Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity

"Shift into zero gravity!"

- Tagline

Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity (ソニック・ライダー・シューティング・スター・ストーリー) (abbreviated SR0G or SRZG) is a hoverboard-racing video game for the Wii and PlayStation 2. Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity is the sequel to Sonic Riders and the prequel to Sonic Free Riders The game was published by SEGA Corp. and developed by Sonic Team in cooperation with NowPro. It's the fifth racing game in the Sonic series, after Sonic Drift, Sonic Drift 2, Sonic R and the game's aforementioned predecessor, Sonic Riders.

The PS2 version was not released in Japan. A sequel titled Sonic Free Riders was released on November 4, 2010 exclusively for Kinect on the Xbox 360.

Story
Sonic finds out about a legend regarding an artifact known as the "Ark of the Cosmos", an item that can take matter and use it to control gravity. However, the Babylon Rogues, Sonic's well-known rivals, are also after the legendary artifact. This sets off a war over who gets the artifact, now leading them to settle their dispute by having an Extreme Gear competition.

Heroes Story
The story begins when shooting stars crash into the planet. One crashes into the Crimson Tower and rolls into the back of a MeteorTech robot. It wakes up, along with others and goes on a rampage.

The next day, Team Sonic are on their way to Megalo Station in Monopole when they hear about the news on the radio. Tails gives Sonic a meteor which he thinks might be from the events last night. Sonic puts it around his wrist. Soon, they are attacked by the robots, who seem to have recognized the meteor Sonic is holding, and barely escape with their lives. While Tails and Knuckles use their respective flying and gliding abilities to save themselves, Sonic almost falls to his death, but fortunately, the Ark of the Cosmos was able to save him. All three manage to escape from the city afterwards.

Team Sonic then meets up with Amy, who says she was being pursued by the robots as well. As she hugs Sonic, she drops an Ark of the Cosmos. Tails suddenly realizes that the robots are after the meteorites. They decide to go to MeteorTech to solve this mystery.

The team then arrives at MeteorTech and is greeted by the Babylon Rogues. Jet tries to force Amy to hand over the Ark but she is clueless as to what Jet is talking about. An alarm then sounds alerting the robots. Sonic and friends take off, leaving the Rogues in pursuit. Sonic and Jet unknowingly crash into Eggman in the main computer room of MeteorTech. When reveals himself, Sonic and Knuckles threaten Eggman and find out that he owns MeteorTech. When he sees Sonic's Ark of the Cosmos, Eggman reveals that his Mother Computer hasn't been responding ever since he gave it an Ark, which is why the robots are going out of control. He also says that the robot leader contains an ark. Jet remembers what he was there for, but realizes that Amy and Storm are missing. Eggman's computer shows that Storm is chasing Amy, but they are being followed by the MeteorTech robot's leader.

Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles leave and find Amy in the Aquatic Capital. She informs them that the robot self-destructed and Storm ran off with something that was previously inside the robot. She then says that Storm was going on about something he found in a place called Giga or something. Knuckles then confirms it to be the Gigan Rocks, a famous ruin among treasure hunters. The team arrives at the rocks and find the treasure gone. When Knuckles reads an ancient script, they find that Babylon Garden is a spaceship powered by the Arks of the Cosmos and that a great darkness attacked it. Eggman (in the Eggmobile) then flies overhead with the Babylon Rogues's airship in pursuit. Sonic then says that they should catch up.

They arrive at MeteorTech's home tower and find Jet and the Rogues waiting. Wave confirms that Crimson Tower is MeteorTech's signal tower. Storm then says that the Arks they collected were stolen by Eggman. Jet challenges Sonic, with the prize being the Arks of the Cosmos and title of Fastest Creature in the Universe to whoever nabs Eggman first.

When they reach the top, Sonic and Jet enter at the same time and grab one of the two Arks he was holding. After bumping into his machine, Wave grabs the master Ark that fell out. After this, all robot operations are shut down. Due to the five Arks being in the same place at once, it called down Babylon Garden. Seeing that he doesn't need the Arks of the Cosmos, Sonic hands all of them over to Jet. When Jet accuses Sonic of running away, Sonic states that he'll see Jet at the next World Grand Prix.

