Welcome to the Archive site of The Sonic Stadium (2008-2023)
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Retailers have been listing the PS Vita version of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed for release in Europe on December 7th 2012 for a while, but now Sumo Digital’s Steve Lycett aka S0L has confirmed the date at our very own SSMB.
I’m waiting for confirmation over on the US side, but the EU Vita version should be out this Friday on the 7th December
A post by SSMB member BlueTidalGamer reporting on his copy being despatched reaffirms this.
My copy of the Vita version has dispatched from ShopTo.
SEGA Europe still hasn’t announced a date and both their website and press site to this day still say it and the 3DS version have been out since November 16th 2012 with the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions.
As for the US, Lycett says in the above quoted post that he’s waiting for confirmation of a release date from SEGA of America. With retailers listing a new date of December 18th 2012, this indicates that the PS Vita version may well not meet its originally announced release date of December 11th 2012, though SEGA of America’s website is still listing that same date.
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Seeing release in Europe today on the Xbox 360 and PS3, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is now officially becoming available to the public! Eager racers whose mouths have been watering in anticipation of this title for months may finally race up and down and all around SEGA memory lane on land, sea, and sky!
Sumo Digital’s latest piece of work will be available to all in North America on the 18th, which includes the Xbox 360 and PS3 iterations, along with the Wii U version for the launch of Nintendo’s newest console. The Wii U version of S&ASRT (as well as the console) will release in Europe on the 30th!
Now, there is one more thing about this game that we would like to share with you – a screenshot of the “Special Thanks” section from the credits of Transformed. However, there is a few spoilers included, so do look at your own discretion.
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With 9 days to go until the game’s Australian release and 10 days until its European release, fans looking to pick up the 3DS and/or PS Vita versions of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed really want to know if the game will see a delayed release like in the US or not. The delay was announced a month ago by SEGA of America, but SEGA Europe hasn’t announced a similar delay here in Europe or Australia. Their European press site, website and recent press releases all still list the handheld versions for a November 16th release.
To clear everything up, Sumo Digital’s Steve Lycett aka S0L has revealed at the SSMB that the team are still working on the handheld versions and so a November 16th release is unlikely. Lycett says they will release slightly later than the console versions.
Given we’re still working on it, 16th November UK release is unlikely. I think SEGA either have or are due to announce the handheld dates over here, they’re slightly later than the home console versions.
Lycett also confirmed that the PC version will release later than the console versions, too.
Again, I can’t say much here, it’s SEGA call to announce dates. All I can say right now is it’s going to after the console release date, but that’s all I can say.
Once SEGA announces release dates for Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed on 3DS, PS Vita and PC, we’ll let you know.
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Sumo Digital’s Steve Lycett aka S0L has informed fans via the official SEGA Forums that the character roster for Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed will differ across platforms. The total number of characters across all platforms is 29, but no single version will include all 29. Some will have low 20’s and others will have high 20’s. Steve says this is because some platforms feature characters that are unique to that platform, but won’t announce which right now. However, he does say that some are SEGA characters and some are not.
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After returning from a holiday in Japan (welcome back) Steve Lycett Executive Producer at Sumo Digital has begun his community support in the SEGA/Sonic community forums again and today revealed the current stance on future downloadable content for Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing in a post at the SSMB.
Yep, you’ve missed one. Switch the leaderboards to Local only and then play through the tracks, if any have the ‘Staff Ghost’ racing on them, you need to beat it still. If it says ‘Sumo Ghost’ you’ve beaten the default ghost and can skip that one.
On the update, ta for that Mr. Casanova. Pretty much as I expected really
Someone else has a Ryo Forklift toy then? We got ours the other day, I was expecting something… nicer! Still, can’t complain, it’s now in our trophy cabinet – boxed up and never to be opened. Ours also didn’t come with a number painted on it. So therefore I can only assume it’s 1/1000 and Doctor Eggmans’s is 2/1000. You can quote me on that
Future DLC is all up to SEGA now. They’ve put out all the bits we’ve done, personally I think they’ll now look to see how the existing stuff goes and decide if they want some more. Not seen any figures yet, but then I’m only nicely getting back into the groove!
