Sonic Team lead Takashi Iizuka teases there's more to come within the series' many pillars, and that keeping the series' momentum is a challenge.

Sonic is simultaneously a yearly franchise and a franchise that feels like it's been missing. While 2026 is the first year without a new release for the series since 2018, it will feature a second season of DLC for Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds.

However, fans have been wondering when a proper follow-up to Sonic Frontiers will finally emerge – possibly compounded by general disappointment with 2023's Sonic Superstars, the latest mainline entry in the series.

Speaking to 80.lv, Iizuka explains he sees the different branches of the series as pillars – such as 2D games, 3D games, spinoffs, and collaborations. He explains, "Each of the different pillars contributes in meaningful ways to the Sonic franchise, and we're looking forward to what we have in store."

As for Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, Iizuka says the second season of DLC for the acclaimed racing game – which features collabs with Godzilla and Neon Genesis Evangelion – "signals our long-term investment in the game," and while it seemingly underperformed, it looks like Sega is happy to keep trying until everyone realizes that it's actually pretty sick.

Iizuka adds, "While keeping momentum in such a competitive market is always a challenge, our team remains dedicated to delivering content that stays true to the Sonic universe."

Most recently, a collab game between Sonic and indie hit Pico Park was announced. A decade ago, Sega apparently had the character on the chopping block, but fortunately the blue blur is likely here to stay for now… I really want to hear about that Frontiers sequel though.

Sonic fans couldn't wait for Sega's new alternate-reality game – until they spotted the AI training agreement.

2026 marks Sonic the Hedgehog's 35th anniversary, and at Summer Game Fest, I got the chance to play maybe the most unusual part of Sega's celebrations: Sonic Pico Park, a co-op puzzle platformer that once again puts Sega's iconic blue blur in the hands of beloved indie devs. It's a sign of an evolving game industry, and the developers bringing Sonic Pico Park to life know that Sonic's continued evolution is key to the character's long-term survival.

My hands-on time with Sonic Pico Park is equal parts delightful and frustrating – pretty much as you'd expect for an indie couch co-op game. Just like the rest of developer Tecopark's puzzle platformer series, you and your fellow players take control of an array of boxy little characters and cooperate to work your way through challenges custom-built to ruin relationships.

Co-op for devs and players alike

The difference here is that there are now Sonic-influenced twists to all the levels. You can spin dash through cracked walls, run through big loops, and bounce off of strategically placed springs. Naturally, these elements play into the puzzle design, too. You can collect rings which, in true Sonic fashion, will save you from a single hit – which means you need to strategically choose who takes each ring to survive the death traps that'll follow.

In one instance, you need to build a wall that one player can spin dash their way up. In another, you'll need a Tails player to fly the whole group across a big gap. The joy is in the discovery, so I won't spoil too many specific puzzle solutions, but it's all great fun. Of course, you'll already know the basics if you've played any of the Pico Park games before, but Tecopark sought out this collaboration in part because it wants to bring in new fans.

Pico Park is already wildly popular on its own merits, having sold some 8 million units. Creator Shunsuke "Teco" Miyake wanted to expand even further, however, and in 2021 formed a company to help the property reach the next level. "We really wanted to start expanding on Pico Park as an IP," as producer Shintaro Shimazu tells me via translator. "It was really popular with casual gamers, but we wanted to reach out and get even hardcore gamers and other people excited."

Shimazu explains that "we really thought we need to start collabing with IP," and since Miyake once worked at Sega, it was an obvious first choice. "Sonic is a great IP to collab with. It's got tons of appeal. People love it worldwide. Let's go to Sega. I doubt they'll ever let us even do this, but let's at least pitch it to them and see what they have to say. Maybe we'll get a skin or something small. To all of our disbelief, Sega was like, 'Actually, this is a great idea. Let me introduce you to the Sonic team, and let's start talking about doing a Sonic and Pico Park collab game together.'"

For Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka, seeing the beloved hedgehog and pals take on such a different type of gameplay was something of a shock, but Sega's previous big indie collaboration gave him confidence that it would work out.

"When I first saw the concept and the whole idea, I was kind of like, 'Is this gonna be a Sonic game?'" Iizuka tells me. "Like, 'I don't know how this collab is going to work.' But our experience working with the Sonic Mania team – they were also an indie developer, and they also had these ideas and kind of core beliefs that they wanted to execute on creatively."

While an eight-player co-op game was "something we on the Sonic Team side had never made before," that type of gameplay "was something that the team at Pico Park was really passionate about making." Iizuka did have at least one big suggestion for Tecopark, however: all the Sonic characters should have unique abilities. "It totally breaks the core game design of Pico Park," Iizuka admits, "but the team at Pico Park were really skilled at understanding the request, and then building around it."

Sonic madness meets Sonic Mania

Sega has now let indie developers make their own Sonic game multiple times, and it's not alone. We've gotten games like Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, The Rogue Prince of Persia, Cadence of Hyrule, and even the upcoming Castlevania: Belmont's Curse thanks to established publishers being open to allowing other developers to use their IP, and the results have largely been excellent. What's made it possible for these sorts of collaborations to happen in the modern era?

"I can't really speak for the other companies and maybe what they're thinking, but you know, from a Sega perspective, we do realize that making our big titles, it takes a lot of time, a lot of money," Iizuka explains. "It's a huge investment of, you know, the staff and the resources that we have, and then once you've invested all that time and energy into something, you really need to sell a lot of units in order to survive in the industry."

Indie developers, meanwhile, "have an idea, and they'll very quickly create that idea – that game experience – and then they'll continue moving forward and making more stuff. That's one thing that larger companies really can learn from the indie development scene – just how quickly they can take an idea, capture that, and put that into a game experience. It's really stimulating working with those indie developers." Iizuka believes this is a lesson Hollywood is already learning, and that AAA game studios should follow suit.

Partnering with indie studios also gives companies like Sega a chance to work with the very people whose love of video games was sparked by their characters. "I grew up in a household where we had a Super Famicom, but I was asking for a Mega Drive," Shimazu says. "My brother wanted a PlayStation, and I wanted to play Virtua Fighter. So I've always been that Sega fan at heart."

Of course, Shimazu was a Sonic fan, too, and has watched the character grow from a platformer protagonist to a multimedia mascot just like many of us have. "It was this really cool, unique character that I got to play with, and I really appreciated and enjoyed that time with the games," he says. "But when we look historically at what Sonic has been and where Sonic is going – Sonic's in movies, Sonic's in lots of different media. All these different ways of presenting Sonic to lots of people, I think, has been one of those ways to help Sonic survive."

Sonic's survival wasn't always assured. A decade ago, Sega had the character on the chopping block. But Iizuka thanks the fans for keeping the series alive even now, 35 years later – not to mention making sure that Sega stays on the right path.

"I'm sure you guys remember the Sonic 1 movie trailer that went out there. The fans really said, 'We don't like this, and we want things changed.' The teams listened to that, and they changed the design of Sonic for the movie. We're always constantly listening to the fans when we're thinking about the next game we want to make. Because the fans are there and they have been supporting us so much, we want to take the time – for the past 35 years – and really listen to what they want and deliver something that they're going to enjoy."

Gotta go fast to our list of the best Sonic games of all time.

Out of all the many speedy platformers out there starring Sega's blue blur, Takahashi Iizuka's favorite one is Sonic Adventure 2.

There are dozens upon dozens of Sonic the Hedgehog games out there, and Sonic Team's lead producer Takahashi Iizuka has been involved with several of them over the last three decades. But there's one game he feels was particularly memorable, and I'm not sure many series fans would disagree.

"I have fond memories of all of them, but if I had to pick one, it would be Sonic Adventure 2 from 2001," he says in an interview with Famitsu magazine (thanks, Genki!) "After finishing the previous game, Sonic Adventure, I took the staff with me to San Francisco to work on this game. While the previous project was a large-scale project involving over 100 people, development on Sonic Adventure 2 started with just 11 people."

"Just hearing this might make it sound like it was a tough development environment, but since we were a small team in a new location, I remember that we were all able to work together freely and enjoy the development while supporting each another both professionally and personally," Iizuka adds.

The head of Sonic Team thinks that smooth working environment also contributed to the game's quality because - surprise, surprise - people do better work when they're supported. Sonic Adventure 2 is now an absolute fan-favorite entry that's even inspired a few indie game love letters.

Sonic's 3D outing was so popular, in fact, it even provided the framework for the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 movie, something Iizuka was "really delighted" to see.

Thankfully, unlike many of the other best Sonic games of all time, Sonic Adventure 2 is pretty easily available on PC (Steam) and Xbox Series X|S consoles via backward compatibility.

On the topic of remakes that could potentially bring the beloved games to even more platforms, Iizuka recently said he would "love" to magically remake every Sonic game, but remakes would apparently take just as much time as developing an entirely new instalment.

Sonic fans couldn't wait for Sega's new alternate-reality game – until they spotted the AI training agreement

Well, Sega's gone ahead and ruined Sonic's birthday party in a way only the worst Silicon Valley boyfriend would dare to: the publisher is letting it be an opportunity to train artificial intelligence.

Now the Sonic franchise's 35th anniversary feels a lot more gloomy. People were excited about the apparent alternate-reality game Sega had set up, in which players were meant to "recover" lost Chaos Emeralds during free events in Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, and New York. Participating either online or in-person could make you eligible to win prizes like a little enamel pin or a Leblon Delienne sculpture, but it would also require you to consent to being scraped and prodded for the sake of AI.

This fact is only revealed if you attempt to sign up for the Chaos Emeralds hunt on the game's official website and view its Terms of Service before plugging in your zip code, date of birth, and other personal information.

It turns out the Chaos hunt is being carried out "on behalf of SEGA via Community," a mass-texting tool that uses AI-generated messages. Giving the service your information means you "consent to our collection, use, and processing of your information [...] for the improvement, development, and training of our artificial intelligence (AI) models and tools."

More specifically, Community could use your data to "enhance our proprietary AI models," potentially make your data available to "third party providers," and possibly retain your data "as part of our AI model’s knowledge base," according to the platform's Terms of Service.

None of this sounds like the kind of 35th birthday blowout an anthropomorphic hedgehog like Sonic would want. Actually, Sega's Chaos hunt seems more aligned with Sonic villain Dr. Eggman's values, which generally involve deploying evil robots.

To that point, one popular reply to Sega on Twitter taunts, "Might as well change the main character to Eggman now cause it's clear how much you love bots."

"Ai data harvesting and decade old renders," says another defeated fan "What an anniversary.

But AI is sadly part of Sega's new normal. The developer is open about the fact that it thinks generative AI is "an optional support tool for developers," as company spokesperson recently said to Game Informer. It also seems to think of generative AI as a wonderful opportunity to kill a mood; Sega earned fans' animosity earlier this month when its Steam page for the upcoming Crazy Taxi: World Tour revealed it used "generative AI support tools during development."

To its very small credit, though, Sega is at least consistent in its tiptoeing around AI. The studio has been publicly sharing its medium-warm approach to the tech for months now, as company executives made it known in a translated 2025 investor call that Sega planned to "pursue efficiency improvements, such as leveraging AI," also noting that "we will proceed by carefully assess appropriate use cases, such as streamlining development processes."

Sega has seemingly stuck to that approach in using generative AI as a garnish, but not overwhelmingly. Maybe a blue guy who runs as fast as Sonic the Hedgehog could appreciate that kind of technological "streamlining"... but what's certain is that fans who are worried about Sega's ambiguous relationship to AI and buried partnerships with platforms like Community certainly do not.

Sonic lead says AAA studios can learn from indies in the same way the movie industry should take notes from Backrooms and Obsession.

Despite throwing shade at Nintendo ahead of its release, Sega has deemed Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds' sales to be below expectations.

In Sega Sammy's latest financial results the company singles out two of its titles that it deems to have "fallen short of expectation" when it comes to sales, despite good reviews for both. These titles are Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds and Shinobi: Art of Vengeance, which garnered Metacritic scores of 82 and 87 respectively when they were released last year.

Sega confirmed earlier this year (thanks, Nintendo Life) that Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds was still hovering around the previously announced one million copies sold mark, and given that Sonic x Shadow Generations the year prior had sold over three million, and Sonic Frontiers sold just under five million, Sega clearly had higher expectations for the project.

