Sonic Shuffle

Sonic Shuffle is a party game for up to four players, playing like a board game in a similar fashion to the Mario Party series. The game is set in a dream world called "Maginaryworld", where the fairy Lumina Flowlight asks Sonic the Hedgehog, Tails, Knuckles the Echidna, and Amy Rose to retrieve "Precioustones" to help her save Maginaryworld from Void, the game's villain. The players can choose to play as one of these four characters, or Big the Cat, E-102 Gamma, Super Sonic, and a Chao if unlocked later. Each character has unique abilities they can use to traverse the game boards.

Players take turns moving across the board in an effort to collect the most Precioustones; this is done by picking cards and moving the amount of spaces specified on it. Each player is dealt seven cards at a time, and their deck is visible on their personal VMU screen in their controller, keeping it a secret from other players. When it is a player's turn to move, they can choose to play a card from their hand, or play a random card from another player's hand. There is also a card which can be used to steal cards, swap hands with another player, or move one to seven spaces as decided by a short slot machine style game. Finally, there is a card that will summon Doctor Eggman, who will steal the player's rings or swap their position on the board with another player.

Sonic Shuffle was developed by Sega, with assistance from the Hudson Soft team behind Mario Party (1998), and supervision from Sonic Team. Most sources attributed Sega as the developer although some attributed the game to Sega's internal development team Smilebit. Smilebit had previously developed Jet Set Radio (2000) for the Dreamcast which was well regarded for its cel shaded visuals. Sega used the same cel shading techniques in Sonic Shuffle.

Sega revealed that a Sonic Adventure spin-off was in development alongside Sonic Adventure 2 in October 1999. The game was revealed in the June 2000 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) with the tentative title Sonic Square, shortly before the E3 trade fair that year. Sega had planned to reveal information about Sonic Adventure 2 to EGM for the issue, but decided the game was not ready to be shown, and shared Sonic Square instead. Support for online multiplayer through SegaNet was planned, it was ultimately cut so the game could ship ahead of the 2000 holiday season.

Sonic Shuffle received "mixed or average" reviews, according to the review aggregation website Metacritic.

Critics were quick to identify the game as an inferior clone of Mario Party. They found the minigames to be overly complex, poorly explained, and generally not as enjoyable as those in Nintendo's flagship party series. Both GameSpot and Eurogamer felt as though the minigames were an afterthought, only appearing sparingly whereas in Mario Party they were central to the experience. GameSpot noted that it was possible to play through an entire game without ever playing a minigame, and felt that they were "a test of who can decipher the needlessly bewildering gameplay first".