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A great game; just don't take it seriously.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 37 / 42
Date: November 16, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Sonic Shuffle is Sega's attempt to enter the "party game" genre, along with Nintendo's Mario Party series and Sony's Crash Bash. And it's a very worthy entry indeed.

In terms of game flow, Sonic Shuffle is very similar to Mario Party, though with enough differences to allow it to narrowly escape the "rip-off" label. Each player controls one of the Sonic characters. As in Mario Party, players take turns moving their characters around a game board, choosing which of many branching paths to take. Depending on which space you land on, you may gain or lose rings, enter into battle with a monster, or trigger a mini-game in which all players battle for rings. The players race to pick up "Precioustones" which appear in various locations on the game board. When all the Precioustones have been collected, a final mini-game is played, and the winner of the game is determined by who has collected the most. So far, Mario Party players have seen all of this before.

But the most critical difference between Sonic Shuffle and Mario Party is hinted at by the name of the game. Instead of rolling dice to move around the board, Sonic Shuffle players must play cards. Each player has a hand full of cards, numbered 1 through 6, along with the occasional "Special" (allowing characters extra movement or special attacks) and "Eggman" (disaster) cards. When it's your turn to move, you must play a card; playing a 3, for example, allows you to move 3 spaces. Likewise, battles with monsters are settled by card play; in order to defeat a monster, you must play a card at least as high as the monster's number. Importantly, you are not required to play a card out of your own hand; you can pick a card from another player's instead--but you won't be able to see which card you're choosing, and you must play whatever card you picked.

This card-play mechanic sets up some very interesting decisions. You might be tempted to play your high-numbered cards for movement as soon as you can, to race to the Precioustone before anyone else--but if you do, you likely won't have a card high enough to defeat the monster that guards the stone. You might be tempted to draw cards from others' hands in order to conserve your own; but in doing so, you run the risk of drawing a low-numbered card that forces you to move to a poor space--or worse, drawing the Eggman card which dumps a random calamity on your head!

(One important note here: If you're going to play multi-player, you should have a VMU for each player. If a player's controller has a VMU installed, then that player's cards will only be shown on the VMU screen, preventing other players from seeing them. If you don't have a VMU in your controller, you will be at a disadvantage, as your cards will be visible to all.)

Movement around the board is complicated by the fact that the characters aren't identical. Tails, Amy and Knuckles each have special spaces on the board that only they can cross; for example, Tails can fly across some gaps that block other players. Sonic has no special spaces, but his "Spin Dash" ability allows him to move at double or triple speed if he plays cards with the same number on several turns in a row.

The mini-games are very similar to Mario Party's. In most of these games, it's every hedgehog (or fox or echidna) for himself; but some games divide the characters into teams of two, or pit three characters against one. Most of the games require skill, but a few are sheer luck (for example, picking a can from a soda machine, avoiding the pre-shaken can that will explode in your face). These mini-games allow the characters to collect rings, that can either be saved or spent to purchase Forcejewels--special gems that allow a character to briefly break the rules of the game (for example, by playing several cards instead of one when moving, or by placing a forcefield around a space so that other characters can't pass).

Unfortunately, these mini-games are where Sonic Shuffle's one major flaw kicks in: load times. Games like this work best when the action is kept fast and furious; Sonic Shuffle has to pause for about 15 seconds while it loads each mini-game from the disc, and pause again when it returns to the main game board after each mini-game. This breaks the flow of the action, a problem which Mario Party's cartridge format allows it to avoid.

A single-player Story Mode makes Sonic Shuffle a reasonable one-player experience, but as with Mario Party, the real fun comes when three or four players compete. Just make sure that none of your friends take the game too seriously; there's a large amount of luck involved. As with Mario Party, a skillful player will win more than his or her share of games, but the outcome of any one individual game is anybody's guess.

In summary, Sonic Shuffle is a great way to kill time with friends; if you liked Mario Party, you'll like this at least as much. And if you play me, remember, I get to be Tails. :)

Summation

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: November 25, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Since the previous review has already covered the details of the game, I will be brief. The game is interesting enough and is a good game for the whoile family to play together. However, the mini-games are very brief and anti-climactic, so it is unlikely that older players will get into the game. It is a nice game, but not very exciting. It does make great use of the VMU, allowing you to see your own cards on the controller. This is a great game for families who play together, otherwise rent it first to be sure its for you.

