Sega resurrects its old ‘blast processing’ Genesis TV ad to fire shots at Mario Kart World

Sega has released a new ad for Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds which harks back to the days of its ’90s war with Nintendo.

The latest ad shows a TV playing a blurred out version of Mario Kart World, with a voiceover saying: “We all know that kart racing game. It’s great. We don’t need to show it to you.”

The ad then switches to footage of Sonic Racing: Crossworlds, saying: “But what if you can blast through and race on a whole other level?”

It then shows a race car zooming down a stretch of road, with a TV on the back showing the game in action, emphasising its speed, followed by a caravan with Mario Kart World on the back, failing to start as a tortoise walks past it.

“Or what if you want to roam around on the open road?” the ad says dismissively, taking aim at Mario Kart World’s open-world map.

Long-term Sega fans will recognise the ad as an homage to the company’s infamous US ‘blast processing’ ad from the early 90s, where a TV showing Sega Genesis games like Sonic the Hedgehog is strapped to a race car while a sputtering van fails to start while playing SNES game Super Mario Kart.

Both the old and new ads end with the slogan “welcome to the next level” followed by a racer shouting “Sega”. Both ads are below for comparison:

The new ad makes it clear that Sega is leaning into the fact that Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds offers a more traditional karting game structure than Mario Kart World’s revamp.

Whereas Nintendo‘s Switch 2 launch game places emphasis on its open world map and Grands Prix which have players driving from one circuit to the next, Sega’s latest racer features a more straightforward selection of cups and separate, non-connected circuits as seen in the vast majority of other karting games.

VGC went hands-on with Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds during the summer and suggested the game could fill the gap created by Mario Kart World’s change of focus.

“Karting games on Nintendo formats are usually ranked with the caveat “if you don’t count Mario Kart”, but CrossWorlds has the potential to provide players with a viable alternative that not only embraces some of the features left behind by Nintendo’s latest – the no-nonsense arcade racing, the addition of characters from other series, car customisation – but also promises to continually update itself more than Nintendo’s game might, ensuring it could remain fresh for quite some time,” we wrote.