If you were a regular listener to past episodes of Wonderpod you would remember that both Bruce and myself were big fans of the original Sonic All Stars Racing from a few years ago. As a matter of fact, we played online via XBL many times as well as playing single player on our own. So when the demo for the sequel came out on XBL I gave it a shot and was pretty impressed. Then, I came into temporary possession of the new WiiU console and decided to try the demo out on that machine. I am glad I looked into this game on the WiiU because it may have convinced me to wait until I own my very own new Nintendo console before I pick up this title. And here is why.

While both demos look absolutely identical and are both a lot of fun, the WiiU version has a few more features that I am more excited about. The full  WiiU version of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed has the unique ability to play the game on either the big screen or, if necessary,  the ability switch over to the game-pad . Either the demo didn’t have this feature, or more likely  I was too dumb to figure out how to do it.  However, switching between TV and game-pad can be done in the full game completely on the fly and it is a great selling feature. Sure if you are a gamer living alone, playing in nothing than your boxer shorts with your chest covered in potato chip crumbs, this feature probably does not mean much to you, I suppose. But for anyone with a roommate, a wife/girlfriend, siblings who always want to do something other than what you are doing and especially anyone with kids,this is a wonderful thing. With the WiiU version I can still play while sitting beside my little guy when he wants to watch cartoons, or I can play on the game-pad while the wife watches her TV shows on the big screen, all the while making me look like “the good guy”. This will result in a lot more game time for me and for many other people.

When you are playing on the big screen, the WiiU version of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed gives you a very nice real time map of the race on the game-pad, showing off your position and the position of the others in game. When you use certain power ups, the game-pad also has a  cool, albeit VERY distracting, “picture in picture” mode showing your weapon as it gets closer and closer to your target. I really like these features but as I discovered in the demo spending more than 2 seconds looking at the game-pad while racing will very likely result in a crash. So they are neat features , but you cant spend much time looking at.

Anyway you look at it ,Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed looks to be a very fun racing game on any system. And probably the online  mode will be superior on XBL. Although I say “probably” because I have yet to test out any online games while test driving the WiiU so who knows, maybe it is a great improvement over the Wii. After playing the demos for this game I know that I will, sooner or later, pick it up. Especially at its lower than average price tag of $39.99 brand new. But, after playing  the demo on both the WiiU and X-BOX 360, I give the edge to the WiiU version, even if I don’t have my own WiiU. Yet.