Sonic Racing CrossWorlds Coming Sep. 25, 2025

Well this all looks rather nice. The game is very pretty and looks like it has more bite to it, more creativity than TSR.

I'm indifferent to Sonic Prime stuff (haven't watched it in full yet but the responses I've seen don't give me confidence), but the fact that it's the on-release DLC with more to come gives me hope for more interesting stuff down the line, and the base content is already looking better than TSR (HELL YEAH SAGE), which I didn't even dislike to begin with. I want more tracks, though! The only DLC being characters would be kind of a shame. Also, I wonder if the Prime characters will have their Prime VAs? Probably not, but who knows.

The return of vehicle customization is disappointing. It's a big waste of dev time and player time, for a bunch of minor stat changes and visual noise on what was never that interesting to begin with. As much as I am entirely over the crybaby "why is Sonic in a car" argument, there shouldn't be more focus on the car than the character...and I'm not going to be using the cars! I'm swapping that shit out for an extreme gear the first chance I get. And somehow the lack of focus on it tells me the gears won't be getting a ton of custom options themselves.

The transformed mechanics coming back is great. I said it made sense with the hoverboards and I am glad to see it in full-force. The track selections are kinda funny, seeing how something from After Burner can become "Metal Harbour" with just a few tweaks, but I'm not really upset about it. It seems like between the regular stages and the "crossworlds"

I wonder where the story for this is gonna go? It seems like they're sticking to canon somewhat here, not bringing in any massive contradictions, but I haven't seen Flynn, Stanley or whoever saying they're working on it. The fact that we've got not one but two Secret Rings levels (that is Pirate Storm, right?) coming back makes me wonder if the characters from that game might show up, especially since they're just the regular Sonic cast with different outfits.

 

I was never too impressed by Sonic Racing games (specifically car ones), I'm way too used to Crash Team Racing and its mechanics and Sonic Racing games feel too restricted compared to them.
But I did like the games, Transformed is a really good game.
And it surprises me how much people hold Transformed in high regard, I've seen people call it "one of the best Kart Racers ever".

 

Looks really good and also graphically a lot better than the new Mario Kart too

 

I love being right
https://xcancel.com/initialD_AS/status/1889918039514292268

https://xcancel.com/Koha2010/status/18899177276678148

 

Sumo has nothing to do with this, then? I guess that means their assets are in Sonic Team's hands now, I guess? I remember being confused that we had so many recreated stages in mainline Sonic but they never seemingly wanted to dip into stuff from the racing games.

 

The characters aren't sorted into trios. There's been no indication Team Sonic Racing's team gameplay will return for CrossWorlds.

 

There's this part in the trailer showing you might be able to send items like in TSR, but it's too early to say definitively for now.

 

Something that looks like it's gonna be a problem for me is that they seem to keep whatever the "trick" system entails stuck to the left stick even with "team Sonic racing controls"? Also why are we doing A Button Acceleration by default?

 

I think that’s showing that you can hold two items at once like in Mario Kart 8, one of the gadgets lets you swap between them.

It’s especially weird considering they’ve made boost on trigger the norm. Seems like they wanted to match MK8’s controls where item and drift are on L/R and accelerate is on a face button.

 

Hopefully PC players will get to map it however they want.

...and if the game won't let them, Steam Input always helps.

 

excited as hell, are you kidding me, SEGA arcade racer veterans getting their hands on this? and we got the return of transforming vehicles?? a fucking Galaxy Force racetrack??

they mention "Sonic and SEGA characters" but there isn't much space in the roster left... I wonder if they're mostly going to be post-release. What SEGA character would I most love to see in here? I guess I would love to see Alis, that's what I voted for on the poll that Sumo put up for DLC characters in Transformed way back when. Myau on her shoulder...

I hope they get some of the Transformed racetracks in it - the Super Monkey Ball, Burning Rangers, Golden Axe and Panzer Dragoon ones are my favorites, would love to see them return. Make it a separate cup of its own, like Transformed did with the prequel's racetracks.

I'm guessing the Galaxy Force track is one of the "Crossworlds", which I think are going to be short interstitial tracks that'll pop up in the middle of an actual full racetrack

 

holy fucking shit it's made by the initial D guys

we stay winningggggg

also I reiterate my happiness that they keep referencing Chao in later games lol

 

You can just attempt murder on your fellow racers now, awesome.

Also those tricks have no cooldown.

 

man that framerate is complete garbage, the video is *so* choppy. I hope that's either IGN capturing the footage really badly or that it's just the Switch version and that performance will improve on release

I'm also concerned about the gadget stuff a lot, I would hope the game doesn't feel like it's going to revolve entirely around using overpowering gadgets that make the race less fun for everyone else. 6 slots seems like a lot of space to stack modifiers, especially if they can range to stuff that drastically changes the mechanics and racing strategy

 

I think someone might've logged the character roster earlier in the thread, but I want to take stock of characters and tracks based on what we know from the website and trailer.

