Hang up your sneakers, because Dr. Robotnik and his ex-enemies are going go-karting! Use the untapped potential of rings to super-charge your vehicle across more than 200 crazy courses. With over 20 unique items and some of the hottest moves on this side of the Floating Island, this is Racing at the Next Level!

Release promo

Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers is a 2024 Sonic the Hedgehog Mascot Racer fangame and the sequel to Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart. It was released on April 24th 2024. Originally planned as a big update for the game, Kart Krew decided to change various mechanics of the game, revamp some of the tracks, emphasize the Sonic content and put away references to other companies, and add some new content to the game, to the point that it ended as a completely different thing from the original, and so they changed the long name of the game (which can seem cryptic to those who never played Sonic Robo Blast 2) for a totally different one.

Set after the events of Sonic Adventure 2, the game starts on a long prologue where Dr. Robotnik and Tails are trying to repair Metal Sonic (the player sees the former two with his visors), and after the reparation is finally complete, they explain that, after apparently becoming friends, they invented the High Voltage Ring, which possesses the combined power of 80,000 Rings. Following this impressive feat, they've created a new vehicle which uses the High Voltage Ring's energy as fuel: the Ring Racers. After Metal views a series of Ring Racer tests where both geniuses switch places as test subjects and analysts, the game finally starts: you can chose between one of the 9 default pilots, do the 5 tracks of the Ring Cup, and after that, either try to unlock the remaining six cups the game has to offer^spoilerand realize that it actually has 14 cups, and then discover it has 28 cups in total, not counting some bonus cups which have their own page, and that's just for the vanilla game, try your hand at the various Time Attack modes, or challenge players online.

The official download website is here.

Contents

This game contains examples of the following tropes:

• Action Commands: A type of floor panel launches racers into the air and brings a pair of half-circle icons on the screen. You must input a direction and the accelerate button as the half-circles join up to either airdash or double jump, or else the kart will flop and tumble all over the floor when it lands. Fast-falling after a successful input will trigger a super boost.
• All There in the Manual: The online manual includes details not mentioned in the game, including the fact that the game takes place just after Sonic Adventure 2. Additionally, the manual contains one of the only hints for unlocking Ring the Racer, with the "race as a ring" password being included on the "Notes" page.
• Alternate Timeline: The manual indicates that the game is set after Sonic Adventure 2, with Eggman being humbled by Gerald's plan to destroy the world. More specifically, as Jack Frost reveals to the playable Shadow, it is a timeline where the latter character stayed dead after his Heroic Sacrifice.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • In the Tutorial levels, getting blown up will send you back to the last checkpoint you reached, and even in the Self-Propelled Bomb escape sequence in the Drifting course, there are multiple checkpoints about so that you don't have to redo the whole chase from the start if you mess up.
  • There's often two methods of completing specific challenges, which is convenient for specific challenges that would either never happen due to luck or something a player wouldn't think to do - two prime examples with primary unlock methods being Carol Tea being unlocked by loading an addon, and Jack Frost becoming unlocked after the game crashes. You can actually get both at the same time by loading an invalid addon file (likely from the original SRB2K) to cause the game to crash, which will still fulfill both conditions.
  • Chao Keys are given every five races (as of 2.2), and can be used to instantly clear a Challenge, should you feel stuck trying to clear one. Even the big challenges can be cleared this way, albeit with a more stringent requirement. While grindy, it is possible to unlock every square (save for one) by just racing a lot.
  • A post-launch update addressed the main complaints about its Forced Tutorial and unlock system. The player is now allowed to leave the tutorial or access its racing challenge at certain sections, and the race is made easier on top of immediately unlocking online mode if won (which actually gives incentive for taking that route). Mod support and Time Attack mode are also unlocked sooner. Chao Keys for unlocking content appear more often and there are more passwords for unlocking categories of stuff. The Rubberband AI is also made more forgiving.
  • The Sealed Star levels can be frustrating, as you need to meet one of two requirements (425+ points on non-Relaxed difficulties, or 1st Place on Master), the minimap is nonexistent and instead replaced with a progress bar like the ones found in Sonic Heroes, the barrier protecting the Emerald is extremely resistant, and you may need to start the cup all over again if you lose all your lives. However, there are some safety nets:
    • The end of a level usually contains an abundance of boost panels, giving you a final chance to smash the Barrier and/or catch up to the Emerald.
    • If you manage to get a Self-Propelled Bomb, once it reaches the Emerald, it deals significant damage to the Barrier, making it easier for you to destroy it and get the Emerald. It also creates Shockwaves that you can use to gain a boost and get back to the Emerald more easily.
    • As of the 2.2 patch, some of the damage that you’ve done to the Barrier (up to 40%) will persist between lives, so if you stock up on them and get some good hits with each failed attempt, it becomes much easier to snag the Emerald in a last-ditch effort.
  • Likewise with the 2.2 patch, the difficulty of CPUs now decreases by one level for every continue you use, and they will never get any tougher after getting an A rank in the Relaxed cups.
  • There are 100 Spray Cans to collect across the tracks, but there are more than 100 tracks total. If you think that a particular Spray Can is too difficult to reach, you can ignore it and try exploring a different track. If you really want all the Spray Cans, you can get them in free play, so you can carefully choose the best item to reach it without worrying about getting first or being impeached by a CPU.
  • After unlocking the Mystic Melody as a companion, the Tutorial will always set it as your companion for if you're looking for an Ancient Shrine around the levels.
• Anti-Hoarding:
  • Since driving through Rings has no effect once you have 20, you are encouraged to use the Rings in your stock, which give you a speed boost when used, from time to time. Turning on the Auto-Ring feature will automatically use Rings for you depending on the situation, usually if you are driving through Rings with a full stock.
  • You're encouraged to use items instead of holding onto one forever by not being allowed to use your Rings (this includes Auto-Ring if it's enabled) if you are holding onto an item, or have brought out a weapon-type item (i.e. its sprite is accompanying your kart) but have not actually fired it yet.
• Balance Buff:
  • Many of the new racing mechanics in Ring Racers including the tether, were created to allow high acceleration, low top speed drivers like Tails, the Chao, Motobug, Eggman, and Heavy to compete more reliably against racers with high top speed on a wider variety of tracks. On the other hand, the Spin Dash allows low acceleration, high top speed characters like Sonic, Flicky, Fang, Metal Sonic, and Mecha Sonic Mk. II to recover more easily if they got off-road or were hit by an item.
  • Much like the KartMP addon used frequently on SRB2K servers, characters get minor buffs to other attributes that scale with acceleration, with the type of buff determined by how much they lean towards weight or handling; high acceleration, high weight characters get mini-turbos faster, while high acceleration, high handling characters have more powerful ring boosts.
• Black Comedy:
  • One of the harshest things Jack Frost says in his easter egg room is how he needs to escort Maria as much as he needs a hole in his head.
