Sonic R has always been a strange outlier: a Saturn racer with big, explorable stages that never quite let you slow down and look around. Now, a new mod finally leans into what those levels hinted at all along. Hacker and reverse engineering specialist Bo Bayles has released Sonic R&R, a patch for the 1997 Traveller’s Tales title that reshapes it into something much closer to a traditional 3D platformer.
Sonic R&R removes the time limits and racing structure from each of the game’s five stages, stripping out the pressure to place well just to collect Chaos Emeralds or Sonic Tokens. On top of that, Bayles has adjusted character controls specifically to make slower, more deliberate movement feel viable, rather than fighting input meant for constant forward motion. The result is a mode where you can simply wander, search, and experiment with routes instead of constantly worrying about lap counts.
Some will inevitably look at this and ask whether it defeats the entire point of Sonic R as a racer. Bayles is upfront that the patch isn’t “terribly” necessary, noting you can already explore courses via Tag and Balloon modes in the original game. He also admits that with the new setup, the game can effectively become “like a 10 minute” experience if you already know where all the collectibles are.
But that’s not really the goal here. Bayles says he liked the idea of letting players unlock extra characters and gather collectibles without having to rush, and that the revised controls make moving around “a lot more pleasant.” For anyone who remembers wanting to poke around Saturn-era 3D spaces without fighting a timer or awkward handling, this patch delivers exactly that option.
The mod is distributed as a patch rather than a full game, so you’ll need your own copy of Sonic R to use it. Bayles has also provided a detailed write-up on the process behind the hack, hosted on his Substack, and I highly recommend it, as it digs into how the game handles character movement under the hood. It’s a small, focused project, but it opens up one of Saturn’s more divisive titles in a way that finally matches how many players wanted to experience it in the first place.
Source: Sega Xtreme via Time Extension
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