Iron Ruin

Iron Ruin
Overview
Game appearances	Sonic Drift 2
Description	Rusted wasteland
Location	Uncertain (Possibly Westside Island)
Statistics
Players (story mode)	Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Nack, Metal Sonic, Dr. Robotnik
Level number	Purple GP 6th track
Level order
Previous level	Desert Road 1
Next level	White GP (Desert Road 2)

Sonic Drift 2
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Iron Ruin is a racecourse in Sonic Drift 2 for the Sega Game Gear. This stage is the sixth track of the Purple Grand Prix - Purple being the easiest of the three tournaments - coming in between Desert Road 1 and Desert Road 2 (2 being the first track of the subsequent White Grand Prix). Iron Ruin is not a cyclic, three-lap racecourse; competitors must race right across the stage, with the fastest racer awarded a Chaos Emerald.

Overview

A more bleak and desolate place it is difficult to find within the locales of the 2nd Chaos Grand Prix. Iron Ruin is a decrepit industrial wasteland, its skyline clogged with broken factories and dark, shadowed assembly plants. Plating the entire region, acres of metallic ground have transformed into lifeless fields of ochre rust, a monotony broken only by the black, yawning pits which appear from time to time on either side of the track.

The obstacles that litter the track here are strange "Reverse pods", which temporarily cause your vehicle to steer left when you hold right, and vice versa.

Sonic Drift 2 makes no unambiguous statements of where in Sonic's world the races are located, but several of the other courses in the Purple Grand Prix (e.g. Emerald Hill, Hill Top) are set in zones that Sonic and Tails visited during Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (16-bit) - and those were on Westside Island. It is therefore possible that Iron Ruin lies there too. On the other hand, some have pointed out that Iron Ruin's skyline looks remarkably like that of Sonic 1's Scrap Brain Zone; to the extent, in fact, that Iron Ruin may be Scrap Brain Zone, seen months after the Doctor's defeat on South Island. There is, alas, no clear-cut answer; and all this evidence is just circumstantial - Iron Ruin could quite easily be situated somewhere else entirely.When the player reaches the third pass, a robotic vulture will fly back and forth and tries to capture the unlucky racer trying to outrun it. If he/she is caught, other racers will have an advantage to pass up unless the player had Invincibility and the vulture will be gone.

External Links

• Sonic Drift 2 page at The Green Hill Zone has more information on all the Sonic Drift 2 tracks.
• Sonic Drift 2 page at Sonic Retro also hosts useful Drift-based factoids.