The games was a bust-------read on

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 8
Date: November 26, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I was so hyped about this game but it is a total bust

First, the game plot is soooo dumb. Second, there are sooo many times this game loades and it takes so fricken long. Third, remember playing Mario Party and playing Mini-Games every turn. Wasn't that great? Well in Sonic Shuffle its possible to play a whole game and play no mini-games, and when you do play a mini-game its sooo complicated and its not all that fun either. Fourth, the song is annoying.

All in all, although i absolutely LOVE DREAMCAST, i am a huge Sonic fan, and a huge Mario Party fan, this game is a total BUST. BUMMER!

one of the best freakin game on the dreamcast

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: November 28, 2000
Author: Amazon User

You have to buy this game it is very fun the mini games are fun to so go out and buy this game and don't listen to any of those dumbasses who say the game suck

one of the best games

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: November 28, 2000
Author: Amazon User

You have to get sonic suffle don't listen to those other stupid pepole say buy this game today

Sonic's lookin' for love here...and he's gettin' some!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: December 10, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Okay. I don't know why people hate this game. I've been reading reviews and noticed that Sonic Shuffle got some bad comments. However, I've been a Sonic otaku (as my friend called me) and rented the game. Even though I haven't beat it, I fell in love with it.

First off: the story. Maginary World was one minute the best place to be in a dream and the next, Void decided that Maginary World was too good. So, he decided to shatter the Precioustone made of people's dreams. Illumina, the Goddess of Dreams, became prisoner in another world. Lumina Flowlight, however, isn't gonna take this, so she calls Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy to give her a hand to get the Precioustone. Recently, I've been thinking that the plot was ripped off from the Sailor Moon SuperS series.

Next, info about the game. You start off on a board from one of the earlier Sonic zones (the only ones I know of are Emerald Coast and FireBird). You can chose if you want Lumina to tell you how things would go at the beginning. As soon as the game starts, you pick a card from the deck and go the number of spaces. If you pick a "S" card, you get choose from 1 to 6 spaces. Get the S and you'll move 7 spaces. Get the Robotnik card and things would get ugly for you. You can also collect some stone to annoy other players or give yourself an advantage. There are also mini games (you should know what these are), mini events (kinda like cutscenes), and battles (where you fight a monster by picking a higher card). You main purpose is to get the Precioustones. There will be 6 in all. Get the most and you'll win and go to the next stage.

Now, my opinions.

GRAPHICS: The characters look really cute and the boards look great. I can't really explain why...

SOUND: The music's great! It really fits the mood of the game. I just love the FireBird music. It reminds me of Ryo-Ohki (Don't know why). As for the voices, they're cool. I'm guessing the same voice actors from SA did 'em. Great job for once again giving me sound that's pleasing for the ears, Sega! ^_^

GAMEPLAY: This is the part where everyone hated. Well, I loved it. Sooner or later, you'll get better at this game if you really try. The mini games are tons of fun! I really like the one where you have to pick a soda and if you picked the one that's been shook up by Eggman, you lose. Even those I lost that one the first time I played it, I laughed so hard that I thought I was watching a Sonic the Hedgehog version of Tenchi Universe. The battles were easy...until I got to the last Precioustone. My only complaint was that I find that the computer always know what card to pick and ends up picking one of mine. Other than that, it's great.

CONTROL: Good and simple control. The only complaint in this area is that at the mini games, the control gets a little tight at times.

BOTTOM LINE: Extremely enjoyable. If you like games like this, get it. Even though I never played Mario Party, this was a lot of fun. I don't know why people hate this and have it "shelved in minutes". I still play it and I usually have a lot of fun and sometimes get a laugh out of it while playing!

Unbalanced. Unfair. Uncool!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 7
Date: December 14, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Wow, what a let down. Having played and enjoyed both Mario party games on the N64, I was looking forward to seeing what the dreamcast could do with a sonic board game. While Sonic and friends have never really reached the same level of character recognition as the Mario and Luigi crowd, I was hoping the graphic muscle of the DC would at least squeeze some light hearted fun out of Sonic Shuffle. What we found when we played for many hours last night was dissappointment and frustration. First, the graphics look just plain bad in my opinion. The opening shots and menus look promising but the actual game screens made me think I had seen better on the N64. In particular, some of the environmental effects like water looked awful, like the animations were running about 4 frames per second. Very choppy and unpleasant to stare at while you are waiting for the computer players to take their turns. You can't turn them off by the way, so there is no such thing as short game. Between that and the long load times, you can expect to be spending alot of time just sitting around yawning.