Last year was one of the biggest years for the kart racer genre to date – granted, it would've been huge with the launch of the first Mario Kart game in 11 years in the form of Mario Kart World alone. But Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds and Kirby Air Riders also released in 2025, meaning the typically niche genre was pretty crowded.

Ahead of launch, Sega threw a bit of shade at Nintendo with an ad making fun of "the open road," quite obviously in reference to Mario Kart World's open-world pivot and the prevalence of controversial intermission tracks in the game. Plus, the game's creative director Masaru Kobayakawa spoke about the Sonic Racing rewarding skill instead of luck, which also felt like a reference to Mario Kart.

According to Nintendo, as of March 31 this year, Mario Kart World had sold just under 15 million copies, and sure, it may have been helped along by the somewhat generous console bundle that arrived alongside the launch of the Switch 2, but Mario Kart always does well. However, the way more niche Kirby Air Riders is also seemingly out in front of Sonic Racing, at 1.87 million copies sold.

Personally, I had all three kart racers on my top 10 games of last year, so for me it was a three cakes situation, but I definitely didn't think it was the best time for Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds to release. But given CrossWorlds released on seven platforms, I can somewhat understand why Sega would be disappointed.

10 years ago, Sega said "we're done with Sonic," and it was up to Takashi Iizuka to save the series: "Sonic was really at a low point."

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The Sonic the Hedgehog 35th Anniversary has landed, as it's been 35 years since the first game launched on June 23 in the US way back in 1991. That means we'd had almost four decades spent on this planet with the blue blur, chilli dogs, cheesy quips, and the iconic Green Hill Zone, whose 16-bit music still remains in my head rent-free.

I don't want to linger on Sonic's age too much, as that'd mean coming to terms with my own old age. But the series' longevity means that plenty of the best toys out there are based on Sonic and friends, should you want to start collecting them. There's everything from official Squishmallow plushies featuring Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, to PEZ dispensers, game controllers, and cookbooks. An order up of Chili Dogs, anyone?

To help get you started, I've gathered together a Death Egg-sized lot of some of my favorite Sonic the Hedgehog collectibles out there today, including plenty of pieces I own myself. Everything I've included is officially licensed by SEGA, too, so you can feel assured that you won't find a faker. Y'know, unless you're looking for Shadow the Hedgehog merch in particular, of course.

Check out our round-up of the best Lego sets and the best Nintendo gifts for more radical video game toys and collectibles.

Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka reveals Sega was ready to give up on Sonic at the low point of its history.

Sonic has had many ups and downs throughout its 35-year history, and while the classic line of "Sonic had a rough transition to 3D" isn't exactly accurate, given how beloved the Adventure duo is, the mixed reception to Heroes, before the triple bill of Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic Genesis, and Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), led the series to a low point.

And while Sega did bring things back around with the beloved Sonic Colors and Generations, the series was right back in the bad books with the likes of Sonic Lost World, Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric, and Sonic Forces.

And while Sonic has always had a dedicated fanbase, his reputation wasn't the best, so much so that Sega delisted sub-par Sonic releases in 2010, ironically just before the worst Sonic game ever made – Sonic Free Riders – was released.

Speaking to GamesRadar+, Iizuka acknowledges "there's been a lot of ups and downs in our history," and recalls "There was even a time when Sega said, 'You know what? We don’t need you to make any more Sonic games. We’re good. We’re done with Sonic.'" He adds, "10 years ago, when I first moved to America, Sonic was really at a low point, and they [Sega] said, 'Iizuka-san, if you don’t go over to America and don’t start building this up and raising Sonic back up, Sonic is going to end, and we’re just going to be done with it.'"

10 years ago was 2016, which would place this moment as just over a year after the release of Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric, a game so disastrously buggy that it instantly became a meme for glitches like Knuckles' infinite flight. While the next 3D game in the series, Sonic Forces, was also slated, Sonic Mania, released a few months prior, is one of the most beloved Sonic games to date. Iizuka also thanks the fanbase for sticking with the series through those low points, saying, "It's really thanks to the fans that Sonic lives on.

Not to mention the Sonic Boom cartoon amassed a big fanbase, and of course, the movie series kicked off in 2020 – which Sonic voice actor Roger Craig Smith credits with launching "the notoriety of the character" into "a whole other stratosphere." So thankfully, Sonic seems to be back in a good place, even if Frontiers and Superstars aren't the most beloved games in the series.

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 director calls it the "best Sonic movie yet" as filming officially wraps.

Sonic the Hedgehog actor Roger Craig Smith says the movies have sent the blue hedgehog's popularity to a whole different level.

Sonic games – as far as mainline entries in the series go – have been weirdly quiet this decade, with only Sonic Frontiers and a number of remakes, remasters, and spin-off titles to sustain it. But despite that, the series is bigger than ever thanks to the massively popular movie franchise that began in 2020 and is approaching its third sequel in 2027, with Sonic 3 being only the second video game movie to be Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes (Werewolves Within was the first, despite the game's lack of notoriety).

Speaking to GameSpot, Sonic's long-time voice actor Roger Craig Smith – who joined the series with 2010's Sonic Colors (although his voice debut as the character was at the UK's Alton Towers theme park) – was asked about where the franchise is at right now. "I really think we're just at an exciting time," Smith says, "I never would have thought that this many years later we'd be, I mean, as large of a brand as the entire thing has become sort of globally now."

Smith acknowledges that Sonic has always been popular with gamers, but "the fact that the movies have done so well, it's like, it really has sort of launched the notoriety of the character kind of into a whole other stratosphere."

Although, despite Tails actor Colleen O'Shaughnessey reprising her role for the films, Smith has mainly been the voice for the game series (albeit with some voice cameos in the likes of Wreck it Ralph, OK K.O., and being the voice of the character in the shockingly good Sonic Boom TV show).

As for the future of the game franchise, Smith says "I don't know where it goes from here," and explains, "as voice actors too, we're always like the last to sort of find out anything." Although he says this is "for good reason" as voice actors could potentially leak projects, as Devil May Cry's Daniel Southworth and Assassin's Creed Black Flag's Matt Ryan can attest to.

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 director calls it the "best Sonic movie yet" as filming officially wraps.

Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka says he would love every Sonic game to be available on modern consoles, but thinks the effort involved would be better spent on new titles.

In case you weren't aware, there's a whole lot of Sonic games out there. Since 1991, there's been as many mainline console games as the entirety of Mario's mainline console and handheld games (that's with a six-year head start). But unlike Mario, where three of the New Super Mario Bros games and 3D Land are the extent of what you cannot play on the Switch consoles right now, there are a lot of Sonic Games that are simply unavailable on modern platforms.

And while some may be happy with not having the ability to play Sonic Heroes, Sonic 2006 or Sonic Lost World on modern consoles, there are absolute bangers like Sonic Adventure 2, the Sonic Advance trilogy and Rush duo that can't be played on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Switch (PC does have a few of them available still, however).

When asked by YouTube creator Jeremy Klinger which Sonic game he would personally choose to be remade for the franchise's 35th anniversary this year, Iizuka responded, "When we think about all the games in the 35 years that Sonic has been out there, I really want to be able to play all of those old games on the modern platforms." He continues, saying if he could "magically do it," Izuka would "want every single Sonic game ever put out there to be playable now on current hardware."

Unfortunately, however, "The cost that it would take to actually bring those games and have them not just be ported over, but actually be remade and be full experiences on that hardware" would be "about the same resource, money, or people's time and energy as it would to make a brand new title." Iizuka adds, "We're really focused more on making new experiences to surprise people."

Granted, I think many people would be happy with simple ports at this point. And with the GameCube on Nintendo Switch Online, we can easily get the Adventure games and Heroes on there. The saving grace, however, is that many older ports of these games are available on PC, and with a fan community as passionate as Sonic's, those have been updated into really good versions. Or in the case of Sonic Unleashed, a whole PC version was made by the fanbase, which is by far the best way to play the game.

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 director calls it the "best Sonic movie yet" as filming officially wraps.

Sonic the Hedgehog producer Takashi Iizuka thinks big-budget game makers could learn a thing or two from indie developers in the same way that major movie studios should be taking notes from this summer's biggest surprise success stories, Backrooms and Obsession.

The Blue Blur's trading dizzyingly speedy platforming for co-op puzzles in Sonic Pico Park, an upcoming spin-off game revealed at Summer Game Fest made by the developers behind indie hit Pico Park, naturally.

But Sonic Pico Park is part of a growing trend as AAA publishers increasingly work with indies on some of their big franchises - Ubisoft's The Rogue Prince of Persia and Konami's Castlevania: Belmont's Curse come to mind. So when GamesRadar+ had a chance to sit down with Sonic Team's Iizuka, we had to ask him what makes collaborations with indie teams so attractive.

"I can't really speak for the other companies and maybe what they're thinking, but you know, from a Sega perspective, we do realize that making our big titles, it takes a lot of time, a lot of money," he says via a translator. "It's a huge investment of, you know, the staff and the resources that we have, and then once you've invested all that time and energy into something, you really need to sell a lot of units in order to survive in the industry."

According to Iizuka, indie developers can instead generate an idea and then "very quickly" execute it before "moving forward and making more stuff." He reckons that's a huge lesson larger companies like Sega could "learn from the indie development scene." Not to mention, it's "really stimulating working with those indie developers, because you get to feel that that smaller team energy and that quickness of working to get an idea into an experience."

The Sonic producer then likens the AAA game industry's problems to what the movie business is going through right now. The summer box office's biggest story so far is how Disney's Mandalorian and Grogu, an expensive Star Wars blockbuster, was pretty easily outperformed by two scrappy horror flicks made by 20-something-year-old directors.

"It's a little bit a different type of media, but the movie industry is kind of going through similar issues that we in the game industry are going [through]," Iizuka explains, pointing to how studios like Disney are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on bets that will maybe pay off "many, many years from now."

"But then you see movies like Backroom and [Obsession], these much smaller creative efforts that are still becoming these great successful hits, so I do see a parallel in the movie industry to what's kind of happening in the game industry with the amount of investment and the actual entertainment that people are consuming and enjoying," he concludes.

Backrooms director Kane Parsons is seemingly considering a Portal movie “with a lot of caution and a lot of curiosity”

Mike Fischer, former Sega of America vice president of entertainment marketing, recalls working with Sonic co-creator Yuji Naka, and not very fondly.

Fischer worked for Sega in the early 90s before returning to the company in the early 2000s, and speaking to Sega 16, he explains, "It was wonderful to go back and reconnect with those people. It was less pleasant to deal with Naka-san." He recalls speaking about trends in the western market going towards mature games, with the soon-to-be-developed Yakuza playing into this nicely. But Fischer recalls, "Naka just went fucking ballistic on me, yelling at me, saying I wanted to make porno games."

He also recalled the development of Sonic Team's Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg, saying, "He wanted to call it Giant Eggs, and we’re like, 'Well, to lay a big egg in the U.S. just means a failure.'" Someone on the team suggested calling it "'Billy Hatcher' because it’s a hatching game with a cute character. The main character is the boy, not the egg." But, "Naka-san hated it. We called it Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg, which he still hated."

Fischer then recalls another tale about the naming of the now-mostly-forgotten GameCube title. He notes, "I promise you, I am not making up this story," and says, "He goes, 'Well, I know another name for the boy wearing a rooster suit. Another name for [a] rooster is cock. Can we call the game Giant Cock in English?'"

And despite the hilarity of suggesting that, Fischer doesn't have the best memories of Sonic's co-creator, saying, "He is literally the most miserable person I have ever worked with in games or anything else in my life, just a horrible human being, and you can quote me on that," while also making reference to his prison sentence for insider trading charges in 2022.

However, Fischer has far better things to say about Sonic's other co-creator, Naoto Ōshima, saying "Ōshima-san is one of the most wonderful, kindhearted people you’ll ever meet in your life," while citing distaste at Naka speaking in an interview about why he decided to make Sonic blue – something Ōshima, as the character artist, was responsible for.

He also says that Naka "was so malignant in trying to rewrite history" and that he "refused to sit in the same row as Ōshima-san because he accused Ōshima-san of trying to steal his credit" at the Xbox One debut event. However, the duo would eventually collaborate again on 2021's Balan Wonderworld for the first time since Sonic Adventure, so presumably they had patched things up by then.

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 director calls it the "best Sonic movie yet" as filming officially wraps.

