iOS has rapidly become a major platform for mobile gaming, and is a big part of the reason the 3DS and PSVita are not getting as much traction as Nintendo and Sony would like. That’s how I see it anyway. I of course am a big Apple fan at this point, so I have been doing a fair bit of gaming on my iPhone 4. It’s really disrupting my perspective on pricing, at least for handheld games. I find myself unwilling to spend money on the eShop or even on retail games when $1 or $2 can get you so many quality titles on the App Store. But then the quality and the IPs of the dedicated gaming handhelds wins me over eventually. Point is, I use both. Obviously my iOS games tend more towards the casual, as is the nature of the platform, but I have played Rayman 2 on there and I have Final Fantasy 3 (DS version) queued up to play soonish.

The App Store is great because of how flexible pricing can be. It’s set by the developers and they hold sales for any old thing. In this case, I managed to pick up the latest successful Mario Kart competitor (or at least the mobile port) for free. There’s obviously in-app purchases I have no desire to partake of, but it feels a little weird playing through a game like this not having paid for it (hypocrite, you use emulators)(yeah, yeah ok, I’ll post about that one day).

So most of my life I’ve been a NIntendo fanboy. I really only know about Sega from acquaintances’ consoles (most of my friends had Nintendo as well) or, later on when they dropped the hardware game and started bringing their software to our platform. I didn’t know that we’d won that war, in my little zone there was no war. There was only Nintendo. So I’d read about a few interesting looking games in N64 gamer—it wasn’t until my family bought an Xbox (for the DVD player) that I actually played a Sega game. We had the double set of Sega GT 2002 and Jet Set Radio Future. Both great, great games. We later bought the super Sonic collection from the bargain bin, and played about ten minutes of it and got bored. More recently I also picked up ChuChu Rocket and Ecco the Dolphin on, yes, iOS for a buck each. And that, apart from a short turn on a department store Dreamcast and a rented copy of NiGHTS into Dreams, is my Sega experience.

Having said all that, this game interested me. Maybe because the 360 version is DKU due to Banjo and Kazooie appearing. Maybe it seemed like what Mario Kart could have been if it was a more interesting crossover game. I don’t know why ROB and the Blue Falcon in MKDS excite me so much; I am a huge Smash Bros fan though. Crossovers are just interesting, especially when you have such a stable of creative characters that Sega does. Even if I don’t recognise half of them.

Well, the game was free and there were enough characters I knew, I couldn’t not give it  a try. And it was quite fun. The simple pleasure of earning points after races, saving up and buying new characters is a compelling incentive for me to come back. The missions were fun, if a little imbalanced in difficulty between each other. The weapons are ok, nothing too special (although I may have missed some references they were making). The individual super weapons were silly though. They all seemed the same and just were underwhelming. The tracks were varied and very much had the flavour of their originating series, although that Eggman casino one was just too hard.

By the way, I should say here that the mobile version of this game is very stripped down compared to the console. I don’t really know what elements they have in common, but the mobile one has many less characters and tracks, for all I know the modes and mechanics are very different, the controls are certainly different. I don’t think I ever played a racer with no accelerate button! It’s automatic, you just brake and slide. Steering is either tilt or on-screen slider (I used that, tilt controls can be annoying if not implemented well). For what it is though, it’s a fairly significant little piece of game, and there was a content update recently so that’s cool.

As far as characters go, fortunately the ones I liked had fairly good stats. The ChuChu mouse was a powerhouse with low acceleration, and Beat was fairly all-round. I couldn’t give two tosses about the Sonic cast, who as in most Sega crossover games seem to be over-represented. The Jet Set tracks just made me want that HD remake of the original sooner. I can’t wait, after having so much fun with the sequel. I don’t know or care who that douche on the motorbike was, probably Generic Fighty Game 2000. Every studio has a franchise like that, or several. Two different monkeys was amusing, with me having no experience with their source. Pretty solid cast all round I think. If only there was an Ecco track (don’t know if Sega actually has the rights there. Oh well).

Not sure what else to say about this game, I just played it pretty casually, and the mobile version at least seems to encourage that style. I mean, I didn’t try to master it, and I essentially stopped playing after beating all the GP cups on easy mode. I quite liked it, I just didn’t have the Sega history to appreciate all the details. But the parts I did get made it much more rewarding. I haven’t actually played any handheld Mario Karts to compare it to, but I played the free trial of Konami Crazy Racers for 5 minutes. Compared to that the controls and gameplay were way better, the characters and licenses were more interesting, so I guess it’s pretty close to the top of mascot racers on handhelds, at least for me. Glowing endorsement I know. Definitely worth it for free, probably worth the $2, especially if you’re not a sheltered Ninty boy like myself.

Man, I love crossovers. If only we had Captain Rainbow over here. Well, soon I’ll be playing Yoshi’s Island DS, that’s close to one. Still really enjoying Melee too. And I should unlock Indy in Lego Star Wars….(mumbling continues)

Wife’s comment: “Oh yeah, I tried that game. It’s ok, but it was a bit slippery. And I didn’t know any of the characters, so I didn’t care.” Wise words. We need to care, or we won’t play. The characters are all informed, like the game doesn’t attempt to set anything up, it assumes Sega literacy. Well, what can you do. Until next time.