CrossWorlds Items Were Cut During Development

Some Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds items that have been in development with Sonic Team won’t make their way to the fully released game, as the development team has simply deemed them too powerful to exist. There will still be plenty of items for players to use in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, but the developers are curating them to make sure they don’t throw off the fairness of gameplay.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds was first revealed at the viewership record-breaking Game Awards 2024 presentation last December. The initial reveal came through a very brief teaser trailer that depicted Shadow sitting in a race car before taking off into the horizon. There was very little content in the reveal, but the game’s mere existence was enough to draw cheers from the audience in attendance.

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Mario Kart World and Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds Aren’t Rivals, But Two Sides of the Same Coin

Even though Mario Kart World and Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds are releasing close together, the two are better standing side by side than as rivals.

Along with unveiling six surprise guest characters for Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, a recent appearance at Summer Game Fest revealed the crossover racing game’s official release date of September 25, 2025. Ahead of the game’s release, series producer Takashi Iizuka revealed in an interview with GamesRadar+ that the teams from the Sonic Racing and Sega Arcade Racing series have come together with the mindset of creating a balanced and fair racing game, first and foremost, practically building it from scratch. Part of that process has involved the removal of items that gave too much of an advantage to the racers holding them, but leaving in the ones that produced “the right amount of chaotic” gameplay.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds Team Values Fair Racing Over Overpowered Items

The joint development team created all of Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds‘ courses and vehicles before designing any items at all. Only after the developers were satisfied with the quality of the racing aspects did they begin their initial item implementation, providing a solid racing game in which to test the addition of any potential items. Multiple rounds of playtesting were then implemented, and while he didn’t give any exact numbers, that playtesting resulted in the elimination of many items, with Iizuka explaining that “anything that always allowed people to come back from behind and win all the time needed to be removed from the concept.”

While not part of the same interview, Iizuka had thrown shade at Mario Kart World earlier this month. In an explanation of Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds‘ features, he let fans know that his team’s game is a multi-platform release that features cross-platform play, unlike “another racing kart game” that was clearly intended as Mario Kart World. Iizuka has also offered kinder words about Nintendo’s recent racing release, praising its development team, but he has stated that the two games are very different, with Mario Kart World filling the action game role and Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds being more akin to a pure competitive racer.