Team Sonic Racing

Developer Sumo Digital

Publisher Sega

Format PC, PS4 (tested), Switch, Xbox One

Release Out now

Of all the company mascots to receive their own kart-racing game – Sonic, Mario, Diddy Kong, even Crash Bandicoot – the hedgehog famed primarily for fleetness of foot always seemed a strange choice. It’s not only the peculiarity of putting those red sneakers on an accelerator pedal; beyond the immediate draws of Tails and Knuckles, there’s not a particularly deep bench of beloved characters to fill out the starting grid. After all, who out there is really itching to pick Zavok or Blaze The Cat from the character select screen?

The previous Sonic racer from Sumo Digital, 2012’s, solved this problem by opening up its roster to include characters from , and, memorably, . More importantly, it washed away any lingering sense of dissonance by virtue of being a tight arcade racer wrapped up in a great gimmick: tracks and vehicles that switched between land, sea and air.