Sonic Shuffle

Sonic Shuffle is a party game for up to four players, in which characters from the Sonic series move around a game board divided into spaces much like a classic board game, collecting keys and rings, and facing off in short minigames for points and bonus items between rounds. The concept clearly draws on the same genre that Mario Party had made famous a little earlier on the Nintendo 64, and Sonic Shuffle was one of the few serious attempts to bring a similar format to the rival Sega Dreamcast, additionally spicing it up with elements of the series' own lore.

Hudson Soft, a studio with rich experience in the party game genre from its own Bomberman series and collaborations on other titles, took part in the development, and that experience shows in Sonic Shuffle through the number and variety of included minigames - from simple reaction-based duels to more complex cooperative and competitive challenges making use of characters with different abilities and movement speeds. The main game board also includes an element of randomized storytelling, where goals and rewards gradually change during a session based on cards players collect along the way, giving each session a different shape and pace every time and preventing any simply memorized winning strategy.

Compared to the platforming installments of the series at the time, this is a completely different type of game, built around sitting together at one screen with several people rather than a solo high-speed run through levels, and that's precisely what makes Sonic Shuffle one of the most unusual titles ever released with characters from this series on any platform or console.

Why play it: Sonic Shuffle will be appreciated by players looking for a multiplayer party game on a single console with beloved characters from the Sonic series, rather than by fans of the classic fast-paced platformers. As a historical detour, it also shows how Sega reacted to the era's success of the party game genre on Nintendo's rival platform.