We already know all 23 launch racers thanks to the trailer. Not all of them were seen in gameplay, but I highly doubt they'd have been on the billboards if they weren't already in the game (asterisks denote characters only seen on the E Stadium billboard):
Sonic
Tails
Knuckles
Amy
Eggman
Metal Sonic
Sage
Vector
Shadow
Jet
Cream
Silver
Omega
Rouge*
Espio*
Charmy
Wave
Storm*
Blaze*
Zavok*
Egg Pawn*
Zazz
Big

Tracks and CrossWorlds are where things get more interesting and ambiguous. We now know that CrossWorlds take the place of the second lap of each track, and legacy tracks are eligible for returning either as tracks in their own right or just CrossWorlds, with the distinction being fairly arbitrary. So, of 24 launch tracks, we currently know of 6:
E Stadium
Rainbow Garden
Water Palace
Metal Harbour
Ocean View

And of 15 CrossWorlds, 5 are currently confirmed:
Roulette Road
Dinosaur Jungle
Kraken Bay
Lava Cave
Sky Road

Within all this, there are two oddities, being Chao Park, which was seen briefly in the trailer but is not referenced on the website, and Radical Highway, which has been spotted in the Closed Network Test's online manual but hasn't been seen in footage. Neither has been designated as a race track or a CrossWorld. My gut is leaning the former on both, but that really doesn't mean much. With all this in mind, there's a bit of direction for speculation on the remaining tracks and CrossWorlds, 18 and 10 left to be revealed respectively for a total of 28 locales, including Chao Park and Radical Highway.

First, it makes sense to start with returning locales. Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, as well as Team Sonic Racing, group tracks into locales or Zones, which I think is a good springboard. Given the criticisms towards the Sonic Racing series generally and TSR in particular, my gut feeling is that we won't see any more than one returning track per locale, since SEGA will likely want the game's identity to be moreso focused on new content. This gives us, if my hunch is correct, a maximum of 7 more returning Sonic series locales from the racing games, regardless of whether they're tracks of CrossWorlds (since Seaside Hill and Casino Park are already represented):
Final Fortress (Thunder Deck, Dark Arsenal or Turbine Loop)
Death Egg (Egg Hangar)
Starlight Carnival (Galactic Parade)
Sky Sanctuary (Sanctuary Falls)
Planet Wisp (Wisp Circuit, Mother's Canyon or Doctor's Mine)
Glacierland (Ice Mountain, Frozen Junkyard or Hidden Volcano)
Sandopolois (Sand Road, Boo's House or Clockword Pyramid)

However, I think there's a wrinkle here, that being Rooftop Run. Sky Road is already in the game as a CrossWorld, but none of Spagonia is visible in the screenshot provided on the website, which actually leads me to believe that all three Rooftop Run tracks could return from Team Sonic Racing, with Market Street being a fully fledged track and Haunted Castle being a CrossWorld. These three tracks were only ever loosely connected in theming and aesthetic, so I don't think it's out of the question that Sky Road and Haunted Castle will be divorced from the Spagonia theming to become standalone. Between this prediction and the possibility of 7 returning locales, we can bring the number of locale slots left to fill down to 17. I think there's a remote possibility some tracks from the Riders games could be reworked and remastered, and a more sizeable chance that tracks from other SEGA IPs from the All-Stars Racing games will be brought over, but these two instances seem to me a lot less intuitive to predict. At any rate, I get the feeling the game will be majority new content, wherever the precise number on that lies.

In terms of characters, this is more anybody's guess I think. I don't think we're going to have a good understanding of what the direction is until we start seeing the DLC, but it wouldn't suprise me if they focus on the SEGA All-Stars side of things. That said, there's no harm in listing off the viable Sonic series contenders that haven't made the base game, in what I personally feel is order of likelihood (this list is non-exhaustive, please don't flame me for not including Lumina Flowlight or Gardon):
Chaos
Sticks
Infinite
Zeena
Zomom
Zor
Zik
Mephiles
Tikal
Gemerl
Marine
Professor Pickle
The Burger Guy
Tangle
Whisper
Surge
Kit
Rough
Tumble
Mimic
Classic Sonic
Trip
Fang
Mighty
Ray

So yeah there's a lot of options for DLC, even just sticking to the Sonic series (and again, this is non-exhaustive, it wouldn't be hard to expand this list even further). Somebody made the comparison to Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled earlier in the thread and I dearly hope that's salient because this game has the potential to be the best celebration of the series since Sonic Symphony. Team Sonic Racing dropped the ball hard in terms of launch content and post-launch support, but there seems to be a real concerted effort to address that this time round that could lead to the game having a very healthy tail a la All-Stars Racing Transformed.

Guilty as charged, haha.

 

I just now realized all deadly six character names start with Z

 

They didn't always have a cooldown in TSR and the previous games either. Go off a big ramp fast enough and you'll be able to tricks like it's nobody's business. This was even the case for the Riders provided you were well timed enough. And in all cases you still have to land properly.

 

Actually, these three are visible in gameplay too.


It's also worth noting that based on the IGN video, Ocean View has a completely different track layout from the original, and the little bit we've seen of Roulette Road doesn't match any spots in the existing track. So even if they reuse a theme, that doesn't necessarily mean the track will play the same as before.

 

Zoinks