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S0L
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So it looks like the ball is in SEGA’s court as to whether future DLC will happen, currently for the game fans can buy Ryo Forklift and a Metal Sonic & Death Egg pack. Outside of the game Xbox 360 fans can buy Avatar items and a Premium Dashboard theme, there were reports of a PS3 Premium Theme being released on the 22nd April but that never appeared. Will sales of the current DLC be good enough to peek SEGA’s interest? Only time will tell and if we hear anything we’ll let you know.
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Steve Lycett Executive Producer at Sumo Digital has posted over at the SSMB an explanation as to why why All-Star Moves are disabled in online play on Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing(all versions) after forum members questioned the absence, here is what Steve had to say –
There’s no All-Star moves online on any platform. Basically those moves are quite complicated and extremely difficult to network. We did a few of them too, and the latency we were seeing didn’t work very nicely. Rather than put something in that didn’t work to everyones expectations – we thought it better to disable them online for a better play experience.
If you’re seeing someone do All-Star moves online, they’ve hacked the game. Kick them out of the lobby
Steve also confirmed at the SSMB that DLC will be coming very soon rather than later, the DLC will be announced by SEGA instead of Sumo Digital but Steve did say he’s been playing it and in his oppinion its awesome –
You’ll hear more about DLC very soon. I don’t want to steal SEGA’s thunder on this. But you’ll be seeing some sooner than you expect – and it’s AWESOME. I’ve just played it 🙂
Also of note we may be seeing more concept art from the game if SEGA of Japan give the green light –
I’ll see what I can do on this. Traditionally it’s quite hard to release art that’s not been approved by SEGA Japan, as we need to make sure any ‘official’ release of art is consistent with the ‘expected’ looks of their characters.
The Xbox 360 has already received a frame-rate patch but both Xbox 360 and PS3 may be getting a patch when the DLC is released –
There already is on 360. We’re still tweaking with the engine, so you may well see further improvements when we launch the DLC. It’s pretty smooth now though for the final release, don’t expect a jump to 60fps though…!
UPDATE:
A deeper explanation from Steve Lycett regarding no All-Star Moves online at the SEGA Forums –
Right I’m back.
I was down in London for two days, attending a Microsoft Dev conference. Only access I had to the web was my iPhone. Have you tried posting a long and complicated forum post on one of those? Trust me, it’s not easy
Also remember I do this in my free time, I don’t get paid for it, I don’t get thanked for it, and I do have to spend time with my family now and again!
Anyway, on this topic. As with all decisions, don’t think we made this one lightly.
The first point is that all the All-Star moves work differently, so we’d effectively have to code each one with specific network code. With all the differences in characters, that’s 23 different bits of code to write there.
Then lets look at what we have to work with. Whilst most of you have super fast download speed, what you don’t realise if you don’t have superfast upload speed. Our target for game communications is 64 kilobits. Note bits not bytes. In that very small amount of data we have to send everyones current position, projected vector, all weapon fire as well as voice chat. Not everyone is on fiber optic broadband you know!
So we’re already sending lots of data, and the ASM’s mean that we’d have to compress this down even further for extra weapon fire.
Of course a lot of the All-Star moves also include increased speed, so in cases with high latency where we’ve already got to be sure we’re not jumping cars around all over the place, we then would have even more extremes of movement -which under high lag would result in false positives for ASM hits. I.e. you maybe nowhere near Super Sonic – but you get blatted off the track as someone has dropped packets and the dead reckoning *thinks* you might have been hit.