Babylon Story
The story begins in The Gigan Rocks when the Babylon Rogues are trying to get an Ark of the Cosmos at the Chalice. The Ark was held in a booby trap, so Jet punched in some keys on an ancient keyboard in Babylonians text. This deactivated the trap. Slowly, Jet grabbed the Ark of the Cosmos. No sooner than that, Wave saw a shooting star. There, she closed her eyes and put her hands together, making a wish. When she tells Storm what she's doing, he simply laughed, but not for long, as he saw Jet doing the same thing. Jet wished of having a power to beat "him". Then, three more crashed down and caused a rumbling sound just as Storm was about to make a wish himself. This re-activated the trap, causing two boulders to come crashing down. It nearly crushed them until the Ark's power caused them to fly out of the way. Jet remarks that "It looks like my wish already came true". With this power, the Rogues escaped the ruin safely.

Back on the ship, Wave was analyzing the Ark of the Cosmos they found and explained it can charge up gravity and convert it to power the engine unit of Babylon Garden. She explains that there are five of them. Jet then orders her to create a radar to help find them. But before she could do that, Storm bursts in and shows a news report of a MeteorTech Mech stealing an Ark of the Cosmos from the Megalo City Museum. At seeing this, they set a course for Megalo City. After going through Megalo City, Jet tracks the robot to the Botanical Kingdom where he destroys the robot, but loses the Ark. He searches the ground and discovers Sonic talking with the others. When Amy hugs Sonic, the Ark of the Cosmos she found (the one Jet is after) falls out. Overhearing their conversation about MeteorTech, Wave and Storm appear and Wave suggests that they go ahead of Sonic and the others to gather information on MeteorTech.

They meet Sonic and friends at MeteorTech but are cut short by guard robots. As Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Jet, and Wave ride off, Storm attempts to get the Ark of the Cosmos from Amy, only to get whacked by Amy's hammer. She then escapes with Storm in pursuit. They reach the Aquatic Capital and Amy throws the Ark at Storm's face. She then insists that he find away out when they are confronted by MeteorTech Robot SCR-HD. After scanning Storm's Ark of the Cosmos, it blows up and reveals a second Ark. Storm runs off with both Arks and returns to the airship. Jet, happy that they now have three, is cut off by Wave's description of an ancient Babylonian text. After Jet gives up on trying to figure out what the 'lightless black' is, he find that the two Arks are missing. Eggman then appears outside flying away with them, having sneaked inside while the Rogues were determining what to do.

They follow Eggman to the Crimson Tower where they wait for Sonic and the others. Jet then challenges Sonic and they reach the top of the tower. After Babylon Garden is called down, Tails thought about what was going on.So he put together the clues he thought about it and figured it out. The damaged SCR-HD breaks in and steals all five Arks of the Cosmos from Wave. Tails informs Everyone out loud that the five Arks will make a giant black hole if put in Babylon Garden. After that, Eggman declares that massive energy readings are coming from Babylon Garden. A scene then shows the outer part of Babylon Garden falling off transforming it into Astral Babylon, the Babylonian spaceship and creating a black hole. Sonic, Jet, and everyone (except Eggman and Amy) rush to Astral Babylon's Mobius Strip to face SCR-HD's giant new form and disconnect the Arks of the Cosmos from the ship.

Afterward, it shows Astral Babylon orbiting Earth. Jet and the Rogues are atop a rock in the desert looking at it. After a quick conversation they fly off on their gear. The scene then switches to Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy, in Tails car driving through Megalo City. Tails explains how the ancient Babylonians warped to Earth and left their engine unit in orbit. Then Amy theorizes that's probably why people started wishing on shooting stars. Shortly after, Sonic hears someone say his name in the tunnel. Jet rides up imposing a challenge. The scene ends with Sonic and Jet racing through the tunnel marking the end of the story.