  • If you activate the joke set of images for the goal signposts, the one for Shadow is of him looking upset with a big R.I.P. written on top — one of multiple hints at him being supposed to be dead in the game's backstory.
• Blackout Basement: The switch puzzle cave at Espresso Lane in Encore Mode has barely any visibility to work with as you toss bananas onto said switches in the distance.
• Bonus Level: Ring Racers has two types of bonus level included in the Grand Prix mode:
  • Prison Eggs: Each cup has two of these, with the objective being to take out a bunch of Prison Eggs in battle mode stages in a limited amount of time, the amount of time you have increasing with each prison destroyed.
  • The second requires more specific conditions to be played, and its difficulty puts it on the Brutal Bonus Level trope below.
• Boss Subtitles: Blend Eye (Mean Blend Eye in Encore Mode) is introduced with its name and a title ("Here to serve" or "Promoted to assistant manager"). The WARNING and VENGEANCE messages on each variant of the boss also have mysterious ramblings written on them.
  "THE FALLEN MAN — CAN THE DESCENDANT OF PROMETHEUS ESCAPE THE SHADOWS OF THE FIRE SET ALIGHT 50 YEARS AGO? THE RISING STAR — 50 YEARS ON, WHO WILL KNOW ALHAZEN'S NAME AND NOT FIRST THINK OF THE BROTHER'S MANY DEEDS?"
• Brutal Bonus Level: The Sealed Star stages are the game's version of the Chaos Emerald Special Stages. For beginners, gaining access to them is already difficult, as you must get enough points in a cup to succeed (usually by either getting first place in every race and/or placing high enough with 20 rings and/or getting at least a B grade on the Prison Eggs stages), but completing them is even harder. In these stages, you have to chase a UFO Catcher carrying a Chaos Emerald much like Sonic Mania, but with the catch being that you must use items to destroy the catcher. At that point, the Chaos Emerald will begin moving on its own, and you need to touch it. The track also doesn't loop, so you have a limited time to do all of this - reach the end of the track without collecting the Emerald or fall off the track, and you lose a life. Lose all of your lives and you are forced to the cup results screen, forcing you to redo the cup all over again, or to unlock the stage again in the next cup (or a previous one if you reached the 14th cup, as you can only unlock Emeralds via the cups on the first select screen).
• Call-Back: The dialogue between Tails and Eggman in the tutorial, particularly the section where you pick your first Spray Can, features a few nods to past Sonic games, primarily (and surprisingly, given the game is styled after the Classic-era games) those set in the "Modern" era:
  • As seen in the opening sequence, Tails has his Miles Electric from the Modern games, and it'll also get mentioned when picking yellow as your color. Picking yellow also has Tails mention it as the color he chose for his fake Chaos Emerald from Sonic Adventure 2; similarly, picking black has Tails mention that he's thinking about the Space Colony ARK.
  • Tails will mention that Sonic likes his car colored red when it's picked as your color, referencing the Cyclone from the Sonic Drift games.
  • If you pick purple, Tails will bring up how he used it as the color for the SS Tornado EX from Sonic Rush Adventure. This will lead to Tails wishing that Eggman had been nicer when they met Blaze, which the doctor retorts, stating that they wouldn't have met at all if he'd been nice, referencing how his plot from Sonic Rush involved merging Sonic's world with the Sol Dimension.
  • Picking white as your color has Eggman suggest Tails visit Robotnik Winter Zone from Sonic Triple Trouble. Tails rejects Eggman's offer on the basis that he "prefers [his] snow un-irradiated", an acknowledgement of the fact that, according to the game's Japanese manual, the "snow" is a result of Eggman testing the weaponry of Atomic Destroyer Zone in the area.
  • Picking green for your color has Eggman ask Tails if he's "had enough of green and hills to last a lifetime", alluding to how often Green Hill Zone has re-appeared throughout the games (including this one, multiple times). Eggman's remark about how "nature lovers would kiss a plant if [they] could get with it" is also a subtle reference to Tails and Cosmo's relationship in Sonic X.
  • Tails will note that the Spin Dash was a technique he invented, calling back to the American manual for Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
• Cave Behind the Falls: In Espresso Lane, spin dashing onto the wall behind the waterfall on the river of coffee will launch you up to a hidden Trick Spring item. There is a point to it besides reaching the Spray Can on a cliff by the end of the track...
• Cluster F-Bomb: In keeping with the mature nature of his series (and in stark contrast to the Sonic franchise's family-friendly nature), Jack Frost's dialogue on SRB2 Frozen Night tends to involve a looooooot of swearing and adult references.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: The rival AI, assigned from the second race of a Grand Prix cup onwards, gets blatant advantages over the player and even other AI racers:
  • Their top speed is 10% faster than the assigned speed stat, meaning a speed-focused character, such as Sonic, makes for a formidable rival.
  • Their tethering slipstream and ring boosts are twice as powerful as the standard versions.
  • They outright get better item odds, and gain more powerful items, such as Invincibility, more frequently.
• Comeback Mechanic: If you're close behind a racer, you can tether to them to slingshot and overtake them. Consequently, anyone else can do this to you.
• Company Cross References: One of the unlockable companions, the "C.H.R.O.M.E.", actually comes from one of the Kart Krew's earliest mod endeavors, Sonic Robo Blast 2: Top-Down for Version 2.1 of Sonic Robo Blast 2.
• Competitive Balance: Ring Racers keeps the chart of Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart and details it on the select screen: the 81 combinations are classified in 9 classes (from A to I, going from the slowest to the fastest, then from the lightest to the heaviest) which the default characters are the standards, and if you press the drift button, you can check the character's stats to determine your choice better.
• Continuing is Painful:
  • You are allowed a few attempts to skip the long tutorial by instead racing against the CPU on a special track. If you fail this, then you will go back to the tutorial and you will like it. Especially painful in the original release version where you only get one shot and the computer difficulty is cranked up...
  • To access the Sealed Star stages, you need to clear any cup on Intense difficulty or higher with a high score, which requires using little to no continues. Those are very tough stages meant to burn through your remaining continues, and if you run out of them, then it cuts to the cup's final results and you must play it all over again. Not to mention that if you want the Chaos and Super Emeralds, you need to do them in the first 14 cups.
  • The secret route to a hidden boss fight in Espresso Lane involves multiple steps that can be failed very easily and two items required to progress do not respawn once collected. The trial and error involved will require you to reset the level several times, and losing to the boss results in a No Contest to force you to square one as well.
