On Dec. 12, 2024, Sega teased a brand new Sonic Racing game titled “Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds”. Despite being about only twenty-five seconds long, it still yields plenty of details that give us a good idea as to what this game will feature.
To start: what does CrossWorlds even mean? It would be safe to assume that it would have to do with multiverses like 2022’s “Sonic Prime”. It could be a reason to have several versions of characters like Classic Sonic, Classic Tails, Classic Knuckles, or Classic Eggman alongside their modern counterparts.
It would be likely that they would also have movie versions of these characters. This way they can draw from just about every major subsection of the Sonic fanbase. CrossWorlds could also even imply a live service approach like “Sonic Forces: Speed Battle”, which has variant skins like a Pirate Shadow and Christmas Tails.
As for the footage of the teaser itself, it begins with a cold garage door opening to reveal a sleek black and red car. The camera then cuts showing Shadow The Hedgehog’s hand holding car keys; he turns on the car, the headlights turn on, and it then cuts to him inside the car, driving out of the garage and into a giant Warp Ring. The camera follows Shadow into the rainbow center of the ring showing the title, “Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds”.
Despite being so short there are a couple things hidden in the background with huge implications. During the shot of Shadow with the car keys, you can see “Extreme Gear” on the left of the screen: a hoverboard-like vehicle from the 2006 game “Sonic Riders”, under a large tarp.
Now, while this could just be a simple background detail or easter egg, it could be telling us that there will be different and varied vehicles included.
There’s a few different possibilities as to what gameplay could be like. It could be similar to 2014’s “Mario Kart 8”, where the player is able to swap various karts for their character to make a combination that they like most. It could also mean certain vehicles are specific to certain characters, like the “Babylon Rogues” being the ones who are able to use “Extreme Gear”.
The big question is: would they play differently?
There are doubts that Sega or the Sonic Team are capable of translating the complex and deceptively in depth mechanics of “Sonic Riders” and “Extreme Gear” without changing things for the worst, removing a lot of the appeal of “Extreme Gear” in the first place, or creating it in a way that casual fans or people who have never played “Sonic Riders” before could understand.
The most likely possibility would be the “Extreme Gear” behaving more like a secondary option to the cars, like in “Mario Kart Wii”, with a tighter turning radius and higher top speed but requiring more skill to take full advantage of.
It is unknown when exactly “Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds” will be released, and with the highly speculated “Sonic Heroes” remake, it could be a late-2025 release date. It would make a lot of sense to release a multiplayer game for the holiday period; families could play as all their favorite versions of the characters together, as well as people from across the world playing together in a (hopefully) stable online mode.
Sega likely understands the missed potential of “Team Sonic Racing”, but its hyped up launch, followed by a disappointing outcome, resulted in the game dying in just a couple months.
It is best to keep hope that “Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds” will be a solid kart racer game that is able to please both long-term and casual fans. With little information, making assumptions and having too high of a standard set can be ridiculous–however–with the release of the third Sonic movie and its absolute success, the possibilities are endless.
