Via GoNintendo, the above piece of artwork comes from one Chris Lewis, who is said to be developing the box art and promotional materials for Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing. As you can see, there is an image of Banjo and Kazooie from Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts on the back of the packshot, which was said to be a work in progress.

Unfortunately, Mr. Lewis seems to have removed his website following this, so all that can be found is at GoNintendo. Nonetheless, it leads one to wonder about the possibility of console-exclusive characters and content.

I have to say, seeing Mario or Captain Falcon or Master Chief or Ratchet & Clank would be pretty nice. Speaking of the latter, this seems to fall in line with those earlier rumors from the leaked Sony/SEGA meeting.

Elsewhere, people seem to be accusing Sumo Digital of "phoning in" the Wii version. Here is what staff member S0L had to say to the NeoGAF on the matter:

It always amuses me that people feel they need to kick the Wii :)

Far from phoning it in - we're actually being as ambitious as we can. You think it's easy to put the same game you're doing on PS3 and 360 onto the Wii with the same features? I can tell you sir, it is NOT! That doesn't mean we're not going to try though!

All versions of the game, from the biggest to the smallest are getting just as much love and care.

Yes, the framerate on some isn't complete, that's why at the base of the screen for the preview code shown it actually states it in nice big friendly letters. Maybe this should be mentioned when such comments are reported :P

We've got time left to sort this out - and we fully intend to. I've actually got a full team of coders and artists dedicated to doing just that.

As for being a core game, maybe on the face of it that may seem to be the case. Yes it's family friendly, and it's easy to pick up and play - but we've included quite a bit of core content in there, you ramp it up to Hard - or take on the Staff Ghosts - and it's certainly just as core as OutRun2 :)

Wait and see. Seriously!

But the NeoGAF wasn't the only place where the insults were flying; even on SEGA's own forums, there has been some back-and-forth over not only the framerate issues, but criticism of SEGA Superstars Tennis lacking online. Via GoNintendo, here is what S0L had to say there:

You do have a valid point where people need to scope their games for the platform. That's why the Wii demo shown was running slow, we were (and still are!) in the process of optimising the art, the physics and other elements of the game for the Wii hardware.

What we wanted to do - and the same's gone on in our other games, is ensure that if you bought the Wii version, you were getting the same game as the PS3 or 360 version. You think about it, we've attempted something that really is tricky on Wii. We've got unique characters and vehicles, huge tracks, loads of special effects and an All-Star move per character. That's quite a lot to hold in a console that has a fraction of the memory...!

Mind you we're pulling it off on DS - so I beleive it's doable :P

Online missing in SST Wii is one of those things we've never heard the end off. That's why it was top of my list of things to include on SSR. The truth of the matter is when we started SST, there was no online on Wii... It got announced mid-project, and by that point it was a massive risk to add it. You've got to remember each game has a budget and timeframe, and adding the online would have meant the game not meeting either.

Especially when if you consider at the time, it wasn't even guarenteed that there would be an audience for it either. We'd already decided the important thing on Wii was ensuring it was easy to get into and set up multiplayer games for relatively in-experienced players (and here, I[m thinking of my parents! - they'd never owned a console in their life till the Wii!). Certainly you can complain SST didn't have online, but I don't think you can complain the quality wasn't there elsewise.

VT2009 was a tricky project for us, especially on Wii. You've got to remember that it was the first time we'd implemented support for new tech (so the Online support, and beleive me this has a whole host of challenges on the Wii) and Wii motion plus (where we were pretty much a launch title for the hardware). It also had to have the same content as the PS3 and 360. In some ways I think it likely did suffer from over-ambition, and likely didn't get to be as polished as the team would have liked. If we let you down on this, then I'll apologise. We do learn from everygame done, and the members my team inherited from the VT2009 team have brought that experience to this project.

Right anyway, positive thoughts :P

We're going all out on SSR, and yes that includes on Wii. In fact there are a couple of Wii specific things that haven't been mentioned yet, now how is that for teasing. Keep an eye on Sega's website :)

And there you have it. It sounds like Sumo Digital is putting everything they can into the Wii version of the game, and then some. I'm rather eager to see what "Wii specific" things will come up.

Could that include exclusive guest racers?