• Continuity Porn: The roster of the game includes a large number of one-shot Sonic characters that had only one key appearance and never showed up again. This includes the robots Heavy and Bomb from Knuckles Chaotix, Tails Doll and Metal Knuckles of Sonic R fame, Honey the Cat from Sonic the Fighters, and Emerl from Sonic Battle. The non-Sonic cast also gets a lot of love as both current and obscure Sega properties are represented- including most of the ones featured in Sega Superstars and then some.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • The Spray Can room in the tutorial is full of these - not only are there specific sets of dialogue for each Spray Can you acquire (most of them Mythology Gags), but if you skip the tutorial, the section where you pick your first Palette Swap adjusts depending on how many Spray Cans you've collected. If you've collected at least one (and therefore unlocked one of the initial nine colors), it'll be replaced with a different one; the game will also acknowledge that the new color isn't supposed to be here if you pick it. If you're crazy enough to have collected all of them without doing this section of the tutorial, there'll be no Spray Cans to pick from, and an extended bit of exclusive dialogue plays where Tails and Eggman hang a massive lampshade on the whole thing.
  • Replaying the Rings section leads to Tails wondering if the doctor's trying to play the same trick twice, with Robotnik clarifying that it's a bug in the system this time. Tails also mentions that a bunch of Spray Cans really aren't worth the level of security imposed, and when he does return to the room, Robotnik clarifies that he got his robots to spread the others around the multiple courses.
  • In the Brakes section, if Tails steers around the trap instead of trying to go through it, he actually lampshades how something was meant to happen, and Robotnik congratulates him for evading the trap. Tails isn't too worried, though, considering the Respawn ability, though ponders if he should give it a go or play it smart and keep going. Should Tails go into the trap anyway, he'll be left speechless from the embarrassment while Robotnik teasingly states that the fox only has himself to blame.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Class G, H and I racers (7 to 9 weight) in general get this as they cannot turn as sharp as the lighter racers and must rely on drifting to get through tight turns or combine drifting with breaking to maintain control through even tighter turns. Your reward for choosing a heavyweight over a lightweight and drifting around corners optimally means you get a racer that can preform better in races than lightweights as they can obtain drift boosts faster and don't have to get worried about being knocked around the track by the bigger racers since they are the bigger racers.
  • For a specific example: Metal Sonic (8 top speed and weight) is as fast as Sonic but trades handling for weight, making him harder to control but much more powerful with drift boosts. Metal Knuckles 7 top speed and 8 weight) and Mecha Sonic Mk. II (9 top speed and weight) are opposites to Jet and Bomb respectively.
• Easter Egg:
  • In SRB2K, the password "banana" unlocks everything. In Ring Racers, it brings up a special screen with the previous game's title crumbling and various characters driving and spinning across the camera, all set to a remix of the theme that plays when a game incompatible with Sonic & Knuckles is inserted into the Sonic & Knuckles cartridge.
  • You can find Jack Frost in a hidden corner of SRB2 Frozen Night. He mocks your character and has a unique quote for everyone including a generic one for custom characters, with lots of Black Comedy and Breaking the Fourth Wall.
• Easy-Mode Mockery: While the cups themselves (barring the Recycle ones) can still be unlocked as of version 2.2, if you only ever play on Gear 1 (Relaxed), during GP races, you never have a chance to see the Sealed Star stages or get any Emeralds, and the end of the credits will tell you to Challenge a harder difficulty.
• Epiphany Therapy: Jack Frost can be unlocked by talking to him as Motobug, where his attempts to mock Motobug's lack of individuality end up bouncing right back at him as he realizes he's also one of many identical Jack Frost demons. Talking to the Motobug causes him to then realize there's still merit in the little things they do to be happy regardless, and it inspires Jack to hop in a kart and join the fun instead of standing on the side heckling random passers by.
• Excuse Plot: While SRB2K had no plot at all, Ring Racers features a long and embellished opening tutorial full of dialogue between Tails and a seemingly reformed Dr. Eggman as they use a new source of power for motorsports. The viewpoint character is Metal Sonic, with hints at him being a possible future threat to the peace they've achieved. Unfortunately, the whole thing comes off like a prologue to a non-existent story mode, as there's no more plot for the remainder of the game, not even any explenation regarding the Sealed Stars and the Emerald UFO Catcher.
• Expy:
  • Some tracks and arenas look a lot like Mario Kart equivalents:
    • Pico Park, an oval with more laps than other races, which makes the races extremely brutal, is extremely reminiscent of Baby Park.
    • Mega Bridge Zone only has small differences with Donut Plains 3.
    • Mega Ice Cap Zone is a less unfair version of Vanilla Lake 2.
    • The Sega Saturn arena is a take on the Gamecube and Nintendo DS arenas.
  • Among the items from the original game, the ones introduced in this version are new variations of other racers' items:
    • Fire Shields are based on the Bullet Bill item, differing in that it is manually controlled, giving the user great speed at the cost of handling. It is not an autopilot item ala the Bullet Bill, and while the heat gauge used for the speed boost is dependant on how far from first the user is, the user can stop using it to let it cool down.
    • The Water Shield replicates the Bubble from Diddy Kong Racing, trapping the victim in a large bubble and preventing them from moving until they get out. Unlike the Diddy Kong Racing bubble, the player can use it on themselves as an offensive weapon instead of a trap.
• Extended Gameplay: Ring Racers starts out with a set of seven cups played in order. Beating Extra Cup plays the credits, and then it unlocks most of a second set of seven cups all at once. And then it keeps going for a grand total of 30 cups.
• Fairy Companion: You can unlock a little companion who will fly around your character and warn you about racers and items coming right behind you. There are many of them, ranging from Flickies to Badniks and even the Barrel from Carnival Night. The Mystic Melody in particular is required to interact with the little hidden shrines taken from Sonic Adventure 2.
• Fake-Out Fade-Out: Speed Highway is a sprint map that seems to have a normal finish line after the final spring jump... Only to suddenly drop racers into a race down a building to the real finish line.
• Flying Brick: The UFO Catcher protecting the Emeralds and Super Emeralds in the Sealed Stars stages is not only fast and persistant, but it also pushes your character if they happen to be on its way.
• Forced Tutorial: Ring Racers requires players to play a tutorial before making it to the title screen, which is framed as Metal Sonic viewing a record of Dr. Eggman and Tails doing a test run in a factory racing course. However, rather than a tutorial, this is really a half hour-long story scenario with multiple sets of platforming and puzzle challenges that introduce every ability in the player's moveset and every mechanic and object featured in the game. Players are allowed to "skip" it only by finding a path that instead challenges them to ranking high in a race against difficult opponents. And then, knowing a lot of people are really there for the online multiplayer, the game forces them to unlock it by first proving their skills on the Grand Prix mode. However, both of these requirements can be skipped with the right passwords and knowing how to open the password feature before entering the tutorial, and the 2.1 update added new exits that would end the tutorial quicker, as well as lowering the difficulty of the secret race.
• Foreshadowing:
  • If you pick the black Spray Can in the tutorial, Tails says he had The ARK on his mind. Dr. Eggman suddenly turns very gloomy in response but doesn't elaborate why. An easter egg in the Frozen Night track reveals that Shadow died in this setting's version of the events of Sonic Adventure 2.