Former Sega of America vice president of entertainment marketing Mike Fischer says he's heard a Sonic CD remake is in the works

In an interview with Sega 16, Fischer speaks at length about his time at Sega, including being around for the launch of the Sega CD, shifting the company from a first to third-party publisher after the fall of the Dreamcast, as well as his time at Namco between his two tenures at Sega. However, right at the end of the interview, he drops a nugget like it's nothing, saying: "I've heard that they're remaking Sonic CD, which would be wonderful. That was my favorite Sonic game."

Sega doesn't have anything in store for Sonic at the moment, at least, nothing that's been publicly announced (there are rumors about a Sonic Frontiers definitive edition release), and while most assume that this year's game will be a sequel to Frontiers – or just the next mainline game in general – the idea of a Sonic CD remake has certainly come out of nowhere.

While Sonic CD was remastered as part of Sonic Origins a few years ago, the timing for something with the classic Sega CD game would make sense, as the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog 4 movie is set to adapt it. And, as the best Sonic game in 2D (in my eyes, I know Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Knuckles and Mania are the fan consensus), I'd be down to see it adapted in a new way, just as long as they keep that all-timer soundtrack – the Japan and Europe version, before you ask.

Of course, Fischer doesn't work at Sega currently, and while it wouldn't be unusual for him to hear about the current goings on at the company, there's always the chance that this is a miscommunication or misunderstanding, so don't get yourself too hyped until we see evidence of it existing.

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 director calls it the "best Sonic movie yet" as filming officially wraps.

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 has officially wrapped filming with blue blur speed, and it's apparently the best movie in the game-to-film franchise so far.

Returning series director Jeff Fowler yesterday tweeted a picture of himself in the director's chair, grinning alongside a menacing Metal Sonic that does not want to be there. "And that's a wrap on SonicMovie4," he writes in the post down below. "On behalf of this amazing cast/crew, we have filmed the BEST Sonic Movie yet and can't wait to share."

Filming began back in March, a short two months ago, when we got our first look at Amy Rose's iconic hammer. Both Metal Sonic and Amy Rose {Kristen Bell) are set to play major parts in the upcoming movie after they were teased in mid-credits scenes at the end of Sonic 3.

Metal Sonic was first introduced as a recurring antagonist in 1993's Sonic the Hedgehog CD - where he also kidnaps Amy Rose - created by big bad Dr. Eggman as a cutting-edge machine capable of rivalling his nemesis' iconic speed.

The sequel's first teaser already gave us a look at Jim Carrey's return to the role of Dr. Eggman, despite the character's death at the end of Sonic 3, so everything's in place for the movie to follow Metal Sonic's origin story, at least loosely.

Paramount has yet to release an official synopsis for the fourquel, but Sonic 3 passed the baton on pretty neatly for Sonic 4 to go zooming. Not only did Team Sonic remain victorious, a post-credits scene teased that Shadow is alive and well, actually, so expect the whole gang to be here (minus, I don't know, Silver?)

Sonic 4 races to theatres on March 19, 2027.

For more, check out our picks of the best video game movies of all time.

You may or may not be aware a new Sonic game came out last year. Sonic Rumble Party is a free, Fall Guys-esque experience, and you'd be forgiven for having missed it since the reception wasn't great. The returns haven't been, either, and Sega's rolling back its free-to-play plans in lieu of this and other releases underperforming.

The company says as much in the financial report for the fiscal year 2026. According to the presentation, "new F2P titles struggled in FY2026/3" – specifically, Sonic Rumble Party had a "weak performance" in the third quarter. Reports around the launch of the Sonic the Hedgehog spin-off in November had revenue for the first ten days at apparently below $250,000, a lackluster start that apparently didn't recover much in the months after.

But it's not just Tails, Amy, and Dr. Robotnik who weren't bringing in the dosh. Sega bought Angry Birds developer Rovio in 2023, and it's not been a fruitful partnership. "Did not achieve the creation of economic value through collaboration with Rovio," the slides state. Delays are noted as being an issue as well – Sonic Rumble Party took almost a year longer than planned to become publicly playable.

In response, Sega's "lowered the priority" of free-to-play projects in order to help the company's medium and long-term prospects. "Over 100" employees who were working in that space have since been moved onto the "Full Game development team focusing on mainstay IPs." In other words, Sonic Team, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio for the Yakuza and Super Monkey Ball series, Atlus for the Persona games, and beyond.

It's said that Rovio will "prioritize rebuilding first" before continuing to do what it's doing. Alas, Angry Birds lives to dive headfirst into a pile of miscellaneous blocks for another day.

In the same breath, Sega revealed the upcoming Super Game project is canceled as well. Uncertainty continues at the brand that once did what Ninten-don't, but it's nothing a new Golden Axe won't be able to fix. Yes, I'm still waiting – patiently.

I can't decide if this custom Sonic 2 controller with spin dash force feedback is genius or Eggman-levels of ridiculous.

SEGA and PC brand Astromeda have teamed up to create a pair of pre-built Sonic the Hedgehog gaming PCs, and they're a sight to behold. Instead of just using some run-of-the-mill old artwork of the blue blur and calling it a day, the brands have come together to release two stunning builds, one inspired by Sonic Frontiers and the other Sonic x Shadow Generations.

As reported by Sonic Channel, these official Sonic PCs are part of the Sonic Pict range and are available in five different configurations, starting from 178,800 yen as Astromeda (roughly $1,141.86). Just like the best gaming PC builds at other retailers, you can also select between your own preferred RAM, storage, and power supply, and if you'd rather the Sonic Model or Shadow Model case. And if you have enough rings, you can import the lot for a hefty free, and that Shadow the Hedgehog PC case has definitely got me considering the pricey investment.

The 'Shadow Model' PC is one of the best accessories or Sonic merchandise I've seen. As a big fan of the original Dreamcast Sonic Adventure 2 game, where Shadow made his first appearance, there's an argument to be made that I'd be just as swayed by seeing older official art pasted on the side glass of the case. But this is the first pre-built PC whose marketing images alone have made me teary. (In a good way.)

SEGA and Astromeda have showcased the art of Maria and Shadow looking up at the night's sky, in a lovely, seldom moment before the events of the game. It's so charming that it's now one of my favorite pieces of Sonic artwork. The art doesn't just wrap around the glass, but Sonic Channel images reveal that silhouettes of the two are also found throughout the entire back panel. The art is so charming that even the vents don't get in the way of its splendour.

If you aren't a Shadow the Hedgehog fan, then there's also the Sonic Model. It also features art on the glass and the entire back panel, but it showcases Sonic chilling out with one of his Koco friends instead. Both of these cases, no matter the parts you pick, come equipped with a 360mm all-in-one liquid cooler and a total of 10 case fans. And as a neat extra, Astromeda has also included a limited-time bonus wallpaper featuring the art of your Sonic PC of choice, and an exclusive Sonic Pict-inspired start-up screen will appear once you boot your PC up.

While you can import these Sonic Pict gaming PCs, I do worry about how much the shipping and part fees are going to cost in the long run. Not to mention, some of the cheapest options, like the RADEON RX 5600XT 6G graphics card, are already sold out since I last checked the Astromeda store, so that's going to complicate things. That's before you take the inflated prices of RAM into consideration.

With that in mind, it might be a safer investment on my part to check out the range of official mousemats, or the Sonic the Hedgehog x Astromeda 8K Gaming Keyboard, also part of the Sonic Pict lineup. The theming is a bit more subtle on the board, and it appears like there's some garish Comic Sans-like typeface used for the caps for whatever reason. But I'd much sooner deal with the 34,980 yen at Astromeda ($163.81) cost than the bank-breaking funds it takes to grab a gaming PC in this day and age, no matter how much it awakens my Sonic fandom ways.

• View all Sonic Pict PCs at Astromeda

If you want to go fast and give your PC a fresh new look, check out our guides to the best gaming keyboards, the best PC controllers for gaming, and the best gaming chairs to see our top accessory picks.

I've been a Sonic fan since I could walk on two legs and run pretty fast, but showing off my blue-blur fandom on the Nintendo Switch 2 hasn't really been an option. Besides grabbing the games, the best Nintendo Switch 2 accessories aren't exactly draped in plenty of imagery of Sonic the Hedgehog and friends like they were with the original Switch.

I was about to give up hope, which is when I stumbled on the radically cool Sonic and Shadow Switch 2 Joy-Con kits by CptnAlex Designs. These controllers ingeniously feature Sonic on the left Joy-Con and Shadow on the right Joy-Con, and that design idea feels so obvious given the hedgehog's iconic colors that I'm surprised no one thought of it sooner. I have zero Switch 2 Joy-Con modding experience, so the $64 kit makes little sense as an investment for my handheld. But I'm willing to learn if it means getting to rep my favorite hedgehog boys.

I know not everyone is a fan of the subtle blue and red peaking out of the Switch 2 Joy-Con sticks, but they look incredible when paired with the officially licensed Sonic artwork. CptnAlex Designs has plastered Sonic and Shadow on semi-translucent, smoky black shells too, which helps give the modded pads that 'Y2K' appeal. It harkens back to the early 00s when transparent plastic consoles were the bees' knees. Charmy Bee knees if you will.

That aesthetic feels so on-brand for Sonic the Hedgehog, especially when the Sega D-Direct website in Japan back in the day actually sold replacement 'clear black' shells for the SEGA Dreamcast. You know, that console that first introduced Sonic and Shadow to the masses in Sonic Adventure 2, a game that changed my life forever. It's this SA2 obsession that has me willing to learn how to mod to install these on my own controllers.

Of course, I'd likely buy an extra pair in case everything goes horribly wrong. I have zero modding experience when it comes to Switch 2 controllers, and the kit doesn't come with the tools I'd need, so I don't suspect it'll be easy. CptnAlex Designs does have a solution for this, as you can just buy these Sonic and Shadow designs fully assembled and good to go, without requiring you to have the tinkering expertise of Dr. Eggman.

The privilege of not having to do any modding yourself will cost you $185 for the pair. That might sound like a lot to spend on controllers that normally cost $99 at Amazon. However, it makes sense when you factor in that the combined cost of the standalone kits and the Ninty gamepads is $164. There's just been $21 added on top to pay for the labour involved in putting everything together.

If the Sonic and Shadow Switch 2 Joy-Con designs aren't doing it for you as they are for me, CptnAlex Designs also had a pair of Joy-Con featuring Amy Rose and Rouge the Bat. These are available for $65 (CptnAlex Designs) as a kit and a fully assembled pair of controllers. In fact, there's a whole range of exclusive Sonic goodies on the site, including a Sonic Racing CrossWorlds Stickerbomb Pro Controller for Nintendo Switch 2 that my bank account could have gone without me seeing today.

There's even a Chao VMU Joy-Con & Game Storage Bag that looks like the official Dreamcast Virtual Memory Card, which, like with everything else, is designed using officially licensed artwork. I started today sad at the lack of Sonic Switch 2 goodies, but these CptanAlex creations now have me believing that everything will be okay.

• View all Nintendo Switch Sonic accessories at Amazon
• View all Nintendo Switch 2 controllers at Amazon

If it's Switch 2 accessories you're after, our guides to the best Nintendo Switch 2 cases, the best Nintendo Switch headsets, and our guide to the best Nintendo Switch 2 microSD Express Cards are full of them.

Former Sega developer Ryoichi Hasegawa says that Nintendo was adamant that Mario should always be a step ahead of Sonic in promotional art for their Olympic team-up.

Frankly, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games doesn't make a lot of sense conceptually; when it comes to the footrace events, having the "fastest thing alive" take on a slightly overweight fella from New York who eats pasta and mushrooms exclusively seems like a weird choice. But then, when you look at trailers or artwork, Mario is always keeping the pace and even slightly ahead of Sonic, and it turns out that was apparently intentional.

Hasegawa – who was the localization producer of Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games' original Beijing 2008 incarnation – has claimed in an interview with Arcade Attack that Nintendo "demanded" that Mario be a step ahead of Sonic on the artwork for the game. He explains that with the artwork that appeared on the box, manuals, and the disk, "there was one small error: Sonic's foot was in front of Mario's foot, and Nintendo demanded us to change the priority." And while it may seem silly, Hasegawa recalls thinking "Oh my god, we have to change it, or there will be no deal."

