Sonic Riders is a console Spin-Off in the long-running Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, where the characters race each other using hoverboards known as Extreme Gear. Released in 2006 as part of the series' fifteenth anniversary for the GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Xbox (and PC a few months later), it stars Sonic and his pals as they meet a new trio of feathery fowl rivals known as the Babylon Rogues, comprised of Jet the Hawk, Wave the Swallow, and Storm the Albatross, the latter team being extremely proficient in Sky Surfing with the Extreme Gear.

Sonic and his friends run into the Rogues as the latter steal a Chaos Emerald in Metal City, with Jet effortlessly escaping and subsequently humiliating the hedgehog. Sonic's nemesis Dr. Eggman later appears to host a tournament known as the EX World Grand Prix, promoting the Rogues as some of the best racers around. Sonic, seeing a chance to compete against these new avian adversaries, participates. Meanwhile, both the Babylon Rogues themselves and Dr. Eggman are looking to unlock the secrets and find treasure related to the Rogues' ancestral home, Babylon Garden.

Sonic Riders would get two sequels in the form of Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity (for Wii and PlayStation 2) in 2008, and Sonic Free Riders (only for Xbox 360) in 2010. 2025's Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds would later feature the return of the Babylon Rogues as new additions to the Sonic Racing series, as well as Extreme Gear as a playable vehicle type.

Sonic Riders contains examples of:

• 11th-Hour Superpower: After Sonic's board is destroyed in the final race of the Grand Prix, Tails hands Sonic a new Extreme Gear, the Blue Star II, right before the very last race of the Hero Story in Babylon Garden to give him the edge over Jet.
• Adaptational Badass: Already a mad scientist who can create armies of robots and various world threatening machines, Eggman seems to lack super human abilities. Yet, gameplay wise he is super human, being capable of running up to 150mph while pushing a motor bike and smash heavy trucks as well other objects out of the way, akin to Knuckles.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Both story modes have the player bouncing around and controlling different racers, rotating between Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, for the Hero side, and Jet, Wave, and Storm for the Babylon Rogues side. After playing through the Babylon Story as the Rogues, you then retake control of Sonic for the final boss/race.
• Animation Bump: The last non-FMV cutscene in the Babylon Story seems to have been animated almost entirely with Motion Capture, and it's a jarring shift after all of the other non-FMV cutscenes were animated normally. This was apparently a last-second decision that happened so late in development that the staff roll doesn't have any motion capture-related credits.
• Another Side, Another Story: After beating the Hero story, the Babylon Rogues version of the plot is unlocked, which gives players more insight into how the Rogues were contacted by Dr. Eggman and their reasons for participating in the race. This side also unlocks the true ending of the game's story, as the Hero story ends with Sonic being chased by Amy, without any resolution to the plot of Babylon Garden's treasure.
• Awesome, yet Impractical: Boosting becomes this with Super Sonic — reason being that Air consumption is tied to Rings while playing as Super Sonic, and attempting to do so chews through a massive amount of Rings.
• Background Music Override: The Hang-On and Super Hang-On bikes will replace the background music of the track you are racing on with themes from their respective games.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Dr. Eggman manages to get the treasure of Babylon Garden that he and the Rogues were searching for. The treasure, however, is just a flying carpet that is basically a prototype Extreme Gear. Eggman faints after failing to justify the trouble he went through for it, and declares the whole thing a waste of time.
• Badass Biker: Bikes are a form of Extreme Gear in this game, with these being the default (and only useable) Gear for Dr. Eggman, which generally have overall higher stats to compensate for greater Air consumption. Funnily enough, any character can use Eggman's Gear, E-Rider, after he is unlocked.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Invoked by Storm when he keeps Wave from grabbing Jet's MacGuffin, thinking she'd use it in some crazy experiment, and she says she only wants to look at it. Ironically, the ancient Babylonians were likely on to something given they're implied to have been real genies.
  Storm: You always say you "only" want this or that! Remember the teachings of our ancestors: "Be careful what you wish for. Ultimately you're only going to get three true wishes."