  • Part of the process for unlocking the final character is inputting the password "race as a ring". In the secret room in the Controls tutorial, you are required to stand next to a static monitor that displays a view taken from a certain screenshot from a particular SRB2 Message Board character mod thread. Indeed, the final secret character is that same Ring, but now with a body.
• Fragile Speedster: Class C characters (7 to 9 top speed and 1 to 3 weight) like Sonic (8 top speed and 2 weight), Blaze (7 top speed and 3 weight), Jet (7 top speed and 2 weight), Shadow (9 top speed and 2 weight), Flicky (8 top speed and 1 weight) and Bomb (9 top speed and 1 weight) are among the fastest characters and have very precise controls, but they’re as vulnerable to off-road as they endure heavier racers’ attacks.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: There are hints that the game is in an Alternate Timeline where Shadow was Killed Off for Real after the events of Sonic Adventure 2, but that doesn't stop the character from being playable anyway, or Maria for that matter.
• Gameplay Grading: Just winning races isn't enough to score high. You must clear as many laps as possible in first place (or at least in the top half) and cross the finish line with as many rings as possible, avoiding their very helpful use as a boost on the final stretch of a race. You must also beat the bonus rounds and avoid losing continues. If you do well enough, you'll get an A Rank at the end of the cup - and on any difficulty but Relaxed, this allows access to the Sealed Stars stages, where while using continues do impact the final grade, getting the Emerald increases your rank by one stage - which can result in getting a S rank as a result.
• Genre Throwback: The game is presented as if it were a Genre Shift sequel to Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine released for the Sega Saturn and then ported to PC, utilizing the Saturn's controller icons wherever appropriate for controller inputs, an art direction for the menus similar to Sonic Jam and promotional art for the franchise at the time, and even a Retraux release trailer designed to feel like a commercial you'd catch on TV while recording something.
• Glacier Waif: Mighty manages to be as heavy as Eggman despite being the same size as Sonic and lacking Metal Sonic's, well, metal excuse. To a lesser extent, the same can be said about Aigis, who's 163 cm (which is taller than the Funny Animals who revolve around 100 cm, but still farfetched for real world standards, even if she does have the metal excuse).
• Glass Cannon: Class C, F and I characters (7 to 9 top speed) are some of the quickest racers in the game in the right hands, but their acceleration leaves a lot to be desired. One mistake or an incoming attack aimed right at them will send them much further back before they can catch up.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: Made more prominent here, where Dr. Eggman and Tails work together to make the Ring Racers used by the entire cast.
• Guide Dang It!: Many of the unlockables have quite complicated and cryptic unlock methods. One in particular is finding the entrance to Hidden Palace via an out-of-the-way pit in Mystic Cave. Then there's the titular Ring the Racer, who cannot be unlocked via password and must be found via a long process that the game only hints at with a riddle. One part of it is inputting the password "race as a ring" that is a community In-Joke not found within the game itself, but which is hidden in the online manual.
• Heel–Face Turn: Part of the premise is Eggman/Dr. Robotnik having apparently turned a new leaf, as a result of the events of Sonic Adventure 2 and how Shadow didn't survive the end of that game according to Jack Frost in a secret conversation, and starting a joint venture with Tails to create less evil/destructive inventions, such as the High Voltage Ring and the titular Ring Racers, which are essentially powerful karts.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: You can use Eggman Monitors against your opponents by taking them with the explosion, but why stop there when you can bump another racer to pass it over to them? They're saddled with your problem now, and you can very much return it to the racer that planted it in the first place.
• Home-Run Hitter: Invincibility, the Land Mine, and the Gardentop send their victims flying across the map, while also putting them in a Tumble damage state that extends the launch with a few extra bounces. Getting hit by a larger player (either due to them using Grow or you being under the effects of Shrink) inflicts a weaker variant called the Stumble, which doesn't launch players very far and has no hitstun.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: With the release of v2.2 came the addition of these to swap out for Easy, Normal and Hard, these being "Relaxed", "Intense" and "Vicious" respectively. The unlockable Master difficulty remains unchanged.
• Instructive Level Design: The first Sealed Star stage, "Balconies", has a few item capsules containing Jawz at the start of your path, wordlessly hinting that you must attack the UFO Catcher with items.
• Intelligible Unintelligible: When interacting with Jack Frost, Motobug is only heard "speaking" using different sound effects, though Jack Frost can understand the message it's trying to get across clearly.
• Interface Spoiler: The staff roll after clearing the Extra Cup in Ring Racers shows various tracks not seen before and yet to be unlocked characters in silhouette. A second set of cups is unlocked right afterwards.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: In the tutorial, when Eggman and Tails reprogram Metal Sonic, the Doctor refers his robot in masculine pronouns, while Miles mentions Metal with the neutral pronoun "it".
• Jack of All Stats: Class E characters (4 to 6 top speed and weight) like Knuckles and Emerl (both 5 top speed and 5 weight), Rouge (4 top speed and 4 weight), Tikal (6 top speed and 4 weight), Honey (5 top speed and 6 weight), and Sakura Shinguji (5 top speed and 4 weight) are more or less perfectly balanced regarding top speed, acceleration, weight and handling.
• Jack of All Trades: The unlockable Heavy Magician has this in spades, being bang in the middle of the character chart despite not having an actual defined position, and for good reason; every time a lap starts when you're playing as her, she'll utilise Voluntary Shapeshifting to morph into any of the unlocked characters in your roster, complete with inheriting their stats. The only giveaway that it's still her underneath the disguise (if she isn't taking damage) is the fact that she retains her own unique voice clips. Who she shapeshifts into also changes at the end of every lap, before she reverts back to normal at the end of the race.
• Kaizo Trap: In the Sealed Star stages, collecting the Emerald is not an Instant-Win Condition. If you fall out of the map while you're carrying the Emerald to the goal, you'll be sent back to the start and forced to break the UFO Catcher once again.
• Lethal Lava Land: Crimson Core Zone, a heated factory-like track with flames erupting from the pits.
• Level Ate: Sundae Drive and Espresso Lane. The former is a track made of ice cream and various toppings, while the latter is a land of sweets that starts in a cafeteria, goes over a river of coffee and ends on an ice cream climb.
• Level Editor: High Voltage Ring, named after the Ring Racers' power source, is the game's official map editor. This is a fork of Ultimate Zone Builder, made for the base SRB2, which itself is a fork of Ultimate Doom Builder.
• Lightning Bruiser: Class I characters (7 to 9 top speed and weight) like Metal Sonic (8 top speed and weight), Metal Knuckles (7 top speed and 8 weight) and Mecha Sonic Mk. II (9 top speed and weight) can knock other racers around while also maintaining high speed, albeit at the cost of acceleration and handling.
• Made of Explodium:
  • Taking damage when -20 rings into Ring Debt causes your kart to tumble and explode upon hitting the ground. You respawn with 5 rings as pity shortly after.
  • Unlike in SRB2K, getting crushed makes your kart explode, regardless of your ring count.