Finally, when it comes to network games, you have to be sure that all the systems are deterministic. Basically that if you fire a weapon on one machine, it will fire the same way on another. If this isn’t the case you wind up with synchronisation issues, quite simply what you see on your screen, won’t be what other player see on theres. Not all the ASM are deteministic as they’re all different, the best example is length of use. Depending on where you are in the pack, they last for varying amounts of time. So if we’ve got any latency causing the positions to be out of sync – even for a millisecond – on one machine it may last for 4 seconds, on the other 10. That happens, and oh oh, we’re really out of sync. Cue everyone gets booted back to the lobby.
So with much reluctance, we conceeded that rather than ship it with things that could go wrong down to latency, especially with cross continent play, it would be a better experience to ship it with the ASM disabled during on-line play.
So that is why it’s not available, as we didn’t want to ruin the online experience with All-Star moves that didn’t work consistantly and fairly. I think when you understand this – the decision makes a lot more sense.
Will we add it back in the future? I think it’s unlikely. In the future when everyone has an internet connection that runs at LAN speeds, it’ll be doable, but not for a few years.
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S0L
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The OutRun2 and Virtua Tennis 3 cabinets at Sumo Digital.
Steve “S0L” Lycett, the producer of Sonic and Sonic SEGA All Sonic Stars Sonic Racing featuring Sonic, has been filling us in on the game’s development every step of the way through forum posts and a diary. The fourth entry in his Developer Diary talks about the painstaking amount of work that the art team has had to endure and the capabilities of the game’s “Sunshine Engine.” The work involved when creating the game for each console is discussed as well.
While detailing all of the intricacies of the game, Steve takes us on a tour of the Sumo Digital building. Interesting, to say the least. I really want that Virtua Tennis 3 cabinet.
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Sumo Digital Producer Steve Lycett has informed us of a new preview from 2D-X for Sonic & SEGA All Stars Racing and a new interview he’s recently had with Digital Spy. The interview touches upon ASR demo’s for Xbox 360, PS3 and even DS, implementing Ryo Hazuki and wether they’d like to take on Shenmue 3.
As for the preview it’s very positive from graphics to characters to controls, the previewer even goes as far to say that the game has now jumped from mere consideration to a game he’s now really looking forward to.
We’ll keep you up to date on everything Sonic & SEGA All Stars Racing as we gear up to launch 23rd Feb in the U.S. and 26th Feb in Europe.
Thanks to Steve Lycett for the heads up and links!
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UPDATE: We’ve taken down the picture of NiGHTS out of respect for the guys over at NiGHTS into Dreams since this is their exclusive so if you’d like to get a good look at NiGHTS in ASR follow the below link to their forums and check it out. /UPDATE END
Speaking exclusively at the NiGHTS into Dreams forums Steve Lycett of Sumo Digital has officially revealed NiGHTS role in Sonic & SEGA All Stars Racing after the cat was let out of the bag a few days back thanks to a certain eagle eyed forumer known as Doctor Eggman.
Right then – first off… We didn’t forget NiGHTS!
Just since you’ve all been trying to make him out from that blurry capture from Youtube, I figured we better put a nicer shot out! Consider this an exclusive
We’ve given NiGHTS a very important role. He starts all the races, and also finishes them too! He also resides over Time Trial, whenever you set a new lap record, you’ll have NiGHTS flying along with you celebrating!
I have to admit the main reason he’s in was after we saw your heartfelt pleas, especially those of DiGi and TRiPPY, we had to make sure NiGHTS was in and played an important role. After all, we really didn’t want them to burn all their collection now. So whilst he’s not playable, he very much made it in, and as a result of the huge amount of support for the character that you all showed.
Does this mean that NiGHTS may not be in future DLC? Well who can say. That’s a question I can’t answer right now – it all depends on how well the game does
Anyway – cats out of the bag, so I figured we best make it official!