Of course, Nintendo was in a favorable position to make these demands, even if the game was developed by Sega. Sonic 06 and the GBA port of Sonic 1 didn't land the best reviews, and with Mario being fresh off a career-defining win with Super Mario Galaxy, there was no question who the big dog was.

I did do a quick glance at the other release, and it looks like Mario is just a bit ahead in the 2012 London Olympics, as well as the Vancouver and Sochi Olympic Winter Games cover arts, before the duo stood as equals on both the Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 cover art. Maybe the Wii U's own misfortunes were enough of a hit to put Mario and Sonic back on, er, equal footing.

Mario's new voice actor has "unbelievable respect" for 32-year icon Charles Martinet

The blue blur has a new game out, and while it's free, I wouldn't get too excited, as Sonic Rumble is getting truly slated on Steam. Players are deeply unhappy about the release, as the absurdly priced skins and an overabundance of microtransactions squeeze out whatever little fun could otherwise be had.

A Fall Guys-esque party game, Sonic Rumble pits cute, toy-like versions of the iconic hedgehog and his pals against each other in different arenas in order to gather rings. Though it seems simple, the whole thing favors deep pockets as better skins yield more rewards, and dailies give limited currency, inspiring quite a bit of consternation.

"You win by having more rings, get more rings by buying legendary characters," writes one Steam reviewer. "You win by having better moves, it also costs money to get different moves." The price range to buy skins without grinding sits at between $40 to $60, and the in-game advertising is extremely full-on.

"It'd be one thing if it was just kept to the shop where you didn't see it, but it's always in your face," says another Steam reviewer. "They want you to buy those ludicrously expensive skins so you can pay to win to get those higher scores and get better ranks."

Some are even disappointed by how little it seems like a Sonic game. "Nearly nothing about Sonic gameplay carried into this game, except the characters," reads a bullet-point in a highly-rated review on Steam.

Rovio Entertainment is the studio behind Sonic Rumble, and you may recognize the name as the team that created Angry Birds. Sega acquired it in 2023, and there's a mobile version to go with the PC release, which goes some way towards explaining the in-game monetization.

"In what world can you get a whole, fully featured, actually fun racing game for less than the price of two skins here," questions another review, short and to the point. If you're looking for something multiplayer featuring Tails, Knuckles and the rest of Sonic's cohort, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is definitely the better option right now.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds has sold over 1 million copies within its first month, with Sega releasing the latest free character to the game this week.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds' Metacritic score may say differently, but it's arguably the best kart racer released this year. Sure, Mario Kart World is also fantastic despite its annoying quirks, but CrossWorlds' racing is pure bliss, which makes sense given it has the legacy of Sega racers like OutRun and Initial D behind it, and it's no surprise the game has an "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating on Steam. And while it still trails behind Mario in sales, it's no slouch in that department either.

In a new press release, Sega announced that since it was released last month, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds has sold over 1 million copies, with 74.5 million races, 31.5 million Grands Prix, and 13 million ranked matches completed by players in that time. And that's without the game releasing on Nintendo Switch 2, with that version set to release sometime this year.

Not only that, Sega has just released the second free Sega crossover character to the game, with Persona 5's Joker appearing in-game alongside a vehicle themed after his Persona, Arsene. Most importantly, three tunes from Persona 5 have been added to the in-game jukebox meaning you can listen to peak while mopping up those time trials.

After Joker, Yakuza's Ichiban Kasuga is set to join the game in November, with Sega planning even more free Sega characters to join the game in the coming months. Then there's the premium DLC that already introduced Minecraft content to the game, with the likes of SpongeBob, Pac-Man, and Mega Man confirmed to arrive in the coming months.

Somewhere at Sonic Team is a whole "roadmap of Sonic titles," says head honcho Takashi Iizuka, and the devs "think about which game to release in which year"

Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka has explained how the studio plans out the releases of Sonic games on a roadmap internally.

Sonic the Hedgehog is back to being a yearly franchise as of late, with every year since 2021 having a major release, whether it be remasters like Sonic Colors: Ultimate and Sonic x Shadow Generations, or new titles like Sonic Frontiers and Sonic Superstars, or something else entirely like this year's major release, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds. And according to Sonic Team lead Takashi Iizuka, a lot of thought is put into what game should be released when.

In a talk at the Brasil Game Show earlier this month (translated by Twitter user Genki_JPN), Iizuka explained, "First, we create a roadmap of Sonic titles and think about which game to release in which year. We then allocate the development resources needed to develop those titles."

While it wasn't specified how far ahead these roadmaps are produced, this is presumably far enough that Sonic Team can best time releases, as seen with last year's Sonic x Shadow Generations, which coincided with the release of the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 film shortly after. As for Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, Iizuka said, "This year we've strengthened the racing genre, and we're currently planning what to do next on the roadmap."

As for what's next, Twitter user P0wyful – who previously leaked that SpongeBob and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles characters would be coming to Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds – has also hinted that the next mainline entry in the series (presumably a sequel to Sonic Frontiers, based on how they have referenced it since) is pegged for a November 2026 release.

Sonic the Hedgehog's Takashi Iizuka said Sonic Adventure remakes aren't happening, but Sega just filed a trademark that's fueling hopes for a Shadow the Hedgehog revival.

Despite Sonic boss Takashi Iizuka stating that Sonic Adventure remakes won't be happening anytime soon, Sega has renewed a trademark, sparking speculation that a Shadow the Hedgehog remake could be in the works.

Shadow the Hedgehog has had one of the biggest career comebacks in recent memory. Sonic fans loved him when he first arrived on the scene in Sonic Adventure 2, but after his self-titled game, which saw him using guns and swearing (along with a banger nu-metal buttrock tune), he became the poster boy of edgelords. But in 2024, Sega – after a few years of people coming around on the character – declared it the Year of Shadow, which gave us his Keanu Reeves-voiced appearance in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Shadow Generations, a semi-sequel to Sonic Generations, included with the remastered version.

However, Shadow Generations also followed up on plot points from 2005's Shadow the Hedgehog (the aforementioned swearing and gun game), despite being one of the most derided games in the series. And a new trademark filing from Sega may imply that it isn't quite done with it. As picked up by a trademark bot on Twitter (via machine translation), Sega has filed for a new trademark on "Shadow The Hedgehog" for "Programs for home video game consoles" among other things.

Of course, fans have taken this as meaning either a sequel or remake of the 2005 original could be in the works, with one user pointing out it's the game's 20th anniversary next month. However, given that Takashi Iizuka said less than a month ago that Sonic Adventure remakes weren't in the cards because Sega "could make a brand new game instead," a remake seems a little less likely.

However, if Sega were to remake Sonic games, I'd argue something like Shadow the Hedgehog would be a far better idea than Adventure. Why remake two beloved games that would inevitably cause people to be unhappy with any changes when you could remake something bad and bring out its full potential?

As someone who recently played Sonic 06, and without that game being a broken mess and some of the weird writing decisions I'm sure a good game could be brought out of that, so if Sega does decide to remake a Sonic game, I'm all in for it being one of the bad ones (although it should release the Adventure games on modern platforms).

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds has Sega's "secret sauce" thanks to the devs combining "the essence" of multiple other "legendary" racing games like OutRun and Initial D.

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.

I think Sega is sneak dissing Mario Kart World again, says Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds races are won by "players who think strategically and race skillfully, not just those who get lucky."

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds' new Festival is focused on the upcoming Minecraft collab, with the challenges for this event set to make things even more ridiculous.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds debuted to 98% "Overwhelmingly Positive" Steam reviews (now down to 96%), with the game receiving praise for its absolutely fantastic core driving – Sega says races are won by "players who think strategically and race skillfully, not just those who get lucky." However, fast-paced driving mixed with the typical kart racing mechanics can make CrossWorlds extremely hectic at points, but that hasn't scared Sega at all, as the next in-game Festival is set to focus on the wildest mechanics.

As part of the game's many crossover events with both Sega characters like Ichiban Kasuga and Persona 5's Joker, as well as a litany of outsiders like Hatsune Miku, SpongeBob, Mega Man, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Sega is holding "Festival" events to give you the chance to grab cosmetics based on them. This week kicks off the Minecraft Festival which allows you to get the likes of Decals of characters, Titles inspired by the game, and most importantly, a Minecraft goat horn.

You earn points by competing in Festival Races, which have special conditions to earn extra points, and to strike fear into racers early, the Minecraft challenges are chaotic. One of the challenges is to hit as many enemies with items as you can, which to be fair you'll be trying to do anyway, but it may result in first place firing extra weapons back instead of hoarding them for safety.

The other challenge however focuses on the Spin Drift gadget, which – as the name implies – spins your entire car around when you try to drift, both making it a bit harder to control, and a weapon in itself. So if you thought races in CrossWorlds were too chaotic already, maybe give this Minecraft Festival a miss. It runs between October 9 at 8pm ET until October 11 at the same time.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorld's cross-play was "leagues more difficult" than any other part of development, but including it was crucial for good matchmaking

Some rivalries never end, and the one between Sega and Nintendo is one of the longest running and most legendary ever. The two companies both have newish racing games out, with Mario Kart World having launched alongside the Switch 2 back in June and Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds having released last month.

Sega took a '90s-style dig at Mario Kart World in a pre-release ad tempting players to "leave the open road behind" and downplaying "that kart racing game," and now, its developers are seemingly laying out what specifically makes Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds the superior kart racer.

Talking to Automaton, CrossWorlds creative director Masaru Kobayakawa said Sega's racing game may look like "a party game on the outside," but it's designed to reward skill rather than luck.

"We designed the system so that no item guarantees victory, and players always have a way to counter items," said Kobayakawa. "The goal was to keep the fun and chaos of a party game, while ensuring that victory ultimately goes to players who think strategically and race skillfully, not just those who get lucky."

Kobayakawa also rightfully noted that item-based racing games, i.e. Mario Kart, often make it a huge disadvantage being in first place because everyone is chucking turtle shells at you from behind. Mario Kart even nerfs first-placers by giving them only the most useless items and increasing the length of time they stay shrunk after getting hit by lightning. Not to mention the blue shell specifically targeting racers in first place.

CrossWorlds, meanwhile, tries to offset the inherent downsides of being in first place by adding Travel Rings that the player in first place can use to decide which CrossWorld the second lap of the race will take place in.

Kobayakawa said the CrossWorlds dev team takes the racing genre as a whole extremely seriously, and balance was at the forefront of their minds when making the game.

"Our arcade development team includes players who are, frankly, among the best in Japan when it comes to the racing genre," said Kobayakawa. "We had them do countless all-out serious matches, tuning the game until everyone agreed the balance felt right. It's probably not something many other studios do."

Nevertheless Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds' Metacritic score ties it with the best Sonic racing game ever made, but it still can't overtake Crash and Mario

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds may not have Mario Kart World's Metacritic score, but it does come on multiple platforms, with cross-play for maximum karting carnage. Sonic and his many rivals from across Sega canon are available to race on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PC, Switch, and Switch 2 with players able to challenge each other across all of them.

The fourth installment in the Sonic Racing series, this is the first to come with cross-play. Launching with the feature proved difficult for Sonic Team, as Takashi Iizuka, Sonic series producer, told Dengeki Online (translated by Automaton).

"The Sonic series has always been pushing for multi-platform support. We've always been providing players with playable environments across platforms like PC and Switch, even when it comes to our regular action games," Iizuka explains. "But implementing cross-play was leagues more difficult."

The Sonic Racing games consistently being multi-console has made the lack of cross-platform play a little glaring, especially for 2019's Team Sonic Racing. The dev team worked with the arcade division at Sega to finesse the necessary technology and infrastructure into the game, ensuring its viability.

Besides creating a wider audience for Sonic's four-wheeled Mario Kart rival, it helps for matchmaking, since it helps protect against beginners getting stuck in races with experienced drivers who'll leave them in the dirt due to lower available players. According to Ryuichi Taki, CrossWorlds' producer, the positives simply outweighed the negatives, even if it was more work.

"If you want to secure a sufficient number of players [that are on a similar level], breaking down the walls between platforms undoubtedly helps. That's also one of the benefits we saw in cross-play, and the decision to implement it was made quite early on," Taki says, adding: "It was an incredibly down-to-earth process that took an insanely long time to complete."

Laborious it may have been, the results are worth it. GamesRadar+'s review from Justin Towell calls it, "a very playable, well-designed racer that should only get better with time."