It's the gameplay, stupid! Even with lousy looks, this game could have emerged from the depths if it had good, engaging gameplay. Instead, this is an example of what NOT to do in a video game. Without going into great detail, I will say the the computer players cheat, the mini-games leave you with no control over your characters, and ultimately the complete random, unexplained nature of why and when things happen will make you feel like you are completely out of control of your character's fate. You may as well just sit back and watch what happens, because nothing you can do will really effect anything. This game is one of the worst I have seen to come from the folks at SEGA, who recently have been putting out some fantastic games- Jet Grind Radio and Skies of Arcadia would make me buy my system all over again. I'm thinking that maybe Sonic Shuffle was made by some sub-team of developers working in some broom closet in the basement of the Sega building. They should be fired or sent back to game design school.

A must buy. Ignore these bad reviews.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 16 / 18
Date: December 18, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This game is so cool. At first, I didn't like it, but after a while, I began to get into it. Before I knew it, I was playing this game at partys, and on story mode for hours and hours on end. I'll bet a lot of the bad reviews on this page were written after playing the game for ten minutes. Here are the good things about it: Great mini games, good plot, good graphics, only takes 4 blocks up on your Vmu, great party game, fun story mode, great way of having battles, cool characters, eventually 8 players to choose from.

The only problems with this game are: you have to unlock 4 out of the 8 characters, sometimes I think they made the computer a little too smart, bad voice acting, and more boards would be nice.

This game is one of the best games on the Dreamcast right now. If you are a Sonic fan, pick this game up. Don't hesitate because of these bad reviews.

Can We Think of a New Party Idea?

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 5
Date: December 22, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I rented this game with some of my friends mostly because I think Sonic is really cool and I thought this game would also be. I couldn't believe it! Besides this game being Mario Party with different characters it has a huge learning curve. I will explain...Sonic Shuffle is basically a board game in which you get cards that have numbers from 1-6 & S (S is a random number from 1-7) in which you use to defeat enemies and screw up your oponents. A gem is placed somewhere on the board and it is a race to the jewel...as soon as you reach the jewel you have to face an enemie that defends the gem and if defeated you win the gem. The learning curve is not knowing where to go. The computer knows exactly which way to go, and even shortcuts to the gem! I'm not saying I am a sore loser but they could atleast make it an easier learning curve AND not have putten a N64 game onto a 128-bit system (mario party). If you are looking for a fun party game, look else where and see what other 4-player games they have out for Sega Dreamcast. Good luck shopping/browsing.

Not Mario Party equivelent

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 3
Date: January 04, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Nintendo started the revolution, by practically bringing board games to life right on your gaming console. Mario Party was a huge success, and there was huge anticipation for its sequel, Mario Party 2. Both SONY and Sega followed in this new genre, SONY creating Crash Bash which mainly focused on mini-games, making the game less interesting than Mario Party for that there was no storyline, just a bunch of mini-games.
SEGA hoped to make Sonic Shuffle a game with online features, in which you could go online (through SEGA.NET) and play against other people. That function was removed, for SEGA wanted this game to be out for the holiday buying fever. You'd think that with the Dreamcast already being a huge success, and there hasn't been one "bad" Sonic game. Sonic Shuffle breaks that great Sonic reputation.
The loading times are unbelievable, and I mean that in a bad way. For one fighting scene, it takes 15 seconds to load the fight, and then 15 seconds to get back to the board. Instead of jumping and breaking the dice like in Mario Party, where the amount of spaces you move is completely random, in Sonic Shuffle, it adds more strategy. You get cards, and you can use any of the cards in any order. When the time comes, you can even use your opponents cards, but you won't know what they are because you can only see your hand.
This game would have been a LOT better if it had a better loading times, and had a place where you can just play the minigames. This game doesn't live up to the standards for the hardcore gamers, but most casual gamers will enjoy this game as much as any other.
Pluses:
- More strategy
- More boards/levels
Minuses:
- Less characters
- Loading times

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