Now, I can look forward to yet more ‘Don’t forget Flagman!’ posts I’m sure
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S0L
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So there you have it! Sumo Digital aren’t just an hard working developer, they are a caring developer who after listening to the community didn’t forget NiGHTS 😀 Join me in a toast won’t you? Now where’s my hankey…
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Official Nintendo Magazine UK has posted up an interview they’ve had with Craig Duncan, development director at Sumo Digital, to talk about Sonic & SEGA All Stars Racing. The interview discusses how the game came to be, Sumo’s relationship with SEGA, comparisons to Mario Kart, favourite characters and Gilius from Golden Axe.
ONM are quite interested in the game’s depth compared to Mario Kart such as the drifting mechanic –
ONM: It is a lot easier to drift around corners in Sonic & Sega Racing than in Mario Kart Wii. Was that because you wanted to remove the barriers for novices?
Craig Duncan: I think we have the same level of depth but I think our drift system is a lot more accessible than Mario Kart so I think you can learn and get drift by playing either a tutorial or a race mission. But it takes a lot longer to master drift so we do have depth for the hardcore racers. It’s got to be accessible and it’s got to have depth.
ONM also liken the game’s commentator to classic cartoon Wacky Races –
ONM: Were you inspired by anything else? The commentary is very Wacky Races?
Craig Duncan: Yeah it is maybe a bit Wacky Races. It’s a game system as much as anything else. So if one of the characters behind gets an All-Star move the commentator will say “Amy Rose has just got her All-Star move!” You’ll know that someone behind you has a certain move so it’s a helpful system for the player. It informs you of what’s going on.
Or if people fire certain weapons the commentator will tell you so. He’ll also chide and goad you if you’re doing badly. He’ll say “that’s not great driving from Sonic” if you bounce off a few corners so it’s really helping you experience the game and how it plays much better.
You can check out the interview in full at ONM’s website.
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The blog site that leaked sensitive information about Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing yesterday has now issued a defence of its editorial position, including a personal attack against SEGA Community Manager ArchAngelUK, after receiving a legal message from SEGA to remove its information.
“This [legal threat], from the Sega employee [AAUK] who, in his spare time, runs on his Sonic website a “Depository,” which is chock full of items just begging to be tagged as copyright infringement,” site editor Tristan Bresnen exclaimed on a front page bulletin.
Sonic Wrecks, among sites such as The Sonic Stadium, hosts media obtained through SEGA products, but it is agreed that such use is not damaging to the company’s intellectual property. SEGA may see the leak of confidential information on an unreleased game as a different circumstance.
Bresnen further defended his position, stating that the discovery was not by way of hack but through files that were “already available without restriction” on the official game website. XML files were discovered, at which point the blog used ‘decompilers’ to uncover the information. Bresnen suggested that “Sega let something loose,” which is a bit of an extreme argument given the blog had to actually go out and find it for itself.
TSSZ sparked controversy when it obtained flash code from the official game website and reverse-engineered it to reveal material that had yet to be announced. Such content included new playable characters in the Bonanza Bros. and Opa-Opa from Fantasy Zone. It certainly was controversial when TSS picked up on it, for all of a sudden the subject became taboo.
SEGA is obviously not very pleased with the situation. ArchAngelUK’s letter to the TSSZ blog reads; “I’ve been asked to confirm upon you SEGA’s official request to take down the following posts made about information on SEGA title Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing with immediate effect. The posts below…contain information that puts TSSZ News in breach of SEGA copyright and I am told additional legal issues as well that facilitate this request.”
Bresnen concluded his announcement by suggesting SEGA is responsible for the blog’s actions in the first place. He implies that he had no choice but to sanction a subversive investigation into ASR’s official website, following an interview snub from SEGA with Sumo Digital’s Steve Lycett.
“Were those at Sega Europe better coders and better communicators–instead of those who seemingly can’t be arsed to return an E-Mail until it’s too late–it would have been possible for us to deliver you the information in question, and perhaps more, without subsequent fear and backlash erected from a situation that, again, rests on their shortcomings.”