• Blaming the Tools: After Storm is beaten by Knuckles in a race, he tells Jet that he believes Knuckles won with a special Extreme Gear. Wave, who designs and maintains the Babylon Rogue's Extreme Gear and refuses to accept anyone could make a better board than her, interprets this as Storm claiming he lost because of her work and tells him his skills just suck.
• Blah, Blah, Blah: While waiting for Storm to return, Wave and Jet chill in Green Cave, with Wave incensed at Jet's laxness. When she attempts to explain the responsibilities of being a leader, Jet only hears her dialogue being sped up to ridiculous degrees, and covers his ears.^note The audio is nonsensical Japanese in both dubs.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: In the opening, Eggman says "Not just any race, but a special race to see who's the fastest!", which makes it seem like he's unaware of the point of any race to begin with. This is a translation error as the original meaning of the sentence is actually the opposite. In Japanese, Eggman says something along the lines of "But this is not just a race to see who's the fastest!" as a segue into his next line about the race being a no-holds-barred battle for the Chaos Emeralds.
• Blow You Away: All racers can use the "Tornado" move, which creates a sudden twister directly behind them to snag any racers about to pass by or attempting to sneak attack them. It's useful in a pinch, but its drawbacks include using up a good chunk of Air, killing a lot of forward momentum, and having a relatively small attack radius, so it's impractical to spam and can just as easily cost you the lead anyways if mistimed. The Trap Gear allows for "unlimited" Tornadoes via removing the Air cost and provides a small speed boost upon usage rather than slowing down, but in exchange it has otherwise average stats and can't Air Boost at all.
• Boastful Rap: Jet's theme, "Catch Me If You Can".
• Boring, but Practical: Darkness, Shadow's default Extreme Gear, is distinguished by having a lower rate of Air consumption. This is a relatively tame gimmick compared to many of the other Extreme Gear in the game, but combined with solid stats across the board and almost no usage restrictions, it beats out a lot of the more gimmicky Gear by virtue of better economy.
• Bragging Rights Reward: The Chaos Emerald, unlocked after completing all of Jet, Wave, and Storm's missions with a Gold Rank (some of which were already hard to complete in the first place), is an Extreme Gear available exclusively for Sonic, allowing him to go Super during a race. As for the reward, it has its flaws: unlike other characters, Sonic needs rings to go Super (walking when out of rings) and while he's quite fast in that mode, accelerating burns your rings — your fuel — rapidly, making Super Sonic a Difficult, but Awesome character to use.
• Brutal Bonus Level: Some of the missions are pretty difficult. Special props to the races with Jet (one of which gives him an incredibly fast board while you're stuck with your character's default one and all of which include rubberbanding A.I. and playing like they have a full stock of rings).
• Cap: A maximum of 100 Rings can be earned in a single race. Considering every Extreme Gear in the shop run several times that number, you're going to be doing a lot of racing if you want everything.
• Character Level: Each character has a Level that starts at Level 1 and can increase to Level 3 by reaching certain Ring thresholds (30 Rings to hit Level 2 and 60 Rings to hit Level 3) during a race. Each Level Up grants a permanent boost to overall stats, increases your Air Tank capacity, and upgrades your Boost attack to be more powerful and more Air efficient. However, being hit by an opponent's Boost Attack will cause you to drop your Rings and Level Down, which reverts your stats, Boost, and Air Tank.
• Cobweb Jungle: Green Cave and White Cave are filled with enormous cobwebs that are used as trampolines.
• Comeback Mechanic:
  • Players moving at high speed leave behind Turbulence, which players behind them can ride to gain speed and do tricks to gain more Air.
  • Much like the Mario Kart series, item luck favors the players who are trailing behind.
• Company Cross-References: This game and Zero Gravity are chock full of references and gags based on different Sega properties, even setting aside the obvious Sega themed bonus levels and guest characters.
  • The Sega Carnival and Sega Illusion tracks. You can call upon Axel to give a ride in the Crazy Taxi cab, there are platforms modeled after Super Monkey Ball, the player can fly through NiGHTS-styled rings, and can ride a ChuChu Rocket board.
