Rambling About Sonic Adventure

 

Focusing on a Classic Today

I honestly couldn’t tell anyone just what my first exposure to the original Sonic Adventure (SA1) was. It wasn’t my first game in the franchise, but I can’t remember if I first heard of the game through the Sonic Mega Collection or not. Even the specifics of my first time playing the game remain lost to me. I had two copies of the game before grabbing the Steam version which I now default to. One was the original 2004 PC Port of the game after I found it online and begging my mom for a copy, while the other was the Xbox 360 version of the game I got after doing well in elementary school. I can’t even recall which I got first or if I was even conscious of the fact that I was buying a second copy of the same game, I just went for it. Sonic Adventure more or less feels like it just popped into my life in a variety of ways, but despite my scattered memories of how it came into my life the impact that it’s had can not be understated. 

While the specifics of my first encounter with the game elude me, I know for sure that I played through SA1 a lot during my early childhood. Most of my time was spent on Sonic’s story as one might expect. The open level design and general theming of almost all of his stages are still in my opinion some of the best the franchise has ever seen. While they’re not all winners (Sky Deck), the overwhelming majority like Emerald Coast, Twinkle Park, and Speed Highway are so fun to explore. They’re dense with different pathways and open areas, which compliments Sonic’s movement in this game perfectly. Of course young me wasn’t nearly as knowledgeable as to the mechanical aspects that allowed Sonic’s campaign to feel so good to me, I just knew going fast was fun. Tails’s levels were also ones I’ve found enjoyable since I was young. The racing aspect stressed me out, but when I won I felt like I genuinely beat the odds and accomplished something. Can’t help but wonder if that was the intent. Tail’s story focuses on him building up the confidence to stand on his own without Sonic, ending on him taking down the Egg Walker on his own. It’s a small but meaningful arc, even if later entries decided to backtrack it for whatever reason. Nowadays, I find the races ridiculously easy. Better knowledge of stage layouts and just experience in general allow me to swiftly crush the competition.

Knuckles, Amy, and E-102 Gamma each had campaigns that took a while to grow on me, but I now also find a lot of value in. Knuckles spent the Adventure series being a treasure hunting mode for finding Master Emerald pieces, and in SA1 I find this to be perfectly fine. I struggled at a younger age since I had a terrible sense of direction, wasn't comfortable with how Knuckles moved, and just not liking how different it was compared to Sonic and Tails, who both had more traditional gameplay. Today however, I can once again appreciate how well the level design lends itself to style and how it contributes to its identity overall. Knuckles portion of Speed Highway and Casinopolis are dense enough to make for a fun hunting location but aren’t suffocating to a point where they feel too narrow and unintuitive to navigate. There’s also Knuckle’s version of Red Mountain, which allows for Knuckles to fly wherever he pleases while also not being so large that players could fly too far and find themselves stranded or lost. Combined with an easy to understand radar on the bottom screen and we have a mode that's able to hold up pretty well even with how different it is from the rest of the game.

Amy has the shortest campaign themed around escaping ZERO as it hunts down Amy and the Flicky she’s carrying. Amy plays similarly to Sonic and Tails though she has the slowest overall speed between the three, with that being my original gripe against the campaign. While the fact that she’s slow can’t be denied, this doesn’t mean there’s absolutely no fun to be had though. Some major airtime can be achieved with a well timed hammer jump, which in combination with SA1’s level design philosophy allows for Amy to reach higher up portions of the level rather easily. It’s her own unique form of getting through a level quicker even if not every level allows for it. I can have my fun with it today and even at its absolute worst, the short length makes it inoffensive.

E-102 Gamma takes on a time attack approach, where you go through his levels on a time limit to reach the boss. I remember the time limit seriously stressing me out as a concept. Despite the fact that this entire franchise was based around the concept of speed, the moment an actual countdown was thrown in the mix I crumbled completely. It always felt like I was finishing levels by the skin of my teeth (I wasn’t). Aside from the time limit however, Gamma’s levels aren’t much different in structure compared to Sonic’s. One could argue that it leads to the mode feeling a bit redundant, but I feel the shorter length of it helps in the long run. My most recent playthrough of this clocked in just under 50 mins. Plus, it gives Gamma the best personal arc in the game with him choosing to free himself and his brothers from Eggman in death. Unquestionably the least connected to the overarching plot involving Chaos and Tikal, but a great character story nonetheless.