Damn. This could get ugly, real fast. Remember No Drama ’09, and how it ‘completely failed’? Yeah, you’re looking at why we didn’t suggest a No Drama 10. Awkward.
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After all of the leaks surrounding Sonic & SEGA All Stars Racing Steve Lycett of Sumo Digital under his S0L tag has been mostly absent in the SEGA/Sonic community but has made one post in a topic over at the Official SEGA Forums Sonic & SEGA All Stars Racing board.
Obviously Steve can’t confirm or deny the leaks but he does address some questions people might have on their mind and what had to be taken into consideration when making the game such as the variety of audiences the team had to cater for.
Steve’s full post is below –
I’m breaking cover in this thread of wrongness
First -I’m not going to talk specific characters – certainly not till I see anything official. I don’t see any official reveals – and until you do – I wouldn’t believe anything either 😛 Don’t bother asking or PM’ing me either. My lips are sealed!
When all the characters are revealed, I’m sure we’ll hear a couple of things…
1. “Why isn’t character X in the game! I’m gonna cry and cry till I’m all out of tears till you add them!”
First, wipe your nose, second, stop crying. It’s not a good look on a 35 year old man!
When we make these games, we do two things. First we need to ensure we have a varied and ranged cast – that – and hold yourself- are as interesting to a non-Sega fan, as they are to a die hard Sega fan…
Take yourself back to when you’re a small child, someone hands you the joypad and you take your first steps into videogaming. You’ve no pre-conceptions, you are mesmerised by the blue skies, the vivid green grass, the character you’re playing is joyfully jumping on the heads of passing Koopa’s – no wait – Badniks.
You’re about to be a gamer, you realise this is GREAT! But you don’t know the characters, you don’t pore over the names of stages, you’re enthralled as you’re having fun and you’re lost in a whole new world. Remember games are about fun 😛
So we’re making this game for that kid too. We do out best to get the fan service in the games, and yes, a big part of what it’s about it nostalgia, and we try our best to sit in both camps. But… this game has to appeal to a very wide audience, and we’d like to get some new gamers in and teach them something about Sega too.
2. “You are calling this game Sega All-Stars – yet character Y appeared in only one game, and they shouldn’t be in as I want character Z! (note the Z doesn’t stand for Zool OK!”
So maybe you disagree with our and SEGA’s choices. Be our guest! Again, we’ve got to make sure the cast is varied for Billy’s Gran who got a Wii for Christmas. She’s heard about that game where you can race a hedgehog against a fox, and she wants some of that action!
As we’ve always maintained, we’ve gone for a good mix across ALL ages of Sega. For all those fans who don’t like Jet Set Radio, we’ve got a forum full elsewhere who all high-fived when they saw Beat drift into view. We can’t please you all, but I think when all is revealed, we’ll have pleased a lot more folk than we did with SST.
You can’t accuse of us not listening either. We did a LOT of research after SST shipped, and I feel we’ve got in a lot of characters that were requested last time. Remember Ryo, we wanted him, and we’d got the research to prove that you guys wanted him too! It might never have happened otherwise. Yep, we’ve had a late rush of support for some characters this time, and if we do something along these lines again, or do DLC, maybe we’ll look at trying to get them in a future title. Or maybe some of them are already in, but not in a form you expect. I know at least one that’s going to make a lot of folk happy.
The other thing – is that some characters may not fit in the style of the game we’re making here. We’re doing a bright, colourful, happy shiny game. Some of the ones we’ve had suggested – are clearly not bright happy colourful characters. We’ve also got an age rating to adhere too, and some characters very much certainly would scupper this…!
It’s good you’re all so excited, it’s good you all want to fight for the characters you love. We feel the same way! But we’re still human and we still have budgets and timescales. We still want to spend some time with family and loved ones, who haven’t seen us for months as we’ve been putting the extra special effort into this game for you.
