Sonic Racing CrossWorlds will traverse space and time and… return to old ways?

Another Sonic-themed racing game is coming and has the potential to be quite remarkable, not only for longtime Sega fans but also for racing fans in general.

The short teaser trailer shows Shadow The Hedgehog (fresh from his appearance in Sonic The Hedgehog 3 in movie theatres) starting up his sleek racing car and zooming off, Back To The Future style, with lines of rubber blazing.

Tres cool. But with the previous game in the series falling a fair way short of greatness, this one’s got a lot of work to do. 

So far as details are concerned, all we really have to go on besides the trailer is the site info text, which reads: ‘Race across land, sea, air, space, and time in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds’.

The first three are no surprise, as Sonic’s been doing that for years, though it does suggest a return to Transformed’s gameplay, which switched between land, air and water from moment to moment.

Space and time, however, are much more interesting. Indeed, Shadow is seen driving towards a portal. Might we see Ratchet & Clank-style world-hopping mid-race? 

That would be a gimmick no other kart racer has exploited, though even Sonic has used portals, in the Samba De Amigo world for example, so it fits the universe.

It’s unlikely a time travel aspect would feature a good/bad future mechanism like that of Sonic CD, instead being more likely to adopt graphical styles from the 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit and modern eras, maybe visiting classic Sonic’s Green Hill Zone before blasting forward to the more recent Sonc X Shadow Generations’ art style. 

That sounds great, but here’s a word of caution. The karting formula is so well-worn by now, the temptation is to rely on such a gimmick over gameplay and 2019’s Team Sonic Racing is the perfect example of that, pushing its team-up mechanics over traditional driving fun.

The original Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing didn’t really follow the gimmick-led thinking, and was all the better for it. Sure, you got the all-singing, all-dancing All Star moves, which made the most of the glorious back catalogue of gaming IP, giving us fan service in the most wholesome sense of the word but, putting that aside, the gameplay was focused around weapons, drifting, and good old-fashioned racing. Purity is beautiful and that goes for gameplay too.

Even Mario Kart has shifted from the focus on driving its tracks with pixel-perfect precision in the days of the SNES original to relying on drift boosting, shortcuts and attack cancelling with clever item use, arguably losing something along the way. 

There was, however, a sweet spot between the purity of the original Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing and Team Sonic Racing.

2012’s Sonic and All-Stars Racing: Transformed debuted in the PS360 generation and found a home on everything from PS Vita (a commendable conversion) to Wii U (arguably the best version). So what made that game so great?

For starters, the tracks in Sonic and All-Stars Racing: Transformed are beautiful to look at and truly evoke the aesthetic appeal of each game they’re based on.

Jet Set Radio’s city looks colourful, Panzer Dragoon’s sunken raceway looks like it was designed by Team Andromeda itself, and the After Burner track feels like you’re actually inside the 1987 coin-op’s world. And as for the NiGHTS into Dreams DLC – honestly, nothing to do with that game has ever looked better. 

But the tracks also change from lap to lap, often requiring a change in vehicle form. Moving seamlessly from road to water to air in the Panzer Dragoon track flexes the game engine’s muscles, shows off the graphical power of the systems and makes for a breathless ride.

The game feels fresh thanks to the variety, spectators get something new every lap, and there’s ample opportunity for the designers to keep that fan service coming in new and surprising ways. Returning to this template for the new game would be a very wise move.

At this stage, we can only speculate as to what the ‘CrossWorlds’ title means. There is a small chance it means Sonic will be racing alongside other publishers’ IP, which would be cool but leaves little space for Sega’s own back catalogue, which would be demonstrably counterproductive at this juncture, since Sega is actively reviving its own gaming properties right now.

Not only have we had Jet Set Radio, Golden Axe, Shinobi, Crazy Taxi, Streets of Rage (‘and more’) confirmed, with the recent delisting of some 60 games from Steam it’s fair to say Sega is either planning new retro collections to replace them, or – more radically – remastering and reimaging its entire back catalogue in new games, hoping we’ll buy those instead.

For a company so bent on re-releasing ancient games for so long, it’s a bold move, but it is a clear vision. And Sonic CrossWorlds fits that vision.

If each of Sega’s retro ‘worlds’ is being reworked and geared up for release in individual, new games over the next few years, what better way to showcase their potential than letting Sonic cross through into each world by portal hopping mid-race?

It would be a great gimmick that lets the game go back to the more pure, yet varied gameplay of the best game in the series while serving fans, showing off modern graphics tech and advertising new Sega. Now that really would be a trailblazer.