  • Dr. Eggman uses the Egg Blasters for the first and only time in Riders. Amusingly, he dual wields them despite being an Assault Rifle-type weapon in its origin game, which would later be referenced by its origin game's sequel.
  • Hang-On and Super Hang-On are vehicles that will change the background music to the ones for the respective games.
• Cool Airship: The Babylon Rogues travel in a giant blimp-like airship when they're not racing. Jet has a jarringly formal-looking office in there.
• Cute Bruiser: Ai Ai is assigned as a Power character by default, despite being a cute-looking and not too threatening monkey, yet he can power through all manner of obstacles that characters like Knuckles and Storm can.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
  • In this game (as well as its sequels), the opposing racers have ridiculous rubberbanding and play as if they have a full stock of Rings, while the player has to gradually build their ring count to get higher speed and abilities, on top of not being restricted by speed loss after taking damage.
  • One of the races against Jet in the bonus missions gives him one of the fastest boards from the shop on top of the rubberbanding and ring cheating. Have fun trying to beat him, let alone get a Gold Emblem, on your comparatively slow default board.
• Crippling Overspecialization: The aptly-named "Fastest" gear is built for speed above else, and it shows: it has the highest possible top speed, but all its other stats are bottomed out.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Eggman runs several legitimate businesses including a popular Extreme Gear manufacturer and a prominent worldwide security company in the sequel. Why he doesn't just let his companies flourish and rake in the big bucks legitimately instead of using them as fronts for his evil plans is never really addressed.
• Demon Head: Various Level 1 attacks, such those of Knuckles and Amy, invoke this.
• Department of Redundancy Department: In the English script, Eggman's announcement in the opening of the Hero Story includes this gem: "Not just a race... But a special race, to see who is the fastest." Part of this is Lost in Translation from the original Japanese script, as what makes this race special is that whoever participates will not only get bragging rights, but also all of the Chaos Emeralds, as they are required to enter the EX Grand Prix in the first place.
• Developer's Foresight: In the Babylon Guardian track, since the boss battle revolves around gathering air to boost into the guardian's core, there are no rings to be found anywhere on the course and all item boxes only give air. However, if you're playing as Super Sonic, who uses rings instead of air, the item boxes will be modified to give him rings instead since the battle would be Unwinnable otherwise.
• Die, Chair, Die!: Power-type racers work this way, with them being able to punch any obstacles out of the way to access shortcuts or find items.
• Difficult, but Awesome: The High Booster has below average stats and consumes a whopping 1/2 to 3/4ths of your tank to perform a Boost, but in exchange it has by far the highest Boost speed in the game, capable of reaching an utterly devastating 350 Speed. Proper usage of the High Booster requires strong track knowledge and timing, but it is one of the fastest and most powerful boards in the entire game when used correctly.
• Distinction Without a Difference: In the English localization, Eggman insists that the EX-World Grand Prix isn't just a race, but a "special" race to see who's the fastest, requires a Chaos Emerald as payment for entry. Sonic just rolls with it since Jet the Hawk is going to be competing. In the original Japanese script, the "special" part of the race is that those participating will not only get bragging rights, but also all of the Chaos Emeralds, seeing that they are required to enter the EX Grand Prix itself.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: When Sonic lets Jet have the treasure at the end of the Story mode, in either path, Jet is enraged and declares he neither wants nor needs Sonic's pity. Wave, on the other hand, is more than willing to accept his charity.
• Driving into a Truck: There is a truck parked by the side of the road in the Metal City track. Power characters can go inside of it and punch through it to access the shortcut behind it.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: This is the only Riders game where the ability types (Speed, Power, Flight) are assigned to the racers themselves. Both of the sequels instead only assign the ability types to the extreme gears.
• Eternal Engine: Egg Factory, Ice Factory, and parts of Dark Desert. Justified by the former two since they're explicitly based in Eggman bases.
• Extreme Sports Plot: Riders's plot is based entirely around racing at high speeds on hoverboard-like objects known as Extreme Gear. Sonic finds a new rival in Jet the Hawk, a master of Extreme Gear, and Sonic tries to surpass him in the EX World Grand Prix.
• Fartillery: Eggman's level 3 attack.