Persona 5 and Hatsune Miku aren't enough – Sega confirms Mario Kart World rival Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds will get new characters every month

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds isn't just a mascot kart racer, it's shaping up to be the mascot kart racer. Is roadmap plans show it's ready to welcome just about every franchise, gaming or otherwise, to compete. While launch content is extremely Sonic-heavy, there's not just room to grow but planned space already fenced off and ready for imminent construction. What we've seen so far manages to avoid feeling too Fortnite-ified, but it's always a risk.

So far, you've got gaming crossovers such as Minecraft, Pac-Man, and Mega Man, and even cartoons in SpongeBob SquarePants, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Avatar making up the upcoming paid DLC for Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds that's planned to rollout through to Q3 2026. But what's interesting is that Sega have split up content drops between these season pass packs that include multiple racers and tracks, and free updates that simply throw new racers (with their own vehicle) into the mix.

OutRun-ning the past

Much less has been revealed about these free racers so far, but some common themes point towards how these might evolve. So far we've gotten vocaloid pop star and rhythm game icon Hatsune Miku, and announced to follow are the hero of Persona 5, Joker, and the protagonist of the recent Yakuza: Like a Dragon games, Ichiban Kasuga. They might all come from different developers, but they all share a throughline with hailing from Sega published games.

So what of the following nine? There may already be some clues. For starters, this seems like the perfect avenue for folding in some returning 'Sega All-Stars' from Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, a karter so good it still may reign supreme – something we struggled to juggle in our Sonic Racing CrossWorlds review. But, rather than just reviving old reliable retro stars, there's a big reason to bring some back, and with new twists to boot. The portal-racing mechanic that wonderfully has each lap zapping racers between each world means it's a great excuse to keep more coming.

That's because Sega have already kicked off their Next Level range of retro revivals – an announced programme to revive older titles with brand new entries that both respect their source material and explore new ways for them to grow. In our Shinobi: Art of Vengeance review, the first release as part of the initiative, we loved how it evoked the '90s spirit of the Sega Genesis series with gorgeous new art design.

It'd make perfect sense for some of the stars of these announced revivals to be part of the lineup with Joe Musashi from Shinobi leading the charge, perhaps with a heavily cel-shaded look to match the block colors of his new game. Likewise, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, Jet Set Radio, and Crazy Taxi have also been shown to be getting new games in that vein.

With the exception of Streets of Rage, they've all been in previous Sonic racing games, so it would make perfect sense – though it may be the case they sport redesigns to match their upcoming releases. They might even be timed to arrive closer to news of their revamps. The only downside is none of these free tier characters have been announced to have tracks – reserved for the paid tracks only – and some of the Sega circuits in past entries have been some of my favorites. The Skies of Arcadia one where the island is blown to bits mid-race? Perfection.

Separately, alternative versions of current Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds racers have already joined the pack – not counted as part of the roadmap. Sonic's unfairly maligned werehog form from Sonic Unleashed was a pre-order bonus, with a character pack for Netflix's Sonic Prime being a digital deluxe bonus (specifically Tails Nine, Rusty Rose, and Knuckles the Dread). We've already seen Sonic X Shadow Generations incorporate Sonic the Hedgehog 3 movie's Keanu Reeves-voiced version of Shadow the Hedgehog, so it's not outside of the realm of possibility he could also make an appearance here. But would he be considered a distinct character or not?

On the topic of expanded Sonic media, it's curious to see Sonic Prime in the mix but no representation of the still ongoing IDW-published Sonic the Hedgehog comic. Intended to be canon, there's nothing stopping that series' original characters turning up, with fan favorites already making it to character-heavy mobile games like Sonic Dash.

Tangle the Lemur and Whisper the Wolf, who have had their own mini-series, feel like shoe-ins if the door is opened to this material, with Sonic rival Surge the Tenrec another top contender. A mix of returning Sega retro characters with games to promote, and a wider Sonic universe (but not Sonic Universe – even if Eggman's El Gran Gordo wrestling persona would be epic, it seems unlikely) feel like a solid start, and what I'd personally expect.

What else could round out the roster? I'd say continue to look at what's upcoming for Sega and what's been big recently. Metaphor ReFantazio representation could fit alongside Persona 5, with protagonist Will even having obvious vehicle choices with his hoverboard sword or a miniaturized version of the Gauntlet Runner land-ship. Likewise, with Kasuga present, could we get Kazuma Kiryu as he appears in the upcoming Yakuza Kiwami 3 remake? With his colorful Hawaiian shirt, he could either ride a taxi in a nod to later games, or maybe some sort of cobbled together soapbox racer made by the kids at his orphanage?

In fact, I've just counted it up. Five retro racers. Two from IDW Sonic. And one from Yakuza Kiwami 3 and Metaphor ReFantazio each. That's a perfect match. There's no way I could be wrong. I refuse. I adore Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, and, while Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds has been off to a terrific start, I miss the Sega-wide celebration as a lapsed Dreamcast diehard. Hopefully they won't stop at nine, either. There's also Super Monkey Ball, Alex Kidd, Phantasy Star, Shenmue, Ecco the Dolphin, DeCap– wait, no, you can't stop me– let me– one more–! (The note trails off from here and becomes illegible. It'd be best to move on.)

Faster, you say? Check out our best racing games for more!

Remakes and remasters and re-ups are all the rage right now, but Sonic Team boss Takashi Iizuka has said the developer isn't too interested in returning to the Blue Blur's early 3D adventures, like the beloved Sonic Adventure games, because the team could just, you know, make a brand new game with the same resources.

Speaking to the BBC about newly-released kart racer Sonic Racing: Crossworlds, Iizuka said the team is more interested in creating "richer, more complex, more interesting worlds" with new tech rather than using it to go back to older ideas. Plus, there's the small issue of time - developers only have so much of it to make what they want.

"Instead of using all that time and energy to remake a game that people have already experienced, we could make a brand new game instead," Iizuka added. "I think the team is really interested in taking that same amount of time and energy and effort to really bring a new experience to the players."

The Sonic head's stance isn't all too different from publisher Sega's, which is currently making new entries in some old cult series - including Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, and Shinobi - instead of remaking the originals.

Still, remakes like Persona 3 Reload were still published under Sega's watch. And, heck, just last year Sonic x Shadow Generations returned to a fan favorite with new content, so maybe the door's not completely closed for Sonic Adventure.

Right now, at least you can still buy and play Sonic Adventure on Steam and Xbox Series X|S.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds debuts to 98% "Overwhelmingly Positive" Steam reviews as it becomes increasingly obvious why Sega was confident enough to throw shade at Mario Kart World

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is proving to be extremely popular on Steam, with an Overwhelmingly Positive review rating on show during the game's early access period.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds was always going to be compared to Mario Kart World given that both mascot kart racers were released within a few months of each other. Sega itself is even steering into the rivalry with an ad that recreates one of the most iconic Sega Mega Drive ads when the company was beefing with Nintendo and the SNES. And while CrossWorlds didn't quite beat out Mario Kart when it comes to review scores, fan feedback has been quite a bit more positive.

Mario Kart World hasn't exactly had the best reaction from fans, with intermission tracks and the open world design being disliked by some players leaving the game with a mixed Metacritic user score. However, Sonic has fared a lot better so far.

Looking at the Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds Steam page shows a Overwhelmingly Positive rating with 98% of the 1,247 current user reviews being positive. One review says "It is literally Super Smash Bros in a racing format. Sega does what Nintendon't, 10/10," while another praises the crossover characters, saying "there's not many racing games out there that let you set the climatic final laps to hatsune miku music, so for that this game gets a thumbs up from me."

Of course, there's the caveat of the game is currently only available in early access for players who paid for the game's Digital Deluxe edition, which are likely to be the biggest Sonic fans. That being said, I've played CrossWorlds and it definitely deserves the high scores (although I'm mad Sega is making me wait until November to play as Ichiban Kasuga), so I don't think that score is likely to go down by a major amount.

Sonic Racing CrossWorlds' portals are better than Mario Kart World's road trips, and some of y'all aren't ready to hear that.

Early copies of Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds are out in the wild, and a leaflet found in the game box has prematurely revealed one more crossover coming to the game.

As posted by a user on Reddit, physical copies of the game come with a leaflet advertising the DLC for the game, and all of the confirmed names are there. However, slap bang in the middle is the logo for Capcom's Mega Man.

With the cross-dimensional races featured in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, it's only natural that there would be characters not from the Sonic universe appearing in the game. While its crossovers started off with additions that make sense (by virtue of being Sega characters), like Yakuza's Ichiban Kasuga, Persona 5's Joker, and Hatsune Miku, things quickly got out of hand with bizarre inclusions: Minecraft Steve kicked off proceedings, which, we're still in the realm of video games so I suppose that's not too out there. But then a barrage of Nickelodeon characters raced in behind, with SpongeBob, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Avatar characters joining.

The latest crossover officially revealed for CrossWorlds was Pac-Man, which brings things back into the gaming realm, and now that physical copies are out in the wild, Mega Man is just one more video game icon revealed for the game.

His surprise inclusion means that CrossWorlds is a reunion from Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – where Sonic, Mega Man, Pac-Man and Minecraft Steve all appeared together.

Sonic and Mega Man also have a unique history together. Back in 2013, Archie Comics decided to merge two of their series into a crossover event with Sonic & Mega Man: Worlds Collide, a twelve part storyline that saw the duo team up before they even met in Smash Bros. for the first time. This event was then followed up by the Worlds Unite comics in 2015, which brought Mega Man X and Sonic Boom into the fold.

CrossWorlds also marks the return of Capcom doing literally anything with Mega Man except giving him a new game, like by including him in things like Brawlhalla, Funko Fusion, and Monster Hunter since the last game in the mainline series released in 2018. But despite the hiatus, Capcom still calls Mega Man "one of our most important IPs."

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds' Metacritic score ties it with the best Sonic racing game ever made, but it still can't overtake Crash and Mario.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds' Metacritic score has tied it as the best Sonic racing game, but it's not quite high enough to take down its rivals.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds' reviews over on Metacritic currently land it a score of 82, which places is right next to 2012's Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, which is a game the community (and myself) hold up in high regard as one of the greatest kart racers of all time, so it's definitely not in bad company. That score also puts CrossWorlds ahead of 2019's Team Sonic Racing (72) and 2010's Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing (75) with all the Sonic Riders tiles sitting around the 47-56 score range. However, Sonic R doesn't have a Metacritic score but we all know that would hit 100 for the soundtrack alone.

However, that score doesn't quite reach the highs of rival kart racers, with Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled at a still shockingly low 83 for being one of the best racing games ever made (the PS1 original sits at a far more appropriate 88). And of course, Mario still leads the pack with every single game barring Mario Kart Wii (which ties CrossWorlds at 82) and Mario Kart Tour (at 59) having a higher rating, although I'm not sure I trust a website that has Super Circuit as the highest rated entry. What's also notable is that a lot of reviews say it's better than Mario Kart World, but it is still behind that game's score of 86.

The GamesRadar+ Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds review from Justin Towell gives the game four stars out of five, and says: "Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is a slick, ambitious racer with loads of tracks, primed and ready for future, licensed crossovers. At first too slow and then suddenly extremely fast, the racing lacks finesse, but it gets better as you play. A strong offering that's compulsively playable, but a bit grindy in single-player and not quite S-tier on the track."

The highest reviews for the game come from The Gamer's Rhiannon Bevan and IGN's Jada Griffin, who both awarded the game a 9/10 score. On the opposite end, Gamespot's Steve Watts gave the game a 7/10 with TheSixthAxis' Dominic L giving it a 6/10. So even its worst reviews are still fairly positive. The majority of reviews, however, are hovering around the 8/10 mark, giving it a solid head start.

The Mario Kart World shade couldn't be any more obvious as Sega tells you to "leave the open road behind" and play Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds in a throwback to the '90s console wars.

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.

These are the best racing games you can play today.

Sega says it was somewhat expecting a new Mario Kart to be released with the Switch 2, but it also stresses that Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds wasn't influenced by Mario Kart World at all.

There hasn't been a new, new Mario Kart since Mario Kart 8 came out in 2014, and likewise, it's been some six years since Team Sonic Racing launched in 2019, so it's a fairly rare coincidence that there's both a new Mario Kart and a new Sonic racing game releasing in 2025. Still, Sonic series producer Takashi Iizuka told Traxion that Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds' proximity to Mario Kart World is just that, a coincidence.

