Sonic CrossWorlds Was “Conceptually” A Sonic Racing Game, But Sega Decided To Add Monthly Sega Cameos For Fans

Will any Sonic racer…scratch that…any kart racer ever be as good as Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed? It’s been 13 years, and although you could argue Mario Kart has challenged its legacy, I still think Transformed is the best kart racer ever made. Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds isn’t attempting to chase that crown. Instead, it’s doing its own thing, and will focus more on the Sonic universe, with post-launch content doing the heavy cameo lifting.

We had the chance to play CrossWorlds for roughly an hour at Summer Game Fest recently and talk to legendary Sonic producer and Shadow the Hedgehog co-creator Takashi Iizuka. He mused about how some of the (Sega and non-Sega) crossovers came to be, and how the game is forging its own path forward in the kart space. I’m anxious to see how it turns out, but so far, it looks like a step up from Team Sonic Racing.

CrossWorlds Remixes Tracks Different From Transformed

Each Lap Will Feel Unique By Design

Having played basically every kart racer known to humankind, I’m happy to report that CrossWorlds feels tighter overall than Team Sonic Racing. Although I’m not entirely sold on it being a second coming of Transformed just yet, it does feel closer, already, in this Summer Game Fest build. I had access to four Grand Prix races and a chunk of the cast (I only needed Shadow, though), and was able to see the “CrossWorlds” mechanic in action across all of those races.

In short, after the first lap, you’ll be transported into a CrossWorld, which is like a portal to another realm. The current first place racer gets to choose between two rifts, and everyone else is sucked into it when they complete the first lap. After finishing the “Cross” lap if you will, you’ll finish out the third and final lap on the original track, with some remixed elements coming into play. It was like a smattering of Transformed and traditional kart racers, and it grew on me the more I played it.

During our chat, Takashi Iizuka talked a bit about that “CrossWorld” moniker, and how they’re attempting something new: “All of our Sonic racing series have something unique…so they had these ideas about the travel ring, it came out of a desire to mix things up in the race. Pretty much every race out there has a first, second and third lap…they wanted to do something they’d never done before. The second lap we go through the travel ring, and the third lap you need to race to the finish, we need to make sure every race feels different. Even the third lap, the first go-around, and the third lap are not the same. Items and shortcuts are different.”

He also talked a bit about the level design, and the breadth of content they’re planning for launch: “We think this is the most amount of courses in a Sonic Racing game. We want to put this brand new stuff in the game, but we also want to put in courses that are inspired by the past. Balancing between those new things and the past: the team will go and say I like this part of this game, that would make a great course. The other bucket is hey remember all this really old game, let’s use our modern technology to create this amazing 3D experience we haven’t seen with such detail.“

When asked if there were any Sonic universe characters he wished were in CrossWorlds that didn’t make it, he gave a cheeky answer: “We do have 24 playable Sonic characters in the game. You’ll probably be able to find a lot of great Sonic characters you haven’t seen in a while.” Sonic might have a lot of friends, but 24 covers a ton of ground.

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Item-tuning felt smooth, even for habitual first-place racers. It was especially nice coming from some of the wacky item balancing in Mario Kart World (a lot of which is by design), and Iizuka-san says that the smoothness is a result of a lot of testing: “We took a look at our entire Sonic racing series, we pulled a lot of items that we liked from the past. But the team wanted to make some new items. Just the testing of putting the item in, we decided that some things were out of balance, and the playtest team further talked about how certain items can ruin the game. Between all that, we were able to find a balance.“

CrossWorlds Is Poised For Tons Of Sega And Non-Sega Cameos

Sega Characters Are In, But So Is Spongebob

Get ready for a ton of cameos. You might have already seen the Minecraft reveal coming out of Summer Game Fest, but Sega subsequently revealed that Spongebob and Patrick Star would be making an appearance in CrossWorlds as well. Iizuka-san muses on this while laughing a bit about how expansive the post-launch content will be: “About Minecraft…so the whole paid season pass will be big non-Sega IP. For Minecraft that was something we had to put a presentation together, and tell Microsoft this was the way we wanted to bring your IP in, and we partnered with them and brought Minecraft to the game.”

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There’s another part of the DLC plan, too, just involving Sega characters: “Out of the games Sega publishes, those are the hot ones we wanted to bring in. The Sega family and friends characters (Hatsune Miku, Ichiban Kasuga, Joker). It’s not just those three [Sega] characters, we’re going to be bringing in guest characters for free each month.” CrossWorlds was also always “concepted out to be a Sonic racing game.” But the team also knows that “people like those Sega family characters, which is why we want to give away non-Sonic family characters away for free.”

I couldn’t leave the interview without talking about everyone’s favorite edgy king from the Sonic universe: Shadow. Iizuka-san has a direct connection to the hedgehog, given that he’s a co-creator, so I asked him how he felt seeing Shadow on the big screen. Laughing, he explains: “I was of course very happy to see Shadow on the big screen. When the first [Sonic movie] came out, it was like, this is too early to have Shadow. When the third one was planned, it was like, finally, this is the time to put Shadow in the movie universe. Ultimately, what was very thrilling was that Keanu Reeves’ voice was perfect for Shadow.”

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds

Systems

Released

September 25, 2025

Developer(s)

Sonic Team

Multiplayer

Online Multiplayer, Local Multiplayer

Cross-Platform Play

Yes – Online

Franchise

Sonic

Number of Players

1-4