Sonic takes off

For SEGA fans that also like a bit of karting, racing sequel Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is sure to be stirring some interest. With 3DS a confirmed platform, some have observed the water and air-based sections of the title as being copied from Mario Kart 7, which isn't necessarily fair.

In an interview with GamesTM, Sumo Digital producer Jem Lee shares the moment that they saw the Mario Kart 7 reveal, and why its racers offer its own unique style.

It was quite funny, right. We were sitting in a meeting room at work watching the E3 conferences and Nintendo came on and we all wondered if they’d be doing a new Mario Kart. Then they had a montage of things and you had a kart sprout wings, and we all looked around the room, and then you saw a car go into water and we were all like ‘no f***ing way!’

But then they went into each one in depth, and although it’s kind of flying, it’s more falling with style because we’d discussed something similar to that in pre-production as we were trying to work out how to get these three modes in and we called it falling with style as you’re always falling but you have some choice. Whereas the driving under water… that’s not boating. So what they have is a kart game with additive options which are really well built on and add to the experience but we’ve gone away with that in what we were doing.

There will be a few people who think we’re copying them but no, we’ve been making this game for 18 months. But that’s the nature of it and we feel confident from watching people play it and hearing opinions that people are really enjoying it, especially the freedom of flying and that the boating is actually quite challenging to do. It’s a different game.

After watching the announcement trailer we'd tend to agree with Lee that his team are taking a different approach; check it out below and see what you think.

[source gamestm.co.uk]