Finally, remember we’ve been doing our very best to make a game for everyone, be they old fans or new, or fans we’re going to recruit soon who will then love Sega in future, just as much as you love Sega now.
Right, back to fixing bugs, or you’ll never get your hands on the game.
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S0L
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A cheeky little hint at a character that appears in the game in some form or another that people are going to like ay? I wonder who that will be?
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Sonic City Blognik has updated with the 3rd Sonic & SEGA All Stars Racing Developer Diary. Steve Lycett of Sumo Digital returns again to talk more about the game’s concepts that derived from his trip to SEGA Japan’s offices. This time Steve reveals that the All Star Move’s came from a suggestion from the guys over at Sonic Team when Steve was asked “Where are the SuperStar moves?” Steve explains that they hadn’t thought about that as they originally planend for it to be a normal racer but after the discussion the idea get’s included the game.
‘Where all the SuperStar moves’ we get asked. Well, at this point I refer to my earlier diary, at that time the game was a pure racer. There were no weapons or special moves, it was all about lines and drifting. ‘We loved those in SST, you should have them in this’. Every so often on games, you have a ‘Eureka!’ moment, and this was one of them. We reply that we’d not considered it, but it wasn’t out of the question…
And thus were born the All-Star moves. Back then we went ‘Well, we could use this to get players back into the race, so they can take revenge on anyone who’s knocked them about on the track’ and now, well they’re something very special. Each character has their own All-Star move, they’re all things that our slightly insane design team figured would be impossible to do in a racing game!
Steve and his team also did plenty of rounds around SEGA’s various game development studio’s to discuss including various character’s and tracks to which each one gave them the ok.
The day goes on, we go visit AM1, who let us play House of the Dead EX, a game we’ve only seen announced a week before! You’ve likely seen we’ve got Zobio and Zobiko from this game, as they’re in the Halloween trailer.
We’re not done there either. Next we’re off to see AM2. Once word gets round who we are, we’re extremely privileged to be asked what we think of Tokyo R-Tuned, which at that stage wasn’t even totally finished. We’re led into a maze of wires, with cabinets that are plugged into all manner of development kits, and get to be, I suspect, the first westerners to play the game. It’s amazing by the way. Not only did we leave with the things we wanted, we were also offered levels from R-Tuned if we’d like them…!
Next we’re off to AM+, Yu Suzuki’s SEGA division. Sadly Yu was out of the office, but here again we’re invited to play SEGA Race TV for our thoughts. It too is excellent We leave with the promise we can have Ryo Hazuki – thus making a lot of Shenmue fans happy we hope.
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Steve Lycett from Sumo Digital has just revealed over at the SSMB that there are at least 4 more characters left to be revealed in Sonic & SEGA All Stars Racing with some being very old school. This means we could possibly be seeing more than the 20 character total listed on retailer websites product pages and this also 100% confirms Banjo-Kazooie, Avatar’s and Mii’s are excluded from this character count.
Steve also inform’s us that the now revealed Crazy Taxi character BD Joe is the reason why he visited AM3.
That Pirate Ship stage isn’t Skies of Arcadia, it’s our take on Monkey Target – mixed up with a whole heap of pirates from Monkey Ball 3.
I know you guys are super enthusiastic, but remember that we have constraints when making these games. 24 tracks are a HUGE undertaking, especially when you have to consider I also need to make versions for next-gen, Wii and DS. That’s really 72 tracks. Not to mention the optimised versions for splitscreen (so it’s nearly an extra two thirds on top of that again!).
As such, we do need to be careful we don’t stretch too far – so yep – we’ve got 3 Monkey Ball levels, but even then, they’re all based on different themes. It’s not easy making totally new designs even when you’re basing them on existing ideas
Anyway…
I guess now they’re out there – I can confirm that it was indeed BD Joe that we asked AM3 for! And yes, finally Ulala is officially confirmed, even if Nintendo Power and the ESRB kind of let the cat out of the bag. Plus believe me, on the ones that are still secret, there are some surprises still – some are definately old school fan pleasers – there are at least 4 characters that haven’t even been hinted at
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S0L
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Steve Lycett from Sumo Digital in one of his communitty visit’s has recently answered alot of fan’s questions in the SEGA forums. Since some questions weren’t as relevants as others we’ll only list the more important info to come from the answers
– You can play your own music during gameplay on the Xbox version but not on PS3.
