You may or may not know that the NowGAmer team contains its share of retro Sega enthusiasts; those of us who could (and do) quite happily bore random passers-by rigid with long-forgotten anecdotes of our childhood adventures in Turtle Village, or how we paid £45 for a second-hand copy of Knuckles Chaotix for the 32X on eBay, or how we can complete Sonic 2 in just over half an hour, on demand, whenever you ask us.

Banjo looks better in his own 'mobile' than the pope.

So as more news and snippets were revealed about the upcoming Sonic Racing, you can only imagine our enthusiasm for its promises of Alex Kidd, Ryo Hazuki and House Of The Dead tracks. We were totally willing to overlook its utterly shameless cashing-in of Mario Kart, so cutely and engagingly did it seem to be recreating all the colours, shapes and sounds of Sega Universe in a karting atmosphere.

And we weren’t wrong there. Any contemporary game that offers Sonic CD’s Palmtree Panic Zone music, the Bonanza Brothers in a racing car and Achievements called ‘Gaining Ground’ or ‘Death Adder’ is an instant winner with us. Sumo has been careful to make sure that the content of Sonic Racing carefully treads the middle ground between fan service and up-to-the-minute relevance to the modern gamer. At least, this is the presumption we’re making for all of the track content being from current or last-generation Sega games, with the real gems (such as Fantasy Zone’s living spaceship Opa-Opa) relegated to hidden unlockables.

Still, we can easily imagine the family audiences this title seems undoubtedly aimed at enjoying the deft mixture of recognisable flora and fauna from recent hedgehog, monkey and, indeed, ball outings, while still appreciating Ryo Hazuki with his forklift powerup.

Happy happy rainbow shiny shiny haha...

Enough with the retro love-in, anyway. This is a racing game. How’s the racing? A bit patchy, if we’re honest. Track design never quite matches the playably cartoony charm of any Mario Kart game, but it’s darn close. Sufficient amounts of ramps, corkscrews, hallucinogenic tunnels, jumps and near misses pepper the tracks, and there’s some truly innovative design work going on here. The race spent driving upstream in House Of The Dead’s Curiel Mansion’s sewer is a particular favourite of ours, along with the course that takes in the whole of the Samba De Amigo ouvre, with each segment of a boxing ring or a vibrantly coloured village interspersed with insane, acid-drenched Rainbow Road-style track segments backdropped by hulking great images of the original game’s protagonists’ faces. Slightly terrifying but, at the same time, rather thrilling.

Despite the general variety on show, a small amount of repetition rears its head at times, with a somewhat unfortunate number of Sonic casino-related tracks – seemingly an excuse to reuse the proliferation of bumpers, lights and poker chips that have been created specially for purpose – while at the same time, a complete omission of the kind of themes we’d have loved to have seen. A few tracks built around the unlockable characters – a Space Channel 5 stage or an Alex Kidd, for instance – might not have gone amiss, and it feels slightly incongruous to have so many wonderful characters forced to keep racing round an influx of Monkey Ball levels.

… continued