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Sonic the Hedgehog
Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is filling the Mario Kart-shaped hole in my life that World isn’t, and I’m as shocked by that as anyone

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“Mario Kart World won’t have any influence” on Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, but like everyone else, Sega was “somewhat expecting a new Mario Kart to be released soon” even before its reveal

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Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds

The Mario Kart World shade couldn’t be any more obvious as Sega tells you to “leave the open road behind” and play Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds in a throwback to the ’90s console wars

Dustin Bailey

15 September 2025

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(Image credit: Sega)

It’s been a long, long time since we’ve had a good reason to pit Mario and Sonic against each other in the style of the 16-bit console wars, but with 2025 giving us the launches of both Mario Kart World and Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, it’s like the ’90s never left. Now, even Sega is bringing back the catty marketing of the Genesis era with a new ad throwing shade directly at Nintendo’s kart racer.

“We all know that kart racing game,” the commercial begins as it shows a blurred screen obviously meant to evoke Mario Kart World. “It’s great! We don’t need to show it to you.” Then the rock music starts blaring as the camera swings over to look at Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds. “But what if you can blast through and race on a whole ‘nother level?”
Suddenly, the Sonic racer is strapped to the back of a drag racing car and blasting down a desert strip. “What if you could warp across different dimensions, fully customize and build out your machine, and compete head-to-head across different platforms?” the voiceover continues, alternating between the drag racer and shots of Sonic Racing before it eventually cuts to a struggling camper hauling the Mario Kart World facsimile along. “Or, uh, what if you want to roam around on the open road?”

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Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is filling the Mario Kart-shaped hole in my life that World isn’t, and I’m as shocked by that as anyone

“Mario Kart World won’t have any influence” on Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, but like everyone else, Sega was “somewhat expecting a new Mario Kart to be released soon” even before its reveal

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds mirrors Mario Kart World’s move away from traditional 3-lap races with tracks that put you in a whole “different universe”

If the implication wasn’t yet obvious enough, the description of the YouTube video goes one step further: “Leave the open road behind and come race on our level.”

Sonic series producer Takashi Iizuka has certainly been willing to talk about some of the comparisons between the games, though he’s been far more polite about it than this ad. Earlier this year, he said that “it looks like Nintendo did a good job” on Mario Kart World, but more recently asserted that “Mario Kart World won’t have any influence” on Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds.
Yet even if the new ad is a bit more pointed in its comparisons, it still comes off as good-natured ribbing thanks to its connections to the deeply corny world of ’90s marketing. It uses the exact same format of the infamous “blast processing” commercial, where Sega unfavorably compared a racecar-worthy Genesis against a rickety van hauling a SNES with – appropriately enough – Super Mario Kart on display.

Perhaps it’s a bit inauspicious for Sega to be evoking blast processing – something that never existed, at least not in the way the marketing folks wanted you to believe – but after spending some hands-on time with Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds earlier this year, that ego isn’t entirely unearned. We’ll find out for sure how the racers stack up when Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds launches on September 25.

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Staff Writer

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He’s been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.

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Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is filling the Mario Kart-shaped hole in my life that World isn’t, and I’m as shocked by that as anyone

“Mario Kart World won’t have any influence” on Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, but like everyone else, Sega was “somewhat expecting a new Mario Kart to be released soon” even before its reveal

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds mirrors Mario Kart World’s move away from traditional 3-lap races with tracks that put you in a whole “different universe”

Veteran Sonic producer says Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds team completely removed items from the game if they were too “stressful” or let players “win all the time”

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is getting Minecraft characters and Hatsune Miku to make sure people are “not just playing it when it comes out, having fun, and that being it”

I played Kirby Air Riders and it’s the perfect racer for players who’ve had enough of Mario Kart

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“Mario Kart World won’t have any influence” on Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, but like everyone else, Sega was “somewhat expecting a new Mario Kart to be released soon” even before its reveal

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