Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds Built on SEGA’s “Secret Sauce” from SEGA Rally and OutRun

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds may look like a bright and playful kart racer on the surface, but under the hood, it’s built on decades of SEGA’s racing heritage. In a new interview with Automaton, creative director Masaru Kohayakawa and former Initial D arcade producer Kenji Arai revealed that the game borrows from SEGA’s most iconic racers — what they call the company’s “secret sauce.”

Developed with input from SEGA’s veteran Initial D arcade team, CrossWorlds combines the energy of modern kart racing with mechanical precision. However, Kohayakawa clarified that its handling wasn’t lifted directly from Initial D but instead from a much earlier foundation.

“Driving behavior in the Initial D arcade series was controlled by one programmer who’s been doing that same job ever since SEGA Rally,” said Kohayakawa. “Now, one of their students oversees the driving behavior in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds. When building the system, they actually used SEGA Rally’s game design as a base, not Initial D.”

While SEGA Rally provided the groundwork for the driving physics, Kohayakawa explained that the team also drew major inspiration from OutRun (1986), SEGA’s legendary arcade racer. The “satisfying feeling” of drifting in OutRun served as a key reference point while refining CrossWorlds’ controls.

Though OutRun was originally developed by SEGA’s AM2 team, its influence reached CrossWorlds through SEGA AM Plus — a division that branched off from AM2 and included one of SEGA Rally’s original programmers. The result is a unique fusion of expertise drawn from across SEGA’s racing lineage, enhanced by Sumo Digital’s intuitive control design and the technical know-how of the Initial D veterans.

As Kohayakawa summed it up:

“Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds has the secret sauce of SEGA. It extracts and combines the essence of not just Initial D, but also legendary titles like SEGA Rally and OutRun.”

The end result is a racer that honors SEGA’s history while propelling the series into a new era — fast, stylish, and unmistakably Sonic.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is available now for PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store. A digital edition for Nintendo Switch 2, along with an upgrade pass, will arrive this winter.

Stay tuned to Sonic City for more news and updates on Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds and the future of SEGA’s racing legacy.