– The DS version contains an exclusive Crush 40 track(track as in music of course)
– You can influence the colour of one vehicle in the game though Steve doesn’t state which vehicle.
– Snaking isn’t possible
– Sumo Digital’s network model should prevent cheaters/hackers though this can’t be 100% guaranteed.
– Some platforms will have downloadable time trial ghosts and all versions will all be able to save local ghosts.
– Only Xbox 360 and PS3 versions support voice chat via headset.
– Steve Lycett’s favourite track is Lava Lair using tree tops for drifting. Steve says “you’ll see why”
– The game starts with things locked, then you have to earn Sega Miles to buy new content in the Shop.
– Every version but the DS version has some very difficult Ghost cars from the track designer to beat.
– Steve’s favourite playable character in the game is still Big the Cat and one character he can’t talk about yet.
– Controls plan for the PC versions is for keyboard or game controllers.
– Steve can’t touch the topic of PS3 exclusive content right now.
– When asked about a Thank Your For Playing screen at the end of the game Steve says the game does say Thank You For Playing but that’s all he can say right now.
Full list of questions and answers can be found all together in my post in the SSMB topic.
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UPDATE: We’ve gotten word from Steve Lycett over at the SSMB under his S0L tag that the Confusion Star is an item and not an All Stars move after all. Steve also respons to the discussion of how review scores may turn out.
Well some proper depressing reading on here tonight…
Whatever the game scores at review, personally I will be proud of what we’ve achieved. I feel this is still the most accomplished game we’ve done at Sumo, especially given it’s an original game!
The weapon you are all talking about above is the Confusion Star. This is one of the standard weapons, you zap the AI and they’ll spin out, you cop it, and WOAH, watch the screen spin upside down!
I like to save it up, them fire it for maximum effect when someone is about to do a chicane
I’m sure Craig will be pleased to hear you are hanging on his every word
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/UPDATE END
XGN caught up with Sumo Digital’s Craig Duncan recently to discuss Sonic & SEGA All Stars Racing. Nothing much is revealed that we didn’t already know apart from the name of one of the items which is seen below targeting Amy in the Banjo-Kazooie & Avatars revelation trailer.
The item is called the Confusion Star which turns the victim’s screen upside down for a short time and causes all sorts of madness by making the controls inverted.
Craig also explains the difference between this game and Mario Kart, how this game plays like more of a racer than Mario Kart does with it’s faster speed and it’s different drifting component.
We’ll keep you up to date with Sonic & SEGA All Stars Racing as we draw closer to its release next month.
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UPDATE: We’ve just found out via Kombo.com that Amazon.com are selling the DS Rumble Pak seperately. /END UPDATE
Steve Lycett under his S0L tag over at the SSMB has revealed that the Nintendo DS version will support the DS Rumble Pak. Good news for original DS and DS Lite owners who love force feedback.
Yep – both SST and ASR support the DS Rumble pack
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For those not in the know, the DS Rumble Pak is an official accessory bundled with Metroid Prime Pinball in the U.S. and Actionloop in Europe that allows compatible games to give rumble feedback though none of those games require the accessory to play them. A smaller version to fit DS Lite better than the official Nintendo one was made in Japan by a company called Ewin. It’s a good option for your games if you have it/can get it.
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As seen above Game Reactor have had a recent interview with Steve Lycett of Sumo Digital about their upcoming racer Sonic & SEGA All Stars Racing. In the interview Steve is asked about Ryo Hazuki’s coming to be which he reveals to be from the obvious demand from the fans. Steve is also asked about balance in regards to the mighty All Star Moves and shortcuts which Steve rests assured are very balanced and definitely not game breaking.
