Game Reviews

Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing

Star onStar onStar onStar onStar off
Get
Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing

Once a powerhouse in both home consoles and portable hardware, Sega now resigns itself mainly to publishing games from third party developers.

The upside of this, however, is that all the fantastic Sega franchises of the past like Sonic can be handed over to specialists on different formats to work with, allowing them to reach formerly unobtainable audiences.

The ever-reliable Sumo Digital made a fine job of bringing Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing to Nintendo’s DS, so who better than mobile masters Gameloft to tackle the Java port?

Unusual Suspects

S&SASR, to give it a catchy acronym, is a Mario Kart-styled racer in which characters from Sega’s immense back-catalogue race head-to-head across a selection of tracks inspired by classic Sega titles.

The ten selectable drivers slant heavily towards the Sonic series for obvious reasons, with the less well known Shadow and Amy sitting alongside Tails, Eggman/Dr Robotnik, Knuckles, and the blue hedgehog himself.

Alongside the six Sonic characters, Sega fans will be pleased to see the company's old (as in, very old) mascot Alex Kidd back in action. Ryo from Shenmue, Amigo of Samba De Amigo-fame and AiAi from Super Monkey Ball also make appearances.

The eight tracks on offer look fantastic, helped by bright, colourful graphics and a decent sense of speed. They’re too wide to pose any real danger of hitting the sides, but this does mean the focus of the racing switches to collecting rings for turbo boosts and hitting power-up boxes.

Kart touch this

The selection of power-ups should be instantly familiar to anyone who’s played a Mario Kart game in the last 18 years, being as they are pretty much direct replicas of that series’ items.

From homing missiles (Mario Kart's red shells) to the over-powered All-stars mode (invincibility star), there’s a wide selection of devious ways to batter your opponent’s cart during the race

There’s also no skimping on the amount of content in the game, with over 12 trophies to race for and a good selection of alternative game modes to try out, including Drift competitions alongside the normal Time Trials.

It is a little too easy to plough through the first two engine levels due to the width of the courses, and the lack of any multiplayer is a little disappointing, but if you’re looking for an entertaining kart racer for your mobile you can’t go too far wrong with Sonic & Sega’s All Star Racing.

Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing

Though rather lenient with the track design, Sonic & Sega’s All Star Racing is still one of the best cartoon racers on the mobile
Score
Will Wilson
Will Wilson
Will's obsession with gaming started off with sketching Laser Squad levels on pads of paper, but recently grew into violently shouting "Tango Down!" at random strangers on the street. He now directs that positive energy into his writing (due in no small part to a binding court order).