Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds - TV Tropes

Due to Late-Arrival Spoilers, all spoilers from Sonic Frontiers and preceding entries will be unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is a Spin-Off game in Sega's long-running Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, being a Mascot Racer that features the blue blur and his friends. Developed under the Sonic Team banner with members of the development team behind the Initial D Arcade Stage series, it is a Creator-Driven Successor to many of Sega's previous Racing Game spin-offs, borrowing ideas from Sonic Riders, Sonic & All-Stars Racing: Transformed, and Team Sonic Racing.

Much like All-Stars and Team Sonic Racing, each of the characters can use go-karts (or the Extreme Gear from the Riders sub-series) to drive around the track. However, each vehicle can transform to adjust to the terrain the player is racing on, going between land, water, and air-based travel, similar to Transformed. Moreover, players can swap between different environments in the different "CrossWorlds" the game has to offer, based on various locales in Sonic's world and other SEGA titles.

CrossWorlds was first teased during The Game Awards in December 2024, but was officially announced during Sony's February 2025 State of Play event. The game will be released on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store.

A closed network test, allowing selected participants to try out an early build of the game (specifically the PS5 version) and test the game's online mode ran from February 21-23, 2025.

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Characters 

Tracks 

Previews:

• Cinematic Teaser Trailer
• Announce Trailer

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Warp through Travel Rings into new tropes!

