In a similar situation to Marvel vs. Capcom 3, someone from Sumo Digital has reached out to the official Sonic forums asking for suggestions for DLC characters, with the stipulation that at least 1,000 people have to have voted for the same character by December 1st, and the top three will be possibly added as DLC characters pending approval from higher-ups at Sega and Sumo. There's no guarantee that the winners will actually become DLC, but there's no harm in voting. DLC characters already on the disc (Shogun and Football Manager) aren't included in the poll for obvious reasons. The original post and links to the petitions for each character can be found here, but I'll also link the individual petitions in this post.

At the time of this writing Hatsune Miku is the closest to meeting the goal at 958 votes (fucking Sega fans), with Segata Sanshiro in second at 650 votes. Please vote so we can get awesome characters like Segata Sanshiro, Kazuma Kiryu and Sketch Turner instead of fucking terrible ones like Hatsune Miku, Hatsune Miku and Hatsune Miku.

Edited on 11/25 to add two new options, Ecco the Dolphin and Spiral Knight.

-Alis Landale (Phantasy Star)

-Amitie (Puyo Puyo)

-Arle Nadja (Puyo Puyo)

-Ash (Hell Yeah!)

-Axel Stone (Streets of Rage)

-Bayonetta (Bayonetta)

-Billy Hatcher (Billy Hatcher & The Giant Egg)

-Blaze Fielding (Streets of Rage)

-Bonanza Bros. (Bonanza Bros.)

-Chu Chus (ChuChu Rocket!)

-Ecco The Dolphin (Ecco The Dolphin)

-Hatsune Miku (Vocaloid/Project DIVA)

-Jacky Bryant (Virtua Fighter)

-Kazuma Kiryu (Yakuza)

-Opa-Opa (Fantasy Zone)

-Phantom R (Rythm Thief)

-Rag Rappy (Phantasy Star)

-Ristar (Ristar The Shooting Star)

-Ryo Hazuki (Shenmue)

-Sakura Shinguuji (Sakura Taisen)

-Segata Sanshiro

-Selvaria (Valkyria Chronicles)

-Sketch Turner (Comix Zone)

-Space Harrier (Space Harrier)

-Spiral Knight (Spiral Knights)

-ToeJam & Earl (ToeJam & Earl)

-Vectorman (Vectorman)

-Welkin (Valkyria Chronicles)

Most of these are great. However, Kazuma Kiryu is the GREATEST.

Definitely, Kazuma Kiryu is easily my favorite Sega character of all time, though I'm not much of a Sega fan so I don't have too many favorites. I figured he was a shoe-in for inclusion in the game's roster since it'd give the game massive appeal in Japan where the Yakuza series is enormously popular, but it turns out the game isn't being released there. I really hope he pulls through.

How does the licensing for Hatsune Miku work? I'm pretty sure it's a bit more complicated than Sega just throwing her into the game, though I could be wrong, I know they do own the actual character. She's a bit too obscure outside of Japan though and she's not a videogame character, so I'd really hope she doesn't make it in.

Bayonetta and Kiryu would be great, but they seem a bit too "adult" to be included in something like this. I doubt we'll ever see either of them.

Personally, I hope Ryo makes it back in, I'd love to see Toejam & Earl and someone from Phantasy Star really should be there too. Another Skies of Arcadia character would be fine too, Fina with a transforming Cupil car would have been fun.

How is Ryo Hazuki not already in the game? He was in the first one! With his sick hawg that changed into a forklift!

Also, Sega should make a new Shenmue game.

@WinterSnowblind said:

How does the licensing for Hatsune Miku work? I'm pretty sure it's a bit more complicated than Sega just throwing her into the game, though I could be wrong, I know they do own the actual character. She's a bit too obscure outside of Japan though and she's not a videogame character, so I'd really hope she doesn't make it in.

Bayonetta and Kiryu would be great, but they seem a bit too "adult" to be included in something like this. I doubt we'll ever see either of them.

Personally, I hope Ryo makes it back in, I'd love to see Toejam & Earl and someone from Phantasy Star really should be there too. Another Skies of Arcadia character would be fine too, Fina with a transforming Cupil car would have been fun.

