Sonic Adventure

The Dreamcast was the first console out in what we could call the second 3D generation, and was to end up as Sega’s final console. It was near enough doomed from the start, a desperate response to Sega’s struggles to line up a worldwide success. The Mega Drive (or Genesis) was far ahead as the leading console in the UK (albeit with consoles then a smaller market) and was a big seller in the US, but it didn’t do much in Japan. With the Saturn, they finally broke through in Japan but tanked completely in their previous successful territories. I knew a lot of people with Mega Drives but only one who got a Saturn as well. Managing the competing demands of different countries was clearly a nightmare. But the Dreamcast, the most powerful console around on its launch, started well, and in another world where Sony fumbled from their leading position it might have carried on doing well. We very much do not live in that world.

For the UK, launching the console with a proper new Sonic game, as Sega conspicuously failed to do with the Saturn, was a good move. Getting a #1 game with a launch title, competing against games with a much larger potential audience, is no guaranteed thing. And Sonic Adventure is a powerful first taste of what the Dreamcast can do. It goes all out on the giddy possibilities provided by new technology. It’s another game where me playing through all these games in chronological order (and having been short of visually impressive PC games lately) makes clear how much of a wow factor it must have provided at the time.

The first stage proper of Sonic Adventure is Emerald Coast, a lush beach paradise with the usual range of less paradisiacal spikes and mechanical enemies. There is one part where Sonic ends up running along a pier towards the camera while a massive whale leaps along destroying it behind him. You don’t have to do much beyond hold the control stick in one direction, but it’s an awesome, adrenaline-filled moment which makes turning Sonic into a 3D game seem the most natural and obvious thing in the world.

By Sonic 3, almost the only way in which Sega were improving on the Sonic formula was by making the setpieces more spectacular. In 3D, they can take that much further – Sonic rushing along on a snowboard! Sonic making huge leaps between launchpads! Sonic running along narrow paths in the sky as they twist and loop dizzyingly! It’s also possible to make them more interactive than a lot of the fanciest bits in Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 – more like the original, iconic Sonic loop-the-loop where you remained largely in control. It can be frustrating when you fail through doing something which seems logical based on the current view that proves not to be what the game wants you to do, but Sonic Adventure is at its best when running wild with speed and possibility.

That’s not the only way that Sonic Adventure expands on the picture of Sonic offered by the first three games, though. Some stages have other excellent new ideas — getting a Chaos Emerald in the casino by collecting enough rings to physically fill up the room and climb up to it is a particularly clever highlight. And the action stages are only a part of what the game’s adventure has to offer. Those stages can only be accessed after doing other necessary things around its hub worlds, often finding keys and placing them in matching slots, with plenty of opportunity for story cut-scenes along the way. Plus each stage is far from a one-off piece. You can play them three times as Sonic with increasingly difficult different goals, and you can also play them another three times each with different characters once you have met them. Sonic Adventure is not just an adventure but a series of different adventures joined together and jutting out in different directions.

The hubs are not exactly seamless. Spread out across multiple screens, there are some painful loading times. It’s sometimes all too apparent that this is a very ambitious game put together against a harsh deadline of the console launch. At one point, while I was walking next to the wall in search of an alley where a key had appeared, Sonic clipped straight through the scenery and died for no reason. There is a bit early in the game which flat out tells you that the camera is going to be erratic and that you shouldn’t worry about it, which is an interesting alternative to actually fixing it. If I hadn’t looked at a guide to help out with what I was meant to do to open up the next stage at some points, I might have given up in frustration rather soon. That side of the game is not a big success.

The story cutscenes are high grade cheese at best, and presumably had a part to play in the subset of players taking against Sonic’s extended cast from around this point. I wouldn’t call the scenes particularly egregious against the general game standard though — the acting is terrible but they convey information and a bit of humour and don’t go on for too long. If it wasn’t for having to see virtually the same scene again when you reach the same point of a different character’s adventure, and having no option to skip them even then, I wouldn’t have ranked them as a low point.

As it is, the repetition grates there but works excellently elsewhere. The levels are too enjoyable to only want to play once, and Sonic Adventure’s approach is a great way of making the most of the branching but ultimately linear nature of Sonic levels that has been present since the beginning. And different characters give different spins that give even more to do. Taking Tails and trying to find flying shortcuts to beat Sonic to the goal, or taking Amy and making use of a big hammer to clear a path for escape, is a great way to think again about the different dimensions present in a level. It’s a different model of exploration to Super Mario 64’s more open-ended one, but it makes getting to know a place rewarding in a similar way. Ultimately, Sonic Adventure shows a good new way to expand on the speed and spectacle that it carries forward. Even if it shows several bad ones too along the way.

---

Top of the charts for week ending 16 October 1999:

• 

• 

• 

• 

•