CrossWorlds Are Two Sides of the Same Coin

2025 has turned out to be a prominent year for racing games, and mascots Mario and Sonic are personally leading that charge. Mario Kart World has just been released as a Switch 2 launch title, and Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is not too far behind with a September 25 release date announced at Summer Game Fest. The first half of the year was full of potential players going back and forth with news between the two titles, with comparisons and speculation all around.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is still in the middle of its press cycle leading up to its release date, and now with the new era of Mario Kart just beginning, it’s clear that there’s more between these games than fans might have seen on the surface. Mario Kart World and Sonic’s time and space racing adventure actually have the same goals in mind, and make up for what the other lacks in terms of features.

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2025’s Racing Games Are a Burst of Nostalgia For Fans of One Era

There are three prominent racing games players have to look forward to this year, and coincidentally, they all harken back to an important gaming era.

Mario Kart World and Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds Deliver on Similar Experiences With Different Approaches

Just as they’ve always done, Mario and Sonic have different styles to their experiences. Mario Kart World may be a racing game, but it encourages players to explore and take things at their own pace with things like Free Roam and Photo Mode being available almost everywhere in single-player modes. Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, on the other hand, leads into the hedgehog’s motto of speed to where it’s hard to see that the two games are actually very similar in what they’re trying to achieve.

The two titles have a shared theme of making the journey into something worthwhile. Mario Kart World includes the in-between of the tracks to highlight its world and what’s in it, and Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds does the same thing with a bit of an instant twist. CrossWorlds gets its name from its Travel Ring mechanic, where players have to choose a ring at the start of the second lap to take them somewhere completely different, only to return to the first track as it takes on a new form for the final lap.

Mario Kart World‘s Rainbow Road does something similar, appearing in the middle of an interlude to open up for the racers after being away for some time, according to the game’s credits.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds and Mario Kart World also share an innate love for their franchises and what came before them. CrossWorlds travel rings and tracks are from previous Sonic games, and Mario Kart World brings in a ton of familiar characters to its huge roster. Both games embrace the music of the series, but Mario Kart World takes the cake with the number of remixes that can be heard while driving around in Free Roam. Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds brings back the EX Gear from Sonic Riders, and also boasts a huge roster full of Sonic characters like Zavok and Sage.

In the recent news brought out of Summer Game Fest, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds revealed a new “rival racer” feature for its Grand Prix races. These characters will talk to the player, mocking them or complaining about their skills, depending on how well they perform. While Mario Kart World isn’t so open about it, its own Grand Prix races feature one NPC that performs better than the rest that’s represented by the character fans will unlock at the end after the races are finished.

At the end of it all, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds and Mario Kart World have made it a point to fix one issue from their previous installments, and that’s how they punish the player. Mario Kart 8 was infamous for having players come to a complete stop for several seconds if hit by too many items at once, and Team Sonic Racing did something similar with its own items and collision.

Mario Kart World is out now, and players can feel the difference for themselves, but Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds‘ gameplay videos so far have shown no signs of letting fans quit against the obstacles in their path. With these similarities in mind, it’s clear that both titles want to deliver a great experience fans can enjoy in ways that suit their respective franchises, and that means plenty of series loyalists will be satisfied with their new games this year.