• Magikarp Power: Class G characters (1 to 3 top speed and 7 to 9 weight) may be hard to handle first and may not seem as useful as fast characters, but if you know how to increase their speed by using their weight, the mini-turbos and the ring boosts, you can give the fastest racers a run for their money. This is also true to a lesser extent for class D characters (4 to 6 weight).
• Marathon Level: The final race of the Egg Cup is Death Egg Zone, a course so long it's split into three laps of four sections each.
• Mighty Glacier: Class G characters like Eggman and Eggrobo (both 2 top speed and 8 weight), Chaos Zero (3 top speed and 8 weight) and Heavy (1 top speed and 9 weight) are among the heaviest (tied with Metal) and have impressive drift spark charge rate, but endure a very low top speed. Played With due to the fact that a low top speed also means a high acceleration and the ability to charge boosts faster while drifting, meaning they can reach said speeds faster and recover better than most other racers.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Some character and companion unlocks have close connections to the character/companion in question. Notable instances of this include:
    • Tails Doll is unlocked by activating the shrine on Regal Ruin, a near-1-to-1 recreation of the Sonic R track of the same name.
    • Big and Froggy are both unlocked on Emerald Coast. In particular, Froggy is floating in a bubble in a secret area on the track, mimicking Gamma's version of the level.
    • Shadow and Maria's unlocks happen on Lost Colony, a track that takes place on the Space Colony ARK. This track is also where you find the Mystic Melody, referencing how it was unlocked in Sonic Adventure 2.
    • Rouge's main unlock method is beating Security Hall in exactly 5 minutes (excluding the milliseconds counter). Security Hall is one of Rouge's levels in Sonic Adventure 2, and she somewhat-infamously imposes a 5 minute time limit on the level.
    • The Flicky driver is unlocked by getting a NO CONTEST^note Coming in dead last, which causes your kart to explode as Motobug, mimicking how Animals (like Flicky) are released when Badniks (like Motobug) are busted in the games.
    • The Chao driver's primary unlock method is beating a cup with Chao Egg as your companion.
    • Rappy is unlocked by getting 4th or better on Las Vegas, which is a track based on the location from Phantasy Star Online 2. Likewise, the Mag companion is unlocked by either activating Las Vegas' shrine or entering the name of "famous bounty hunter" Red Ring Rico on the password screen.
    • Mail is unlocked by getting 99,999 Rings, like if she negotiated a price with the developers to race and refused to do anything below this amount.
    • NiGHTS is unlocked by activating the shrine in Avant Garden Zone. While the track itself already takes a fair bit of aesthetic influence from NiGHTS, the inclusion of NiGHTS-style loops on one of the track's shortcuts acts as a more direct hint towards who's unlocked here.
    • Zipp, from the cancelled Sega Technical Institute title Astropede, is unlocked by activating the shrine in Hidden Palace Zone, referencing how an early gameplay demo of Astropede reused the level's assets, and was a pitch of by that level's original designer Craig Stitt. Simply visiting the level also unlocks Redz, one of the level's Badniks.
    • Azusa's unlock methods are both tied to 765 Stadium, which is iDOLM@STER-themed. Similarly, both Sakura and the Kobu companion are unlocked on Hanagumi Hall Zone, based on the location of the same name (sans "Zone") from Sakura Wars.
    • Carol's primary unlock method is to install a mod in the game, reminding that Freedom Planet was originally conceived as a Sonic mod before becoming its own thing. The secondary unlock method simply involves visiting Aqua Tunnel, a track based on a level from Freedom Planet. Getting 1st on this track as Carol also unlocks Shade Core (the little creatures that pop out of enemies in Freedom Planet) as a companion.
    • Glyph's secondary unlock method involves entering "NNNNNNNN", the Ecco the Dolphin password that skips you to The Machine, on the password screen.
    • Cacodemon is unlocked by either getting the gold medal for Dead Simple, which is based on the Doom II level of the same name, or by entering "IDSPISPOPD", the noclip cheat from Doom, on the password screen.
  • The S.P.B. Cup is based on the levels from the Competition Mode of Sonic 3 & Knuckles: Azure Lake, Balloon Park, Chrome Gadget, Desert Palace, and Endless Mine, the last of which gets a second track in the later Flash Cup.
  • The Phantom Cup features all seven of Sonic Mania's Special Stage courses, two of which are Battle/Prison Eggs stages and the rest are normal race courses.
  • Jack Frost's interactions on SRB2 Frozen Night are nods to the Demon Negotiation mechanic from his home series. This is also his secondary unlock method, fittingly phrased as "recruit a new party member" on the Challenges screen.
  • While comparing Mighty to Knuckles, Jack Frost'll note that "at least the other guy got a TV show!" This reference is particularly notable given that Ring Racers released within days of the Knuckles series' release, though the show had been announced about a year prior.
  • Talking to Jack Frost as Knuckles will cause Jack to repeat a memetic dare from one of his older games, to crush a rock with his bare hands if he thinks he's "such hot shit", which Knuckles complies with.
  • Several Rival set-ups are made based on either direct rivalries, or because the characters would remind each other of a rival not represented in the game itself. For example, Whisper's rival being Heavy Magician since not only is Magician a shapeshifter under Eggman's employ similar to Mimic the Octopus, but they are both the Sole Survivors of their respective squads.
  • In the intro, Tails mentions that his original character is "Nine Tails", a meaner version of himself who never met Sonic, implying that he's either aware of his Shatterverse counterpart or is aware that he could have turned out quite differently if he had never met Sonic.
  • The map Blue Mountain Classic opens with a single pit of lava that is somewhat at odds with the rest of the level's ice theming. Older versions of SRB2 had an unused level called Blue Mountain Zone Act 2 that had the same single pit of lava at the beginning of an ice level.
  • A few of the passwords are also strewn with this as well. To give examples (outside of those already mentioned above):
    • "sonic in paynt", which unlocks all the colors, is derived from an infamous Sonic ROM hack where the colors were all over the place.
    • "creature capture", which unlocks every companion, is based on the Dr. Robotnik's Creature Capture ROM hack that involved Robotnik capturing the critters in advance for Sonic's arrival to the stages in Sonic 1.
    • "cartridge tilt", which unlocks most of the game's stages, is not only based on the common practice of doing so to bug out old games that supported cartridges, but is mainly a nod to its usage in Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island, where knocking the cartridge about enough would enable a hidden stage select.
  • The last leg of City Escape unleashes a Self-Propelled Bomb upon the race leader to simulate the G.U.N. truck chase from the original game.
• Nitro Boost:
  • Ring Racers revolves around speeding up with the titular ring mechanic. You can collect up to 20 rings at once and you need to keep peppering yourself with them, particularly while driving up slopes since the kart can barely do it on its own. Running out of rings can be extremely punishing.
  • Dash pads boost whoever drives over them. Gust Planet in Ring Racers even has an unique launch tube gimmick that is taken from its source romhack. You need to hit a nearby dashpad and the tube back-to-back for the best effect.