• Fastest Thing Alive: Jet mentions Sonic's reputation as such, though scoffs at how Sonic can only be fast on the ground and not in the air like Jet. Part of Sonic's rivalry with Jet stems from this particular point, with Sonic finding the EX World Grand Prix an exciting time to show up the competition.
• Final Boss:
  • There are two final bosses in the two Story Modes: Jet in the Hero Story to settle the score between him and Sonic on who's the fastest racer, and the Babylon Guardian in the Babylon Rogue Story to settle plot threads of the ancient Babylonian treasure.
  • In Mission Mode, Jet's final available mission (#100 in total if you've been playing through all the Rogues' unlocked missions in order) involves Sonic taking on all three of the Babylon Rogues on Sky Road in a no-holds-barred one-lap race to the finish.
• Floating Continent: Babylon Garden is a rocky airborne island.
• Flying Broomstick: The Air Broom is a board type Extreme Gear that has average stats, but also grants the rider the Speed-Type attribute, allowing them to grind on rails while retaining their original Flight or Power class the character originally had.
• Fragile Speedster: Characters with the Speed attribute have excellent speed, but are average in everything else.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Wave the Swallow with Extreme Gear; Dr. Eggman with robots (when in a helpful mood); Miles "Tails" Prower with appliances.
• Game Mod: Tournament Edition, Sonic Riders DX, and Sonic Riders Future; three mods for the GameCube version that tweak and overhaul numerous gameplay elements to make Riders more viable to play in both casual and competitive settings. They also have their own netcode for online play, as well as additional characters and costumes.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • Any of the races in the story that aren't explicitly part of the World Grand Prix run into this, as the mission describes a scenario, but the objective is usually to get first place in a three lap race. For example, the first race of the Babylon Rogues' campaign has Jet and the other rogues outracing Sonic, though this is shown as a race.
  • In the first race of the Babylon story mode, Sonic and Storm are seen riding their default Extreme Gear. In the cutscene this race is adapting, Sonic had stolen Storm's Gear, since he didn't have his own Gear made yet, while Storm himself had to hitch a ride with Wave to not get left behind.
  • Eggman demonstrates super-human levels of speed and strength in gameplay, capable of knocking away super heavy objects and running upwards of 150mph. He demonstrates none of these abilities anywhere else in the franchise, at least story wise.
• Genie in a Bottle: Near the end of the game, it's established that the Babylon Rogues were descendants of genies. They don't go into much detail about it since they find out near the end, but it does say that they had a flying carpet that was really a prototype of a hoverboard, and the Babylon Guardian seemed to be a genie who appears from a bottle and is hurt by the player boosting into it.
• "Get Back Here!" Boss: The Final Boss of the game, the Babylon Guardian, requires the player to chase it down, then damage it with Air Boosts three times. A full lap doesn't pass unless the boss gets hit in this fashion. The boss will always speed up when darting around corners such that it has to be hit on the long straight-way parts of the track, and starting from the second lap onwards the boss will begin launching various attacks to impede racers from getting close.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: In free-play modes, Eggman can go toe-to-toe with Sonic and co. on Extreme Gear.
• Gravity Screw: Dark Desert has an indoor section that has the riders jumping along the walls and ceiling.
• Grind Boots: Speed-type characters can hop onto rails and grind across them, which not only restores Air, but also moves faster than regular boarding and generally takes you through shortcuts. Certain Extreme Gears like the Grinder Skates and Flying Broom give the Speed-type Attribute to any Flight or Power-type characters using them, while also retaining their class' abilities.
• Guest Fighter: Riders has three non-Sonic SEGA characters as secret unlockable characters for completing every mission in Mission Mode: NiGHTS, Ulala, and Ai Ai.
• Guide Dang It!: While the game does explain that you can trick off of ramps with proper timing of charged jumps, generating air and speed on landing, it doesn't explain that you can also change your jump's trajectory by holding the analogue stick in a certain direction as you jump, which is how a large amount of shortcuts are reached (holding the stick back for platforms higher up, or pressing forward for platforms further out horizontally).
