Sega Smash Kart: Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing (PC/360/PS3/Wii/DS, 2010) Review

 NOTE: This review is part of a retrospective of the Sonic franchise. Feel free to read the other Sonic reviews I’ve done here - https://expithecat.blogspot.com/search/label/sonic%20retrospective

You might have expected my next review to be Colors DS. Or Generations. Or Colors Ultimate when that came out.

But nope, you were wrong, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Background and History

Prior to this game, Sega had published a series of games under the “Sega Superstars” tag - which came in the form of a crossover between many of Sega’s properties. Kind of like Smash Brothers, but instead of fighting games, the first game in the series took the form of an Eyetoy minigame collection developed by Sonic Team and the second as a tennis game developed by Sumo Digital - which I actually remember having some vague memories of playing with my brother on the 360. Also in researching this I found out that ‘Sega Superstars Tennis’ has a Mac OS X port but not a Windows port which honestly is pretty strange to me.

Anyway, the said developers of Sega Superstars Tennis decided to develop a kart racer as the next title for this series - originally with a greater variety of vehicles with Sonic racing on foot, Tails in a plane, Eggman in an Eggpod, Amy in a car and Gilis Thunderhead from Golden Axe riding a Chickenleg creature, but due to some mechanics not meshing well with others, each character was just made to ride one of three types of vehicles - some having a car, some having a motorcycle/bike, and others having a sort of hovercraft.

The game… seemed to have been officially announced just prior to or around E3 2009, and released in February 2010 for most of the major platforms at the time. Reception was generally pretty positive albeit not particularly amazing, with most people considering it basically as a solid Mario Kart clone.

Course, to back up a bit, this wasn’t the first time the Sonic series had a racing game, albeit you may notice that I didn’t really review or talk about any of the others aside for Sonic R. To give sort of a recap on how I feel about some of them - Sonic Drift 1 and 2 are both games that I just find as bad as I would have expected as racing games on a system that just wasn’t able to pull off 3D graphics and as such the depth perception in both is practically non-existent on top of the controls just feeling pretty stiff and clunky to use. I remember considering them to at least be somewhat impressive considering the 8-bit system they were on but then I realized Pole Position existed on Atari 2600 and was actually a better game.

There’s also Sonic Riders released in 2006, and was definitely the best Sonic game released in that year, and I actually did buy it on PS2 a couple years ago, but I haven’t really played much of it - frankly the learning curve seemed a bit steep to me and I figured it was just a game I would have to dedicate some time towards to learn rather than one that I’d just play to review. I also have not played Zero Gravity, which I’ve heard is easier to swallow, although I do remember seeing it at a GameStop at one point shortly after getting my Wii, thinking about getting it but deciding to get something else instead. I also have not played Free Riders in case you expected me to review that, and frankly I have no plans on playing that because 1. I don’t have a Kinect, and even if I did, I also don’t own a 360 and the game isn’t backwards compatible on Xbox One, and 2. I don’t think breaking my spine in several places is worth the review.

There are also the Sonic Rivals games, which I have not played either and honestly I find myself constantly forgetting that they even exist.

But with All-Stars Racing, I feel like I have enough experience with and things to say about the game to warrant a review. And on that note…

Personal Experience

I do remember being made aware of this game around the time I started getting more into the franchise, and did plan on at least getting it at some point. I decided to put the Wii version on my Christmas wish list for 2012 and I did end up getting the game. But truth be told, I really just never got into it, and frankly I really didn’t find myself playing or going back to it very much. I will admit that I never really played Mario Kart Wii that much either, but if I was going to play a kart racer on the Wii, usually it was definitely that - which I also got for that same Christmas.

A bit later on I did end up getting the game’s sequel, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, for PC as part of a Humble Bundle my brother bought for me, which I actually really enjoyed, and later I got All-Stars Racing again as part of a separate Sonic bundle for the series’ 25th anniversary in 2016. But even when I tried going back to it… I dunno, it just didn’t really “click” with me very much and frankly I could never put my finger on just *why* I couldn’t get into it. It seemed like a pretty solid kart racer, but I just never really felt much incentive to play it over other kart racers I grew up playing.

Story

There isn’t one. Next.

