Sonic Rivals 2

Sonic Rivals 2 from 2007 followed the first PlayStation Portable entry a year later and expanded its formula of direct two-character split-screen racing with team cooperation. This time the player picks a pair of characters and can switch between them during a race or combine their abilities into a joint team attack, bringing a cooperative element to the series where the first game was built purely around individual rivalry. Development was again handled by Backbone Entertainment, this time with the ambition to push the series further than just new tracks and new rivals, and to give the second game a depth that the first, due to its short development time, hadn't managed to include.

Alongside Sonic, Shadow, and Knuckles, whom players already knew from the first game, Silver the Hedgehog and other characters with their own special abilities joined the tournament, significantly expanding the range of possible pairings and their combinations on the track. The story mode gets more room for cutscenes between individual races and explains in more detail why the characters team up this time instead of competing purely solo as in the previous game, whether out of alliance or a temporary truce.

The foundation stays the same as in the first game – short rounds built around switching between the track's foreground and background with their different shortcuts and traps – but the team mechanic and new characters add a second dimension to the gameplay: alongside speed and route knowledge, it now also matters how well a player manages to combine both team members' abilities at the right moment and exactly when to unleash the team attack against rivals on the track.

Why play it: Sonic Rivals 2 is for players who know the first game and want to add team tactics and new characters to their pocket racing, or for anyone curious how the concept of a simple track duel can be expanded with cooperation between two playable characters.