Sonic Shuffle

Sonic Shuffle is a Sonic the Hedgehog-themed party game developed and published by Sega for the Dreamcast in 2000. The game plays like a board game much in the same vein as Nintendo's Mario Party series, with up to four players moving their characters across a game board filled with a variety of spaces which can trigger different events. Some spaces will launch minigames that pit the players against each other in short competitive events. Sega contracted Hudson Soft, the developers of Mario Party, to assist with development. For the game's graphics, they used the same cel shading technique used in their earlier game Jet Set Radio (2000). An online multiplayer mode was planned, but it was pulled so the game could launch in time for the 2000 holiday season. Although critics praised the graphics, the game's excessive load times and poorly explained, overly complex minigames were found to be significantly detrimental to the overall experience. Critics classified Sonic Shuffle as an inferior clone of Mario Party.