Master Core: ABIS
One of the robots from MeteoTech, and the final boss. During the story, it once contained an Ark of the Cosmos until it cornered Storm the Albatross and Amy Rose. Later on, near to the end of Jet's story, it ambushes the Babylon Rogues, snatches all five of the Arks and takes them to the Babylon Garden, creating an immeasurable black hole. When facing it in the course known as Mobius Strip, the boss battle works in a similar way to the Babylon Guardian, but is considered a lot harder. It can activate the Gravity Dive about halfway towards the end and the player can use the rising floor panels to gain more speed and ram into the boss. It takes six hits to fall, twice as how many hits the Babylon Guardian could take.

Gameplay
This game introduces new abilities most characters use throughout the entire game. By gaining gravity points through tricks and technical challenges, players will enter a zero-gravity zone and be able to perform two new moves: Gravity Dive, which sucks the player towards a black hole further down the track, giving them a speed boost which tosses cars and other objects off the track and into the air which characters are able to smash into to gain more speed; in the Wii version this move is done by flicking the Wii Remote upward (L or R trigger for using the Nintendo Gamecube controller) and in the PS2 version, this is done by pressing the R1 button; and Gravity Control (somewhat replacing the boost from the first Riders game), which changes the gravity of the course; this enables the use of the Ark of the Cosmos to shoot the player forward a short distance (as well as skipping through the stage music for a "wild" effect), though the huge difference is that the player delay it and can aim in literally any direction to boost in, allowing the player to use a different track, such as one of the walls. This is done by pressing the 1 button and tilting the Wii Remote in the direction you want to go (B trigger if the Wii Remote is in vertical position), by pressing the square button while tilting the left analog stick in the direction you want to go (PS2), or the B button and tilting the analog stick in the direction you want to go for the GCN Controller. (This move is very similar to "Chaos Control.") Also in the game is a move called Gravity Drift. This move is similar to the Grip move in Sonic Riders in which it can help characters turn on tight corners. This is also done with the aforementioned controls for Gravity Control. Items, first seen in the original Sonic Riders, give you special features, such as 5-30 rings, more gravity points, and an attack boost, which allows you to access shortcuts, such as springs. Item boxes can work against you, such as a ball-and-chain that hooks on your gear and slows your speed down. There are two special items that appear hidden in each course that will give you either 100 rings or 150 Gravity Points. Also, some state that the reasons for this change in system is also an intentional nerf; players in Sonic Riders would find many ways to gain air in the previous game, despite frequently running out, thus they would continuously boost too many times often. The overall racing speed in this game seems to also have decreased.

The usage of tricks also changed. When progressing towards a ramp or ledge where it is possible to do a trick, a player must simply press the jump button. When performing a trick, the player can only trick in one direction (such as only doing frontflips, or only doing backflips). This was criticized by many fans, stating that the original concept for tricks (being able to trick in any direction), used in Sonic Riders, was much better suited and made each trick unique in its own way.

Along with the returning characters from the previous installment comes new items such as new playable racers, hover boards, bikes, air riders, yachts, air skates and other futuristic hover crafts that are available. These vehicles can be upgraded, even in the middle of a race. The PS2 version uses a Dualshock 2 controller while the Wii version supports 3 control methods: the Wii Remote sideways, the Wii Remote held vertically, and the Nintendo GameCube controller.

Upgrading System
Replacing the old upgrade system from the last game(where stat parameters simply increased by certain amounts from collecting rings), there is a new method in the game called "Gear Change". Once you gain a certain amount of rings, you will get an opportunity to upgrade their gear. Each gear has from zero to three upgrades and can be upgraded during a race using the A button (Wii Remote), the Y button (GCN Controller), or the triangle button (PS2). Some upgrades include modifying your Extreme Gear's look, higher top speed, an increased Gravity Points Gauge, and character type specific upgrades, such as the ability to grind in rails as a Speed character, transform your Gear into an air ride/yacht-type to fly through Dash Rings scattered throughout the stage as a Fly character, or transform your Gear into an invincible bike/wheel-type as a Power character.

There are many different gear types:


 * Board Style: A basic gear type that most characters can ride.
 * Skate Style: Air skates that always allow the user to grind.
 * Air Ride Style: Allows user to fly through Dash Rings and soar through the skies.
 * Bike Style: Allows characters to knock away heavy objects.
 * Yacht Style: Allows the character to fly and draft an opponent (different from the first game, as you only run along the slipstream)
 * Wheel Style: Allows you to destroy obstacles and handle turns easier but the gravity control dash is short.