"Of course, we don't know the road map of Mario Kart titles," said Iizuka. "So, when it was announced, the dev team was surprised about it.

"However, typically when Nintendo releases new hardware, it's pretty common that they also release a new karting title. So, the dev team was somewhat expecting a new Mario Kart to be released soon."

Release timing aside, it's even more of a coincidence that Mario Kart World and Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds both innovate on series formula with a fluidity between maps that manifests in open-world sections in the former and straight-up portals to other maps in the latter. They're different gimmicks, sure, but they both have a way of connecting different maps into more of a cohesive whole.

And yet, "Whether or not Mario Kart was going to be released, our goal was to develop the best kind of Sonic racing title. That hasn't changed – Mario Kart World won't have any influence."

CrossWorlds is getting a fair amount of buzz ahead of its launch on PlayStation, Xbox, Switch/Switch 2, and PC on September 25, with our own Ali Jones going hands-on and writing, "Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is filling the Mario Kart-shaped hole in my life that World isn't, and I'm as shocked by that as anyone."

Nintendo reportedly kept delaying Switch 2 because first-party devs wanted more time to perfect games like Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza

I'm a Mario Kart fan. Super Circuit was one of the first games I ever owned, and Mario Kart 8 has swallowed countless weekends. So when I tell you that I've come away from playing Sonic Racing: Crossworlds to find that it's closer to the kart racing experience I'm looking for than Mario Kart World is, that should hold some weight.

The most obvious difference is how brash and bold Crossworlds is. This game is brighter, bolder, and louder than any other karting game I've ever played, with courses as big and brazen as Mario Kart's most impressive maps. Sometimes Sega overcooks things here, with sections of some tracks feeling like an assault on the senses, more of a high-speed, living obstacle course than a traditional race track. At its very worst, that can feel like a case of style over substance, though it's rare that becomes a problem in a franchise that's happy to lean into its individual style.

Let's have fun with science

In CrossWorlds, that style is all in the portals. At the end of the first lap, the race leader picks which completely different track the second lap will be run on, before portalling back to the original track for the final lap. From a distance I was sceptical, but portals are easily CrossWorlds' greatest innovation. Pass through one first, and it genuinely feels like you've dropped into a new dimension – with enough of a lead, you'll find yourself in an empty world, each new opponent popping onto the minimap as they finally start to catch up to you. In one instance, I was able to dodge an explosion by passing through the portal just in time to leave the impact in a totally different time and place.

Punching through the portal feels impressively weighty, and you're often catapulted forward into this new world. Sometimes that makes for a natural extension of the race, but other times it can be a huge contrast – you might be making your way through the twists and turns of a neon-drenched city, only to be flung out among the clouds, your car now a plane forced to weave through the sky to maintain the momentum that you might have built up on the track. The final race in each Grand Prix doubles down on that feeling, stitching together a lap from each of the three previous races (along with a handful of extra points for the winner) to ensure that no tournament ever feels like a foregone conclusion.

Combined that with CrossWorld's rivals system, and even CPU races start to feel truly competitive. While other Kart racers might let a villain emerge on the track, CrossWorlds tells you exactly who to watch out for. Every time you overtake one another, they'll let out a disgruntled bark that only heightens the satisfaction you get from beating this more competitive racer. In one Grand Prix, I was pitted against Espio the Chameleon, who I had to claw the title back from after a disastrous first race. In the end, it was only with the added points from winning the final race that I was able to win, but the rivalry held throughout the entire competition.

That push for maximum points got me surprisingly invested in two specific elements of CrossWorlds. The first is its incredibly deep kart customization. While it's easy enough to stitch two racers together (combining Shadow's signature hoverboard with Hatsune Miku's was a particularly entertaining quirk of the character roster), the real complexity is found in the gadgets system. At its most basic level, it might offer you a choice between a blanket improvement to speed or acceleration, but I heard other racers theorycrafting wildly, taking a specific concoction to allow for increased rings, faster tricks, and more boost that should help catapult top-level players to the front of the pack, especially if you master the system well enough to adapt it to different tracks.

But despite those changes, beyond some technological wizardry powering its portals, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is a stylish, fast-paced kart racer. It's pushing the envelope a little on presentation and is set to do some interesting things when it comes to its roster, but it's not doing too much that feels particularly different. That, however, could work firmly in its favor.

I'm a huge fan of Mario Kart 8, but I'm yet to be converted to the bigger grids and open-format gimmicks of Mario Kart World. Granted, CrossWorlds has its own on-track gimmicks, but it doesn't really distract from the racing experience in including them. It feels different - a little slipperier in its handling, a little more aggressive when you're part of the pack - but that's to be expected, especially for someone battling against Mario muscle memory as much as I am.

Regardless, this is an experience that feels far closer in my mind to what I want from Mario Kart than anything I've ever had from a Sonic Racing game. Combine that feeling with the very effective pitch that CrossWorlds is launching on all major platforms with crossplay, and the fact that you don't have to own a Switch 2 to get that traditional karting feeling becomes very compelling. Throw in a wider-than-ever roster, and it feels like, with CrossWorlds, Sonic might be closer than ever to pushing Mario off pole position.

Kingslayer

On the complete other end of the spectrum are the helping hands that CrossWorlds offers. Indicators show up to help you measure how much boost you've accrued by drifting, or let you perfect your routine at the starting line. If you're holding an item that can dispel an incoming projectile, you're prompted to use it at the opportune time. Rings are handed out like candy, and you're not totally spun out if you're hit by something, merely slowed down.

But on the other hand, you're robbed of those rings if you do something as minor as bumping up against the barriers on a tight corner, and even if you trade paint with other racers, which feels particularly unkind in the original jostle for position. It's fascinating to see where CrossWorlds is prepared to offer a helping hand, and where it's more willing to get in your way.

Hit pole position with our list of the best racing games.

Despite being a $70 with paid DLC, none of the collaboration characters in Sonic Racing: Crossworlds will be voiced in the game.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is picking up the slack from Mario Kart World, as Sega is bringing in characters from outside of the Sonic universe into the fold. But while having the likes of Yakuza's Ichiban Kasuga and Persona's Joker are within the same realm of Nintendo adding their own characters to Mario Kart, Sega is going one step further with crossovers every month with characters outside of its wheelhouse like SpongeBob SquarePants, Minecraft Steve, and Hatsune Miku (who is kind of a Sega character, but owned by Crypton Future Media) showing up in game.

However, if you were excited to hear SpongeBob chat with Ichiban Kasuga about the Yakuza life while Hatsune Miku serenades them in the background, you're out of luck. As spotted by TheGamer, Sonic franchise head Takashi Iizuka said in an interview with Famitsu (via Google's machine translation) "There is no dialogue for collaboration characters. Because of the IP, the voice dialogue is limited to the 24 Sonic characters." While I get IP restrictions affecting the likes of SpongeBob, Sega owns Yakuza and Persona, so I'm not sure why that is an issue.

However, it goes one step further, as even the Sonic characters featured as DLC won't have voices. Sega posted a video of the Werehog (which is Sonic's werewolf form from Sonic Unleashed), and in the clip he's completely silent. While the crossovers are bad enough, fans really aren't happy with the lack of a Werehog voice, with one tweet saying "This is just unacceptable for a 70 dollar game."

The Werehog was voiced by Jason Griffith, who also voiced Sonic himself until Roger Craig Smith took over in 2010 with Sonic Colors. But Smith was asked about potentially voicing the character for CrossWorlds, and said "I would love to," but sadly that hasn't come to pass.

Sega hands physical media a win amid Nintendo's push toward digital with Switch 2 game-key cards — Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is confirmed to have "the full base game on a 64GB cartridge"

Sega has confirmed that the physical version of Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds on Switch 2 will be a normal old 64GB cartridge like the good old days.

There's been some question as to whether Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds' physical Switch 2 copy would come with one of those lame game-key cards that don't actually have the game data on them, but instead a "key" to download the game onto your system via the internet. Basically, it's akin to buying the physical version of a game, opening the case, and seeing a slip of paper with a key to redeem online. Something of a hybrid of digital and physical media, essentially.

Anyway, game-key cards have been controversial from the day they were revealed, but that hasn't stopped major publishers like Square Enix, Warner Bros. Games, and yes, Sega, from opting for game-key cards instead of traditional physical media. This trend, coupled with seemingly misleading messaging from Sega customer support a few weeks back, has led to a whole lot of speculation that the Switch 2 version of Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds will ship on a game-key card.

Not so! In an FAQ on Sega's website, it's confirmed in no uncertain terms: "The physical version will feature the full base game on a 64GB cartridge."

Sega also confirmed that the digital Switch 2 version is launching in Holiday 2025, while the physical version is due out "early 2026." There will be a standard version for $70 and the Digital Deluxe Edition for $90 that'll come with the season pass, a bunch of DLC, and 72 hours of early access.

Veteran Sonic producer says Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds team completely removed items from the game if they were too "stressful" or let players "win all the time"

I usually steer everyone I know away from officially licensed micro SD cards, as while they're pretty cute, they're also pretty pointless. Not only are you never going to see the pretty branding once you pop them into your older Nintendo Switch, but these cards usually come at a much higher price than the plain alternatives.

This week's Prime Day Nintendo Switch deals have not only finally made one of these branded SD cards worthwhile, but it also happens to be the one I want the most. Right now, you can grab the massive 1TB Samsung Pro Plus micro SD Card for as little as $69.99 at Amazon, saving you $47 off its $119.99 MSRP - and it features my boy, Shadow the Hedgehog.

Sure, it's not compatible with the Nintendo Switch 2, so this is purely a deal for those of you sticking with the older handheld. But 1000 GB of storage is a surefire way to breathe new life into your aging handheld and give you plenty of space for all your favorite Sonic games.

More storage deals...

• View all Amazon storage deals
• 256GB Samsung PRO Plus microSD Card: $24.99 at Amazon
• 256GB Samsung microSD Express Card (Switch 2): $69.99 $59 at Amazon
• 512GB Samsung Sonic The Hedgehog SD Card: $42.99 $29.99 at Amazon

Should you buy this Samsung 1TB microSD Card?

Unless you're on the hunt for one of the best Nintendo Switch 2 microSD Express Cards, grabbing this massive 1TB worth of storage for your older Nintendo Switch is a great plan. Honestly, my OLED Tears of the Kingdom Switch has now been added as decoration to my Zelda shelf, and even I'm about to add this Samsung card to my Amazon basket - and here's why.

First of all, let's talk Shadow the Hedgehog. I've been obsessed with that bad boy since playing Sonic Adventure 2 on the Dreamcast growing up, and even though there's just a silhouette of his edgy face on the card, it still looks incredible.

Like I briefly went over earlier, I normally don't care too much for these officially branded microSD cards, as once you pop them into one of the best gaming handhelds like the Switch, Steam Deck, or whatever compatible gadget or gizmo your heart desires, you aren't gonna see the design ever again. That being said, because of Prime Day, this Shadow SD card is actually cheaper than the non-branded counterpart, which is only down to $89.99 at Amazon this week.

If you're a big Shadow (or Sonic) the Hedgehog fan, and are in need of enough extra storage to store your massive digital Switch game library that you've been accumulating for 8 years, this Prime Day deal is worth it. Also, it packs in plenty of space for the 24GB needed to install Sonic x Shadow Generations and a ridiculous amount of Sonic games - which is what's really important.

Want more Prime Day deals? Check out our hubs for the best Prime Day PS5 deals, the best Prime Day PC deals, and the best Prime Day gaming laptop deals for savings up until July 11.

Sonic the Hedgehog just turned 34, and while the Sega mascot and I are the same age, I somehow forgot to celebrate his big day. That's not to say I usually wait till the blue blur's birthday to run through his best adventure, but I'm currently paying belated homage to the series using the perfect retro handheld for the job.

The best Sonic game, in my humble opinion, is Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, and I've been playing through it this week on the Anbernic RG ARC-D. Before someone tries to revoke my retro console purist card, I still largely play the speedy side scroller on original hardware. That said, this best gaming handheld contender takes cues from the Sega Saturn, meaning it feels like an OG '90s console.