• Hailfire Peaks: Egg Factory is both an Eternal Engine and Lethal Lava Land. It gets frozen over into a Slippy-Slidey Ice World as Ice Factory.
• Handicap Mission: The game has a mission mode where the goal is to complete some kind of objective. Some of said objectives involve winning a race or reaching the goal with a condition of some kind such crossing the finish line with at least half your air remaining or maintaining a certain speed for the entire race.
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: In the Hero Story race in Sand Ruins, the player is required to get first place, or else they fail the mission. It doesn't matter if you approach the finish line with a 30 second lead and Jet is choking on dirt at the back of the pack, as Wave will trigger the bomb attached to Sonic's Gear, blowing it up, and Jet will win the race anyways.
• Hostage for MacGuffin: After beating the Final Boss, Sonic and Jet are ready to pop open the Genie's treasure chest together, when Dr. Eggman suddenly appears and holds them all at gunpoint with dual Egg Blasters, in an attempt to steal the treasure for himself. He actually succeeds at this, although what he gets is... a carpet. After he faints in shock at the possibility of holding the tournament for such a useless prize, Tails points out that the "carpet" shares a lot of similarities to their Extreme Gear, with Wave theorizing it was a prototype from ancient times that the Babylonians used to travel.
• Hourglass Plot: Riders initially had Jet as being superior to Sonic, being an expert at Extreme Gear and the latter being a rookie, with Jet outmaneuvering him as the Babylon Rogues escape Metal City. However, this dynamic is flipped by the end of the game, where Sonic proves to be the better racer than Jet, and the hawk promises to face him again in another race.
• I Am Not Weasel: Knuckles doesn't take it well when Wave calls him a "red mutt" (as in, a red dog).
• Incredibly Obvious Bomb: When Tails first shows Wave the Blue Star, she arms it with one that's red and blinking. Neither Sonic or Tails notice it all the way up to the final race.
• Instant Expert: Downplayed. In the Heroes Story opening, Sonic picks up Extreme Gear riding basics quickly when he snatches up Storm's fallen board, though he noticeably stumbles a bit while trying to weave between traffic to catch up with Jet. When he manages to cut ahead of Jet with a sudden move, Jet quips Not Bad before catching Sonic by surprise with an attack that wipes him out and off Storm's board, Sonic being unprepared for any sort of offense or able to muster a defense. From there, it's a plot point Sonic needs to improve his Extreme Gear handling ability in order to beat Jet in a rematch and the EX World Grand Prix is the training field to do it.
• Jungle Japes: Green Cave is a dimly lit jungle filled with giant centipedes, cobweb trampolines, and even grapes that can be used as shortcuts.
• Last Lousy Point: The two E-bots are only unlockable by leaving the game on for 20 hours and 50 hours (for one, then the other). It's not very hard to get everything else well before you even get the first one.
• Lethal Joke Character: Cream the Rabbit has the lowest top speed of any character and is easily tossed around if anyone makes contact with her. However, because she's so light, if she gets a boost for any reason, she will sustain it for an incredibly long time. Put Cream on the Light Board (which decreases a character's weight), and a sufficiently skilled player can spend pretty much the entire race in a boost, initiating another one roughly when the previous one goes out.
• Lethal Lava Land: Egg Factory combines this with Eternal Engine, where contestants have to race through a hot laboratory while ignoring the heat and various other obstacles.
• Levels Take Flight: Babylon Garden and Sky Road take place on the titular Floating Continent, both levels involve a lot of big jumps, dangerous drops and sections involving using the turbulence off of fighter jets to soar along the skies.
• Lighter and Softer: Riders is very lighthearted in tone compared with the main games that were released around the same time for the franchise's 15th anniversary. Compare Eggman in the other console games of the era (fighting a war against an alien invasion, trying to capture a deity that could destroy time itself) with his plot in the first Riders, where, despite being Obviously Evil, Eggman is presented as a goof who still wants world domination but is relying on a more mundane method via a rigged tournament to get Lost Technology, which turns out to be a bust rather than a existential threat in disguise.
• Lightning Bruiser: Any character with the Power attribute, in addition to being as fast as the other racers, can punch obstacles away effortlessly. Other characters are bumped backwards, but Power characters not only don't slow down, but gain Air for doing so.