Presentation

This game’s visuals definitely look pretty good. The models themselves look fairly high quality, although I did notice that the characters’ “victory” animations don’t seem to show any facial expression, which is especially apparent when doing the mission modes and watching the characters’ victory animations as they hop out of their car with a blank expression the whole time. 

However, I think the environments are definitely where the visuals in this game shine - all just doing a good job catching the art style of the respective games they’re based off. I’m not the most familiar with some of these games admittedly, but I can definitely tell, say, a Super Monkey Ball or House of the Dead track from a Samba de Amigo or Jet Set Radio Future track and so on, and they’re definitely well represented here. Samba de Amigo’s tracks in particular were usually my favorite visually, just due to all the color and liveliness going on while capturing the feeling of the original game.

As I said, the first time I had played this was on the Wii, and after playing the PC version, I can definitely tell the graphics were downgraded in that version from the other console and PC versions - looking pretty pixelated and low-res in comparison - but it still captures the overall style this game is going for pretty well. There’s also the DS version which is even worse visually but at the same time it is impressive just on the basis of a console Sonic kart racer being translated pretty well to the system - still keeping the art style going and in addition, while this may be more of a gameplay subject, the tracks from what I played seemed to be recreated pretty faithfully.

Also side note, at one point there was an error where one of the playing cards on the “Roulette Road” track displays fanart of Sonia from Sonic Underground instead of Amy in the console and PC versions. This was patched out of most of those versions, however if you own the Wii version, it’s still present - and I can confirm that. So, does this make Sonic Underground canon?

The soundtrack though is largely just recycled from previous games, at least aside from this game’s main theme and menu themes, and as such, I can’t say I really have much to say about it. The original compositions to this game honestly just feel sort of forgettable to me, and while the track themes are nice, the fact that they are all reused from other games does just come off as feeling sort of lazy to me and leaves me without anything to say without going into the soundtracks they’re from.

This is also the last Sonic game of any sort to use the “4kids” cast aside for Mike Pollock’s Eggman, although I noticed a lot of the lines seemed to be reused from previous games - in particular a lot of the core Sonic cast’s lines pretty much just sounded ripped from 06, so as far as new voice work goes here it’s pretty much nonexistent. And some of the lines just feel weird here, like how Shadow says “who are you, and how do you know my name?” at the start of the races which pretty much just doesn’t make much sense for the context here.

Gameplay

So, first things first, this is obviously a kart racer as I went over, being full of not just Sonic characters, but characters from other Sega properties as well. The roster does have a lot of variety - the Sonic franchise itself is pretty well represented with Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Eggman, Amy Rose, Shadow… Big the Cat for some reason, as well as Metal Sonic as DLC, and in addition you have characters like Samba de Amigo, Alex Kidd, Billy Hatcher, AiAi from Super Monkey Ball, Opa-opa from Fantasy Zone, Beat from Jet Set Radio, Ryo from Shenmue, among others from various Sega properties, and in addition the 360 version has Banjo and Kazooie, which is pretty nice to see. You can also play as your Miis and Avatars in the Wii and 360 versions respectively although those aren’t of course an option on PS3 and PC since, well, there aren’t 3D avatars on those.

Adding onto that, the tracks also represent a variety of Sega properties, although all seeming to just be from Sonic Heroes, Jet Set Radio Future, Super Monkey Ball, Samba de Amigo and Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg, which I feel sort of narrows down the variety of the tracks, especially with each of the track themes having three separate tracks of their own.

You may notice that I mentioned Sonic Heroes specifically here and, well, that’s because it’s the only Sonic game that really gets any representation within the tracks, which I honestly find somewhat disappointing. I mean, I do like Sonic Heroes, but I would’ve definitely liked to see more games from the series get some representation. I mean, after all, this was after Sonic Unleashed, so I would’ve liked to see tracks from that game, or Adventure 1 and 2, or of course the classic games. Instead, Seaside Hill, Casino Park and Final Fortress all have three tracks with their themes - which isn’t a bad selection, but I still wish we could’ve had more tracks that represented the series. Honestly I’m kind of surprised they didn’t even choose Green Hill - I guess Seaside Hill is pretty similar but considering Sega’s history of bringing that back I’m surprised it wasn’t chosen for this game.