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You can enable catch-up for human players (in Multiplayer that is, both online and split-screen), but the aim is for the weapons and All-Stars to do the movement through the pack.
Or you can turn it off – and see who is actually better at racing 😛
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So, very good news for gamers who hate ‘rubber banding’ in multi-player games like Mario Kart and should make for some interesting race’s online. No word on single player but the way Steve says “in multiplayer that is,” we can assume it is in single player, we’ll let you know if we hear any different.
Meanwhile, are you happy with Sumo Digital’s decision to make this optional in multiplayer? Let us know in the comments.
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Sumo Digital’s Steve Lycett under his S0L nickname has informed everyone via the SSMB that the special announcement planned for this week regarding Sonic & SEGA All Stars Racing might be delayed until next week now.
Rumour has it the announcement that was due this week – will be next week instead BTW. Apologies for being a tease on this, like I say, I’m not in charge of PR and Marketing 🙂
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If it has been delayed at least it’s only another week and with that week being closer to Christmas you could say it’s a Christmas present from Sumo Digital. Now what could the announcement be…
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After yesterdays announcement that Bentley Jones’ new song So Much More will be the theme song for upcoming game Sonic & SEGA All Stars Racing some fans were worried that Richard Jacques involvement might not come to be after all but Sumo Digital’s Steve Lycett(AKA S0L) has laid those worries to rest.
For those worried that Rich Jacques isn’t behind the music in the game – rest assured he very much is. All the menus are Mr Jacques creations, as well as other music used throughout the game.
Bentley’s tune is used for the end credits, and it’s pretty damned awesome. You can blame us for the extravagent Guitar solo used in it – we forced it on him 🙂
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Look’s like the soundtrack is shaping up to be as fan pleasing as every other area of the game. Excited? We sure are.
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Steve Lycett who began his developer diary for Sonic & SEGA All Stars Racing which we reported about earlier has revealed a couple of new screens and a piece of Amy Rose conept art to SEGA of America’s blog where they too have posted the diary entry.
Will we see more in the next diary entries? We’ll keep an eye out, for now here’s the pics –
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Sonic and SEGA All-Stars Racing’s Executive Producer, Steve Lycett, has written a post on SEGA Europe’s official blog discussing the upcoming mascot racing game. Although mostly an introductory post, Lycett mentions the genesis of the game, which was staged very much like Sonic R as opposed to Sonic Drift.
“We started off with… Sonic running. Yes running. Not in a car. Not Super Sonic, but Sonic running full pelt around a test track.” Lycett revealed on the SEGA blog, “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.”
Other characters included Gilius Thunderhead from Golden Axe, riding atop a Chicken Leg creature. Despite how awesome this setup sounds, Lycett tells of development difficulties in maintaining the flow of gameplay.
…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.
Coders at Sumo managing to make Amy’s car drift threw up even more possibilities, hampered by the difficulty in giving Sonic a drift function on foot. “How do you get a Hedgehog to drift [like Amy’s car]? Worse still, how do you get dwarf in full battle armour on a parrot faced lizard to drift?”
And hence, the result is everyone in a vehicle, as you see here. Lycett humorously asks fans angry about putting Sonic in a vehicle to direct their venom at the creators of Sonic Drift, but also throws down this final nugget of information, hinting at how the planes will handle in Sonic and SEGA All-Stars Racing:
For the flyers we didn’t want them to have too much of an unfair advantage, so we decided to treat these like hovercraft, they wouldn’t be affected by surfaces that slow the other cars down, but they also wouldn’t have high acceleration. As such Tails’ plane needed a re-design.
Interesting stuff. You can read the whole blog entry at SEGA’s Blognik.
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Sonic and SEGA All-Stars Racing’s Executive Producer, Steve Lycett,