In the kart racing world it takes some big cojones to go head to head with the game that essentially invented the genre – the granddaddy of them all – Mario Kart.

There are only two franchises who have done this successfully, the first is Crash Bandicoot with the excellent Crash Team Racing and now SEGA has thrown its hand in with its established stable of characters in Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing.

They say that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, and S&S All-Star Racing pays huge respect to Mario Kart by basically copying it, replacing the Nintendo Characters with SEGA characters and giving the tracks a SEGA theme. Even the weapons have direct comparisons to those available in Mario Kart. Don’t get me wrong, S&S All-Star Racing is certainly no Mario Kart killer (or equal) but it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

There’s no story and no explanation whatsoever as to why characters from all corners of the SEGA universe are converging on one game to race each other around tracks based on the games they originated from. There doesn’t need to be a story as games like this, Mario Kart and Crash Team Racing are unabashed celebrations of everything SEGA, Nintendo and umm Crash Bandicoot respectively.

SEGA does have an enormous back catalogue of popular games and characters dating back to a time when many of you reading this review were still a flagon of Rheineck away from being conceived. But there are only 20 playable characters included in the game of which a sweeping glance will see almost all the characters from Sonic the Hedgehog, AiAi from Super Monkey Ball, Ulala from Space Channel 5, B.D. Joe from Crazy Taxi, Ryo Hazuki from Shenmue, Jacky and Akira from Virtua Fighter, Beat from Jet Set Radio, Alex Kidd and some characters from ChuChu Rocket! Only a handful of these are playable initially but the rest are unlockable as you earn currency along the way. SEGA purists will no doubt rant about some of the character omissions, but there are shout-outs to games such as Fists of Rage, Golden Axe and Altered Beast in some of the Trophies/Achievements on offer.

Buy the game on the Wii and you’ll not only get a much worse looking game, but you’ll get to use your Mii to race with. Xbox 360 owners get an exclusive bonus in their version with Banjo and Kazooie available as playable characters. What does the PS3 version have extra? Nothing.

As I’ve already mentioned, S&S All-Star Racing is essentially Mario Kart sans moustaches, so I’m sure I don’t need to explain what’s going on. There are shameless similarities from the drift & boost racing to the 4 player, split screen Battle Mode where a couple of tracks are almost ripped straight out of Mario Kart.

One original feature is that each character has a special power-up that is unique and matches their game of origin. Sonic and Shadow both turn Super Sonic and earn a blistering burst of speed, Billy Hatcher squashes characters with a giant egg and Amigo has a maraca attack that makes every player he touches join in a conga line behind him. It’s a thoughtful inclusion although it does bring a certain imbalance to the game with some character’s power-ups being much more useful than others. Which ones? I’ll leave that up to you to discover.

Graphically the tracks, surroundings, characters and vehicles are beautifully recreated. The PS3, 360 and Wii versions are almost identical in content with the Wii only suffering from the lack of HD support. This is even more evident in 4 player split screen battles on the Wii as the textures are stripped right back to the bare essentials to allow for the game to run smoothly. It’s not all good news for the PS3 and 360 versions though, the framerate suffers horribly much of the time due to having to draw all the prettiness at high speeds. This is very evident when the tracks start taking loops and corkscrews. It doesn’t make the game unplayable by any means as you still get a decent sense of speed.

The single player mode does ramp up the difficulty early on in the piece so don’t expect to blitz it like many arcade racers, it does present a worthy challenge. But as with the mighty Mario Kart, Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing has its focus firmly on the multiplayer whether it be online or splitscreen with some mates.