• Alternate Company Equivalent: Based on the Digital Manual, at a basic level, some of the items that racers can pick up are very similar to those from the Mario Kart series in functionality:
  • The Wisp Boost items are equivalent to the Mushrooms, where using them grants the user a quick burst of speed. There is a Triple Boost as well, which acts similarly to the Triple Mushroom.
  • The Drill Wisp acts as the game's equivalent to Bullet Bill (introduced in Mario Kart DS), which turns the user into a Drill Wisp that automatically moves them towards the finish line.
  • The Homing Punch and Rocket Punch items are CrossWorlds' equivalent to the Red and Green Shells respectively, the former being a common item that can target and attack racers ahead of them, while the latter flies straight forward and can bounce off walls. Unlike the Green Shells, the Rocket Punch can be locked on to a target and will home in on their opponent. These items also come in triple variants.
  • King Boom Boo from SA2 acts like the Spiny Shell from Mario Kart, being a Comeback Mechanic that will attack the racer that is in first place.
  • The Slime item, when used, will block the vision of the racers and their machines, slowing them down, just like the Blooper item introduced in Mario Kart DS. Using the Slime also causes the racer to drop all of their items.
  • The Monster Truck is analogous to the Mega Mushroom from Mario Kart Wii, causing the user's car to grow giant and squish any racers it runs over.
• Anti-Frustration Features: The game offers various assist options, such as smart steering, auto acceleration, and automatic tricks. There’s also an option to use the control scheme from Team Sonic Racing, averting Damn You, Muscle Memory!.
• Art Evolution: The trailer showcases that the basic body structure of the characters have gotten some minor tweaks, most notable of which is that many characters have lengthened spines and quills.
• Artistic License – Paleontology: As the trailer shows, the dinosaurs from Sonic and the Secret Rings make a return in this game, still possessing the extra set of horns and spikes that they never had in real life. The Closed Network Test shows this extends to their skeletons, on display at Wonder Museum.
• Big "WHY?!": In the Closed Network Test, if Sonic or Cream hits Amy with an item, they'll apologize while Amy cries out "Sonic?! Why?" or "Cream?! Why?" in response.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • As shown in the trailer, Cream returns in a racing spin-off after being absent since Sonic Free Riders.
  • The trailer reveals that this is the first major Sonic game to feature the Babylon Rogues since Free Riders, outside of Jet and Wave's appearances in the Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games series and mobile spin-offs like Sonic Forces: Speed Battle.
  • Generic NPCs from Sonic Forces fill in this game's pit crew in the announce trailer, marking their first appearance in six years.
• Cap: In the Closed Network Test, racers can collect rings to gradually increase their top speed, maxing out at 100 rings. The cap can be doubled to 200 rings with the use of a specific gadget part.
• Character Class System: As outlined in the Closed Network Test, machines are split into four categories: Speed, Acceleration, Handling, and Power types. The Extreme Gear are a separate fifth class.
• Clean Cut: In the Closed Network Test, getting hit by the Slicer item will cause the target vehicle to be cut in half with one quick stroke, though luckily it won't hit the racers themselves.
• Comeback Mechanic: According to the Digital Manual, King Boom Boo from SA2 acts like the Spiny Shell from various Mario Kart games, where he will attack the machine that is in first place, disrupting an opponent's chances in order to give the player a chance to take the lead.
• Company Cross-References: Lava Cave is in part a 3D recreation of Ashutar from Galaxy Force, an old-school Sega rail shooter that predates Sonic, including the lava serpents and planets in the distance.
• Continuity Cavalcade: As seen in the announce trailer and Closed Network Test, there are racetrack promotional banners in E Stadium for various locales from Sonic's universe, such as Donpa Motors (and Donpa Holdings) from Team Sonic Racing, along with Kronos and Chaos Island from Frontiers.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Eggman and his team in the announce trailer have vehicles based on iconic imagery associated with them: Eggman's kart is based on his drill car from Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Metal Sonic's car is patterned after his Metal Overlord form from Sonic Heroes, and Sage's car is designed to resemble the GIGANTO Titan from Sonic Frontiers.
  • In the Closed Network Test, if Sonic hits Shadow with an item, he has a chance to quip about how that hit "jogged his memory," referring to the character's Laser-Guided Amnesia arc throughout Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: The game's controls in the Network Test differ greatly from the All-Stars Racing series and Team Sonic Racing, which can cause some whiplash when going into this game from the former three:
  • Accelerate is on the bottom face button (X on PS5, A on Xbox, B on Switch) instead of the right trigger (which is used for items), making it more akin to the Mario Kart series than previous entries. It seems Sega saw this coming, as there is an option on the character select screen to change the layout to Team Sonic Racing's instead.
  • The boats don't drift like they do in Sonic and All-Stars Racing: Transformed, instead doing a charge jump when holding the drift button. This has caused many players to try and drift on the boat while making a tight corner, only to go off course and/or run into a wall instead.
• Demoted to Extra: After being playable as part of the group of Chao in Team Sonic Racing, the manual for the game confirms that Omochao and the Dark Chao are demoted to items this time around, while several pre-release trailers show that the normal and Light Chao only appear in the background of certain tracks as spectators.
• Design-It-Yourself Equipment: A PlayStation Blog post details how vehicles are customizable in this entry, rather than characters being restricted to one vehicle or board like in past racing titles. Vehicles have their own unique set of parameters like speed, acceleration, and handling, with parts being swappable between the machines of the class the player chooses at the start of the process. The player can also adorn their vehicles with various stickers on the front or rear and customize their vehicle's colors.
