In November of 2012, Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed dropped to a positive critical and fan reception. Some considered it a contender with Mario Kart, while others would argue that, at the time, it may even have surpassed it. Transformed, unfortunately, had its fair share of bugs, some of which were sorted but many that, to this day, haven’t been. Fast forward to today, and after a healthy delay, we now have Team Sonic Racing. Gone are the transforming vehicles and colorful SEGA cast, instead replaced with Sonic mainstays and a focus on cooperative gameplay. And while in a few areas, Team Sonic Racing feels like a step or two towards improvement, it takes several flights worth of stairs tumbling backwards.
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Sumo Digital
UPDATE: Hey so this was a dumb April Fools thing. Sorry about that. Blame Tracker.
Today on the last day of EGX Rezzed, Sega Europe has made a huge surprise announcement. And that announcement is that a new version of last gen’s best Sonic game is coming to Nintendo Switch: Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed: Turbo Edition, not featuring Big the Cat!
The press release states that the game will run at 1080p and 60fps in docked mode, and 720p/60fps in portable mode. In addition to the characters in the original game, this new version will feature new characters such as Opa Opa from Fantasy Zone, Kazuma Kiryu from Yakuza 0, and Hatsune Miku from Project Diva Future Tone. The guest characters Wreck-It Ralph and Danica Patrick seem to be gone though, along with Big the Cat, who is not in this game.
You can find all of the screenshots along with a press release below. Sega also put out a teaser image with silhouettes of additional characters like Bayonetta. There’s also this official website, which, strangely enough, does not feature Big the Cat.
Game News, Merchandise
Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed Soundtrack Available on iTunes and AmazonMP3
SEGA and Sumo Digital have answered the demand for an official release of the soundtrack for Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. While it has featured a physical release in Japan on two CDs, you can buy each CD digitally through your choice of Apple’s iTunes store or on AmazonMP3. Each CD is available for $9.99 USD, (Or $9.49 on Amazon at the time of this writing,) and£7.99 GBP, or you can purchase tracks individually.
For someone like me that’s been listening to this soundtrack in the most cumbersome way possible, (Try hooking up your phone to your car stereo and hoping all four G’s of your data connection can play songs off of YouTube and not stop to buffer every so often,) this could not have come at a better time for me.
Thanks to Sumo Digital’s Steve Lycett and Retro Staff Member GerbilSoft for providing links to the soundtrack. If you’d like a complete listing of the songs, head over to VGMDB.
The PC version of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed had a surprising amount of additional characters exclusive to the platform with Team Fortress 2 characters, some guy from Total War: Shogun 2 and some guy from Football Manager. Now to celebrate the American holiday known as Independence Day, SEGA has decided to add in another character for free: some Russian General guy from Company of Heroes 2. To download this new character, just let Steam update the game.
If you don’t own ASRT on PC, you’re in luck. The full game can be played for free until Sunday 1pm PDT and is on sale for 75% off on Steam. All other Sonic games are priced off as well including Sonic Generations, Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic 4 etc.
Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday Monday.
Retro News
- Dario put up a video of Cool Edge in Sonic Generations, also more details on when the Unleashed mod is going to be released. [Youtube] [ModDB]
- Tiddles showed some new stuff for his Sonic 3 Complete hack, also this happened 2-3 weeks ago. Oops. [Sonic 3 Complete]
- Pelikan13 has teased that The 90’s Arcade Racer could be coming to the Wii U. [Kickstarter]
- David is still doing his Mobius 25 Years Later thing. [Part 12]
Sonic/SEGA News
- SEGA bought Relic Entertainment, the developer of the Warhammer 40.000 and Company of Heroes game. Here’s some PR stuff about that. [SEGA Blog]
- A behind the scenes video of Bayonetta 2 was shown during the latest Nintendo Direct. [Youtube]
- Pix ‘N Love’s History of Sonic book is getting a collectors edition. [Sonic Stadium]
- SEGA of Japan is doing a 24 hour long live stream on February 2nd/3rd featuring Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F, Phantasy Star Online 2, Yakuza 5, Rusty Hearts, Puyo Puyo and Sonic Team. [SEGAbits]
- Sumo Digital has gotten approval to make one of the DLC characters for Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed that fans requested. [SEGA Forums]
- Another Aliens: Colonial Marines has been released, this one features cheesy lines that are supposed to sound bad-ass. [Youtube]
What can you say about launch day games? They’re usually the sloppiest, trashiest bits of data to hit a system if they’re not from a first party developer. It’s unfortunate that this is so with All-Stars Racing Transformed on Wii U. It seems a bug has been reported that essentially makes the game unplayable.