In general, since it would be difficult to animate transformation from board to skates, boards get "grind parts" rather than transforming to skates. Gears that start off as 'upgraded' versions of standard gear (Yacht, Wheel) usually have lower capabilities or have situational gear changes.

Special Gear: There are 61 collectible gear pieces.

Boards:
 * 1) The Blue Star, Type J, Black Shot, Pink Rose, Flame Lance and Rhythm Machine are all speed type gear. Each of them has three gear changes including Max Speed Up, Grind ability, and GP Gauge up.
 * 2) The Shooting Star and Turbo Star are similar to the first six boards, except neither of them has a Max Speed Up gear change. The Turbo Star also has two Starting Speed Up gear changes in place of GP Gauge Up.
 * 3) The Faster and Fastest are similar to the first six boards, except neither of them has a GP Gauge Up gear change. The Fastest has two Max Speed Up gear changes.
 * 4) The Light Board has the same gear changes as the Shooting Star, but its stats are different.
 * 5) One gear is called the Rainbow, and is the only gear with unlimited gear changes and no rings added, from grind parts, to Air Ride, then to a Bike. However, it is the most expensive gear in the shop, with a cost of 9999 rings.
 * 6) Although there is one gear supposedly similar to this gear, called the "Omnitempus", but it cost rings for gear changes, and it is not unlimited.
 * 7) One board is called the Gambler. It can multiply a player's ring count if the player comes in 1st in a race. Its gear changes are Ring Cap Up (50) and Ring Cap up (100).
 * 8) Another board is called The Crazy. This board uses rings as fuel, and it looks like the Crazy Taxi. Its gear changes are Ring Cap Up and Magnetic Barrier.
 * 9) Sonic has a second exclusive board, the Chaos Emerald. Just like The Crazy, this board uses rings as fuel. Using this board, Sonic can turn into Super Sonic with one Ring. Its gear changes are two Ring Cap Ups and Magnetic Barrier. After getting 50 rings, Super Sonic can use a Speed Boost that uses up rings twice as fast.

Skates:
 * 1) The Rail Linker is an automatic grinder. Linking rail grinding is done automatically by this gear. Its gear changes are Max Speed Up, Starting Speed Up, and GP Gauge Up.
 * 2) One gear is called Wanted. If the player finishes a race without taking damage, the ring count will be multiplied. Its gear changes are exactly like the Gambler.
 * 3) A gear called Shinobi have the gear parts of being invisible to the opponents and an automatic wall-route accessor (useful when you have no GP left).

Air Riders and Yachts:
 * 1) The Yellow Tail, Type W, Temptation, Smile, Psychic Wave and Night Sky are all flying type gear. Each of them has three gear changes including Max Speed Up, Air Ride, and GP Gauge up.
 * 2) There is a gear called the Airship. It has the same gear changes as the first six boards, except it transforms into a yacht instead of an air rider.
 * 3) There is a yacht called the Bingo Star. If a player gets three identical trick ranks in a row, many rings will be earned. Its gear changes are exactly like the Gambler.
 * 4) The Wind Star can transform into a yacht and an air rider using the gear changes.
 * 5) An Air-Ride called the Kunoichi have the same gearparts of the Shinobi.
 * 6) A Yacht named the Magic Broom whose gear changes can mess-up the rider's opponents.
 * 7) A unique Air-Ride gear named Angel/Devil will have a gear part which changes the design based on your timing of activating it. If on Angel, you are more likely to ge beneficial power-ups and if you land on Devil, you are more likely to get hindering items.

Bikes and Wheels:
 * 1) The Red Rock, Type S, E-Rider and Power Egg are all power type gear. Each of them has three gear changes including Max Speed Up, Bike Transform, and GP Gauge up.
 * 2) There is a gear called the Wheel Custom. It can transform into a wheel and increase staring speed & max speed using its gear changes.
 * 3) The Road Star can transform into a wheel and a bike using the gear changes.
 * 4) There is a gear called Hang-On. It has very high stats, but its only gear change is a BGM (background music) change.
 * 5) SCR-GP is a wheel, but it doesn't have any gear changes.
 * 6) SCR-HD likewise doesn't have any gear changes, but, despite being a wheel, it can only take flying shortcuts as it is unable to take any power shortcuts.

