The soundtrack is fairly robust as well containing at least 40 music tracks all in styles reminiscent of the games they are attached to or originally from. Additionally, the cart sounds are decent and keep you engrossed in the game as are the the ambient sounds and the weapon sounds. There in one strange thing about it all thought, the announcer. I swear that at times he says "things are about to hot up" which makes no sense and I know he’s not saying "heat" like one would expect. In fact, he’s about the only drawback to the game. Fortunately, SEGA realized that some of us might not like the commentator and it can be turned off in the game settings. There are separate volume settings for music, effects and speech even.

The game tracks your progress via your SEGA license. It changes color as you reach certain milestones and tracks stats like how long you’ve driven, how many miles (the in-game currency) you’ve accrued and your favorite track, driver, etc.

The online component is well integrated into the game with leaderboards for all of the time trials and three online multiplayer ’modes’ including play with anyone, play with friends and XBLA party. Races can be set up on specific courses with a user-decided amount of laps, private slots (for friends) AI drivers (and skill level) and whether or not power-ups and catch up are on or off.

SEGA even went so far as to give you four sets of controls that you can choose between in the options menu, something that many developers fail to do. Even though I was more than happy with standard configuration, some others might not be or may have non-standard controllers that are better suited to a different configuration.

All in all Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing is the most robust cart racer I’ve seen (and I’ve played them all). It’s got pretty much everything one would expect, and a couple more things. The 64 missions and ability to run time trials on all of the courses is cool. Sure you might not need to buy all of the racers or music tracks but it is a cool feature that will allow you and your friends to play exactly who you want and how you want. With 24 courses, 3 difficulty levels, 64 missions, and at least 21 racers all avaiable in both single and multiplayer modes, the game will keep you coming back for more. In fact, I’m off to play more right now instead of doing some work.

The only thing really lacking is better diversity in the vehicles themselves and being able to mix and match vehicles or upgrade basic components. But that’s not what these cart racers are really about, now is it?

See next page for driver listing.