Those starting off the tour mode in single player find themselves at an impasse on the first boost challenge stage when the checkpoints you must pass through to extend time fail to load, essentially making the level on all difficulties unbeatable. There’s no getting around the stage either, leaving Wii U owners high and dry on the game.
This seems to affect all Wii U consoles that downloaded the update patch for the game upon boot up. Deleting the update data causes the system to redownload it upon booting up the game, and taking it offline will cause the system to complain at you to get an Internet connection to play the game.
If you’re deciding still which version to get, we highly advise staying away from the Wii U port until further notice. Hopefully Sumo Digital and Sega are on top of this and working up another patch, but such a gross oversight on a release game is reprehensible and lazy. Come on, Sega, this isn’t 2006 anymore.
Once upon a summer, your fearless correspondent went to Brighton for Summer of Sonic. There, he braved seagulls, rain and hundreds of other Sonic fans to get interviews with Takashi Iizuka and Jun Senoue. Those, you have seen. What you won’t have seen is the interview with Steve Lycett and Tim Spencer of Sumo Digital. That’s because, erm… we forgot to put it up.
Still, the good news is that because the game is out soon, you can now have all the latest information from July! Naturally the information contained within will be common knowledge, what with the interview having been recorded four months ago and all. However, you can still hear Sumo’s thoughts on designing for multiple vehicle types, testers with Sega knowledge deficits, and theoretical control systems for a version of the game that hasn’t been confirmed to exist at all.
So, what are you waiting for? (What were we waiting for?) Start the player, you!
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Game News, Game Secrets, Interviews
Retro Interview: Steve Lycett on Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing
All Stars Racing Transformed is only a little over a month away at this point. With this close to release, a number of people may be looking to retire their copy of Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing. Comparing the two is almost like comparing apples to oranges. That said it still acts as an important stepping stone that deserves an honorable mention. Before it becomes overshadowed from it’s upcoming sequel, we rattled the memories of Executive Producer at Sumo Digital Steve Lycett in an E-mail interview regarding development for Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing and what it’s sequel has benefited from their efforts.
Leave it to Sega to have their secrets disrupted by every external force in the universe. Kotaku is reporting that toys pitching the upcoming racing sequel were spotted at the New York Toy Fair with further confirmation from the representative on deck that the game will be out by year’s end and feature new playable characters. This information links up well with a teaser posted on Sonic Stadium that Sumo Digital was at work on another racing title.
We can only hope the shortlist includes the likes of Wonder Boy, a Rag Rappy from Phantasy Star, and Segata Sanshiro riding on a Sega Saturn controller.
Here’s one for all you Apple device owners that almost went under our radars. Along with confirmation that Sonic 4: Episode 2 is under development, Sega also announced that Sumo Digital’s answer to Mario Kart in Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing is on its way to iOS devices.
In this case, it’s specifically for the iPod touch and the iPhone. Very few details about the game were released, so there’s no clue as to how much the game will include in comparison to its console and DS counterparts. However, Sega confirmed the game will include support for local multiplayer over WiFi and Bluetooth.
Expect it to hit the App Store sometime this Spring.
[Via IGN Wireless]