• Loose Canon: As a spin-off, the Riders games have always been of nebulous canonicity to the main Sonic games; for a long while, the only appearance of Riders-related material in a main Sonic game was in Sonic Generations, which featured a statue of Jet as a collectable item. Sonic Frontiers finally confirmed the games as canon to the rest of the series, as Jet and the Babylonians are mentioned by Sonic and Eggman respectively.
• Lost Technology: While the Babylon Rogues initially believe the "treasure" within Babylon Garden is some form of riches, Eggman has reason to believe it's actually advanced ancient technology withheld by the Babylonians, following through on a legend he found about how the Babylonians once bestowed an "angel wing" upon a human as a gift which allowed him to rule the world, and concluding whatever they chose to keep for themselves must be even greater. Jet almost decides to give up on the whole endeavor in disappointment before Wave convinces him this technology could be even more valuable than silver or gold if the Rogues successfully take and market it. In the end, Eggman is closer to the truth, even if it's not the world-dominating tech he envisioned, though Zero Gravity would return to this plot point and show the Babylonians were definitely more high-tech than at a glance.
• MacGuffin: In addition to the Chaos Emeralds' usual role, Jet carries around a mysterious glowing cube passed down by his father which serves as the key to unlocking Babylon Garden, the ancestral home of the Babylon Rogues that long ago was buried beneath the earth. Eggman's alliance with the Rogues involves telling them that combining the key with the seven Chaos Emeralds will raise Babylon Garden back into the sky, letting them access the untold riches their ancestors hoarded in their thievery. In reality, what Eggman really wants is to access the supposed Lost Technology the Babylonians kept secret deep within the Garden, and he snatches the cube from Jet after he raises Babylon Garden to take it.
• Magic Carpet: A board-type Extreme Gear unlocked after beating the main story, it is well-balanced with average stats, and has an average rate of fuel-consumption. Riders of the gear gain the Flight attribute, meaning Speed-type and Power-Type characters like Sonic and Knuckles can fly through the Air Ride rings, while also maintaining their unique rail grinding and obstacle punching attributes, respectively. In the story, the carpet is the fabled Treasure in Babylon Garden that Jet and Eggman were searching for, much to the latter's disappointment. Based on Wave and Tails' observations, it uses the same materials as their Extreme Gear boards, with the carpet itself being a prototype Gear, leading to the revelation that the Babylonians were genies.
• Meaningless Villain Victory: After Sonic, Jet, and company defeat the Guardian of the treasure on Babylon Gardens, Eggman shows up and snatches the treasure at the last second, only to find said treasure is actually an ancient prototype Gear in the form of a Flying Carpet, outclassed by every other Gear currently available to the public. Eggman faints over this find, dismissing it as a waste of his time, trouble, and resources. At least it was a nice carpet.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter:
  • Shadow and Dr. Eggman are unique among the cast in that they don't use boards as their default gear. Rather, Shadow uses skate-type gear while Eggman uses bike-type gear. This means that Shadow uses less air than most characters but also has worse stats overall, while Eggman uses more air than most characters but also has better stats overall.
  • Super Sonic, true to form, uses rings to power his board instead of air, meaning he can't use tricks, type-specific shortcuts, or the mandatory set pieces around each track to replenish his resources and must rely exclusively on the rings scattered throughout the track to stay super. This also means he cannot level up mid-race. In exchange, he has maxed out stats from the start, can use all three type shortcuts as he pleases, and has a level 3-tier boost right off the bat instead of having to level it up first. Also, if he falls off the track, instead of losing all his rings like anyone else would, he gets respawned with 30 rings right off the bat.
  • A few of the boards have unique mechanics:
    • The Berserker board makes it so you automatically attack other racers while on your board or on foot (instead of having to boost to do so), and get air from doing so. However, to compensate for this advantage, your racer can only gain air by attacking others; all of the other sources of air, like tricks, type-specific shortcuts, and track setpieces, will no longer give air.
