ArcadeStriker's RingNET

The Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers Compendium

So, you've heard of Ring Racers, huh? Looking for cool stuff related to it? Fun screenshots and montages? Mods you could try? Tips and tricks beyond the official manual? Well, someday, sooner or later, you'll find a lot of that here.

Here's the Promo Trailer, in case you haven't seen this game before.

Content Table

What is Ring Racers?

If we want to get official about this, the official website has this:

“Dr. Robotnik’s Ring Racers” is a Technical Kart Racer, drawing inspiration from “antigrav” racers, fighting games, and traditional-style kart racing.

Designed to minimize randomness and emphasize player expression, Ring Racers isn’t just about precise handling—you’ll need to master tense combat, resource management, and taking risks under pressure.

Ring Racers is not a “pick-up-and-play” experience. If you aren’t already a racing fanatic, the learning curve will be quite steep.

If you are here, then you either have heard of this game recently and starting to pick it up, or you are more than familiar about the basic quirks and such. So I'll jump to the point.

You either love the game the way it is, learn how to love it...or you don't. And I've come to terms a fair while ago about how it won't be for everyone...but as you might know already, I definitely do.

If you are looking for something that tickles your fancy for a tough to master racing game in the same way games like F-Zero, Wipeout, or the more finicky SEGA Arcade Racers do, I'd definitely recommend this.

Ring Racers Guides

If you came here to see if you could learn a thing or two about how to play the game from whatever stupid stunt I was pulling off this month, then I gotcha covered.

Items featured: 7

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...

  • The lack of minimaps for Kart and Sonic R maps
  • You'll get items other than the Mushroom even if playing alone.
  • You can throw items forwards and backwards here. Some can appear right above you and hit you if used while not moving though, like the Fake Item Box or the Bob-Omb (if thrown backwards).
  • Throwing an item will show a ringslinger indicator on the side (an obvious leftover from using the ringslinger weapons as items).
  • Split-screen two-player still works here, though both players start in the same place and the item box indicators are invisible/off-screen.
  • The Riders mode start behavior is still present in this mode (the countdown and spinning camera), and you can turn around during the countdown in this mode for some reason.
  • Some of the item sprites and icons are taken from Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64.
  • The Starman plays MKDD’s Starman music and lasts a whopping 20 seconds active.
  • ...But it does NOT make you off-road invulnerable while active.

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

Tracks featured: 10 - Same as Riders 1.0

Tracks featured: 9

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:

  • All items seem to exact behave the same as in Riders 1.0.
  • The new Mega Mushroom item doesn’t let you cut through off-road like the source game, but this property was kept for its replacement (Grow) in Kart v1.
  • You still get items other than Mushroom while playing alone in Multiplayer.
  • You now get a proper Mario Kart-style countdown with Lakitu instead of having the Riders countdown, and Rocket Start was added to the game. No Perfect Rocket Start is present.
  • Offroad skipping with hops is still present…but this is made obsolete by the drift oversight.
  • The ringslinger indicator when using items was removed.
  • The HUD was changed to use a MKDS-style font. No minimaps are present.
  • Item boxes and most items were resprited.
  • No Kart battle mode present. The only options available for modes outside of Race are all SRB2 modes.

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

Tracks featured: 46 - Click here to open the full list
  • Mario Circuit
  • Pipe Speedway
  • Dry Dry Desert
  • Luigi Castle
  • Peach Castle
  • Crawla Cape
  • Dusty Dunes
  • Azure City
  • Blue Mountain
  • Battleship Halberd
  • Luigi Circuit GBA [MKSC]
  • Ribbon Road [MKSC]
  • Delfino Plaza [MKDS]
  • Ghost Valley 2 [SMK]
  • Dounut Plains 3 [SMK - the mispelling is in the game]
  • Mario Raceway [MK64]
  • Riverside Park [MKSC]
  • Shroom Ridge [MKDS]
  • Sky Garden [MKSC]
  • Desert Hills [MKDS]
  • Retro Maze [PWR]
  • Cloud Cradle K
  • Lovely Afternoon
  • Lovely Night
  • Black Bliss
  • Cloud Cradle K-E
  • Darkvile Castle Zone
  • Forgotten Ruins
  • Thunder Piston Zone
  • Azure Island
  • Knockout City
  • Skyrise Metropolis
  • Sapphire City
  • Oil Ocean
  • Metal City [SRB2Riders]
  • Splash Canyon [SRB2Riders]
  • Green Cave [SRB2Riders]
  • Sand Ruins [SRB2Riders]
  • Night Chase [SRB2Riders]
  • Red Canyon [SRB2Riders]
  • White Forest [SRB2Riders]
  • Dark Desert [SRB2Riders]
  • Morning Hill Zone
  • Sandopolis Zone
  • Race Alley Zone
  • Bleeding Green

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...

yosh

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).

There's already a video version of the Part 2 of this published [it should appear at the end of Part 1], so you can check that out if you want to follow on what's next already with visual reference and everything.

You can still read the old, longer but maybe outdated in some areas version of Part 2 in my Wordpress- although I hope that you have adblockers because I don't get a single penny from that site deciding to slap ads in a few places because of the free plan. I might eventually get to finishing a written version of Part 2 to share here though now that I have this new layout that makes me feel better about writing in this place.