Today I was at a Sega press event, and I got the chance to talk with one of the developers about Sonic & Sega All-Star Racing. I thought I'd let you know what questions I asked and the answers I got, since I'm sure atleast a few of you are interested in it. The answers will be somewhat shortened down and not quoted literally, but you get the gist of it.
Q1: Will any IP other than Sonic have more than one playable character?
A1: Very good question. Yes.
Q2: Did you plan on it being Sonic and Sega All-Star Racing from the beginning or was that added later due to the amount of Sonic-characers added?
A2: It was planned to be a Sega crossover from the very start, and it felt like a good way to increase people we can reach by having both "Sonic" and "Sega" in the name.
Q3: How did you decide who to include in the roster?
A3: We visited pretty much every Sega-studio, and eventually had a giant list of characters and then slowly started trimming it down to make sure it would fit with both fan expectations and the timeframe we had to work with.
Q4: Why is Sonic in a car? (My colleague pretty much made me ask this :P)
A4: Well at first, he wasn't. But we found that his size felt out of place, and having him on-foot also caused a lot of control issues. But the official reason from Sega is that it's supposed to be a fair race, so Sonic has to be in a car or he'd just win every race.
Q5: Will all the IPs that have a playable character also have a playable stage?
A5: Not every IP, but most of them will. There will be a lot of stages to choose from, over 20, as well as over 20 characters. It was a lot easier for us to make many varied stages by taking, for example, many from the Sonic series so we could re-use textures between them.
Q6: Is there any unlockable content or is it all available from the start?
A6: A lot of the stuff is unlocked. You start off with, I think, 8 characters and 8 stages, and then by playing you gather points which you can use to unlock what you want. A problem with a lot of multiplayer games is that to unlock new content you have to play singleplayer, which kind of defeat the purpose, so here you gain points by playing any mode, so you can play multiplayer with friends and unlock content while you do.
Q7: Any plans for DLC?
A7: It's too early to say. If the game does well and is successful, we'll certainly consider it, but in the end it's up to Sega since it's their money.
Q8: Mario Kart Wii is widely regarded as by far the most competent online experience on the Wii, will your online play on Wii be able to rival it?
A8: Well, we certainly hope so. We've been working hard on it, and hope that it'll be up to par.
Q9: Lastly, can you tell me something about the game that is not already publicly known?
A9: Well, no, I can't, really, but... I'll tell you one thing. Keep your eyes open around Halloween.
I also got some hands-on time with the game. It was the PS3 version, and the gameplay was solid. The only character I played as was Knuckles, but I got to see a few other characters in action. It feels like a very, very competent Mario Kart-clone, and even judging from this fairly early build(which was 2-3 months old), it feels like this game will be a must-have for any Sega-fan.
Every character can get an item which unleashed a signature move for them during the race, the ones I got to see were:
Sonic (Super Sonic, works like the star in Mario Kart-games)
Knuckles (Smashes the ground while using a chaos emerald raising his speed, damaging people around him)
Alex Kidd (switches from motorcycle to that helicopter-thing)
Billy Hatcher (He started rolling on an egg or something?)
Beat (Got onto his inlines and sprayed his enemies when he got close to them. Didn't really understand what the spray did, since it only hit AI enemies)
Aiai (Starts rolling on a ball, speeds up and can damage people with it.)