Before I dive into what the RG ARC-D has to offer Sega fans, let me combat the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 naysayers. The 1992 side scroller holds a permanent place in my heart, in part because it's what brought me and the love of my life together. And, while that originally happened at a retro gaming event I used to run, we both love using Anbernic's handheld to replay the iconic sequel on the couch.

At its core, the Anbernic RG ARC-D is a retro emulation handheld not unlike various others out there. It's packing an ARM Cortex-A55 CPU and 2GB RAM that can easily handle everything up to the PS2 and Dreamcast, but it's naturally built to mimic '90s systems without breaking a sweat. It can even tap into mobile games since it can boot into either Linux or Android, providing access to the Google Play store and far greater emulator versatility.

That all helps the handheld compete with some of the top portables, like its Anbernic RG Cube sibling and even the beefier Ayn Odin 2. However, the main reason this console stands out is absolutely its Saturn-inspired controls and form factor. The system effectively looks like a Sega Gamepad with a 4-inch IPS touchscreen in the middle, and that alone makes it feel like the Game Gear sequel that never was.

I'm specifically into the RG ARC-D's disc-shaped D-pad, as it feels virtually like the Saturn controller in terms of texture and movement. Whenever I roll my thumb across this handheld's controls, my brain is flooded with tactile memories of playing Sega systems both back in the day and in recent years. That, in turn, helps playing everything from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 to arcade fighters like X-Men vs. Street Fighter feel absurdly authentic, practically satiating my cravings to play on OG consoles.

The RG ARC-D has a ridiculous amount going for it as a handheld, and it can serve as an all-in-one retro console for those of you in the market. Like any portable, though, it's not perfect, and there are a few annoyances that you'll want to consider. For starters, it's a bit more gutsy with battery life than some emulation devices, as it'll typically last between 4 hours max on a single charge.

Anbernic's Linux firmware is also a little finicky to use, as it can be difficult to get into basic settings like brightness if you launch a game via RetroArch. I also wouldn't call the vast array of emulation options at hand user-friendly either, even if at the same time they're extremely useful to enthusiasts looking to dial things in perfectly. You could say the solution is to boot the device into Android instead, but that does replace the console-like UI with mobile phone vibes.

The Anbernic RG ARC-D won't be everyone's retro cup of tea, and there are plenty of alternatives out there. Are they going to offer up the same beautiful Sega-inspired controls? Probably not, so if you're itching to re-play classic Sonic on a portable built for that purpose, grabbing this device is a no-brainer.

If you need me, I'll be lying horizontal, jamming to Chemical Plant Zone.

Looking for Ninty's latest handheld? Check out where to buy the Nintendo Switch 2 for stock updates. You'll also want to peek at the best Steam Deck accessories and best Steam Deck dock if you're rocking Valve's portable PC.

Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka says that players shouldn't expect to see remasters or remakes of Sonic Adventure or its sequel in the near future, as it "would be about as much time and energy as it would to make a new title."

Sonic Adventure is one of the best launch games ever made, and its sequel – also one of the best Sonic games – was recently adapted into the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 movie. But despite the games' beloved status in the Sonic the Hedgehog community, there hasn't been a modern re-release of them since the Xbox 360 and PS3 era. While those versions are still available through Xbox backwards compatibility and Steam, there's no way to play two Sonic classics on PS5 or Switch 2.

Because of this, fans are always eager to talk about or make up fake rumors about a potential remake of the Dreamcast classics, but Sonic Team head Iizuka isn't quite as keen on the idea.

Speaking to Shacknews (spotted by VGC), Iizuka is asked about the possibility of a remake of the Sonic Adventure games. "I think about what it would take to bring that game up to the standards and expectations of what the modern gaming audience would want, I think it would be about as much time and energy as it would to make a new title."

He adds, "part of me is thinking maybe I should just make a brand new title and that's why there are currently no plans."

Sonic games aren't really remastered all that frequently when compared to other series, with the only games really getting the re-release treatment being semi-modern ones like Generations or Colors, or classic compilations like Sonic Origins. The Dreamcast and GameCube-era games haven't had a modern treatment since the Xbox 360 ports, and at that point they were only 10 years old.

Early test footage of the first Sonic movie shows how the original design could have been even worse than what we saw.

The first Sonic movie could have been even uglier than its first version, according to newly revealed test footage. Remember the human teeth? The eyes, the figure? In the released images, we get a glimpse at earlier designs, and it does not look good.

"Short thread of Sonic Movie 1 test footage since apparently the world is clamoring for this stuff," wrote X user Doctor Caboose (@joe44951318), sharing some Sonic test footage images that might haunt your dreams, including a few with Sonic in a "lumberjack outfit". The user also said they will be releasing the full video footage soon, and revealed he got it from an "old job with a company that no longer exists".

These images only highlight how off the mark Paramount was about the highly anticipated first Sonic movie.

Back in 2019, the first trailer for the film was released, causing a huge controversy among fans who slammed the weird design of the titular character, dubbed 'Ugly Sonic'. The film was then delayed in order to come up with a more satisfactory design.

"It was pretty clear on the day the trailer was released, just seeing the feedback and hearing the feedback… that fans were not happy enough with where we were at,” director Jeff Fowler said at the time of release. "The message was very clear. In a situation like that, it was very little discussion – we just knew that that work had to be done. We just rolled up our sleeves and dived in," he continued.

Luckily for everyone involved, the re-design was a success and turned the first Sonic into one of the best video game films of all time. A few years later, it has become a massively popular and growing movie franchise, with more sequels and spin-offs in the works.

In fact, according to the franchise's executive producers, the Sonic movies are heading toward "Avengers-level events".

The last time we saw the blue hedgehog was in Sonic 3, which was released in December 2024, and we already know Sonic 4 is on the way. For more, check out our lists for all upcoming movies in cinemas and upcoming video game movies in 2025 and beyond.

Mario Kart World is courting controversy with a new update that makes it even harder to play traditional three-lap races, but Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds has been planning to make a very similar change since the beginning.

Speaking to GamesRadar+, veteran Sonic producer Takashi Iizuka said that early in the development process on Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, Sega was trying to come up with a fresh new idea for the new iteration. In that brainstorming session, he says, "we had this idea that we've had this three-lap course up until now - it's always once, twice, three times around. What if that's the thing that we change?"

That idea brought the CrossWorlds team to the concept of its 'travel rings'. These portals allow the racer in first place to select which world the second lap will take place in, before the racers all return to the original track for the final lap. The aim, Iizuka says, is that "instead of racing the same lap around the same course, you're going to a different world, a different universe, a whole different racecourse."

It's an interesting way to change things up, and it's also felt across CrossWorlds' approach to its Grand Prix format. The travel ring means that "we can warp around to different places, we don't need to stay on the same course," so the final race in each Grand Prix will be an amalgamation of the previous races.

It's an interesting new spin on the traditional one-two-three that kart racers have largely relied on for years. It's also part of why Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds can get around introducing characters like Hatsune Miku, and courses based on Minecraft. It might, however, prove to be more controversial than Sega expects - Mario Kart World has just pushed an update that means you're no longer guaranteed to get a regular three-lap race and it seems to be going down quite badly. Granted, that seems to be because Mario Kart is moving firmly away from the traditional three-lap formula, which CrossWorlds isn't doing - you'll just run a different second lap, rather than a whole new race. Still, it makes for a more interesting run-up to launch, especially as Sonic's biggest competition stumbles during its headstart.

Veteran Sonic producer says Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds team completely removed items from the game if they were too "stressful" or let players "win all the time"

We've wanted Marvel vs. Capcom back for years, and the newly revealed Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls looks like it will scratch that itch. But Arc System Works was too slow as dedicated Sonic the Hedgehog fans have raced onto the scene with a marvel of their own.

It's fair to call Sonic the Hedgehog the series with the most prolific fan-game community of all time, considering fan games from Christian Whitehead got that guy hired to make official ports and then eventually lead a team in making Sonic Mania – an official mainline Sonic game and the most beloved series entry in years. Meanwhile Sonic Robo Blast 2 is a well-loved release that's been in various stages of development for over 25 years at this point.

However, a new challenger has entered the ring in the form of Ultimate Sonic Smackdown, which was announced by YouTuber Choctopus and is a 3 vs 3 tag team fighting game that feels like prime Marvel vs. Capcom.

It feels like a massive homage to Marvel vs. Capcom 3 in particular with it's light, medium, heavy, special control layout; and some of the characters have moves that are ripped straight from the MVC mines with Knuckles' having a Bionic Arm-esque finisher, and Eggman feeling like a sendup to sentinel.

Not only that, but it's out right now and features rollback netcode, which Sonic's other fighting game appearance in Super Smash Bros. doesn't even have. Plus, if you don't fancy keeping track of 3 fighters, it pulls in Skullgirls' best mechanic of being able to pick whether you want one, two, or three characters in your team. At the moment the roster is fairly small with Sonic, Knuckles, Eggman, Mecha Sonic, and Shadow being playable, but it's already a pretty impressive game, and that's only two characters short of 2XKO's roster.

Of course, this was built off the back of the team's previous fan game Sonic Smackdown which was a 1v1 fighter. That game had 17 characters by the end of its run, with the likes of Tails, Amy Rose, and Mighty the Armadillo showing up to proceedings. The key art for Sonic Smackdown prominently shows Rogue the Bat, so I wouldn't be shocked if we get the full cast returning to this game.

10 years ago, Sega producer was convinced he had to "save" Sonic the Hedgehog from certain death: "This brand isn't going to be around for much longer."

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds was originally balanced around a complete lack of items, which allowed the devs to be ruthless with anything that was too stressful or too powerful.

Speaking to GamesRadar+, veteran Sonic series producer Takashi Iizuka explained that the joint development teams - from the Sonic and Sega Arcade Racing franchises - came together to create a "balanced, fair" racing game, starting almost completely from scratch.

"They wanted to make sure the racing itself without any items was fair and fun," Iizuka says. "The dev team really took things down to the base level, and wanted to have that fun, competitive racing mechanic." Vehicle and course design came first, and only once the devs had nailed the racing experience did they build it out by adding items.

But those items weren't set in stone, even after they eventually made it to the game. Iizuka says that the team did "a lot of playtests," and "anything that was very stressful for players, anything that always allowed people to come back from behind and win all the time needed to be removed from the concept."

After that somewhat ruthless-sounding approach to balance, there'd be even more playtests, and more balance passes. Eventually, the team settled on what Iizuka says was just "the right amount of chaotic," but retained the feeling of being fun, "and always feeling fair to the racers."

Now, I've not played all that much Mario Kart World, but I've heard plenty about being utterly bombarded by shells or watching in horror as the guy who was in last place for two laps surges forth to take the win thanks to some sandbagging-related item trickery. Whether Sonic and his many friends are immune to exactly that fate isn't clear, but if they are it could make the battle for kart racing pole position a little more interesting.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is getting Minecraft characters and Hatsune Miku to make sure people are "not just playing it when it comes out, having fun, and that being it."

Sonic The Hedgehog is in a very different place than he was 10 years ago. What was once a consistently mocked series is now back to being on a level akin to its 90s popularity. Takashi Iizuka, who has led the series through this rough spell until today – and is the de facto face of the franchise following Yuji Naka, Naoto Ohshima, and Hirokazu Yasuhara's exits from Sega – is reflecting on this difficult time.

Speaking to Eurogamer, Iizuka says, "Ten years ago, I moved from Tokyo to Burbank. At that time, the Sonic brand was not in a very positive space. A lot of people were bashing on the brand. They really weren't happy with the things coming out."

He added, "We need to save the brand, or this brand isn't going to be around for much longer."

Looking back at 2015, Sonic had just been through a very rough 10-year run, with the likes of Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic 06, Sonic Free Riders, and Sonic Boom making headlines for how terrible they all were.

While there were good games in the mix, too – like the Sonic Rush duology, Unleashed, and Generations (and, of course, one of the best kart racers ever made, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed) – conversation around Sonic had definitely skewed negative.

Since then, Sonic has been on an upswing, with the beloved Sonic Mania, the beloved (by some) Sonic Frontiers, and three blockbuster movies that includes the second-ever video game movie to be certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.

Iizuka says when he thinks about 10 years ago, "I can't really believe some of the things that have changed."

"We were fighting to survive," he says. "It's totally different now."

