An interview on the Official Nintendo Magazine website, where they bully a poor bloke for answers such as these and more!
How does it compare to Mario Kart? That's pretty much the first question anyone has about Sega & Sonic All-Stars Racing. We recently caught up with Craig Duncan, development director at Sumo Digital, who gave us the answers!
ONM: Who came up with the idea for Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing? Was it you or Sega?
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Craig Duncan: Sumo Digital have got a long-standing relationship with Sega so there's a lot of continuous talk about different concepts. Obviously we did Sega Superstars Tennis which was our first play around with a multiple IP based game.
We really loved SST but ultimately it was a sports game and we thought: 'how could we take the Superstars franchise further?'
We have a ton of racing experience and there are a lot of racing fans in the studio so it was very much a case of 'let's take a look at all these IPs and let's do a racer - let's do a character-based racer.' That was the idea. Sega loved it and then it was in development.
ONM: Why has it taken so long for Sega to make another Sonic racing game?
Craig Duncan: I don't know. There have been a couple over the years (Sonic Drift, Sonic Riders). That's probably a question for Sonic Team. Sega were really happy with the multiple versions of Out Run we'd done so there's definitely that trust there. They trust us with their IP because they know we use their IP because we care about it and if we put a character in [a game] it has got the right animations and it's got the right music tracks.
So they were comfortable with our racing experience and our use of IPs so I think it was a natural decision.
ONM: So would it be fair to say that they wanted to make a rival to Mario Kart but Sega only trusted Sumo to do it?
Craig Duncan: I don't think the plan was to make a rival to Mario Kart. I think if you make a character based racing game, Mario Kart does set the bar. As a studio we're big fans of Mario Kart so I would hope people who like Mario Kart will see our game and see a lot of the things they enjoy in Mario Kart in our game.
I think we do a lot of things differently to Mario Kart. I think we're probably more of a racer than Mario Kart. Our gameplay offers a faster gaming experience - it's more frenetic and it's more intense than Mario Kart but I'd hope that people who like Mario Kart would see our game and enjoy it.
ONM: Did you play Mario Kart and decide how to improve on it?
Craig Duncan: We have the Mario Kart player's guide, we've been playing it regularly in multiplayer and that wasn't just for research. We play it because it's a good game. There are things that Mario Kart does that it does very well.
One example - the steering wheel support and motion control. Mario Kart has set the bar for motion control on the Wii so our goal as a developer is to make sure our motion control works as well as Mario Kart because that's what people expect.
ONM: Is there anything that you didn't like from Mario Kart Wii that you wanted to improve upon?
Craig Duncan: Personally, I think Mario Kart is a slightly slower game experience. It's more about the items than the actual racing aspect. I think we're a frenetic, intense racer but we still have the items and the characters and the All-Star moves.
We looked at the drifting. The people who use drifting on Mario Kart are the smallest minority. I play Mario Kart and I know how to drift but I wouldn't say I used it as a player.
If you play Mario Kart online and you look at the hardest of the hardcore players - they all use drift and it's something that I'd imagine 95% of the people don't even realise how to do or know what it is so when we were developing our game system we wanted a very easy and accessible drift system where you could hold the accelerator, hold the drift and put the car sideways around bends to get boosts from it. We've made that part of our core mechanic.
Mario Kart Wii is a great game, Mario Kart GameCube is a great game is a different way...
ONM: But is your game better?
Craig Duncan: It's different. Like I say, it's more of a racer but I think if you like Mario Kart you will enjoy Sonic and Sega Racing without a doubt.
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.
Okay, enough Mario Kart! How did you decide upon which characters to put in the game?
Craig Duncan: It was a continuous process. We had our list that we thought would be really cool and Sega had their own list of characters. Really what we wanted to do was have some well-known and recognisable characters and mix them up with some characters that only the real hardcore and fanboy gamers will remember. Characters that I remember playing as 20 years ago right up to Dreamcast and some really interesting characters that aren't normally featured in this type of game as well as Sonic and all the characters from his world that are recognised worldwide.
So we came up with ours, Sega came up with theirs. People came off the list, some came on the list. Some just didn't work when we prototyped it and put it in the game - they just weren't as much fun as I thought they would be. Others who were on the fringes ended up playing really really well and working amazingly.
ONM: Can you tell us about any characters who didn't make it onto the final roster?
Craig Duncan: Steve, who is my executive producer, has recently done a dev diary where he talked about using Gilius from Golden Axe. We had an early prototype of that but it didn't quite play right.
ONM: Who is your favourite character?
Craig Duncan: My favourite character hasn't been announced yet. Big the Cat I like because it's a huge cat on a very small bike with a very cool All-Star move. Billy Hatcher gets a notable mention. For his All-Star move he's running on top of these a giant eggs crushing other vehicles. How can that not be cool?
There's an emotional attachment [with these Sega characters]. So you pick Ryo from Shenmue and you immediately have that fond memory of playing him originally. Even though he's on a motorbike in a racing game, there's still this emotional attachment to him that you wouldn't normally have.
People are fond of Mario games because they like Mario and they've spent 15 years playing Mario games. I think everyone will have their own favourite character that they remember playing like Alex Kidd on Master System. When you play them, they'll make you smile and when you see their All-Star move and hear the music track from the original games, that's all stuff that pulls on your gaming heartstrings and gets you really excited.
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.
ONM: Was getting the online play right the hardest thing to do?
Craig Duncan: It's always tricky to get it right. For multiplayer we needed to make sure the balancing was all right. We do eight player testing every day. We've got eight players on Wii, four players on DS and there's local Wi-Fi as well as online so I think for Wii and DS owners it should be the online multiplayer aspect that you expect.
Would you like to make more All-Star games?
Craig Duncan: I love the franchise and there's something very cool about making a game featuring an IP you're fond of or a character you can relate to. We're very fortunate that we have this close relationship with Sega. It's good fun to work with these characters in these universes. There's a lot of fondness for the All-Stars and Superstars franchise.
The really hard bit is making these characters fit together in the game. You take the Sonic characters and you think they all work together in one game but then you add Ryo to that and it's completely different. Then you add Zombio and Zombiko from House Of The Dead and that's different again and you've got to make that fit.
It makes us different. You take Mario Kart and everything is within that world. You've got Donkey Kong and some other IP characters but essentially it's Mario's world and everything is set around that whereas we have a lot of different universes and they're all put together in this one game. It's cool. It's fun.
You can read our hands-on preview of Sonic And Sega All-Star Racing in issue 52 of Official Nintendo Magazine which is on sale now. The game will be released for Wii and DS on 26 February.
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