For whatever reason, when the topic of Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing comes up, the question that seems to inevitably get asked is why Sonic is driving a car instead of running. And while that would seem to be against the very spirit of a vehicle race, and is akin to asking why Bo Jackson didn’t just use a baseball bat to send a football to the other end of the field back in the day, it so happens that Sonic was originally on foot when Sumo Digital began developing the game.
Executive Producer Steve Lycett has made a blog post on the Sonic City Blognik which introduces the company to those who aren’t familiar with it (and the fact it’s not actually Japanese), and goes into how things started with All-Stars Racing once they had finished Superstars Tennis.
We started off with… Sonic running. Yes running. Not in a car. Not Super Sonic, but Sonic running full pelt around a test track. Next we added Eggman, riding in his Eggpod, but with robotic legs attached. He was running too. Then we added Tails. He was in his Tornado, the red biplane from Sonic 2. Next, we thought ‘It’s a racing game, lets try a car’ and dropped in Amy, in a nice bright pink Amymobile. We didn’t stop there either, next we added Gilius Thunderhead, you know, the Dwarf from Golden Axe. I’m sure you’re wondering what fiendish choice of travel he has, so I’ll tell you. We put him on top of Chicken Leg, the odd looking two legged parrot creature from the same game. Note, don’t all be running to the internet to go ‘OMG GILIUSSSS!!!!!’ as with all the prototype characters, it doesn’t mean they’ll make the final game!
Now I’m sure you’re wondering what on earth this looked like, and I can tell you, it was pretty mad. What was clear though that it wasn’t all that much fun to play. Our main problem was that all the characters were different sizes. Sonic was Sonic sized, but he was really small compared to Eggman and Gilius on their rides. Worse still was Tails’ Tornado – it was huge! The wings made it really wide.
Also the programmers, having spent so much time playing OutRun, had got Amy’s car drifting. This was really satisfying, but how do you get a Hedgehog to drift in a similar manner. Worse still, how do you get dwarf in full battle armour on a parrot faced lizard to drift…
So, as with all prototypes, we’d got things that worked well, and things that didn’t. That’s the point of prototyping after all!
From there, Lycett explains that they kept the cars and reviewed the flyers, but decided to drop anyone who was moving on foot or riding something that was moving on foot. “No matter what we’d tried, it didn’t work right,” he says. “At which point we upset every Sonic fan in the world by doing the unthinkable, we put Sonic in a car…!”
In addition, he makes note that this is in fact not the first time Sonic has gotten behind the wheel, pointing to Sonic Drift back in the 90’s, and asks that you direct all “in a car” complaints to those developers from here on in. SEGA adds “and the fact that Sonic’s very first appearance was in a car in Rad Mobile!”
And for those wondering about the planes, Lycett reveals that they decided to treat those more like hovercraft, so as not to give such characters too great an advantage; they’ll be unaffected by terrain, but have slower acceleration. That led to Tails’ Tornado airplane getting a redesign.
