Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is a hit, and its devs think we can thank the "secret sauce of Sega" – namely, the many other influential Sega racers before it – for its vibes and feel.
It was already known that the development team behind the Initial D arcade game series was involved in the making of CrossWorlds, but in an interview with Automaton, creative director Masaru Kohayakawa discusses how other Sega racers contributed to shaping Sonic's latest outing.
Kohayakawa explains that the Initial D arcade series' driving behavior was "controlled by one programmer who's been doing that same job ever since Sega Rally," and "one of their students oversees the behavior programming for Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds." The creative director continues: "Also, when creating the driving behavior for CrossWorlds, they actually used Sega Rally's game design as a base, not the Initial D arcade series."
On top of that, the Sonic Racing devs turned to OutRun as another reference, specifically when it came to the "satisfying feeling" of drifting in the older Sega racer. Kohayakawa says the CrossWorlds team doesn't strictly think of OutRun as part of their "DNA," as it was instead developed by Sega's AM2 team, but there's still a connection since the dev who oversees CrossWorlds' behavior programming worked with a team which branched off the OutRun studio division. It all makes for a melting pot of influences that led Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds to become what it is today.
All in all, Kohayakawa summarizes that "Sonic CrossWorlds has the secret sauce of Sega. It extracts and combines the essence of not just the arcade Initial D, but also legendary titles like Sega Rally and OutRun."
Secret sauce or not, it's safe to say that Sonic's latest racer has gone down very well, having debuted to 98% Overwhelmingly Positive reviews on Steam (which have only dropped slightly to 96% since). And hey, the wild roster of non-Sonic characters including Hatsune Miku, Persona 5's Joker, and Minecraft Steve have got to help, too.
