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Sonic & Sega All Star Racing; Taking on Nintendo at its "own" genre...and other "US TOO" games

VGEsoterica

Member
If you think "kart racing video game" one series is obviously going to come to everyone's minds...Club Kart: European Session from Sega on the NAOMI arcade board!

haha but seriously...everyone is going to say Mario Kart. The genre is synonymous with one series and it's from Nintendo. But that didn't stop Sega from stepping up to the plate and taking a swing at glory...and they basically hit a home run on their first at bat.

The Sega universe is rife with series to take from to create an awesome universe to have a kart racing game take place in and Sega took all that history and lineage and rolled it all up into a neat kart racing package. Awesome handling, great physics, intense racing...and most importantly FUN! Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing is every bit as FUN as Mario Kart is when you have friends sitting around you racing against. (with a few drinks. Always need drinks)

Sure Sonic has been very hit or miss in the platform arena lately (more misses than hits) but in the kart racing genre? It might be Sonic's most successful series at this point in Sega's lineage.

But that got me thinking GAF...what other "we can do it too" games made entries in different genre's popularized by ONE company and succeeded? Kart racing is easy...you have stuff like Diddy Kong Racing, Crash Team Racing, etc etc...but lmk those other games you can think of that made "me too-ism" work for them

 

AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
CTR was better than Mario Kart, I'll say it. Better than MK8? Maybe not.

All-Star Racing Transformed was really cool at the time too.
 

Punished Miku

Human Rights Subscription Service
Yep, it's amazing. Bought it for XSS as it's backwards compat. Nearly maxed it out back in the day. The combination of insane multi-drifts, plus boat, plus technical flight, plus all the Sega fan service is pretty insane.
 
I was bummed when all that Sega fanservice was tossed out the window with Team Sonic Racing. I did not even play the Sonic characters in All-Stars and Transformed and found most of the Sonic tracks mediocre. I would not mind another one like those two from Sumo Digital.

The next best kart racer for me is Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled. It is too bad it is filled to the brim with microtransaction elements because I find Mario Kart to handle sloppy and the power ups to be far too obnoxious.
 
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Saber

Gold Member
For what is worth, Sonic All Star Racing 1 is a pretty solid and fun game. It has recycled of sounds sure and some itens could use a better design, but most of stages are pretty good to play and their visuals are charming. It has its own take on the karting genre, being the All-Star move. Its one my favoritle titles for X360.
 

kunonabi

Member
Problem with the Sonic racers is they weren't casual friendly. If people don't know the mechanics or shortcuts then they have 0 shot at winning. This is fine for playing other people online who own the game but for a casual session with friends who dont it's just a bloodbath. Which isn't to say Mario Kart's BS isn't massively annoying in recent games but there has to be some sort of balance.
 
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AJUMP23

Parody of actual AJUMP23
Good game, but I am a Mario Kart fan. But it was a smart move by Sega to make a Kart racer.
 

ACESHIGH

Banned
Is there a Mario kart game with a robust campaign like CRT Diddy Kong racing or Sonic? The ones I played were pretty bare bones
 
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RoboFu

One of the green rats
The first two all star racing games were awesome but some how they completely f up team racing. The track design was just nowhere as good.
 

Holammer

Member
Many prefer Transformed, but the first game in the series is still my favorite.
Always figured it would be better to make a cart game and to focus more on the Sonic Universe, then they did Team Sonic Racing... Oh boy.

Need a team of scientists to dissect that road kill, to figure out what went wrong.
 

VGEsoterica

Member
Many prefer Transformed, but the first game in the series is still my favorite.
Always figured it would be better to make a cart game and to focus more on the Sonic Universe, then they did Team Sonic Racing... Oh boy.

Need a team of scientists to dissect that road kill, to figure out what went wrong.
Classic Sonic curse. They keep making games and somehow they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory
 
can you turn it off in transformed? cant find the option
I checked and oddly it is exclusive to the first. Sorry for misleading you. I knew at least one of them had it but could not remember which one I used it in. Strange that a sequel would remove such an amazing feature.
 
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SegaShack

Member
Good times with these and the devs would take feedback and ideas on the official sega message-boards while the game was in development.

It was great to see Sega make levels and characters for series that were deep cuts.
 

Banjo64

cumsessed
Got to say I loved playing through Diddy Kong Racing DS back in the day. Never owned it on N64. Just a very pleasant campaign to go through.
 

Unknown?

Member
I always liked Modnation Racers, it was my favorite of the Mario Kart clones and so easy to build tracks unlike LBP. However it wasn't that successful and the LBP Karting spiritual successor wasn't nearly as good.
 

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
Racing Transformed is an amazing game and is probably the top 3 kart racers of all time. CTR is a masterpiece in fun gameplay as well...

Honestly I wish people would look beyond Mario Kart for kart racing, it's honestly not all that in comparison to a lot of competitors on the market.... well, besides DS, 64 and Wii of course

Wish more people would mention SRB2Kart as well, it's the most chaotic kart racer on the market. It's really really janky (in a good way)
 

Elysion

Banned
Not only did Crash Bandicoot get his own cart racer, he even got his own Mario Party inspired party game, Crash Bash:
000%20SCES-02834-%28En%2CEs%2CPt%2CGr%29-Preview.jpg


But the most blatant ‚me too‘ game has to be Sony‘s Playstation All-Stars:
1lookj1747p91.jpg
 
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