    • The Crazy board doesn't use air at all, but is powered exclusively by rings. As such, it doesn't level up and thus cannot upgrade its overall stats or boost power, but it gives the user fairly high stats (akin to starting off at Level 3 by default) to compensate.
    • The Trap Gear can execute tornadoes without using up air, and the player gets a slight speed boost whenever they perform a tornado. However, to balance it out, they cannot boost.
    • The Hovercraft is always treated as if it has ice physics and has some of the most unwieldy handling of any Extreme Gear, but in exchange it has incredible stats and is able to Air Slide simply by fully tilting on the stick without using any additional air, which can be further augmented with carefully-managed Air Slides to provide unparalleled control. It also does not gain increased traction by charging a jump unlike every other Gear, which can make approaching ramps more difficult.
• Mythology Gag: During the opening cutscene, Sonic is attacked by the Babylon Rogues while chasing after them. As he tries to get up, Jet exclaims, "So, you're supposed to be the fastest thing alive?"
• Not Just a Tournament: Sonic and company cotton on pretty quickly that Eggman's "EX World Grand Prix" isn't just a "special race" both for the fact that entry fee requires a Chaos Emerald and that three of the existing competitors are the very thieves they encountered stealing an Emerald not long ago. Still, they figure the best way to deal with it (and get some payback against the Babylon Rogues) is to enter and win the prize. The Rogues themselves obviously know the purpose of the race is to raise Babylon Garden with the Chaos Emeralds, but they're in the dark until shortly before the final race as to what's Eggman's stake in this endeavor until Storm retrieves an entry of Eggman's diary gloating about wanting the Babylonians' Lost Technology to Take Over the World.
• Precursors: The ancient Babylonians, with Tails describing them as thieves who ended up incurring the wrath of their gods, and that they were Extreme Gear specialists. The Ancient Treasure that was discovered on Babylon Garden turns out to be a Magic Carpet, which Wave and Tails hypothesize that it was used as a prototype for their Extreme Gear, with Jet commenting that they could have been descendants of genies.
• Punched Across the Room: Level 2 boost attacks will send their targets flying uncontrollably in a spin-out for a few seconds before they regain control.
• Resources Management Gameplay: The game's main gimmick is Air, an analogue to fuel in a conventional vehicle that gradually depletes over time. Players also burn Air to cast special moves, such as Boosting, Drifting, and dropping Tornadoes, and Air can only be recharged by dedicated refill stations placed along the track, random Item Box pickups, successfully performing tricks off launch pads, obtaining enough Rings to level up (which also boosts the size of the total Air gauge), utilizing the shortcuts for the three ability types, or stage gimmicks. A lot of the strategy in Riders revolves around efficiently managing your Air usage to maximize uptime and minimize downtime needed to refuel.
• Rival Final Boss: In the Hero side of the game's Story Mode, Sonic competes against Jet in a race to decide who is the fastest (along with a bunch of other E-Bots), with the flavor text stating: "Defeat Jet once and for all!"
• Rollerblade Good: Air Skates are a form of Extreme Gear in this game, with these being the default Gear for Shadow the Hedgehog, and compensate slightly lower overall stats with superior Air conservation. Funnily enough, any character can wear Shadow's Gear, Darkness, after he is unlocked.
• Scarf of Asskicking: Dr. Eggman wears a wicked scarf when he's ready for a race.
• Second-Person Attack: In the opening, Knuckles punches Storm like this a few times, knocking him off his board.
• Secret Final Campaign: This game follows a Sonic Adventure 2-style campaign. You must first clear the Heroes/Team Sonic campaign to unlock the Babylon campaign, and then a retelling of the same story from the Babylon Rogues' point of view. Unlike Adventure 2, the final boss isn't contained within a third campaign, but takes place after the final race of the Babylon Rogues' counterpart race from the Hero Story, and the player takes control of Sonic for the final battle.
• Shaped Like Itself: How Doctor Eggman announces the tournament in the English script.
  Eggman: Not just a race... But a special race, to see who's the fastest.
• Shifting Sand Land: Sand Ruins and Dark Desert are tracks set in a dry desert, with the latter undergoing a solar eclipse.