  • One type of item will spin a roulette whose results will recharge your rings for certain amounts of time.
  • At the start of the race, you need to hit the forcefield (that normally traps you for a foul) after the countdown has ended, but before any other racer does, to get a considerable boost at the start of the race.
• No Fair Cheating: While there is a password to access Tournament Mode that gives access to almost everything, the game can't be saved, and there is one achievement which is hidden when Tournament Mode is active which isn't unlocked — despite more passwords being added since the game's launch, the player must legitimately solve a riddle to acquire the final character. And not only that, there are two maps which need to be entered and beaten properly before they can be used as a race course or as a time attack boss fight.
• Non-Indicative Name: The music for Sub Zero Peak is identified as a Genesis remix of Frost Man's Stage, much like how the version from SRB2K was simply the original track. However, the remix is actually of the beta version of the track, which sounds substantially different.
• Nonlethal Bottomless Pits: Of particular note is that Mystic Cave Zone is faithful to the mobile remake of Sonic 2 — a pit in the track will send you into Hidden Palace Zone.
• Nostalgia Level: Several tracks from SRB2K are recreated in this one with varying amounts of changes in their level design. Some like Hot Shelter share a location but are really entirely different courses.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: If you pick up the black Spray Can when given the option in the Tutorial, Tails mentions that he's thinking about the ARK, and because of this, Eggman doesn't give any of his usual quips (likely for the reason stated under the Alternate Timeline trope), instead hanging his head low and just responding "Right. Yes. Of course."
• Obvious Rule Patch: The Bubble Shield allows players to repeatedly bounce along the ground at high speeds and get over shortcut tripwires. This was a very powerful strategy in several tracks when the game first launched, so the developers ended up making an arbitrary rule in version 2.2 that causes the bubble to burst after a bounce if you're in first place.
• Opening the Sandbox: The first set of cups are played in a fixed order from first to last. Clearing the Extra Cup unlocks most of a second set of cups all at once, allowing the player to tackle them in any order until the final cup is unlocked. Collecting the Chaos and Super Emeralds during the first 14 cups will also unlock their respective cups in the second page, while (depending on the version) either beating the cup that would grant the Emerald on Hard or beating the cup before it in the list of cups unlocks another cup.
• Optional Boss: Going off the beaten path and taking a complicated secret route in Espresso Lane will allow you to fight the Blend Eye robot in a single-player boss fight, and successfully beating it will unlock the robot as a companion. Of course, the robot won't hold anything back, and like with its brethren before it, it has two phases to fight through, all the while you cannot get hit more than three times like in the Prison Eggs levels, or you're out.
• Out of Focus: While he's obviously still playable in the game, Sonic himself is nowhere to be seen in the opening tutorial, nor does he make any meaningful appearances in any promotional material. This is lampshaded by Jack Frost, who asks how it feels that his nemesis got top billing instead of him.
• Pet the Dog: If Cream talks to Jack Frost, he lampshades the illegality of a little girl who "hasn't even hit double-digits" being allowed to drive, and instead of poking fun at her, offers to give her a quarter for a nearby payphone to call her mother Vanilla and have her race instead. Strangely, he doesn't seem to share the same settlement with Maria (see Black Comedy above).
• Platform Hell: The game prides itself on having tracks designed like they're 3D Sonic levels played with a car, so many tracks in later cups and also in the Sealed Star stages have a significant focus on gimmicks, hazards and platforming.
• Press X to Die: If you overcharge an Insta-Whip or Spin Dash, the kart takes damage and loses some rings. If you keep charging anyway over and over on purpose, the kart will leak rings and spikeballs before finally exploding at -20 rings.
• Punched Across the Room: Taking significant enough damage or driving into a Drop Target can and will send you flying.
• Put on a Bus: A large chunk of the SRB2K bonus characters are missing, including most of the guest characters. On the flip side, this is inverted for certain characters who were part of Super SRB2 Kart Z which didn't appear in SRB2K, but returned for Ring Racers.
• Rainbow Motif: The Eggrobos that challenge you in Test Track Zone consist of a red one named "Champ", an orange one named "Pharaoh", a yellow one named "Caesar", a green one named "General", a blue (technically cyan) one named "Shogun", an indigo (technically blueberry) one named "Emperor", and a violet one named "King". Appropriately, the source code dubs them "the ROYGBIV Rangers".
• Read the Freaking Manual: Some weeks after the game's launch, an online manual was published. Besides detailed instructions on techniques, items and modes, it contains the "working designs" password on the Notes page and a barely legible hint about the final secret character. It still treats the Sealed Star stages as a major spoiler to not be spoken of at all, though.
• Reformed, but Not Tamed: Dr. Eggman is a fair bit nicer than he used to be, but he's still got a mischievous side. As seen in the scenario if you skip the tutorial and collect all 100 Spray Cans before the game could officially introduce them, when he "forgets" to unlock a door for Tails while he goes to get a drink for the two of them.
• Retraux: Ring Racers is still on the SRB2 vibe of making the games the Sega Saturn didn't have by being the missing link between Sonic Drift and Sonic Riders. The mid-90s feeling is emphasized by the bright colors which are reminiscent of Knuckles Chaotix, and the button mapping which is thought to work for a (classic or 3D) Saturn controller. Also, once again, Sonic characters appear in their Classic Era design^note Amy, who previously appeared in her modern design in Kart, now has her classic era design, and Dreamcast and Modern Eras characters like Tikal and Blaze are slightly chibified to fit this design choice. Even guest racer Arle is hit with this, using her Compile-era design and English voice in Puyo Puyo Fever, as opposed to her current design from Puyo Puyo!! 20th Anniversary and voice acting from Puyo Puyo Tetris onwards.
• Rubber-Band A.I.: Players now all have a tether, which causes them to drive faster based on a speed and distance determined by their stats. This also serves as an interesting inversion, as the player can instead rubber-band off of CPU players as a Comeback Mechanic.
• Secret Character: The game features many unlockable characters, but Ring the Racer stands out among the rest, having an unlock method which is nigh impossible to discover by accident and which has to be done by said unlock method[[note]]"Hire a bounty hunter, recite a fabled incantation, and wait until morning." That means gathering 99,999 rings to unlock Mail (unlocking her with a password or with Chao Keys also works) and typing "race as a ring" in the password screen (which has no immediately apparent effect). In the Controls tutorial, you must unlock the gate at the end, return to the beginning, use a rainbow drift on the set of red springs to launch yourself at the high rooftop of the building ahead and dive onto it to bounce over the fence. In the shortcut room, stay idle in front of the static monitor for 10 whole minutes until it clears up, go back again and launch yourself at the building's lower rooftop. Then finally and carefully drop down onto the nearby bridge with a now unlocked door to grab the balloon inside.
• Secret Level: A few can be unlocked in the Lost & Found submenu.
