![]() ![]() There are full courses based on fan favorites Panzer Dragoon, Burning Rangers, and Skies of Arcadia, racers from beloved action classics Shinobi, Golden Axe, and Alex Kidd, all manner of slick new remixes of classic themes from Sega music maestro Richard Jacques, and even a special original course and racer made specifically as representations of Sega's hardware history.īut here's the thing: even if you removed all the Sega references and made this a standard-issue kart racer, it would still hold up based on the strength of its gameplay and course design alone. While some of the more obscure references from the previous game have been removed or replaced, it's hard to miss them too much when you see the new ways other classic Sega franchises have been represented. A company as storied as Sega has a lot of material to work with for a crossover, and Sumo has gleefully mined fanservice from almost every corner of Sega history for its latest racer. ![]() Yes, they've done plenty of work outside Sega, but when you play Sumo's Sega-published titles, you can feel the love they have for the company and its legacy reflected in the games themselves.Īnd that's certainly one of the elements that makes Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed so good – the developers clearly had as much fun making the game as I did playing it. Many a blue-blooded Sega fan would gladly have Sumo Digital inducted as an unofficial Sega studio for their hard work in propagating the gospel of blue, blue skies through various modern incarnations of OutRun, Virtua Tennis, and Sega Superstars Tennis. That statement might not be as surprising to those who played the original Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing game – or really, anyone who knows of developer Sumo Digital's history with Sega in general and Sega racing games in particular. But I'm here to deliver an important message: if you do that, you will be depriving yourselves of what might be the best racer of its kind to come along in years, and that's no exaggeration. With such low expectations, it's much too easy to write off Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed as a cynical cash-in featuring a past-his-prime mascot. The only kart racer that a "serious" gamer will even give the time of day is the stalwart Mario Kart, and even that series has offered up some recent disappointments: Mario Kart Wii was utterly blasé, and Mario Kart 7, as fun as it is, squandered promising chances to deliver some much-needed retooling to the formula. Kart racing games rank perhaps a notch above licensed cartoon platformers in the category of "assumed quality at first glance" – which is to say they don't rank highly at all. ![]()
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