14 DAY TRIAL // Yesterday Sega and developer Sumo Digital presented to the world Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed and now the two companies have talked about the similarities between the racing game and Nintendo’s Mario Kart 7, which came out last year on the 3DS.
Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing arrived in 2010 and offered a decent kart racing experience starring many famous characters from different franchises made by the Japanese company.
With Transformed, Sega is taking things into a new direction, allowing the karts of the players to transform into planes or boats.
"The key thing is that vehicles can transform, so you can not only race on land but on water and in the air too. There can be up to three surfaces per track, meaning you can have cars racing alongside boats during certain sections, for example. The second part of the transformation element is that the tracks can transform in different ways," Joe Neate, the game’s producer, told CVG.
Nintendo 3DS owners will easily remember that last year’s Mario Kart 7 also had such features, so Neate went on to talk about Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed in detail and how it differs from Nintendo’s own title.
According to the producer, Sumo Digital had already started working on the game before Mario Kart 7 was presented to the world, so the studio never wanted to imitate Nintendo’s own project.
What’s more, Neate went on to highlight that there were some differences between the two games.
"When Nintendo showed MK7 in more detail we realized it was more focused on kart customization. So you have this option to not fly as such, but what we call 'falling with style,' and this gliding is something we had considered during pre-production on our game. But we decided to go with full 3D flying for our game, so you're not forced to land after a certain amount of time. Obviously you have to take the flying route, but it's full 3D movement and it's a proper flying model."
Sega hopes to really show off the special features of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed before the end of the year, when it is released on PC, PS3, Xbox 360, 3DS or PS Vita.