  • Test Area, an engine test sandbox area is unlocked by first unlocking all the other normal courses. It can be played as a battle mode arena.
  • Test Track is an optional challenge in the tutorial that counts as a clear condition for it and is accessed by leaving the intended path via a backdoor. It is based on the virtual world-like visuals of test levels from fangame engines such as Sonic Worlds. In the initial version, there was no indication that this course existed but updates added huge neon signs and dialogues to inform players about it.
  • Hidden Palace replaces Mystic Cave in the Emerald Cup if you find its entrance in the latter course. It is only very vaguely hinted at in the Achievements menu and you can only access it in free play after unlocking the Lost & Found section of the cup menu.
  • The Blend Eye fight hidden in Espresso Lane can be accessed as a Boss-Only Level in the Special Stages section.
• Self-Deprecation: Inputting "gaster" on the password screen in the beginning of the tutorial resets the game and skips it. In Undertale and Deltarune, typing this as the protagonist's or the player's name causes the game to reset or outright crash because Dr. W.D. Gaster doesn't take kindly to people speaking ill of him or assuming his identity. If doing this here has the beneficial effect of skipping the tutorial, then it implies even he doesn't like the thing.
• Sequel Hook: The Lost & Found submenu on the Special Stages section that contains the Blend Eye boss fight has hints towards future content for the game. A banner with a greeting from Amy, which also appeared in Kart as part of the in-game instruction manual, is marked as R2, one with an ominous Metal Sonic is marked as FUTUR3 and a final mysterious one without a character is marked as R4.
• Shout-Out:
  • As you'd expect from a game using the Doom engine, a secret area in Nova Shore Zone hides none other than the Dopefish, which expresses disappointment at you before busting down the wall behind it, revealing the track's shrine.
  • Jack Frost confuses Pulseman for a "computer warrior that fried everyone's eyeballs", referencing both Pulseman being another game by Pokémon creators Game Freak and the infamous Pokémon: The Series episode Electric Soldier Porygon, in addition to Rotom being based on Pulseman.
  • When talking to Heavy, Jack Frost'll ask him to "tell the one about the sandwich" or "how much it costs to fire that...", before admonishing himself for going for the "low hanging fruit".
  • When talking to Shadow, Jack Frost calls himself The Ghost of Christmas Future and asks what it was like to see how much better the world is with him dead, as explained under Alternate Timeline.
  • When talking to Gutbuster, Jack Frost challenges his belief that he's top chef, remarking that he looks more like he came out of Kitchen Nightmares.
  • Jack Frost asks Mecha Sonic if Eggman could turn Super using the Master Emerald as he did once, and wonders if he'd get ripped in so doing.
  • One of the achievements which is to beat the Blend Eye boss fight has an objective listed simply as "Survive".
• Sidelined Protagonist Crossover:
  • Carol Tea is an unlockable racer, but Lilac herself is nowhere to be seen. Jack Frost lampshades this fact in his dialogue with Carol, telling her to head back to Parusa and "send back a new Freedom Planet rep while you're at it".^note He considers her sending the "green one" (not herself OR Torque, but rather Serpentine), but quickly reconsiders that considering he'd need earplugs when in the snake-man's proximity.
  • Likewise, Gum appears as one of the unlockable racers, but compared to SRB2K, Beat didn't make it along to the roster.
• Silliness Switch: The password "working designs" changes the character signposts at the end of races to gags like Heavy as a kettle, Jack Frost jawdropping like a soyjak meme and Ring the Racer posing with a katana like Chihiro from Kagurabachi.
• Skill Gate Characters: Class A, B and C (all 1 to 3 weight) characters are lightweight, making them easy to control and good for newcomers who want to learn how to use drift power and to handle top speed respectively:
  • Class A characters (1 to 3 top speed) are to this game what characters like Peach and Toad are to Mario Kart: they have a great acceleration to recover from off-road and they're easy to control for newcomers, as they can take sharp turns without drifting, don't lose any when drifting, and benefit huge boosts at the exit, but otherwise, they're slow on straight lines, and they are vulnerable to heavier and / or faster racers' attacks. While Tails (2 top speed and weight) is the standard for this class, Silver (1 top speed 2 weight), Tails Doll (2 top speed and 1 weight) and Chao (1 top speed and weight) are more extreme examples.
  • Class B characters (4 to 6 in top speed) like Amy (5 top speed and 2 weight) and Cream (4 top speed and 1 weight) are also beginner-friendly, as they can take turns relatively easy without relying on drifting, not losing too much speed from turns and off-road, and being able to recover fairly easily. The biggest downside is, once again, their lightweight that makes them easy for heavier characters to drop out of the race (Cream especially, as she's among the lightest characters in the game, while Amy still has extra weight), and being balanced also means that they're not as efficient as fast characters on straight lines, nor as fluid as slow characters on sharp turns.
  • Class C characters (7 to 9 top speed) like Sonic (8 top speed and 2 weight), Flicky (8 top speed and 1 weight), Shadow (9 top speed and 2 weight) and Bomb (9 top speed and 1 weight) are the best choice to benefit top speed when you start the game, as their lightweight allows them to take sharp turns without drifting, but if they do drift, they lose a lot of speed and their boosts are not as impressive as the class above, they endure hard times to recover from off-road, and they are still vulnerable to heavier karts.
• Skyscraper City: Skyscraper Leaps, a level taking place atop incredibly tall city buildings with no ground in sight. Power Plant and City Skyline in Prison Break/Battle also have this, being set on differing buildings high above a city.
• Stone Wall: Class A, D, and G characters (1 to 3 top speed) can use their high acceleration to quickly gain speed, recover from attacks, and correct driving errors much more quickly than faster racers. They also tend to have above average Drift Spark Rates for their weight class. Despite this, and true to their norm, they have lower top speeds overall and need to rely more greatly on drifting, boosting, and (for class D and G) knocking away other racers to overtake opponents and stay ahead.
• Story Breadcrumbs: The game starts out with a prologue-tutorial with lots of dialogue where Tails and Dr. Eggman somehow are BFFs but there is no Adventure mode to go with it except for a "preview" for future content in the form of a secret boss. Several secrets and easter eggs in the game, along with the online manual, give clues about the backstory, which involves Shadow dying at the end of Sonic Adventure 2 and Tails preventing the events of Sonic Heroes due to befriending Eggman and thwarting Metal Sonic's betrayal.
• Streamer-Friendly Mode: As of v2.2, Ring Racers has an option in the Sound Settings to turn off all copyrighted songs in the game that could give red flags on websites' copyright policies. There's plans to expand on it later (possibly such as adding copyright-free alternate tracks), but for now, it just mutes the offending songs.
• Strong and Skilled:
  • Class C characters (7 to 9 top speed and 1 to 3 weight), as long as they stay on the road and avoid heavier characters, are the fastest on straight lines and take the sharpest corners with ease.