Finally we have Big, who was my least favorite character in my first few playthroughs and remains my least favorite today. My original problem with Big was that I could not figure out fishing for the life of me. No matter how much I tried I could not get a hit with Froggy specifically, the frog would never bite. Most other fishes would catch on no problem, but the one I was actually supposed to catch just refused. Unfortunately, this mode always served as a soft-lock for me until I returned to the games years later. Turns out when Froggy “bites” your bait you have to jostle the joystick a little for it to count as a hit, and to be fair the original manual for the game does mention this. But seeing as the versions of SA1 I had access to didn’t provide a manual, and there’s no in-game mention of Froggy being the only fish to behave like this, I ended up never truly learning the right lesson because the game failed to teach me what made Froggy different. Even knowing this today though, the mode is just plain boring and uninteresting. Unconnected to the main plot like E-102 Gamma, but without the good personal narrative to save it. The fishing game would be fun if optional, but it isn’t and thus feels like ramming into a wall whenever I get to it on a new playthrough. Big just isn’t salvageable for me, and remains SA1’s biggest blemish.

SA1's Two Unique Characters

Tikal and Chaos are the two overarching characters in the plot, with Tikal serving as a way to get each character up to speed with the Echidna tribe and the creation of Chaos while Chaos serves as the main villain. It’s fine but I wouldn’t call it the absolute strongest story the series has ever seen. Tikal just sorta hijacks a character's route at certain points to show them scattered pieces of the past, and even when everything is revealed it doesn’t feel super satisfying. I attribute this to Sonic being the only character to really get the full picture just at the end of the game. While he is the protagonist, I feel like everyone deeply involved should’ve been present for a more coherent reveal. Knuckles in particular since this entire incident relates back to his history. Main gripe aside, I still do have a soft spot for it since I’ve experienced it so often over the years, and the Super Sonic fight against Perfect Chaos remains one of the most iconic set pieces in the series. Super Sonic is only accessible officially in game via the final boss, but mods allow me to play as him whenever I like.

Speaking of mods, whenever I go back to SA1 it’s always going to be with the community made patch for the Steam version. The Steam release of the game is a rather shoddy port of Sonic Adventure DX, a re-release of SA1 for the Nintendo GameCube that became SEGA’s go-to version of the game for subsequent ports to other platforms. The release on its own is fine to play, but it contains various downgrades to lighting, models, and texture quality from the original Dreamcast game that makes most fans consider it an inferior version of the game to play. The community patch converts the Steam release of SA1 to the 2004 PC release (the one I had as a child) and uses that version's extensive mod support to inject a whole slew of model, lighting, and texture replacements to make the game a visual marvel. It also restores cut features like the unlockable Sega Game Gear games and the various Dreamcast events and collaborations. The Steam version of SA1 can become the best version of itself because of this and it stands alongside Mega Man Legends as one of the best examples of 3D polygonal art-styles.

If You Can, Please Check Out Try Out Mods

Some games in life just always find a way to stick with you no matter what, and Sonic Adventure remains one of those for me. No matter how much time passes, SA1 has remained a game that I can return to at any point. It’s the equivalent to a bread-and-butter combo for me, I can pick it up any day effortlessly and know I’m in for a predominantly good time. Earlier this year in my post about A Link Between Worlds, I noted that I hold games that I can revisit in high regard, with most of my favorite video games ever being ones I know I can return to. Sonic Adventure is a premier example. Regardless of its shortcomings, I know that whenever I just need a short game to be there as a pick-me-up Sonic Adventure will be there. A game I’ve loved since childhood that I will continue to love even as I hit the grave.