The characters themselves are full of personality and regularly flip each other off mid-race or perform strange stunts during jumps and skids. The graphics are overall a nice mix: everything looks pretty good and is fairly clean, though some background details appear to be MIA. Perhaps the main flaw with the track design is that virtually everything within a 'theme' comes from an identical selection of game resources, so one track is only distinguishable from another after repeated plays, whereas in Mario Kart all the levels, though themed around the Mushroom Kingdom, are easily placed and mentally separated. Sometimes it feels like an encyclopedic knowledge of the tracks is more important than the ability to drive or even correct errors. All too-often, colours on the side of the track merge into one and upcoming corners are rendered totally invisible, leading to many head-long smashes into the scenery. The casino stages are full of roulette wheels, flying poker chips, enormous dice and stacks of cards which all hold up well in their own way, but the greatest obstacle in many of the levels is the levels themselves. The courses are also a mixed bunch: there are no clear stand-out tracks, but several howlers that should have been thrown out during the beta stage. Tails and Eggman are good examples - Tails is prone to massively oversteering, Eggman is sluggish, too sluggish in fact to make it credible that he is capable of rivalling you in terms of speed when played by the AI.

Naturally, most racers will want to start with Sonic, who really is the most balanced of all characters, but he's also a safe choice because a few other characters in the game are almost useless for beginners. It makes a good start and is leagues ahead of other kart games manufatured by third parties, but is easily pipped to the post by Nintendo's more seasoned veteran. On the one hand, it's a surprisingly entertaining Mario Kart clone on the other hand, it's steeped in the speed and mythos of Sega, which do not gel so well overall. Sega's new racing title is a good game with one fundamental flaw: It has no idea which game it is. 'By far the best Mario Kart clone we've seen grace a home console.'

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