  • Class F characters (7 to 9 top speed and 4 to 6 weight) like Fang (8 top speed and 5 weight), Mail (8 top speed and 4 weight) and Espio (8 top speed and 6 weight) have the former category’s top speed and a good balance between smooth controls and a good weight to resist opponents’ attacks.
• Take That!: Talking to Jack Frost on Frozen Night almost always leads to this (though given that he's a snarky demon, some of his insults are very clearly not meant to be taken seriously):
  • Bringing Tails Doll will have Jack Frost warn it that it'll scare the children... before questioning whether or not kids'd be even creeped out by Tails Doll these days and telling it to get with the times by getting red eyes.
  • He'll sarcastically tell Headdy that he'll get a sequel someday, potshotting both SEGA and Treasure, unless he "beat up his manager or something", alluding to the True Final Boss of Headdy's home game.
  • Bean's father Bin gets called "a duck from a crappy arcade game".
  • Carol gets told to go back to Parusa and send a new rep for her series, as noted above.
  • Jack Frost expresses confusion at the confusing nature of Blaze's origins, unable to figure out whether she's from another world or if she's from the future (and also died). He then "fires" the staff and demands a real writer.
  • When Billy Hatcher drives up to him, Jack Frost expresses disappointment at Ring Racers being about an "egg man" and not the Eggman before going to see about getting a Steam refund, taking a jab at Steam users who make refund requests for absurd reasons.
  • He'll also snark at how Azusa's games tend to not make it overseas.
  • Working Designs gets a potshot when Mail talks to Jack Frost, who notes that her game's translators "almost have a worse potty mouth than I do!"
  • When Zipp approaches him, Jack Frost tells him that his game's fate was better than that of the infamously-cancelled Geist Force, one of the first games revealed for the Dreamcast.
  • He'll tell Honey the Cat that "[his] two cents talking to you is richer than your dead career" and "Depending on some poor simps to help you scrape by is all that's left for you now".
  • With Espio, he'll ask if he does "that ninja run thing weebs are obsessed with".
  • Aigis naturally gets called a "wannabe mascot".
  • Mighty gets snarkily compared to Knuckles, and Jack Frost questions whether or not "we need to keep dredging you up every decade for nostalgia points".
  • When Jack Frost finds out that Metal Knuckles was in Sonic Superstars, he goes to look... only to change his mind upon finding out that he needs to log into his Epic Games account just to see him, referencing the PC version of Superstars' multiplayer mode requiring an Epic account regardless of storefront.
  • The Rappy gets called "one of those defanged grinder dispensers", criticised for being a Piñata Enemy turned Mascot Mook, and is told to "go back to playing dead".
  • Wonder Boy is made fun of for apparently having not broken his curse in the five years since SRB2Kart.
• Take That, Audience!:
  • The developers really want you to play through the tutorial. If you fail to skip it via the secret race, you're denied from attempting again while either Eggman or Tails insist they should resume training. If you do skip the tutorial via the race or a password and only clear it after collecting every Spray Can in the game, there is a special cutscene where Tails encounters no cans in the end and repeatedly shames himself for skipping the tutorial.
  • The passwords for instantly unlocking Add-ons are "McDonalds" and "mustard gas".
  • Jack Frost also takes aim at the game's playerbase (and the Sonic fanbase as a whole):
    • If you take Ring the Racer to Jack Frost, the latter will act like a player who's whining about how SRB2 Kart doesn't work on their computer.
    • He'll compare Amy to the most fanatic and deranged of Sonic fans (unfavorably, mind, but the point still stands).
    • Sonic himself gets called "washed-up", especially given Eggman's the title character this time around.
    • Whisper is told that "some clueless spriter" will come through and make a WAD file of her dead teammates.
    • Modded characters get called "out-of-towners" and told to buzz off, with Jack Frost remarking that he "barely has enough material for the basegame cast as it is".
• Token Human: Of the unlockable characters (not counting guest racers), Maria Robotnik is the only one to be a human.
• Tube Travel: A lot of tracks feature tubes around which pilots revolve for a short time before being propelled higher on the race.
• Tutorial Failure:
  • The Forced Tutorial is too taxing due to lasting over half an hour and is divided into platforming challenges mostly irrelevant to actual racing without the game even having a single player story mode to justify it. The many cutscenes and banter between Tails and Dr. Eggman also distract from what the game is attempting to teach the player.
  • Despite having Tails and Dr. Eggman playable, the game never takes the chance to explain how their stats affect driving. It makes players use the Insta-Whip to hit switches and solve puzzles that never happen in live gameplay but doesn't inform them about how it can be used to parry opponents and items. It never says anything about the rules of race start-ups either, which comes off as very ironic once you finally get to truly play the game.
• Unlockable Content: Even things taken for granted in the previous game like Online mode and color palettes start out locked in Ring Racers. Similarly to Kirby Air Ride, it features a wide board of icons with hints for their unlock requirements, and playing enough matches grants keys for bypassing those conditions. Large icons require both 10 keys and for the surrounding items to be cleared, though. Players are allowed to input passwords easily found in a text file in the game's own folder to unlock categories of content, but at least two items in the list, Ring the Racer and Hidden Palace Zone, must be unlocked legitimately.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Class I characters (7 to 9 top speed and weight) lack acceleration to recover from spinning out and precision to take sharp corners precisely, but their heavy weight allows them to knock lighter drivers off-road and once they reach their top speed and anticipate sharp turns, they are nearly unstoppable.
• Video Game Demake: Several courses from the Sega Dreamcast games, such as Emerald Coast, Speed Highway, City Escape, and Lost Colony have been recreated to resemble games from the Dreamcast's predecessor.
• Villain Respect: Though bothered by Tails's loyalty to Sonic should the player pick blue as their Spray Can of choice in the Tutorial, he isn't ashamed to admit that the blue blur's doing something right if he raised someone like the little fox genius.
• Visual Pun: One secret character, the final one specifically, is Ring the Racer, a robot with a ring for a head in a game called "Ring Racers". He started out as a joke mod for ''Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart'' that was just a floating ring on the kart.
• Weak, but Skilled:
  • Class A characters (1 to 3 top speed and 1 to 3 weight) like Tails (2 top speed and weight), Bean (1 to speed and 3 weight), Silver (1 top speed and 2 weight), Nights (3 top speed and weight), Tails Doll (2 top speed and 1 weight) and Chao (1 top speed and weight) are the slowest and lightest of the default characters, but their high acceleration allows them to quickly recover from spinning out, and their excellent handling makes it easy to zip around corners while chaining boosts.
  • In a similar way, class B characters (4 to 6 top speed and 1 to 3 weight) like Amy (5 top speed and 2 weight), Cream (4 top speed and 1 weight), Charmy Bee (6 top speed and 1 weight), Jack Frost (6 top speed and 2 weight) and Carol (4 top speed and 3 weight) are very easy to control and benefit of both decent boosts and top speed, though not at the same extent as class A for the former and class C for the latter.