Video version also available!

February 1, 1998...

That was the date Sonic Robo Blast, one of the earliest Sonic fangames ever, was released. And as outdated as it might be today, back then it was an impressive milestone since fangames weren't too common to see yet, due to the internet and accesible tools for game development were still slowly evolving.

A sequel was being made with the same engine months later, but it got scrapped after a few months of work. This original scrapped version of the sequel would later resurface and become known as SRB2 TGF (which stands for The Games Factory, the engine used for both this and the first game).

Instead, SRB2 publicly surfaced for the first time in October 1999, as a demo called SRB2 Halloween. This demo was a 3D platformer made in 45 days by modifying Doom Legacy's engine. It was very primitive un execution...but the concept was good enough for it to be developed on the following years.

This proof-of-concept slowly but surely started shaping up as a functional 3D platformer as time went on, until it led to the first major release that would stay as the current version for more than a year...

August 19, 2006: SRB2 Final Demo v1.09.4.

Thanks to new features introduced that were intended to open the gates for modding, a lot of people started getting creative with big new mods for the game. And at the same time, the now beloved Sonic Riders had just arrived on store shelves in XXXX date.

And soon after that, things would result in a community member named Chaos Zero 64 working on a very ambitious mod for SRB2 that would attempt to recreate Sonic Riders into the game.

This very mod would be what started it all.

A little footnote about JmanKart

On my initial research, I assumed that JmanKart, an old mod released in May 28, 2007 that would have predated SRB2Riders's Kart mode, was an inspiration for said Kart mode...but the KartKrew team confirmed that it is actually entirely unrelated and they only had played it very few times. But for those still curious about that, I had played it for almost an hour to record footage since there was none of it on Youtube, and you can watch that here. The video description does have some more info aobut it and a download link if you want to try it as well, though it is as ancient as you can imagine.

On a side note, it is worth noting that said mod's developer Jman has since become the lead of Team Cross Fever, responsible behind the Battle Cross Fever and Sonic Battle R fangames. It isn't related to SRB2Kart at all either...but I found it cool that he moved on to such ambitious new projects long after that.

Origins: SRB2Riders

The project was initially started by Dark Mystic as a SOC mod, assisted by Princess Plushima (previously known as "Draykon") and Chaos Zero 64 on the side of coding and mapping, and while the release thread is dated June 28, 2006, the first post was edited to reflect Riders v1.46.4X, the LAST version of the original mod that got released in June 29, 2009.

There are messages after it that quote older posts and refer to earlier versions of the mod, but these old messages and mod versions are now lost to time; likely due to a message board change back then, which would explain why the first post is NOT marked as edited despite how the version mentioned is from much later than the marked date.

SRB2Riders was originally made out of separate characters and map files paired with a single script file (SOC) to modify the game and packaged together by the small team. There is evidence of how the SOC file itself used to be updated on its own for gameplay tweaks on the Message Board thread, with the evidence of mentions of Riders5.soc files and so on.

Some players also contributed with small things for the project, as seen in the thread with other members sending in their sprites and the credits inside the mod's files.

But at the time, SRB2's limitations did not allow for huge gameplay changes through SOC, so the older versions can be assumed were much more basic than what would later get released...

You see, Chaos Zero 64 eventually started working on a source code version of the mod, modifying the game's engine as much as possible to fit their needs instead of doing it through the limited SOC files, and this led to the release in February 27, 2007, of a new version of SRB2Riders, which in CZ64's words, was much more improved than before.

Features from Sonic Riders like the Air Gauge, boosting and mid-air tricks for extra air were implemented, and it had JTE bots to race against in the Single Player mode. These changes certainly pushed the mod to be way more than it used to be...but sometime after that, there would be a certain new addition important to this story.

An update from June 3, 2008 introduced a Mario Kart gamemode to SRB2Riders...and this is the very first seed of what SRB2Kart would eventually become. Though don't get ahead of yourselves; it definitely didn't play like it yet.

SRB2Riders 1.0's Mario Kart mode

The handling and controls weren't very altered as with the Riders mode, and instead played closer if not virtually like re-skinned vanilla SRB2 gameplay but without normal jumps. You could hop but not drift, items were completely random (regardless of position), didn't have the single player bots, and you could even cut over off-road without a speed loss by hopping over and over with the right timing.

There are other details I noticed from investigating this build, such as...

Even though it isn’t possible to confirm this due to how the older versrons can’t be found anymore, it seems that the first Riders versions with the Mario Kart mode might only have included 8 maps made by CZ64, Chromatian and FlareBlade.

