ToeJam & Earl creator would like duo added to Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed

In 2009, ToeJam & Earl creator Greg Johnson said he and fellow creator Mark Voorsanger would be open to the possibility of adding his famous space trotting duo as playable racers in Sumo Digital’s Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing. Of course, as history would prove, this would never come to pass.

“I was a little bummed when it didn’t happen,” he said in this week’s SEGA Nerdcast. “The reality of it, though, is that it takes a lot of time; it’s complicated. You start talking with a publisher and a producer and everything will be great. Then the lawyers (get involved.) Their job is to look out for the interest of the company and basically get everything they can.

“So then you get a contract that says, ‘Oh by the way, now we own everything going forward, and we have the rights to publish this on all these other platforms if we want to,'” he continued. “Then you go back to the producer and say, ‘Hey, what a second. What’s this doing in the contract?’ And they say, ‘Oh, that’s not supposed to be there. Let me go back and talk to the lawyer.’ All of a sudden, two or three months have gone by.

“So that’s really the kind of thing that happens, and the fans are sitting out there asking where is it,” Johnson said. “How do you explain that to people? It’s just the reality of how the industry works.”

However, Johnson told us he and Voorsanger remain willing to talk to SEGA about ToeJam and Earl becoming available as playable characters in the game’s sequel Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed or a future title in the racing series.

“Hopefully, it still can or will. I don’t see any reason why not,” said Johnson, whose company HumaNature Studios recently released Doki-Doki Universe on PlayStation consoles. “I think the more it can be out there the better. As long as (Sumo Digital) isn’t having ToeJam and Earl toting guns and blasting people’s heads off. But the violence in those games were pretty cartoony and playful, so we weren’t worried about that.”

With Ryo Hazuki presumably the next racer in the competition, how would you feel if ToeJam and Earl entered the race?