![]() ![]() ![]() Sonic Adventure was the first Sonic game to feature free-roaming 3D gameplay and was met with a great deal of commercial and critical success, being praised for its graphics and soundtrack, and for retaining the dynamic and fast-paced gameplay of earlier Sonic games. This revised version carried the original Sonic Adventure title everywhere in the world except Japan, where it was released as Sonic Adventure: International Edition. There was nearly a year between the release of Sonic Adventure in Japan and its release in the rest of the world, and this time was used to iron out some of the game’s issues and to include content missing from the original Japanese version: a full English voice track, subtitles in multiple languages, rumble support, more sound clips, better-organised menus, and more. The game’s problems and missing content were soon addressed by Sonic Team, however. However, the tight deadline presented to Sonic Team meant that the original Japanese version had some planned content missing while simultaneously containing several glitches and bugs, such as the player being able to use certain characters in levels those characters shouldn’t have had access to, problems with collision detection, and various graphical glitches. In the end, the more fitting Sonic Adventure was chosen.Įven though development had only begun around April 1997, Sonic Adventure was released in time for the launch of the Dreamcast. One working title for the new Sonic game was Sonic RPG, but this didn’t stick, which was probably a good thing since the game didn’t actually turn out to be an RPG. Sonic co-creator Yuji Naka had spent his Saturn days acting as producer on games such as Nights into Dreams and Burning Rangers, but returned to the Sonic series due to his interest in the upcoming Dreamcast console and the suggestion of Sonic Team colleague Takashi Iizuka, lead designer on Nights into Dreams and the person who would go on to direct Sonic Adventure, to apply an RPG-style formula to a Sonic the Hedgehog game. So Sega needed a return to form for Sonic’s debut on the Dreamcast, especially since as part of the launch line-up, the game would be responsible for selling the new console to people. Sonic had already been the Sega mascot for several years by then, this being based more on the character’s success on his original home, the Mega Drive, rather than his limited and uninspired appearances on the Dreamcast’s predecessor, the Saturn, which never actually received an exclusive Sonic platform game.īetween the Mega Drive and the Saturn, the five people in the world who owned a Sega Mega-CD (myself being one of them – thanks, parents!) could enjoy Sonic CD, a worthy successor to the early Mega Drive games, while the two people in the world who owned Sega’s 32X add-on (don’t look at me this time – even I wasn’t that much of a Sega fan) only received Knuckles’ Chaotix, a spin-off starring Knuckles the Echidna rather than Sonic. Sonic Adventure was a launch title for the Sega Dreamcast, released in Japan on 27th November, 1998. (And later sold it to pay the rent, but that’s another story). It was a brief sequence but also a thrilling and visually spectacular one that helped launch the blue hedgehog onto a new console generation in style. The demo in question showcased the game’s opening level, Emerald Coast, the highlight being the now-famous sequence where Sonic sprints along a wooden bridge, closely pursued by a killer whale leaping through the water and smashing the bridge behind him. I was in Another World (a shop that sold video games, comic books and other cool stuff), and they had a then-brand-new Sega Dreamcast on display, the console hooked up to a TV monitor showing a Sonic Adventure gameplay demo on a loop. ![]() I was about 18 years old, a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed university student with a smile on my lips and a song in my heart, years before I became the angry, whiskey-soaked misanthrope I am today. That – or something along those unpunctuated lines, anyway – was the thought that ran through my head the first time I saw Sonic Adventure in action. “ SweetJesuslookatthatwhalethatlooksawesome!”
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