The Ninja Turtles arrive in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds with a New York City track

The Turtles are racing Sonic now. Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello and Michelangelo went into Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds on July 29, and if that lands as unremarkable in 2026, it is worth sitting with for a second. Konami published the Turtles games that mattered, the arcade cabinet and Turtles in Time. Sega spent those same years trying to put Nintendo in the ground. Those companies did not trade characters. They barely shared a shelf.

The pack is $5.99 on its own, or it comes inside the $29.99 season pass, and Digital Deluxe owners already have it. Four playable Turtles, a Pizzafire Van, a New York City track, music built on the license, six emotes each. If you skip it you can still race the people who bought it, and New York City still comes up in the rotation.

CrossWorlds launched last September with 24 characters. It is at 52. Pac-Man is in it, and Mega Man, and SpongeBob, and Minecraft’s Steve, and Hatsune Miku, and Joker out of Persona 5, with Godzilla and Evangelion booked for year two. Sonic Team has turned a kart racer into the one garage where every old mascot roster parks together. Turtles in Time is in the Vault. So is Sonic the Hedgehog. Nothing about playing either of them in 1992 suggested they would end up on the same starting grid.

There is a wrinkle here, and it is mine. On the podcast last week I held CrossWorlds up as the good example of Switch 2 physical media, the one where the cartridge actually has the game on it instead of a Game-Key Card pointing at a download. That is still true, and it still beats the alternative. It is also worth being precise about what the cartridge holds, which is the game as it stood on the day it was pressed. Most of the current roster arrived after that. Buy the box and you own a kart racer. The Turtles are a license on a storefront.