• Gangplank Galleon: The Kraken Bay CrossWorld is a racetrack that takes place during a stormy night at sea, with the racers going through a shipwreck that is threatened by Boos throwing exploding barrels and a giant kraken.
• Gentle Giant Sauropod: The trailer shows a gigantic sauropod whose back acts as a road for the racers.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: In the announce trailer, not only does Sonic race alongside series Big Bad Dr. Eggman, his creation Metal Sonic, and one of the Egg Pawns, but Sonic Frontiers' Sage, Eggman's A.I. daughter, is playable too, though she's shown with her blue-and-white palette, rather than her original Red and Black and Evil All Over palette. Likewise, antagonistic Zeti like Zavok and Zazz are playable characters.
• Hoverboard: The announce trailer prominently features the Extreme Gear from the Riders games, used by both Sonic and Jet the Hawk.
• Kids Driving Cars: Among the Sonic cast, who are either teenagers or adults, six year old Cream and Charmy alongside the child-looking AI Sage are playable, meaning that they can drive cars here.
• Kraken and Leviathan: As seen in various screenshots and the announce trailer, the Kraken Bay CrossWorld is a racetrack at sea that features a huge squid-like kraken monster as a major setpiece amidst a sunken pirate ship out at stormy seas.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: The announce trailer features Sage from Sonic Frontiers in a blue-and-white palette rather than her original Red and Black and Evil All Over palette. This palette is used to indicate when she feels "positive" emotions like love (a pivotal part of her character arc in that game), especially in regards to her father, Dr. Eggman, and would be something she permanently keeps in the Another Story scenario.
• Lethal Lava Land: In the Closed Network Test, one of the CrossWorlds players can race through is Lava Caves^note , taken from Galaxy Force: a volcanically-overactive planet with oceans of magma and dragons made of fire.
• The Multiverse: As outlined in the game description, racers will be warping through Travel Rings entering different dimensions. Additionally, characters from Sonic Prime (which features Alternate Selves of the main Sonic cast who hail from different variations of the prime universe) will be playable when buying the Digital Deluxe Edition. Lastly, it's also confirmed that other Sega characters will be playable as well.
• Mythology Gag:
  • As seen in the Announcement Trailer, the lead racer picks what the next part of the track will be, bringing to mind the "Race of AGES" track from Sonic & All-Stars Racing: Transformed, where its main gimmick was the lead racer picking whether the current lap's second half takes place on the water or in the air.
  • In the trailer, there is an advertisement for a car air freshener based on his 16-bit sprite, a reference to the Early-Bird Cameo of Sonic in Rad Mobile.
  • One of Sonic's in-game lines in the Network Test is "You're too slow!", which is what he says when doing his side-taunt in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.^note 
• Nothing Personal: In the Closed Network Test, when hitting Omega with an item as Shadow, there's a chance that Shadow will quip that it's "nothing personal" between the two, with Omega even commending Shadow for a good hit.
• Original Generation: In a first for the Sonic Racing series, E-Stadium, Rainbow Park, Wonder Museum, and Chao Park are fully original track settings not based on any existing Sonic or SEGA stages.
• Pet the Dog: In the Closed Network Test, when Shadow is hit by an item by either Cream or Amy, he'll compliment them on how they managed to score a hit on him, considering he still has elements of his Competition Freak characterization when hit by Sonic.
• Prehistoria: The announce trailer shows the return of Dinosaur Jungle from Sonic and the Secret Rings, which features Sonic and friends racing around jungle-like areas that are littered with dinosaurs.
• Promoted to Playable:
  • As seen in the announce trailer's cinematic and gameplay, an Egg Pawn is now part of the playable cast this time around, as they were previously NPC racers in the original Team Sonic Racing.
  • As seen in the announce trailer's cinematic and gameplay, this is the first time that Sage is playable in any Sonic game since her debut in Sonic Frontiers, unless one counts the True Final Boss of the base game, where the player controls SUPREME while it's being piloted by Sage.
  • As seen in the announce trailer's cinematic and gameplay, this is the first time Vector's fellow Chaotix, Espio and Charmy, have been in a major racing spin-off. With Cream's addition, this is the first time in years that all the original Sonic Heroes teams are playable on a console game.
• Shout-Out: In the Closed Network Test, Wonder Museum is a track that takes place in a museum. In the first lap, it takes place during the day, but on the third lap, it turns to night and the artifacts come to life.
• Shown Their Work: In the Closed Network Test, an exhibit sign at Wonder Museum shows the two major clades of dinosaurs, Saurischia and Ornithischia, with birds being theropods and thus saurischian dinosaurs.
• Sore Loser: In the Closed Network Test, if Sonic ends up in 10th place or lower, one of the lines he'll say is "if we were racing on foot..." while sulking.
• Squashed Flat: In the Closed Network Test, when a racer is hit with the Weight item, run over by a racer using the Monster Truck item, hit by a Giant Rocket Punch, or crushed by another racer using the Warp Ring item, the racer goes completely flat for a few seconds.
• Terrifying Tyrannosaur: The trailer shows several Tyrannosaurus acting as obstacles for the racers in Dinosaur Jungle.
• Transforming Vehicle: The trailer reveals that cars are once again able to transform as in Sonic & All-Stars Racing: Transformed, with boat and plane forms as suited for the terrain. New to this installment is a Monster Truck power-up, which (according to the manual) causes the user's car to turn into a monster truck that can flatten racers it runs over.
• Wolverine Publicity: The Cinematic Teaser Trailer stars Shadow the Hedgehog rather than Sonic himself, with Shadow's spotlight in the trailer tying into Sega's Year of Shadow event that was taking place in 2024.

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