They don't own the character, but they own the digital licencing rights, for the moment, similar to how Capcom owned the Marvel digital licencing rights while making Marvel vs Capcom 3, and how Activision owns the Spiderman licencing rights.

And as much as I don't like her or the idea of her popularity (people don't even know what she IS, how is she THIS popular?), anything with her face on it sells millions. It's a safe easy system seller.

That being said, VOTE FOR SELVARIA DAMNIT!

What about that guy from Decap Attack? He was pretty rad.

I'm voting for the Xenomorph and Predator to appear in this game. Sega owns the license to that franchise now, so it shouldn't be a problem to have Xenomorphs and Predators racing each other

So The Ooze, Kid Chameleon, Ecco the Dolphin, and Chakan are already in the game? Because they aren't on your list.

@MooseyMcMan said:

How is Ryo Hazuki not already in the game? He was in the first one! With his sick hawg that changed into a forklift!

Also, Sega should make a new Shenmue game.

Do you real want the Sega of the modern era to make a Shenmue game?

@bartok said:

So The Ooze, Kid Chameleon, Ecco the Dolphin, and Chakan are already in the game? Because they aren't on your list.

Apparently nobody on the Sega forums wanted them. Didn't notice Ecco wasn't on the list, I would have thought somebody'd vote for him at the very least.

If i actually thought I would play this game, I'd easily campaign for Sketch Turner, Toejam & Earl, and then either Vectorman or Bayonetta. Bayonetta only to see what type of crazy ass vehicle she would be given. I'm assuming something made out of hair. But my condolences go out to you after seeing all those votes given to Hatsune Miku.

Add Rolf or Nei from Phantasy Star 2 to that list

The thing that sucks about this is a lot of those characters were originally in the first game.

The Sega forums added two new characters to the poll, Ecco The Dolphin and Spiral Knight, so I added them to the OP. With less than a week left though their chances aren't looking good.

I hate that I know who Hatsune Miku is. Fucking Vocaloid community...

Ecco is obviously the only choice in all this.

Don't really care about the game, but had to vote for Segata Sanshiro, because he is awesome.

I need to give the game a look. I had a Genesis as a kid and was a big SEGA fan at the time.

@MightyDuck said:

I need to give the game a look. I had a Genesis as a kid and was a big SEGA fan at the time.

It's a really solid game, I like it a lot more than the last couple of Mario Kart games. And it launched at $40 too, so I didn't hesitate to pick it up at release like I do most games.

@Taku128: I'll definitely give it a look then. I was a huge fan of Crash Team Racing back on the PS1 so kart racers are always good in my book.

Is there an actual "campaign" so to speak? By this I mean, finish first etc. to unlock the next set of races? I was just curious how this was set up.

Sega has the rights to the Total War franchise...so why not pull a Sengoku Basara and start having historical figures in a weird and crazy manner for the game?

I vote Napoleon.

@MightyDuck: The main single player mode is the World Tour mode, in which each chapter has a bunch of stages that either consist of a typical race or some kind of challenge or event. There's stuff like drifting and boosting challenges where you have to drift or boost between checkpoints to keep your timer up, battle events where you use items to take out either a single opponent or multiple opponents at once, stages where you fight a tank or dodge through traffic, and a few other stage types. I'd say about half of each chapter is made up of normal races, and the other half is all challenge events. You also select the difficulty of an event when you choose it and it determines how many stars you'll get for winning, which are used to unlock characters, mods that change the stats of your kart, and let you unlock "gates" so you can get to more stages and chapters in World Tour. You also gain XP to level up individual characters by racing as them, which in turn unlocks more mods that let you slightly change a characters stats. There isn't a story to the World Tour, but there's enough variety in the events to keep things interesting.

There's also a typical Grand Prix mode where you race through a cup made up of four tracks and try to get an over-all first place in the cup, but the World Tour is the main mode and where you unlock most of the characters.

Welp. Opa-Opa is doomed. I don't much care for most of the others to be honest.

Never forget.

Also I nominate Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington.