Covers and Advantages:
 * 1) The Cover S (skates) offsets a speed gear's weakness. Its gear changes are Starting Speed Up and Durability Up.
 * 2) The Cover F (air ride) offsets a flying gear's weakness. Its gear changes are Max Speed Up and Durability Up.
 * 3) The Cover P (bike) offsets a power gear's weakness. Its gear changes are Starting Speed Up and Max Speed Up Up.
 * 4) The Advantage S (skates) increases a speed gear's strength. Its gear changes are three Max Speed Ups.
 * 5) The Advantage F (air ride) increases a flying gear's strength. Its gear changes are three Starting Speed Ups.
 * 6) The Advantage P (bike) increases a power gear's strength. Its gear changes are three Durability Ups.

Modes
In Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity, there are three new modes, along with the main story mode: Survival Mode, Survival Relay, and Survival Ball. Survival Mode entails each player to use gravity in certain spots of the level to slam objects into opponents. Survival Ball mode is, simply put, a football game on Extreme Gear. Players score points by throwing a ball into a goal.But in the third zone, Megalo Junction, A noticeable change is made to the ball. It is the only ball that can explode and paralyze any player (including yourself) for several seconds. In Survival Relay, 2-4 players make a team of two and do a relay with a single Extreme Gear.

Courses
There are a total of 16 courses in the game, eight worlds with two tracks in each.


 * Megalo Station/Nightside Rush
 * Botanical Kingdom/Snowy Kingdom
 * MeteoTech Premises/MeteoTech Sparkworks
 * Aquatic Capital/Tempest Waterway
 * Gigan Rocks/Gigan Device
 * Crimson Crater/Security Corridor
 * Astral Babylon/Mobius Strip
 * '80s Boulevard/'90s Boulevard

One notable difference from the first Sonic Riders is that the tracks are a bit longer and don't virtually carbon-copy each-other, like they did in the original Sonic Riders. Another change is that there are sharp 90 degree or sharper turns that require the use of gravity to get around. In the first, drifting was used. Also, since Air is no longer used as a fuel source, refuel stations were removed. There are 6 tracks in the Heroes Story and 7 tracks in the Babylon Story. Though the first 5 tracks are unlocked in Free Race, the other 11 tracks are locked, and can only be beaten by completing the Babylon story.

Reception
Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity received mixed reviews from reviewers. GameRankings and Metacritic assigned the PlayStation 2 version 59.31% and 56/100, respectively. GameTrailers praised the game for its graphics, but lambaste the control schemes, especially the fact the Wii version was compatible with the GameCube controller but not the Classic Controller, and saying that all options were confusing and rendered the game "almost unplayable".

