Oh Sonic, Sonic, Sonic... the tale of Sega's once mighty mascot is legendarily filled with face-palms, failure to adapt, and failure to listen to fan outcries (until very recently). In fact, the proverbial blue hedgehog's downfall over the past ten or so years is not entirely unlike watching your once favorite child star spiral into addictions and reality shows. Fortunately, with the recently released Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing the down-and-out hero manages to rise from the ashes like a phoenix - and then proceed to fly over to Nintendo and steal the source code for Mario Kart. While it's not surprising that a kart racing game featuring Sonic and a wide (and bizarre) cast of Sega 'All-Stars' would turn out like a Mario Kart clone, what is surprising is how well this clone manages to pull itself off.

The single player of the redundantly titled Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing (is Sonic not a Sega All-Star?) is conveniently split into a Grand-Prix mode, a Time Trial mode, a Mission Mode, and a Free Race mode. The four modes are pretty much what you would expect from the titles and give a nice variety of game-play tweaks on the core system of kart racing. As with any good kart racer, several of the courses and characters are locked at the beginning. To unlock a character, course, or song you will need a certain amount of 'Sega Miles' - which are collected in any mode you select (even the similarly competent multi-player modes). The better or longer you race the more miles you get. This idea of a conveniently straight-forward and simple set up is echoed throughout the rest of the game.

Racing in Sega All-Stars is simple, you have a button for gas, one for brake/drift, and one for the kart-racing-necessity: items. Though the layout is straight-forward there's actually some depth and a definite level of skill required if you want to win a race. As with newer Mario Kart titles, holding down the 'drift' button in Sega All-Stars Racing will allow you to slide around corners and build boost depending on how long you drift. The skill to winning a race then comes down to four important aspects: drifting correctly (hitting obstacles while drifting will cost you speed), knowing when to use items, knowing your vehicle, and knowing the courses. The latter two are definitely what makes All-Stars Racing's solid game-play outshine other kart racers.

The roster of characters in the game is definitely diverse. You'll see everyone from mainstays like Tails and Dr. Eggman to titular characters from such classic Sega titles as Super Monkey Ball, Jet Set Radio, Crazy Taxi, House of the Dead, and Virtua Fighter. While each character is strictly assigned a specific kart (with no option to modify it or swap it out for another) there are three main types of vehicles that shake things up a bit. There are characters that drive your average four-wheeled karts with standard stats and capabilities, characters with bad-itude that drive motorcycles with the ability to wheelie for extra boost, and characters that drive weird flying vehicles which just seemed useless so I kind of avoided them.

Aside from the unique and humorously designed or familiarly recognizable vehicles, each character has the ability to pick up a special 'All-Star' move if you're falling behind the pack and need a little something extra to regain your lead. Not only does this help balance races but it also introduces a fun little gimmick as each character's all-star move is actually fairly unique.

The Sega All-Stars also kindly bring an assortment of locales to race in. While only a few game series are represented here (Sonic, Billy Hatcher, House of the Dead, Jet Set Radio Future, and Samba de Amigo) the twenty-four tracks are vividly colorful, well-designed, and trickled with short-cuts, obstacles, and ramps to keep things interesting. I should also mention that the character design (especially modern generation adaptations of older characters such as Alex Kidd or the Bonanza Bros.) is just as colorful and slick. The animations are well done as well but nothing to write home about.

Finally there's the unfortunate announcer . While the rest of the sound design isn't too shabby (with the exception of the occasional annoying character dialog or theme song) the announcer will no doubt get on your nerves. I didn't actually mind his play-by-play information in the beginning as it can help you know exactly what the other racers are up to but ultimately his incredibly dull and dry wit, insults, and constantly repeated lines will probably make you go into the options to shut him down faster than Sonic on Red Bull. That aside, I should mention the enjoyably familiar character themes and variety of unlockable and selectable songs available.

The Final Verdict:

Pros:

1. Blatant Mario Kart rip-off

• Solid variety of characters spanning about two decades.

• Simple, intuitive, and reactive kart racing controls.

• Great track design and fun, colorful graphical presentation.

• A surprising amount of content with over 60 missions to complete, Grand Prix cups to win, solid multi-player (both online and off) and a handful of unlockables.

• Nice set of options to toy around with and make races the way you'd like

Cons:

1. Some obscure characters are included that younger audiences will more than likely require playing through Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection to become familiar with.

• Announcer, a few voice-overs, and some music can be annoying.

• Though there's a lot of content here I would've loved to see some characters and settings that didn't quite make the cut.

• Customization in the karts and characters would've been nice.

• A bit sad that Sega has to directly copy Nintendo... just to pull Sonic out of his slump.

The Score:

Presentation/Concept: 7/10
Music/Sound: 7/10
Graphics: 8/10
Value: 7/10
Game-play: 8/10

Overall: 7.5/10

Conclusion:
Some of you might remember the slogan the Sega ran on its Genesis commercials a while ago: Sega does what Nintendon't. Something tells me that slogan should now be updated to Sega does what Nintendoes - which certainly isn't a bad thing. Sure the characters, tracks and overall gameplay might not be quite as polished as the Mario Kart series but Sega All-Stars is a worthy competitor and downright enjoyable kart-racing title. Any Sega fan out there should definitely look into taking Sonic's latest romp for a spin.

~Review by Ben Gentry