Sonic Shuffle

Sonic Shuffle (ソニックシャッフル) is a video game for the Sega Dreamcast and was Sega's answer to the successful Nintendo party game, Mario Party. The game was co-developed by Hudson Soft, who also developed Mario Party.

Story
The story involves Sonic and company getting caught up in a mess in a world called Maginary World, which they inadvertently stumble upon one day. A villain named Void has shattered the Master Precioustone into many pieces, resulting in chaos in every part of the world. Lumina Flowlight and the rest of Maginary World are counting on Sonic to restore it and bring Illumina back, who mysteriously disappeared after the disappearance of the Precioustone.

Overview
In Sonic Shuffle, the player can select one of the main characters of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. The game supports up to 1 player in Story Mode and up to 4 players simultaneously in Versus Mode and the Sonic Room. Further to the simultaneous play, the game allows for players to play in teams and play against one another on a giant game board, going around and playing mini games to collect Emblems. Whoever has the most emblems at the end of each board wins. The overall goal of each board is to collect the most precioustones, out of a total of 7. There are 5 boards in total: Emerald Coast, Fire Bird, Nature Zone, Riot Train, and Fourth Dimension Space.

The game also featured 8 playable characters, each with their own unique abilities, and 4 of which needed to be unlocked. The available characters were: Sonic, Tails, Amy, Knuckles, Super Sonic, Big the Cat, Gamma, and Chao.

The game featured around 50 mini games and around 30 mini events. Mini games ranged in variety and challenge and they were divided by Teams of 2, Teams of 3 versus a Single Player and a Free-For-All. The mini events generally involved a little story, or event, and usually a choice given at the end to determine your prize or punishment. As well as having a single-player Story Mode and a two- to four-player Versus Mode, the game had a “Sonic Room” where you could play your favorite mini-games, after unlocking them, with your friends without starting a full game in a place called the "Toy Box", as well as a stereo to play your favorte soundtracks. Both of these must be unlocked by buying Photos from the Photo Album.

Gameplay
The game play involves playing randomly given cards. The deck of cards has four of every card numbering 1-6 and four wild cards. Three of the wild cards have an “S” and the remaining card is the “EGGMAN” card. Playing the cards would dictate the distance your player would move on the board. The S cards could be played as a 7 if you had decent timing as the card changed from 1 to S. The "EGGMAN" card was bad fortune for one or all of the characters and would generally cause trouble for the players in myriad ways. A full game could take anywhere from 20 minutes to two and a half hours, depending on how many precioustones you decided to be available to you at the beginning.

Playable Characters

 * Sonic the Hedgehog
 * Miles "Tails" Prower
 * Knuckles the Echidna
 * Amy Rose

Unlockable Characters
 * Big the Cat
 * Chao
 * E-102 Gamma
 * Super Sonic

Each character had their own unique ability. With the exception of Chao, who only had one ability, each character has an ability for the Board and an ability for Battles.

NiGHTS is also unlockable.

Mini Games
There was a wide variety of mini-games found within Sonic Shuffle. In some mini games, the players all play against each other, while in other mini games the players are split into 2 teams of two and 1 vs. 3.

Reception
Sonic Shuffle generally had poor reviews. Ratings from online gaming sites include:


 * Planet Dreamcast: 5.5/10
 * IGN: 4.7/10
 * Gamespot: 4.5/10
 * GamePro: 4/5
 * Official Dreamcast Magazine (UK): 55%
 * Gaming Age: C
 * Game Revolution: B-
 * Electronic Gaming Monthly: 5.5/4.0/6.0

Criticisms
Sonic Shuffle was not as successful as its competitors, Mario Party and Crash Bash. Some positives about the game were its graphics and concept. However, some viewed Sonic Shuffle in a negative light which resulted in some bad reviews and opinions, including the following:


 * Many of the available mini-games, were confusing and/or frustrating.
 * The loading times between the mini-games and the boards were very long.
 * The music was annoying, even "horrendous", for some.
 * The game's manual was not as helpful as it could have been.
 * The game's tutorial system was not as explanatory/detailed as it could have been.
 * The computer-controlled players would very often cheat at the game, stealing the best cards from other players to get to the Precioustones first, and making the game very difficult when computer-controlled players were used.