What's your opinion on the differences between racing in the two? I've mentioned it before, but I found drifting to feel "awkward" in Mario Kart 7 (3DS game) after playing an extensive amount of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed (SART) -- I beat most of it on the 360 and the PC. I went back to play the first Sonic racing, and I found its drifting to feel awkward too.
I did read that Nintendo put in SART's drift-boost mechanic, which may make the game more interesting for me. I wonder if they also included SART's drift change where you let go of the drift button for a second, start turning in the other direction and hit it again. You don't lose your drift bonus, and you start drifting in the opposite direction.
First off and to be clear, I'm not very good at karting games. I enjoy them, but I can't convincingly beat the SART AI in Hard/Expert mode, and I'm even worse online. I mostly play karting games SP or local multiplayer, so these are not the words of a competitive racer.
That said, in my time with MK8 so far:
Mechanics & Drifting
I would classify SART as being a more technical racer than MK8. Mario Kart has always been a party game, and the racing mechanics reflect this. SART has more complex boosting mechanics, not just drift boosting but also the starting boost and the trick system. SART challenges you to get a triple boost as often as you can, and to take heavy risks in doing so.
MK8 on the other hand is mechanically simpler. There are only two levels of boosts, and really other than drifting there's only 1 level. Stunts come into play less often and again are just a single button press. However that doesn't mean that MK8 is an easy game. I find that MK8 rewards track memorization and knowing your shortcuts better than SART does, so you still need a lot of skill to play it. Just not technical skill in driving itself.
Oh, and since you asked, MK8 does not have drift changing (I even tried, just to make sure).
Vehicles
MK8 has a lot more customization than SART does, since you have numerous combinations of bodies, wheels, and parachutes, on top of the innate stats of the racer. Furthermore the ability to pick between karts and bikes offers an interesting way to switch things up that SART does.
On the other hand, SART did transformations much better. This is mostly presentation, but transforming vehicles in SART were just cooler; each form was very distinct and you felt the transformation both at a visual and audio level.
Overall the karting is similar, while MK8's hovering is much more enjoyable than SART's boats. There's something to be said for driving on a wall and bumping into someone on purpose. MK8's parachuting can't really be compared to SART's planes though, since parachuting is used so rarely for short periods of time.
Tracks
I'd give the edge to SART on tracks. How each compares is going to be on a track-by-track basis, but I don't feel like MK8 has enough tracks that can compare to SART's best tracks, such as the space carnival track and the lava mountain track (although Bowser's Castle gets close). The changing tracks were a ton of fun, and while MK8 has a handful of such tracks, even then it's not quite as dramatic as tracks such as SART's air pirates track.
Style aside, I'd call the MK8 tracks harder. There are more shortcuts and you benefit greatly from knowing them.
Items
MK8 has the edge in items. The Mario items are iconic, and while SART had some neat ideas I think they also got stuck creating items that are in times inferior because they needed to not be Mario Kart. The end result being that the MK8 items feel more balanced and easier to understand.
Graphics/Design
Following up to what I said earlier about SART's transformations being cooler, outside of transformations MK8 has a very strong and very consistent design. Having everything in a single shared universe as opposed to trying to tie together multiple universes (and a real person) certainly made the task easier for the MK8 crew versus the SART crew. Comparing WiiU to WiiU, MK8 ends up looking better and better yet it runs at 60fps versus 30fps for SART. I can't understate just how important that is for a racing game. SART's definitive edition is definitely the PC - 60fps and many more patches/characters - but on a console MK8 holds the edge.
That said while MK8's style blends together better and the assets are generally better, there are times where the lack of "cool" means SART holds the edge, going back to what I said earlier about track design.
Characters
Character rosters are a real tossup. The MK8 characters are all well known and their size helps to effectively communicate their weight and performance. No one will be at a loss to understand a MK8 character, whereas some of SART's characters are head scratchers if you haven't played a ton of Sega games (and some of the characters are just outright lame).
On the other hand the MK8 characters are fairly homogenous, which is both a benefit and a drawback. The SART characters don't mesh together quite as well, but there's something about a race between a hedgehog, a pyro, a taxi driver, a dancer, and a football coach that just seems right...
Music
MK8's music is really well done. Most (if not all) of the tracks were recorded live with a band, and it shows. However MK8 mostly uses the upbeat music that Mario games are known for, which I don't know if it is always right for a racing game. SART's greater emphasis on rock and vocal tracks (Burning Rangers!) made racing more epic, I feel.
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