If you’re making a kart racing game, the standard to beat is Mario Kart; it always has been, and it probably always will be. Even after three decades, there’s still nothing that hits quite like Nintendo’s adorable racer — although a few have come close. Sonic has been playing second fiddle to Mario for years now, even in the kart racing realm, but that ranking might be in jeopardy. Sonic Racing Crossworlds looks like it could give Mario Kart World some serious competition, and not just because it looks and plays well, but because it’s capitalizing on the kind of “Super Smash Kart” experience that Nintendo isn’t.
If the launch of Mario Kart World has proved anything, it’s that people go absolutely crazy for a wide array of weird characters in kart racers. After the game’s reveal, the number one thing people were talking about was Cow — the fact that you could now play as an adorable cow in a little kart.
The Mario series certainly has no shortage of characters, and it now seems like Nintendo will be laser-focused on Mario Kart being only Mario — despite the fact that the previous game added the likes of Link, Isabelle, and the Inklings. In a recent interview with Quest France, Mario Kart World producer Kosuke Yabuki commented on the lack of guest characters, saying, "As developers, it would have seemed incongruous to us to add characters from other games into this universe. It didn't seem necessary to us, given everything we could already do with Mario."
I get that the game is called “Mario” Kart, but after Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, I’d always felt there was fantastic potential in something along the lines of Super Smash Kart — a kind of grand meeting of characters. A kart racer is literally perfect for something like this, because you don’t have to have pronounced differences between characters, like you would in a fighting game. The focus can be on integrating the unique personality of everyone through kart design, animations, voice lines, and even different stages. It’s a relatively low lift that could have a huge payoff.
That’s where Sonic Racing Crossworlds comes in, the latest entry in Sonic’s racing sub-series — and a game that has huge ambitions. First and foremost, Crossworlds is taking that Smash approach, and being smart about it. The game is adding guest racers from Sega’s portfolio, including Persona’s Joker and Yakuza’s Ichiban, as well as other game-centric celebrities like Hatsune Miku and Minecraft’s Steve. But even further than that, Sega recently announced that some wild crossovers will be bringing even more characters from Nickelodeon, including SpongeBob SquarePants, Ninja Turtles, and Avatar: The Last Airbender.
It’s a wild mix of characters that’s just crazy enough to work, but only because it’s in a kart racer. By all indicators, it looks like the game is leaning into that absurdity, even letting SpongeBob drive a Krabby Patty kart. It’s a gimmick, sure, but integrally it feels like Crossworlds also has the gameplay chops to back it all up. That’s mostly because it’s not trying to emulate Mario Kart; it’s doing its own thing.
I had the chance to play roughly an hour of Sonic Racing Crossworlds at Summer Game Fest, and it's remarkable how distinct the game feels. Its big defining feature is the “Crossworlds,” which has you teleporting between different realms in the middle of races — with the first-place racer getting to choose which direction and realm to go to. This adds a neat layer of unpredictability to races, shaking up both the visuals and track design.
But Crossworlds is also getting the most important part of a kart racer right, the game feel. While kart controls feel a little more “floaty” than Mario Kart, everything still feels tight and responsive — letting you effortlessly pull off drifts, air tricks, and evasive maneuvers. Crossworlds simply feels good to play — the kind of game you can instantly click with if you’ve ever played a kart racer.
But the other key differentiator is the variation in the carts you can choose, with a surprisingly in-depth customization system. Not only can you customize the individual parts of your car for different stats (hood, wheels, etc), you can also equip different sets of skills that alter how you play. For example, one skill might reduce the time for your drifting boost to build up, while another raises the performance of your car on rough terrain.
With dozens of cars and skills, there’s a staggering amount of customization that can happen — really letting you fine-tune the way you want your kart to perform. That’s an approach that’s integrally different from Mario Kart, and feels like it might please anyone looking for a kart experience with meaningful customization.
It feels like Crossworlds is really building on everything the Sonic Racing series has done before, using those lessons to craft a kart racer with its own unique personality. While Mario Kart World is fantastic in its own right, the continuing lack of competition in the kart racing realm is genuinely a problem — and maybe Sonic can finally change that once and for all.