• Shoot the Hostage: When Eggman holds Amy at (presumably) gunpoint to keep Sonic from taking the treasure at the end of the Hero story, Sonic simply attacks them both with a tornado. Amy is pissed, and Sonic proceeds to get chased by her hammer as the credits roll.
• Shoot the Hostage Taker: Eggman holds Amy in front of him before Sonic can attack him, telling him to not move as he accesses the treasure of Babylon Garden. Sonic uses his Extreme Gear to kick up a tornado that takes him out, getting the Key and saving Amy in the process. However, Sonic also got Amy in the same tornado, which pisses her off for his lack of care.
• Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration: While Dr. Eggman technically wins, all he gets out of the adventure is a flying carpet that is useless to him. It really is, as he can't even use it in gameplay.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Snow Valley, one of the Battle tracks, as well as Ice Factory.
• Smug Super: Super Sonic is portrayed as being especially cocky in these games, taunting the other racers maliciously as he passes by and responding to his victories with only a disgustingly smug "As it should be..." or "Nobody can keep up with me." Managing to lose a race with him has him respond with a dumbfounded "What happened...?".
• Smurfette Principle: Amy and Wave are the only female characters involved in the game's story mode, with Wave being the only girl playable in either the Hero or Babylon Story. Averted in the main roster, as Amy, Cream, Rouge and Ulala are playable outside of the story mode.
• Squashed Flat: Some characters have certain attacks (usually their Level 3 Boost) that will leave the opponent comically paper thin after they attack them, and more crucially will completely halt their forward momentum for several seconds before they can sluggishly start moving again.
• The Starscream: The Babylon Rogues discover shortly before the final race that Eggman lied to them about the nature of the Babylonian treasure and that it's not hidden riches but Lost Technology, and after some goading from Wave they decide they'll take the technology for themselves for a profit. However, Eggman is faster on the draw for the double-cross and swipes Jet's cube while he's still in awe at the sight of the raised Babylon Garden, gloating that he'll unlock the treasure first.
• Suspiciously Cracked Wall: In Egg Factory, there is a crooked sign concealing a shortcut that can only be accessed by using a Power character to bust through it.
• A Taste of Defeat: Sonic, after gaining the lead and managing to maintain it ahead of Jet in the final race of the Grand Prix, gets sabotaged by Wave triggering the bomb that she attached to his gear, and destroys it before he crosses the finish line. Jet then wins the race shortly afterwards and smugly taunts him about how well "the ground suits [Sonic]." Sonic can only weakly groan in defeat and throw his fist in the ground for getting second place. However, Sonic gets his runback when he races Jet in Babylon Garden with Tails' Blue Star II.
• Theme Naming: The default gears for Team Sonic include their primary color as part of the title (Blue Star, Yellow Tail, Red Rock, Pink Rose). The default gears for the Babylon Rogues are all part of a series called Babylon Standard with each gear having its own letter to denote it (Type-J, Type-W, Type-S).
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: In the final boss fight of the Babylon Story, instead of racing around the track, you have to deal damage to a boss in order to complete a lap.
• Weak, but Skilled: Characters with the Fly attribute have average top speed and durability, but make up for it with their excellent acceleration and curving capabilities.
• We Will Meet Again: At the end of the first game, Jet declares that he'll be back to challenge Sonic again before departing. Naturally, he makes good on his promise in Zero Gravity.
• What the Hell, Hero?: The ending of the Hero Story has Amy justifiably angry at Sonic for attacking Eggman with a tornado despite knowing she was being held hostage by him and tries to chase him down with her hammer. Although once the Babylon Rogues story catches up to that point, it turns out Amy had to cut the chase short as the heroes rush to save the Rogues from the Guardian.
• Worthless Treasure Twist: When Eggman finally lays claim to the treasure of the ancient Babylonians, he discovers that it is actually...a carpet. A carpet of exceptional craftsmanship, but not the world-shaking wonder he was hoping for. In a twist, it is actually a flying Magic Carpet, which Tails speculates may be the prototype of all Extreme Gears.
• Wrench Wench: Wave the Swallow, who is the one responsible for building the boards for the Babylon Rogues. She's also not afraid to use a wrench physically.