As this year is quickly drawing to an end, most of us had forgotten that just over a year ago, Sega held a poll for fans to pick which character would be added to Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed as a DLC racer. Console versions of the game only saw Metal Sonic as a DLC racer, then were largely abandoned by developer Sumo Digital.
On PC however, SART has had a very different life. After a delayed release, PC players have been getting a pretty steady stream of free characters including Football Manager, Shogun, Team Fortress, General Winter, and Willemus. None of these characters were from the poll, however, and obviously added because they originate from PC titles (mostly from Sega). Fans had given up hope of seeing another true classic Sega character added to the game, until this curious listing popped up on Steam last month.
With the listing indicating the next update as paid DLC, this was surely going to be that long-awaited character we were promised. Was it going to be Ryo from Shenmue (who was a racer in the previous game)? Project DIVA‘s Hatsune Miku? Well, today we get the DLC. Simon from Yogcast…
WTF is a Yogcast?! Some obscure Dreamcast peripheral?
So it turns out that Yogcast is a highly popular YouTube channel with over 6 million subscribers. Sega was already planning on participating in the upcoming Charity Humble Bundle, and thought since the YouTuber participated in the yearly charity drive as well, he would be a good fit for the game (despite having never streamed or produced any videos based on SART).
It is hard to get mad at SEGA when 100% of the DLC proceeds are going to charity. Sumo Digital also explained that the lack of DLC on consoles was up to Sega not giving them any money to do so.
This isn’t as we don’t want to add these characters to the console, I think you already know that I’d love to have all characters on every platform, hell I’d port the game to Dreamcast given the choice, but there are real financial reasons why it may not be practical.
DLC for a game that’s already over a year old is always a tough sell anyway… and it’s not like SART was a smash hit with an active community. Still, for a company to hold a DLC poll to garner interest in a newly released title, then not fullfill that DLC promise a year later is a bit shady.
All is not lost quite yet however, as they’ve promised more content is on the way after the Yogcast DLC when many people were upset on the game’s Steam Forum.
How’s this folks? You are super passionate about the Sumo Poll, We are today taking a serious look at the possibilities of getting one of the most popular characters greenlit.
We’ve got some things going on over the next few weeks which will hopefully get more players into SART too.
This charity DLC was never intended to replace or take the place of any other character, I hope you understand that.
Thanks for being such keen and passionate fans, some of you that are most critical have racked up awesome playtime on SART, we had no intention of causing upset by adding this charity feature.
Still… I’d like to dream that I could have possibly played as Segata Sanshiro and been able to judo slam other cars while his glorious theme song played in the background.
I don’t have too much hope… in their apology, there was admission that they hadn’t even greenlit the creation of a character from the poll. Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed will likely never get more console DLC support from Sega.
Still… I’d like to dream that I could have possibly played as Segata Sanshiro and been able to judo slam other cars while his glorious theme song played in the background. That now seems just as likely as my dream of getting to play Shenmue 3.
Update- The DLC replaces the random select button if you also have Metal Sonic… so maybe hold off if you plan on using that feature. The racer also is not voiced by Simon, the person it is based on.
