Upon finally playing (it takes time to review five Wii U games!) Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed in preparation for our review, I was excited to get some hands-on time with the full retail version. After figuring out the controls and getting the hang of the flow of the game, it turned out to be quite the fun time. Unfortunately, the experience went sour about thirty minutes in. One of the game’s modes is called “Boost Challenge”, where players must boost as often as possible to not run down the clock. While the previous races and modes were challenging, this one seemed a bit too difficult. After about ten tries where on the 10th the course was executed perfectly and still failed, suspsion set in that something was wrong.

Upon checking out the same level on the Xbox 360 version, the problem became clear; the Wii U version does not have about 75% of the Boost Pads that the 360/PS3 versions do, rendering the entire mode impossible to complete. To make matters worse, it must be cleared to move forward in the game, making any level past the fifth unreachable under normal circumstances. Luckily, we figured out that if you play the game on the lowest difficulty and fail twice, the option to skip the level is given, but it’s hardly an acceptable solution. In fact, any gamers without good net researching skills (we’re thinking youth) will basically have an unplayable game.

While this may seem like the kind of glitch that would have been patched day one, apparently it’s been a problem since then and owners of the game have been unable to complete these modes the past week and a half.

It’s a very disappointing oversight and response — especially for a game heralded as the premire version.