This becomes clear when you look at some of the extra, non-Sonic content included in the game, including a few guest characters such as Donkey Kong and teen robot Aigis from Persona 3. It's a mod scene for a mod of a mod, and that's brilliant. SRB2 Kart's legacy as a Doom mod shines through in online play, because creating new tracks and playable characters is easy, and the required files are automatically distributed to anyone playing. It has a neat little in-game manual (complete with a centre crease) that explains most of its tricks and secrets, and the default controls are set up perfectly for an Xbox or equivalent gamepad. Were it not for its lack of single-player AI, SRB2 Kart could easily pass for a retail game, featuring dozens of tracks across racing and battle modes, some fun power-ups and a tasty drifting system. Grab it here and check out the trailer below.īased on the (also Doom-based) third-person platformer Sonic Robo Blast 2, SRB2 Kart is a side-project created by the Kart Krew, a talented bunch operating out of the SRB2 forums. It supports solo time-trials against ghost replays (no AI at present), up to four players in local split-screen, or up to sixteen players in messy online mode. There's full online play, a built-in server browser and a mostly-friendly bunch of players ready for some N64 styled knockabout racing fun. On a technical level, it's a Doom mod, but also a completely standalone freeware game. That was a very fun time.I didn't expect to lose most of Sunday to Kart Krew's fan-made racer Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart, but I did and don't regret a second of it. This all makes me so nostalgic for 1998-ish. When the guys behind SRB2 first started, how many of them thought it'd eventually lead to stuff like this, 20 years later? Shit, Sonic the Hedgehog wasn't even 10 years old at the time! Amazing!!

Lots of these old projects that just keep trucking are proof that if you keep at a passion project long enough, you'll likely eventually find payoff. Starting with the Doom engine was a stroke of genius for SRB2, and that's a good reason why it's been enduring. Now a days, there are physics guides and multiple freeware engines, and even frameworks for other engines like UE4 or Unity, that you can be up and running with your own Sonic fangame in just a days worth of work if you know what you're doing. It's like everyone was too young and too naive to know that they were taking on a task that was too big for them, and that wound up being a strength because they could dream big. Many people who got into the entire scene likely had no idea how complex or difficult it was to make an accurate Sonic clone when they started, but that just made everything more fun.

You had so much experimentation going on back then, when Rom hacking was still basically limited to Save State hacking. It reminds me of the days of Klik n Create when people were trying whatever tools were available to build Sonic engines from scratch.

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