It's been a long, long time since we've had a good reason to pit Mario and Sonic against each other in the style of the 16-bit console wars, but with 2025 giving us the launches of both Mario Kart World and Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, it's like the '90s never left. Now, even Sega is bringing back the catty marketing of the Genesis era with a new ad throwing shade directly at Nintendo's kart racer.
"We all know that kart racing game," the commercial begins as it shows a blurred screen obviously meant to evoke Mario Kart World. "It's great! We don't need to show it to you." Then the rock music starts blaring as the camera swings over to look at Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds. "But what if you can blast through and race on a whole 'nother level?"
Suddenly, the Sonic racer is strapped to the back of a drag racing car and blasting down a desert strip. "What if you could warp across different dimensions, fully customize and build out your machine, and compete head-to-head across different platforms?" the voiceover continues, alternating between the drag racer and shots of Sonic Racing before it eventually cuts to a struggling camper hauling the Mario Kart World facsimile along. "Or, uh, what if you want to roam around on the open road?"
If the implication wasn't yet obvious enough, the description of the YouTube video goes one step further: "Leave the open road behind and come race on our level."
Sonic series producer Takashi Iizuka has certainly been willing to talk about some of the comparisons between the games, though he's been far more polite about it than this ad. Earlier this year, he said that "it looks like Nintendo did a good job" on Mario Kart World, but more recently asserted that "Mario Kart World won't have any influence" on Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds.
Yet even if the new ad is a bit more pointed in its comparisons, it still comes off as good-natured ribbing thanks to its connections to the deeply corny world of '90s marketing. It uses the exact same format of the infamous "blast processing" commercial, where Sega unfavorably compared a racecar-worthy Genesis against a rickety van hauling a SNES with – appropriately enough – Super Mario Kart on display.
Perhaps it's a bit inauspicious for Sega to be evoking blast processing – something that never existed, at least not in the way the marketing folks wanted you to believe – but after spending some hands-on time with Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds earlier this year, that ego isn't entirely unearned. We'll find out for sure how the racers stack up when Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds launches on September 25.
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