When I first heard of Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing I feared the worst however after playing it I thought, actually this is rather a good game. I grew up with a Sega Mega Drive, so you can imagine my delight when I fired up Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing and found out that it was actually good, clean nostalgic fun. The variety cast of characters is great, whilst there may be too many Sonic characters there is at least a decent supporting cast with characters from Crazy Taxi, Virtua Fighter and Samba di Amigo, Chu Chu Rocket mice, Alex the Kidd, Ulala from Space Channel 5, Beat from Jet Set Radio Future and Ryo from Shenmue make their appearances, so this title is definitely meant to open the eyes of long-time fans that are nostalgic for their favourite characters. The games tracks are all themed on Sega’s back catalogue of games. All the action takes place over 24 tracks from six Sega worlds: Sonic the Hedgehog, House of the Dead, Jet Set Radio, Super Monkey Ball, Samba de Amigo and Billy Hatcher. The Sonic tracks are my favourite, but the track design as a whole is predominantly good. The action very fast paced and the handling is spot on, in particular the drifting which provides a three-tier boost system.
On the pre-race fly by you can select a music track from that world’s selection. The music is fun and vibrant but there’s not the deep back-catalogue I’d have hoped for. This doesn’t stop the audio work standing out; the theme tune from Bentley Jones has a superb part used in the podium scene. The weapons are distinctive and great fun to use. From the Super Monkey Ball boxing glove rocket, to the special moves you’ll pick up when you’re struggling. These specials are similar to Bullet Bill in Mario Kart, allowing you to power through the pack with ease. The difference here is each character has their own unique animated special, most of which are very entertaining, like Tales’ tornado. You can find some of the more rare weapons include a star, which turns your target’s screen upside down, to a rainbow, that self-inflicts rainbow colours over your view of the action. The controls are easy and very simple to use with literally only 4 buttons used with any of the right shoulder buttons to accelerate and of the left to drift with square to look behind and X to shoot. It’s in this simplicity that Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing manages to shine as you drift to build up boost. But it does get a little deeper pressing the drift button in the air to do tricks to boost and holding down shoot when holding triple weapons to fire them all at once.
Ok, lets face it, kart games are made for multi-player and Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing really caters handsomely in this department. Naturally there are the online modes that are a bit slow to get into but once in they run well and if you don’t have a full 8 individual racers, then bots are added to fill out the field so no race is left empty. With the four-player split-screen featuring race battle, capture the chao (flag), grab, king of the hill and knockout modes. If you’ve been searching for a entertaining 4 player split-screen game, stop looking, you’ve found it, there's tonnes of fun to be had, and you even have 4 other CPU racers joining you. The frame rate and graphical details doesn’t even deteriorate noticeably either, not that they were running that smoothly at first but it’s good to see it performing well. Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, may not offer the most compelling single player racing experience but does feature a good level of variety. However, just like most casual games it is best played via its various multiplayer modes which by far give the best and quite an enjoyable experience. If you’re a huge fan of past Mario Kart games, then the game could be just what you’re looking for.