On that note though, I feel like that sort of thing was the first reason I initially didn’t care much for this game - the lack of variety. The character roster definitely has a good selection of Sega characters that represent different eras and games from the company (although I wish Nights was playable instead of being designated to the race starter), but I feel like the track themes being designated to a few different themes from only 5 games sort of negates the feeling of this as a celebration of Sega’s history.

That’s also present with the track design itself which in general tends to feel pretty… basic to me. I guess there really isn’t much wrong with it, but like I said, there’s just little variety here and the tracks generally just come off to me as pretty flat. Other than the track themes themselves, I feel like the design often does little to incorporate said themes and the tracks themselves just come off to me as flat, basic raceways. There’s occasional shortcuts and hazards (the latter of which varying based upon the track themes), but that’s really all this game’s tracks tend to offer. I guess it’s fine as far as kart racers go but I feel like after playing games like Transformed and even Team Sonic Racing, I tend to get the impression that those games do more with their track design (aside for the reused ASR tracks) and have more variety compared to All-Stars Racing

And that’s probably my biggest gripe with this game overall - it’s a bit too basic as far as kart racers go. I think this was always the biggest reason why I didn’t go back to this game very often - other than having Sonic and other Sega characters, this game just doesn’t have much of it’s own identity outside of just being Mario Kart with Sega characters. 

Even the items just feel like stuff reskinned from Mario Kart - the cone mines being banana peels, the punch being a green shell, the missile being the red shell, so on and so forth. We have some unique items like the “All Star” and “Confusing Star” but otherwise they just feel like basic kart racer items. The Rainbow in particular is basically an even more useless version of the Squid in Mario Kart, seeing as I can literally just see right through the rainbow filter.

Even then, I don’t really feel like the items do all that much. Which I suppose isn’t a huge deal - after all Mario Kart Wii always tended to piss me off with how items would basically be spammed by the AI at all times - and I appreciate the actual emphasis on skill but that just leads to another issue I have with the game regarding the controls.

The controls in this game aren’t bad or anything - pretty solid as far as kart racers go with good handling and a really nice drift mechanic, but that’s about as much as I can say about them. They don’t really have much else as far as mechanics go outside of a pretty sluggish “trick” system, and overall just come off as pretty shallow without allowing much room to experiment. 

What makes it more noticeable is that the AI in this game is pretty pathetic - I played all the cups on Expert mode, and despite not having played this game much, I was able to pretty easily get to first place just by drifting and boosting. The drift itself isn’t really hard to master, and aside from a couple times, I was consistently able to pretty easily get a good lead over the AI. Maybe this wouldn’t be so much of an issue if I played online but… let’s be real here, almost no one’s playing this game in 2021 so that option can be thrown out the window.

I guess I could touch upon the Mission mode as well which I decided to play a good amount of prior to this review and… it exists. I do like when kart racers like this offer mission modes and whatnot but I kind of felt like halfway through I just felt like I was either just racing through the same tracks I did in the Grand Prix modes or doing the same missions over and over again - collecting enough rings, drifting for points, keeping up time by driving through green gates, be in first long enough. Sometimes there would be a bit more variety with the Billy Hatcher egg and Bonanza Bros bomb missions but after a while it just started to feel a bit monotonous to me.

Conclusion

While I do have more to say about Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing than Sonic Drift or Sonic Riders, I still don’t really have much else to say about it. Overall, my biggest issue is that it feels a bit basic and lacking in identity, and as a result there just isn’t much else to say about it. As a kart racer on it’s own, it’s solid - the controls are fine, the handling is good, the character roster has a lot of variety, but… that’s the extent of it. Especially looking in retrospect after playing Transformed a lot, I can’t really say that this game does much for me, and even at the time, I just didn’t find much reason to play it over, say, Mario Kart DS or Wii - games with more interesting mechanics and track design.

Can I recommend it? I mean, sure - if you like kart racers there’s really not much wrong you can go with Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing, but I would definitely recommend Transformed or Team Sonic Racing over this game, and really, the most reason I would have to buy and play this game would just be to look at the origin of the All-Stars Racing duology. Although the Xbox 360 version has Banjo and Kazooie so that might be enticing.