After 2 underrated tactical RPGs on Switch, Mario + Rabbids developer Ubisoft Milan's pitch for another game was apparently turned down, which may explain why it's now working on Rayman.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds might be launching in the shadow of Mario Kart World, but publisher Sega is planning for its own arcade racer to have some long legs with free characters launching every month.

In an interview with Famitsu, series producer Takashi lizuka revealed the team is planning to add one new character to Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds each and every month. Iizuka didn't specify when the post-launch plans will conclude, although the upcoming characters are likely to come from Sega's roster.

Iizuka played coy when asked about the possibility of Shenmue's return to kart racing after his small cameo in Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. Though characters from other Sega series - like Metaphor: ReFantazio, Shin Megami Tensei, Phantasy Star, Puyo Puyo, and Super Monkey Ball - might be good guesses, too.

And in case you missed it, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is digging into the multiverse, as the name may imply. We recently learned that everybody from Persona 5's Joker to Hatsune Miku to Yakuza's Ichiban will be on the list of playable characters, while Minecraft Steve is part of the paid season pass that's promising to add even more, unannounced names from outside of Sega's wheelhouse.

Of course, Sega was mum about the game's purportedly leaked DLC from a few weeks ago that mentioned SpongeBob SquarePants, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would be joining Minecraft Steve in the season pass. So, take that how you like.

I played Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds for an hour and its chaotic item-based destruction reminded me of how fun it is to be bad at a kart racer

Sonic the Hedgehog will be 34 years old this year, and just in case you wanted to brush up on the complex lore of the series, Sega has released a complete official timeline, stretching from "tens of thousands of years ago" up to 200 years in the future.

Right now, this timeline only appears to be visible on the Japanese Sonic Channel site, so it has to be machine-translated to view it in English, but it's seriously detailed. For each chunk of lore, the most relevant games are listed, so anyone who wants to attempt a chronological play order can do so, although some games appear multiple times at wildly different points in the timeline because of how they tie into various events, so don't expect this to work entirely smoothly.

While not every game has been included here, there's one very surprising inclusion – the party game Sonic Shuffle. It might look like a Mario Party-like board game spin-off (and, uh, it is), but Sonic still helps save a mysterious dream world called Maginaryworld, so into the timeline it goes. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN SONIC SHUFFLE IS CANON?" one baffled fan on Reddit questions.

Otherwise, lore heads have pointed out that the two PSP Sonic Rivals games are absent, which, as one fan summarizes, "are pretty important as they reintroduce Silver, retcon Eggman Nega's origins and officially bring back Metal Sonic," not to mention the fact that there's a reference to Rivals 2 in last year's Sonic x Shadow Generations (in Gerald Robotnik's journal). There might be a simple explanation for this, though, as the two Rivals games were never released in Japan, and this is a Japanese website, so Sega might not want to make references to games its intended audience has most likely never played.

Needless to say, the timeline doesn't provide absolutely perfect answers for how every game fits into the full story, but it's still really cool that we have an official resource to refer to for a lot of the series. Clearly though, some of us need to catch up with that all-important Sonic Shuffle lore.

While you're here, be sure to check out our roundup of the 25 best Sonic games of all time.

Unlikely worlds will collide in the upcoming DC X Sonic the Hedgehog comic book crossover, which mashes up Sonic and his pals with the heroes of the Justice League as they take on none other than Darkseid with the fate of both their realities in the balance. Now, DC and Sega have released a first look at interior pages from DC X Sonic the Hedgehog #1, showing a race between the Justice League and team Sonic.

And yes, of course that means we'll finally get an answer to whether Sonic can outrun the Flash (though I suspect it'll be an outcome that flatters them both somehow). But that's not all, as writer Ian Flynn and artist Adam Bryce Thomas will go on to pit the Justice League, Sonic, and the hedgehog's friends against Darkseid as he apparently gains the power of the notorious Chaos Emeralds.

Perhaps it's that chaos that will lead to the mash-up between the heroes becoming literal, as Sonic is mashed-up with Flash, Shadow becomes Batman, Tails becomes Cyborg, Silver becomes Green Lantern, Amy becomes Wonder Woman, and Knuckles becomes Superman.

Here's a look at the interior pages from DC X Sonic the Hedgehog #1, along with the main cover Pablo M. Collar and a variant cover by Ethan Young, as well as the main covers for #2, #3, and #4:

"DC x Sonic the Hedgehog…features an unprecedented crossover event where the Justice League and Team Sonic must unite to save their worlds from a major threat," reads the official description of the story. "The action speeds up when the monstrous Darkseid crosses dimensions to invade the world of Sonic the Hedgehog, seeking the ultimate power. Sonic and his friends have faced everything from mad scientists to ancient spirits, but the forces of Apokolips may be too much for them! Thankfully, the full heroic might of the Justice League arrives to back them up!"

DC x Sonic the Hedgehog #1 goes on sale March 19.

Take a look back at the most unlikely comic book crossovers of all time.

After 17 years, Sonic Unleashed finally has a native PC port, and it's been developed with a tool that could potentially help give the same treatment to any Xbox 360 game. With that, the door to one of the most exciting avenues of game preservation we've seen in ages might have been kicked open in a major way.

There's a lot of "potentially" and "might" here because this new tool, called XenonRecomp, simply gives fan developers a path to creating PC versions of Xbox 360 games. As the GitHub page explains, it "converts Xbox 360 executables into C++ code, which can then be recompiled for any platform." It's not magic - you can't simply drag a 360 .iso file in and get a perfectly functional PC port - but it could make things much easier for fan developers to create their own ports.

XenonRecomp was heavily inspired by N64: Recompiled, which effectively does the same thing for Nintendo 64 games. The asterisk here is that N64: Recompiled has been out for nearly a full year and there are so far only a small handful of N64-to-PC ports that have happened as a result, and we might be in for a similarly long wait for Xbox 360 ports to take off depending on the interests of hobbyist developers.

For now, at least, there's Unleashed Recompiled, a PC port of Sonic Unleashed made using XenonRecomp. It has all the features you could hope for from a proper PC release, including much higher native resolutions, ultrawide support, and the ability to unlock your frame rate. Unleashed has always been among the more divisive 3D Sonic games, but if you're looking to play it in 2025 this seems to be the definitive way to do so.

Emulation tends to be the most far-reaching way of making old games playable on modern devices, but Xbox 360 emulation has never quite reached an ideal state. Unofficial 360 emulator Xenia only plays a fraction of the console's library, and even Microsoft's official emulator on modern Xbox consoles, while broadly excellent, has a relatively small whitelist of compatible games.

Many Xbox 360 games either received their own official PC ports back in the day or came to PS3, which has a far more robust fanmade emulation option in RPCS3, so very few of these games are genuinely lost to modern hardware. But the possibilities of new native PC ports are nonetheless exciting, as they can offer more robust performance improvements and gameplay tweaks than emulation.

These are the best Sonic games of all time.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is another high-octane racer starring the blue blur that has Sonic hop once again into a transforming race car to go hog-to-head with rivals to nab victory. Which also means that once again I have to hold my rings tight as people appear from the shadows to repeat the phrase "If Sonic is so fast, why does he need a racing car?"

It's a very original observation, certainly not a tired one people have been making since the mid-90s when Sonic Drift first released on the Sega Game Gear. It's also one that has an answer so obvious it's essentially canon for whenever Sonic uses another mode of transportation. I'll put this as simply as I can: it's so the races remain fair on an even playing field.

Race to win

Sonic can be an arrogant character, sure. And he does love to, nay, has gotta go fast. But he's not so mean-spirited as to laud his speed needlessly. In fact, he enjoys competition. Have you seen how much fun he's having on the covers of the racing games? He's grinning, having a whale of a time. This is just another exciting activity for him, and he genuinely enjoys taking part in the events across Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, and Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds.

In fact, it's even been addressed before in the likes of comics. In the officially licensed, no longer printed, Archie-published run, a humorous 'off panel' strip nods to this being "because then it's fair". The comic was even written by Ian Flynn, the writer of recent games Sonic X Shadow Generations and Sonic Frontiers.

Likewise, in Sonic Riders, which focused on hoverboard 'extreme gear' races, Sonic is irked by Jet The Hawk (who returns here in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds alongside the boards) specifically being able to outspeed him while they're both boarding. Though Sonic could doubtless outrun Jet The Hawk on foot while the latter stayed boarding, it simply wouldn't be enough – he wants to prove he can still be the fastest even within the context of those rules. You can't best your pal at Tekken 8 by saying you're actually really good at Street Fighter 6. It just wouldn't make sense.

Sonic Riders is helped along, of course, by a plot that revolves around Eggman orchestrating an extreme gear tournament. Sonic and friends simply have to use the boards to compete, just like how the rules of the racing in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds doubtless specify use of the transforming vehicles. If that's not enough, both Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds and Sonic & All-Star Racing Transformed feature both air and sea sections of track. Sonic can't fly or swim. Do you want Sonic The Hedgehog to die?

Sonic has raced on-foot before. The underrated Sonic R (which I'll note had far fewer technical issues on PC than on Sega Saturn) may be maligned by some, but it has all racers bar Amy and Eggman spinning their legs, and is technically the first fully 3D Sonic game ever. Sonic The Hedgehog 2 and Sonic The Hedgehog 3, of course, feature split-screen multiplayer races. Sonic Rivals and Sonic Rivals 2 on PSP are entirely based around two-dimensional races. Simply put – Sonic covets speed in all its forms, even though his penchant is for his default sprinting, and is always up for some fair and friendly competition. No, I cannot explain why Sonic doesn't always win foot races in Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games. Leave me alone!

Looking for more righteous Sonic takes? Here's why Shadow the Hedgehog is peak Sonic, he's always been peak Sonic, and after 23 years I can't bury the truth any longer

Sega has fully lifted the lid on Sonic Racing CrossWorlds during today's PlayStation State of Play, and in doing so announced a closed network test happening later this month.

In the full announcement trailer, which you can view just below, we can see a roster of classic Sonic the Hedgehog characters zooming around various stages in cars, off-road buggies, hoverboards, and watercrafts, which seem to be able to adapt to different environments and surfaces.

You can also see racers zip through portals leading them to completely different worlds, which suddenly makes the whole CrossWorlds title make a whole lot of sense. PlayStation explains in a new blog that the "Travel Rings" are chosen by the lead racer before each match and force every player to be transported to a different level in the second lap of the race.

This isn't the first time we've seen Sonic Racing CrossWorlds, but it is by far our most comprehensive look yet, and it's also the first new trailer since the subtle reveal of Mario Kart 9, CrossWorlds' biggest and most direct competitor.

Neither Mario Kart 9 nor Sonic Racing CrossWorlds have release dates yet, but the latter is getting a closed network test on February 21. You can sign up for that right here, right now if you want to try out the game before launch.

Only time will tell whether Sonic Racing CrossWorlds has the chops to take on Mario Kart in our list of the best racing games to play today.

Former BioWare veteran Mark Darrah has revealed that the storied studio's oft-forgotten, seemingly random Sonic RPG uses the same under-the-hood dialogue system as Dragon Age: Origins - or, rather, because of the order of release, maybe Dragon Age uses Sonic's code stack.

The former long-time Dragon Age executive producer revealed the interesting tidbit in a new YouTube video, calling 2008's Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood his "favorite" project to work on because there was something "magical about leading a team as small as this game was - it never got much above 20 people."

Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood "actually uses Dragon Age: Origins' dialogue system," Darrah said. "Heavily streamlined to fit on the Nintendo DS, but it's still at its base the same code stack. I guess if you really wanted to try, you could make the argument that, because Sonic Chronicles shipped in 2008 and Dragon Age: Origins didn't ship until 2009, that Dragon Age: Origins actually shipped using the Sonic Chronicles dialogue system."

The Sonic RPG team eventually moved on to the cancelled Mass Effect DS game that was planned to have you pirating across the fringes of the galaxy in first person. The spin-off was scrapped due to the economics of shipping games on the Nintendo DS, though.

BioWare now doesn't have the bandwidth for any quirky projects like Sonic Chronicles, though. The entire studio now reportedly employs around 100 people after EA cut even more roles from the team. The publisher blamed the layoffs on Dragon Age: The Veilguard's performance, but one wonders how much more "agile" a team can get.

Baldur’s Gate 3 developer slams EA’s BioWare layoffs as “a short-term cost-cutting measure” that “doesn’t solve a long-term” problem.