Wait, SEGA, what is this? Sonic and SEGA All-Stars Racing? It’s Sonic the Hedgehog, in a car, launching boxing gloves, doing flips off ramps, powersliding around turns and turbo boosting. This is, like, a totally fun kart racing game, from a company that makes some of the worst kart racing games known to man!

Basically SEGA All-Stars Racing is Mario Kart with SEGA characters, which sounds like the worst thing ever. But, unlike other attempts to inject Sonic and friends into games (looking at you Tennis and Olympics!), this one is actually fun.

I’ve always enjoyed a good kart racer, but somehow Sonic and racing has never been a good match. But Sumo Digital did it. The racing mechanics are solid, despite some framerate issues. The tracks are gorgeous and fun, all based around famous SEGA games. There’s a ton of style, with the character animations and weapons. And the game is actually challenging, so it doesn’t feel like a kid game. If Sonic Heroes, or Sonic Riders, or that other Sonic Riders game were even half this good, I wouldn’t have thrown them in the garbage.

Calling these characters “all-stars” is a bit of a stretch for anyone who wasn’t a big Dreamcast fan. But since I was a SEGA brat until early 2000 I instantly recognized Beat, Ulala, Ryo, the ChuChus, and BD Joe. It’s all the bastard children that SEGA has forsaken, reuniting like a cheesy reality show.

And yes, there are a ton of Sonic universe characters, good and bad. Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Shadow, Amy and, for some weird reason, Big the Cat are all playable characters. Sorry you freakshow Rouge the Bat fans.

Xbox 360 owners get a bonus: Banjo & Kazooie and the Avatars are playable characters. PS3 owners get shafted. It’s out for the Wii too, but I rarely, if ever, recommend a Wii version of a multi-console game.

The best part of the All-Stars Racing, by far, is the annoying commentator who shouts at you as you race. He has “witty” comments whenever any player does anything. He would be terrible except half of the things he says sound sexual out of context (the other half sound sexual even within context). You get to hear a guy that sounds like Adam West shout things like:
–Tails took a real pounding there!
–Big, showing he can take as well as give!
–AiAi takes a bruisin!
–Sonic taking it where it hurts there!
–The big cat gets the cream!
–All Billy can do is just lap that up!
–Ouch, Amy takes a nasty one!
–Ulala, taking it like a champ!

Despite SEGA’s best intentions, there are still fans of Sonic the Hedgehog, and most of them seem to be in the fandom. It’s definitely worth adding to the collection for Sonic or kart racing fans. This is the first 3D game starring Sonic I’ve genuinely enjoyed in a decade. And yeah, I’m labelling this as a Sonic game. If him being a stretchy armed werewolf or a knight of the fucking round table count, then so does this.