Hi every one, I’m the new guy Impish. As my first appearance at You Tube may have shown, I’m a bit of a Sonic-head, and so, for my first review, I will be covering one of my favorite games, Sonic Adventure. It might not seem all that old, but Sonic Adventure came out in japan in 1998, definitely fitting into our pre-1999 policy.

Sonic Adventure

Platform: Sega Dreamcast (Original Release). Nintendo Game cube & PC (Director’s Cut), Xbox live (Coming Soon)

Released: 1998 (Japan) 1999 (Internationally) on Dreamcast (2003 Director’s cut)

Developer: Sonic Team

Publisher: SEGA, (PC version by Activision under Sega PC)

Features: 6 different single player storylines, dozens of mini-games, A-life Virtual Pet Chao Garden, VMU game Chao Adventure (DX also includes 12 Game Gear Sonic Games)

Sonic Adventure was the first actual 3D Sonic game. It was released as a launch title for Sega’s final Console, the Dreamcast. Sonic Adventure was the best selling dream cast game during the consoles entire history, selling 2.5 million copies. And in my humble opinion was one of, if not the greatest, Sonic titles ever.

The games story focuses around six different playable characters, Sonic the hero, his young sidekick Tails, the gruff and tough Knuckles, Sonic’s wannabe girlfriend Amy Rose and newcomers Big the Cat and E-102 Gamma. These six characters have a wide variety of game play, and give the game a huge amount of replay ability. The game also introduced the English speaking world to Dr Eggman, the name of the villain known to us English speakers as Dr Ivo Robotnik .

Sonic’s story involves running to get to the end of the level in the fastest possible time. It might be because of this speed based game play, as well as his being the main story, why Sonic has the most levels, going through a whopping ten “action stages” and three “sub games” . Sonic gets the most bosses too, fighting Chaos four times, Eggman 3 times, and duelling with fellow playable characters Knuckles and Gamma. Because of the sheer amount of Bosses, after completing the game you unlock a boss rush mode, letting you duke it out against all 9 bosses in a row with no breaks in between.

During Sonic’s game, you’ll notice Tails following you around like always, but now you can play as Tails. Yes you could do this in Sonic 2, 3 and Knuckles, but now you get to play as Tails when he’s following Sonic around, instead of just pretending Sonic never existed. Because Tails can fly, there is a more open feeling to the seven playable levels Tails can explore, making Tails a good character to play after completing Sonic as you see much of the game from a new perspective. Tails’ Story is great, showing him becoming independent from sonic, and culminates in him not needing sonic anymore, which was instantly retconned in the following games to turn Tails into the whiny baby he always was.

When I first played this I still hated knuckles for terrorizing me during Sonic 3 and Knuckles (he threw a bomb at me in Launch Base!), so it did my heart good when the opening cut scene of Knux’s game shows him utterly failing his Master Emerald guardian duties, letting it first get stolen, then smashing it into lots of little pieces. Knuckle’s Game is vastly different to Sonic and Tails’ as he isn’t aiming to complete the level this time around. Knuckles’ has to track down three pieces of the Master Emerald in each level.

Amy Rose first appeared as Metal Sonic’s hostage during Sonic CD, and is back in Sonic Adventure as a fully playable character. Amy’s story involves helping a bird get away from Eggman’s robot E-100 Alpha, known as Zero. Amy’s levels involve running away from Zero. She plays rather like Mario, her levels involve a lot of platforming, puzzles and less fighting, if she tried jumping on a badnik, she would get hit. To attack Badniks she must use her Piko Piko Hammer. She has only 3 “Action Stages”, but she has to do a lot of missions within the Hub stages known as “Adventure Fields”.

Gamma and Big have the largest departure from the traditional game play of Sonic Tails, knuckles and Amy, although one has a relatively fun game while the other is a snore fest. Gamma must travel through a level, and get to the end within a time limit, and then duel with one of his fellow E-series robots. Big on the other hand has to ponder around the level, looking for his best friend Froggy, a frog. Then Big must get out his fishing rod and spend an hour trying to catch Froggy. There is an incentive to completing these characters as well. If you finish all 6 character’s storylines, you unlock the final character Super Sonic. I’m not going to spoil the ending for you, so you’ll have to get the game to find out.

Another feature is the Sub Games. There are three different sub games. The first is Sky Chase. Reappearing from Sonic 2, Sky chase involves flying Tails’ new Tornado plane toward the Egg carrier, Eggman’s ship, and shooting down small fighters. It is the least fun and pretty hard because the reticule is inaccurate and flies all over the place. The second is twinkle circuit. This is a built in kart racing time trial mode based on a section of the main game level Twinkle park. This is pretty fun and it is quite satisfying to get a new record, although there are some acceleration problems in it. The best of all though is the Snowboarding. There are two snowboarding levels, Ice Cap and Sand hill, and it is amazingly fun to just zoom down the levels in a snowboard. Some other mini games include a shooting range, a whack-a-sonic game and a boss rush mode.

There were some huge flaws in Sonic Adventure though. The biggest, was in fact, Big the cat. Fishing isn’t fun! It never will be fun. It is tedious and hard and nearly stopped me from finishing the game. The second big issue was the camera. It was prone to start flicking around or for some strange reason zooming into first person mode while I’m trying to complete a delicate puzzle. The character’s animations were also kind of scary, when ever Sonic talked it looked like his eyes were going into a seizure.
Sonic Adventure has huge variety in Game play, featuring 6 wildly different characters, a built in kart racer, a mission mode and many many mini games. The music is amazing, as is the voice acting and FX. The graphics have dated, but were amazing for there time, and the story is film worthy. Give it a try by buying it on Dreamcast, Gamecube/Wii, PC or on Xbox live this year.

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