allowing to change between software rendering and 3D acceleration or adjusting the game's draw distance, affecting how soon objects in the distance are visible. Like many other previous Sonic games during this time period, a largely unrelated Sonic R game was released as a Tiger Electronics LCD handheld game around the same time in 1998. Music The soundtrack for Sonic R was composed by British composer Richard Jacques of Sega Europe, who had also previously worked on the soundtrack of the Sega Saturn and PC versions of Sonic 3D Blast. Work on the soundtrack began in March 1997 when Jacques travelled to Japan to meet with Sonic creator Yuji Naka to discuss the musical approach to take for the game. The first song written was "Super Sonic Racing", which would be used for the game's reveal in June at E3. British singer TJ Davis provided the vocals for the song, which Naka liked so much that he requested that she be featured in all the game's songs. Jacques wrote all the lyrics for the songs with the intention that they would complement the on-screen action but still be appealing to someone who had never played the game. Tracks were recorded and programmed at Sega Digital Studios, and then worked on for two weeks at Metropolis Studios in London, where a week was spent on vocals, and a week was spent on producing, mixing, and finalising the tracks. Jacques stated that this task was amongst the most difficult in his career because the lyrics needed to "really mean something". Sonic R features two separate mixes of each song in its in-game soundtrack; ones with vocals and instrumental versions, giving the player the option to disable vocals. An official soundtrack CD was released on 21 January 1998. Reception The Saturn version of Sonic R received mixed reviews from critics at the time of its release, although retrospective commentary has been more negative. It received an aggregate score of 69 per cent from GameRankings, based on six reviews, and the PC version received 70 per cent based on two. The game's visuals were considered its strongest feature. AllGame called the textures vibrant and noted they had "no pop-up or glitching", and Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) felt the environmental details were lush. EGM and Sega Saturn Magazine highlighted the consistent frame rate (which rarely dropped below 30 frames per second) as a noteworthy achievement,