Trivia

 * Like its predecessor, Sonic Team tried to manage minimal differences between consoles. The obvious change is that the Wii edition features three different play styles - two using the Wii Remote and one using the GameCube controller, but none with the Classic Controller. The PlayStation 2 version includes an expanded tutorial that is missing entirely in the Wii release, but does remove the Japanese language entirely and contains more instances of slowdown as is common in Sonic's PlayStation 2 ports.
 * If looked at closely, any gear Storm rides is nearly twice as big as normal, this can be seen in Tag Mode when the other character will be much smaller than the gear.
 * This is Silver and Blaze's first appearance on the PS2.
 * All the unlockable characters in this game (except for SCR-HD) are unlocked from the Story mode with Shadow, Rouge, and Cream being unlocked by beating the Heroes Story(just as in Sonic Riders) . Silver, Blaze, Doctor Eggman, and SCR-GP are unlocked by beating the Babylon Story and the Sega Crossover Characters Amigo, NiGHTS, and Billy Hatcher being unlocked by beating all of the missions in the Story mode. Super Sonic is available after all side missions are rated Extreme.
 * When the characters go into second gear change, their gears transform into vehicles depending on their type; Speed types' gears transform into what appears to be rockets or missiles, Fly types' gears transform into hovercrafts or saucers, and Power types' gears transform into bikes.
 * SCR-HD is the only unlockable racer that's not unlocked from the story mode but instead is unlocked by winning a Free Race with SCR-HD in it. It appears randomly but the BEST way to unlock it is to do a Free Race without any Character unlocked so SCR-HD will always appear in a Free Race until the Heroes story is beaten.
 * Most of the new racers in this game actually replaced some of the old racers from the previous Sonic Riders like the Sega Crossover Characters AiAi and Ulala are replaced by Amigo and Billy Hatcher, NiGHTS is the only one who remains, and E-10000 Robots are replaced by the Meteortech Robots.
 * Silver and Blaze are the only new racers in this game to appear in a trailer of this game and to never replace any old racer from the previous Sonic Riders.
 * During cutscenes, Amy is wearing her normal dress, but during the races, she wears her racing out from the previous game. (However, when playing as Amy in Story Mode, she is wearing her normal dress.)
 * In the intermission cutscene for some reason Amy is not there even though she participates in the race before that cutscene. She is also not present in the final boss.
 * On the cover Tails' Arc of the Cosmos is on his left hand, while in the game mode it's on the left side of his hip.
 * Each playable character holds an Arc of the Cosmos by color; Sonic is the only character who has the blue Arc. Jet, Shadow and Knuckles have the green Arc. Tails, Wave, Rouge and Silver have the red Arc. Cream, Blaze and NiGHTS have the yellow Arc. Amy and Storm have the pink Arc.
 * The characters hold the Arcs on certain parts of their bodies; Sonic holds his Arc on his right wrist. Jet and Amy hold theirs on their left wrists. Knuckles and Shadow hold theirs on their ankles. Tails, Wave, Rouge and Silver hold theirs on theirs hips. Cream, Blaze and NiGHTS hold theirs on their chests. And Storm holds his on his finger like a ring.
 * Shadow's artwork in this game has a striking resemblance to his Sonic Adventure 2 artwork, as it's a mirroried version of it.
 * This is the only game in the "Riders" series where the main story doesn't take place during a World Grand Prix.
 * Two extreme gears called 'Shinobi' & 'Kuniochi' reference the Shinobi series by Sega and its canonical offshoot, Nightshade. (Called Kuniochi in Japan)
 * This is the only Sonic Riders title to not appear on a Microsoft hardware although there was originally meant to be a Xbox 360 version of this game but it was cancelled for unknown reasons.
 * Despite being a hero, the only time Amy is playable in Story Mode is in the Babylon Story.
 * Despite the fact that the PlayStation 2 supports widescreen, the PS2 version cannot be played in widescreen unlike the Wii version (the PS2 version however supports progressive scan).

Cast
With the exceptions of Blaze, Silver, Amigo, Billy, SCR-GP, and SCR-HD, all characters voices in gameplay are actually sound clips from the original Sonic Riders though the only new voice clips they have was used for gear changing and gravity diving. And like in the first Sonic Riders, recycled Deem Bristow clips from Sonic Adventure 2 were used in the gameplay, but Mike Pollock recorded the clips that weren't in the first one, such as gear changing and gravity diving.

Soundtrack
There is an official soundtrack for Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity, which was released as the album Sonic Riders Shooting Star Story Original Soundtrack "Zero Gravity Tracks". There are a total of 23 tracks. The tracks are:


 * 1) Un-Gravitify
 * 2) Meteor Falls
 * 3) When Robots Attack
 * 4) Through Traffic
 * 5) Spiral Madness
 * 6) Mystery of the Meteorite
 * 7) Gadget Round
 * 8) Aquatic Time
 * 9) The Divine Wings
 * 10) Give Me the Power
 * 11) Sealed Ground
 * 12) Full Speed Ahead
 * 13) Dive Into Gravity
 * 14) Babylon Garden
 * 15) The Lightless Black
 * 16) Stop the Black Hole
 * 17) The Core
 * 18) After the Storm
 * 19) Wish and Hope
 * 20) Catch Me If You Can
 * 21) Blast Town
 * 22) Multi Attack
 * 23) Un-Gravitify (Electro Extended Mix)

To listen or download the tracks for free, see the album, Zero Gravity Tracks.