@ShaggE said:

I hate that I know who Hatsune Miku is. Fucking Vocaloid community...

The developers have stated that they're "puzzled" by the fact a guest character is topping the polls on the official website and are worried that her being there damages the credibility of the fan choices, since all they can do is present the list of requested characters to Sega.

So not only is there zero chance of her ever appearing in the game, but she's probably destroyed the hope of any fan requests from making it in at all.

@ZombiePie said:

Sega has the rights to the Total War franchise...so why not pull a Sengoku Basara and start having historical figures in a weird and crazy manner for the game?

I vote Napoleon.

..are all playable in the game via hacks. Seems they'll either be early DLC or more probably guest characters for the PC version, since their code is only there in the 360 version and none of them would make much sense for console players.

@WinterSnowblind: I saw that in the original post, and I'm requesting Sega go one step further into crazyville and add named historical figures.

I think RiStar, Vector-Man, and Ecco would be really cool additions. I would choose Ecco just to see how they do her car.

@thegoldencat7 said:

Don't really care about the game, but had to vote for Segata Sanshiro, because he is awesome.

Holy shit, I could care less about this game but after watching this video even I want to vote for him.

The tallies are in, and because of the larger than expected response to the polls they've decided to show all of the characters who got over 1000 votes to Sega, rather than just the top three. The characters who received over 1000 votes are:

1) Ryo Hazuki: 3379

2) Hatsune Miku: 3180

3) Segata Sanshiro: 2613

4) Vectorman: 1221

5) Bayonetta: 1215

6) Ristar: 1081

7) ToeJam & Earl: 1015

@Taku128 said:

The tallies are in, and because of the larger than expected response to the polls they've decided to show all of the characters who got over 1000 votes to Sega, rather than just the top three. The characters who received over 1000 votes are:

1) Ryo Hazuki: 3379

2) Hatsune Miku: 3180

3) Segata Sanshiro: 2613

4) Vectorman: 1221

5) Bayonetta: 1215

6) Ristar: 1081

7) ToeJam & Earl: 1015

YYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

SEGATA SANSHIRO WILL BE IN A VIDEO-GAME.

THIS IS NOW DLC OF THE DECADE.

@Snail said:

@Taku128 said:

The tallies are in, and because of the larger than expected response to the polls they've decided to show all of the characters who got over 1000 votes to Sega, rather than just the top three. The characters who received over 1000 votes are:

1) Ryo Hazuki: 3379

2) Hatsune Miku: 3180

3) Segata Sanshiro: 2613

4) Vectorman: 1221

5) Bayonetta: 1215

6) Ristar: 1081

7) ToeJam & Earl: 1015

YYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

SEGATA SANSHIRO WILL BE IN A VIDEO-GAME.

THIS IS NOW DLC OF THE DECADE.

He's actually already in the game, he makes a cameo appearance on the final track riding a missile with a Sega Saturn strapped to his back.

@Taku128 said:

He's actually already in the game, he makes a cameo appearance on the final track riding a missile with a Sega Saturn strapped to his back.

I did not know this. That's seriously pretty awesome, and unexpected. Had Sega ever even mentioned this legendary character after the Saturn era?

And by the way do you have any idea when the PC version of this will released? Last I checked I don't think an exact date had been announced.

@Snail said:

@Taku128 said:

He's actually already in the game, he makes a cameo appearance on the final track riding a missile with a Sega Saturn strapped to his back.

I did not know this. That's seriously pretty awesome, and unexpected. Had Sega ever even mentioned this legendary character after the Saturn era?

And by the way do you have any idea when the PC version of this will released? Last I checked I don't think an exact date had been announced.

He makes a cameo in Rent a Hero No. 1, which unfortunately never saw a release outside of Japan despite an English version being fully or nearly fully completed and reviewed by GamePro. Sega also randomly had the actor appear for promotional events of an arcade game based on the most recent Rambo movie back in 2008.

No word on a PC release date yet aside from it not happening this year. It's going to have a few exclusive characters though, and actual meaningful ones, unlike the 360 and Wii U exclusive Avatars and Miis.