SO......it's my first time writing a review on here. And I have no idea how this works. Let's hope this ends well.

So this is Sonic Drift. Basically Sega's first attempt (to my knowledge) at making a Sonic Kart.
(edit: I have discovered it was actually Arc System Works who made this game. Yes, the guys who made BlazBlue made a sonic racing game. So that's something.)

The game itself is pretty straightforward. You have an accel button, you have a brake button. You can hold both at the same when turning to drift, but if you drift too long you spin out. You can pick up rings on the track, and characters have a special move that you can press up on the d-pad to use for the cost of 2 rings. And as with pretty much any kart racer there's items you can grab on the track (although this game only has two kinds, speed boost and invincibility)
And that's about it.

so now it's time to actually review things yay!!!

Graphics: 6 I was going to give this a 5 at first, but I bumped it up once I realized I've never actually seen this sort-of 3D effect on the Game Gear before. There are probably other games that use it but it's new to me. Probably nothing special in general but still cool by Game Gear standards.

Sound: 5 I can't say it's bad by any means, but I personally don't really like it. Most of the songs aren't all that much (except Scrap Brain's theme, that one slaps). Sonic Drift 2 did far better here.

Addictiveness: 5 I actually stuck with this game quite a bit, surprisingly. The game does only have 6 tracks, but they all have 3 different variants, bringing the total up to 18. You can get through the grand prixs pretty quickly (the AI isn't very good), but trying to get better in the time attack mode was fun.

Story: N/A I'm pretty sure there isn't one

Depth: 4 There isn't a whole lot to it really. I explained how the game works at the beginning, it's fairly simple. I honestly think once you memorize all the tracks (which only took me a day or two) you'll be able to blast through them no problem. There aren't any obstacles or anything, you just gotta know where the turns and items are.

If you really really really want to keep improving after that, you're gonna have to start pulling off crazy hardcore speedrunner stuff. This game has got a fair share of glitches that you can exploit to go faster but I'm not gonna get into those.

Oh, and I should bring up how very unbalanced the character roster is. If you look up speedruns of this game you'll notice that every single person ever uses Amy because she has good speed but also much MUCH better acceleration compared to everyone else. She's just broken, man.
And then there's Eggman with his basically nonexistent acceleration. TOTALLY not an extremely underpowered character, just trust me

Difficulty: 4 I might have said this before, but the AI sucks. I beat every GP on my first try. So most of the challenge comes from trying to get better times.

Overall: 6 So that's Sonic Drift. In short, please just play Sonic Drift 2 instead (and I'll review that eventually), it's better in every way.

Sonic Drift 1 isn't a bad game at all, but it feels really plain compared to the sequel. If you ignore the above advice and play this anyway, you'll still probably have a bit of fun with it but just don't expect anything too unique.