Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds
An arcade-style kart racer built around drifting, item pickups and a mid-race course swap, CrossWorlds puts Sonic and friends behind the wheel of vehicles that convert into boats and planes. Travel Rings pull the field out of one course and into another partway through a race. Sonic Team developed the game and SEGA published it on 25 September 2025 for PC, PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo systems.
Top 3 Reasons to Play
- Races do not stay on one circuit, which keeps a familiar cup from playing out the same way on every repeat run.
- Builds go well past picking a favorite character: five classes, more than 70 gadgets and swappable parts can add a third item slot, speed up drift boosts or hand out a starting item.
- Four players can split one screen on a single system, and online lobbies run across platforms for friends or random opponents.
Story and Lore
No story mode ships with the game. Reviewers describe a package built purely around racing, with no campaign or open world, and the official pitch offers a premise rather than a plot: portals called Travel Rings drop Sonic into a multiverse where each race is a surprise.
The setting comes through in the courses instead. Holoska is carried over from Sonic Unleashed, Sweet Mountain from Sonic Colors and Dinosaur Jungle from Sonic and the Secret Rings, while Metal Harbor revives a stage from Sonic Adventure 2 and Digital Circuit traces back to Shadow the Hedgehog. New locations sit alongside these returning places.
The only running commentary belongs to the Rival assigned to each Grand Prix, who taunts the player while the race is on.
Gameplay and Mechanics
Driving and boosting
Drifting drives the boost system. Holding the drift button through a corner stores a boost, and letting go fires it; powerslides are central to placing well. Rings lying on the course lift top speed, but wall hits, collisions, falls off the course and enemy items strip them away. Vehicles switch between car, boat and plane forms at set points on the track. Combat items include boxing gloves and slicers aimed at opponents, while a Wisp pickup adds a short burst of speed.
Travel Rings and CrossWorlds courses
After the first lap of a standard race, two portals open. The racer in first place steers through one of them, and the whole field spends lap two on the CrossWorlds course behind it before the final lap returns to the starting circuit. CrossWorlds courses cannot be picked from a menu, so the portals are the only way in.
Builds, classes and gadgets
Racers and vehicles fall into one of five classes: Speed, Acceleration, Boost, Handling and Power.
- Unlocked vehicle parts from different machines can be mixed, which shifts top speed, acceleration, boosting and turning.
- Gadgets sit on a plate with a limited number of slots, and the stronger ones take up more room. Effects range from a starting item to a higher ring cap and an automatic boost after falling off the course.
- Extreme Gear hoverboards from Sonic Riders are built from the same parts-and-abilities system.
Game modes
- Grand Prix: eight cups, each a run of four races whose finale strings together one lap of each preceding course. The last two cups become available after the first six.
- Race Park: a party mode with six race formats, online or offline, where rule twists such as bonus points for collecting rings change what winning means.
- Time Trials: best-time runs on single courses, ranked on global leaderboards.
- World Match: ranked online racing for up to 12 players, with Rank Points and a World Rank.
- Friend Match and Custom Match: lobbies with adjustable speed, team size, courses, AI difficulty, items and rule sets, online for friends and offline in split-screen for up to four.
- Festivals and Legend Competitions: limited-time events.
Progression
Each Grand Prix assigns a Rival, and finishing with more points than that Rival counts as a win over them even without taking the cup. Donpa Tickets, earned through racing and challenge objectives, pay for penalty-free retries of a Grand Prix race and are gifted to racers in the Friendship menu, which becomes available once the main cups are finished and pays out cosmetic titles and decals.
Characters and Factions
The launch roster has 23 racers, most of them from established Sonic groupings.
- Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Shadow, Rouge, Silver, Blaze, Cream and Cheese, Big and E-123 Omega make up the heroic side.
- Dr. Eggman, Metal Sonic and Egg Pawn cover the villains.
- Team Chaotix is represented by Vector, Espio and Charmy.
- From Sonic Riders come Jet, Wave and Storm of the Babylon Rogues.
- Zavok and Zazz of the Deadly Six complete the list alongside Sage, in her first appearance since Sonic Frontiers.
Free updates have added guests from SEGA's other series and beyond: Hatsune Miku, Joker from Persona 5, Ichiban Kasuga and Goro Majima of Like a Dragon, NiGHTS, AiAi of Super Monkey Ball, Axel of Crazy Taxi, Tangle and Whisper from IDW's Sonic comics, and Classic Sonic with a machine of his own.
Paid packs bring Steve, Alex and Creeper from Minecraft, SpongeBob and Patrick, PAC-MAN with the ghosts, and Mega Man with Proto Man, along with packs themed on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Avatar Legends. Three Sonic Prime racers (Rusty Rose, Tails Nine and Knuckles the Dread) ship with the Season Pass.
Two racers sit outside the packs: Super Sonic, who is earned in play, and the Werehog, Sonic's beast form from Sonic Unleashed, who came as a pre-order bonus.
Editions
Every edition contains the same base game; the difference is the bundled DLC.
- Standard Edition: the base game only.
- Digital Deluxe Edition: the base game plus Season Pass One, which covers six crossover packs (Minecraft, SpongeBob SquarePants, PAC-MAN, Mega Man, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Avatar Legends) and the Sonic Prime racer pack.
- Year Two Digital Deluxe Edition: the base game plus Season Pass Two. Anyone who already owns the game only needs the pass, since the edition adds a second copy.
Season Pass Two consists of six packs themed on Godzilla, EVANGELION, Virtual Sanrio Puroland, SEGALAND, Final Fantasy VII Remake and Persona. Owning both passes adds Super Shadow with the Super Dark Flare machine. Each pass and each individual pack is also sold on its own.