This is because out of the 10 tracks that were seen in this last version, two of them actually had standalone releases in the Message Board in 2009 intended for the Mario Kart mode: Crawla Cape by Violo, and Dusty Dunes by DaicheS9. It is possible that they were noticed by CZ64 and added to the mod, which is doable from how Crawla Cape seemingly was modified by CZ64 to have less lag as he mentions it on Crawla Cape's thread.

You can watch all the maps being explored in Riders 1.0 by following the playlist linked below, where you'll also likely notice the gameplay quirks.

The most noteworthy maps from this very first version would be Peach Castle, which actually survived virtually intact until the current SRB2Kart release as a hidden Map Hell map, becoming the oldest unchanged layout playable in the game, and Pipe Speedway, which is a very early version of what would later become Daytona Speedway, noticeable with the first half with the left circle turn and right turn with an earlier off-road shortcut to take with a mushroom/sneaker being already present, but otherwise being very plain in visual details and the rest of the layout.

Both Riders and the Mario Kart mode enjoyed a fair share of popularity back then, even in their primitive state, and aside from the aforementioned Violo and DaicheS9, there were a few other players such as Super Chris who made maps for Riders 1.0's Kart mode.

But the Mario Kart mode wouldn't REALLY take off until its next major update. See, in July 24th, 2009, SRB2 v2.0 was released, which added and polished many old details in the bae game, and was the logical step to continue SRB2Riders with.

It would take a few years until a port to the new version was finished in June 23, 2011, but aside from having the advantage of an improved base engine and new features to improve the Riders mode (such as the Riders countdown behaving like the original game, having to run through the finish line after the beam vanishes), the most noticeable change was that the Mario Kart mode was significantly reworked.

SRB2Riders 2.0's Mario Kart mode

Not only the handling and acceleration were changed, but drifting and mini-turbos were implemented as well. If you have played KartZ before, Riders 2.0 plays the exact same regarding the physics, sticky wall collision and even the insta-thrusts from miniboosts- only that drifting has an oversight with being off-road invulnerable.

It still wasn't perfect, as there was an oversight where drifting over off-road didn't have a speed penalty, and the Star off-road oversight is still present, but otherwise is a noticeable improvement. Other details that can be mentioned are:

In any case, this update made the Mario Kart mode so popular that it eventually eclipsed the standard Riders mode in popularity, which is made evident with the amount of custom tracks that it received back in the day.

There actually were enough to the point that someone would be inspired to make a full track pack just for this mode...

D00D Kart 64

Made by D00D64, who used to be an active community member and even a KartKrew member during SRB2Kart's development, it compiled both tracks from other players and of his own into a single player, mainly made for multiplayer.

While there were no single player additions nor any modifications to the gameplay, the expansion with maps was enough to warrant having some attention at the time, even though a majority of those were Mario Kart ports.

There were a few maps from this pack that returned to SRB2Kart through the Map Hell rotation, like Black Bliss and PWR Retro Maze (as well as Bleeding Green in the SRBKart 1.0 before being removed in later updates), but there'sone track that survived in the normal rotation.

Cloud Cradle K-E as it featured here would be the oldest track in Kart's vanilla map rotation that still resembles its original layout. However, the original Cloud Cradle K seen in this map pack had more obstacles to avoid and deadly springs in one section, which made the already challenging layout harder and prompted players to request it to be toned down, which is how the Easy variant that survived came to be.

At the time D00D Kart 64 released though, Chaos Zero 64 had lost interest and slowly retired from the SRB2 community, leaving SRB2Riders and the legacy of its Mario Kart mode up in the air...

...

...But you knew this wasn't the end, did you?

A coder named ZarroTsu wanted to expand this Mario Kart mode into its own mod, and with the help of many old contributors and brand new players alike, a new project would rise from the ashes of SRB2Riders. And in January 12, 2012, the arduous road for the yet to be named team of developers would finally begin with the release of...

---

TO BE CONTINUED...

Thanks for reading!

If you are here from the video version, then I'm glad that you checked this out :)

If this seems familiar to you, then it is because you might also have read the original version of SRB2Kart The Documentary on my old Wordpress site- what you just read is a considerably condensed version using the video version as a base (as I was working on it concurrently as I decided to move the article to this site).

If you don't mind the length, you can continue reading the original version meanwhile the revised Part 2 to be published here is still on the works (also concurrently with the video version). Aside from taking the chance to streamline stuff a lot after a glance at that version, I wanted to do this to add extra flourish through formatting and having it available in a much nicer looking site that also doesn't have ads if you aren't using an adblocker (I only found out about that quite a while later and it does bother me a bit).