Diary of a Mad Sonic Fanboy: Chapter Four

Chapter Four: Dreams of a Sonic Adventure are Cast Act 1

Then Sega President Bernie Stolar remarked at 1997’s E3 show, “Sega Saturn is not our future.” By 1998 this was more prevalent than ever as both Nintendo and especially Sony had left them in the dust and with no viable attention getting game being released on the Saturn, both Sega and Sonic were fast becoming ancient relics of the past as far as the North American market was concerned. That remark was either a concession of Sega’s eventual retirement from the video game industry to come, or perhaps a slight hint of something major to come. Now that the Sega Saturn was essentially abandoned and everyone jumped ship, where did Sega turn? Behind the scenes Sega was working furiously on a new console that would put all others to shame. Sega had finally learned their lessons with three failed consoles underneath their belt. With the Saturn being the largest failure of them all, it was put up or shut up time for Sega. This was their final chance. Sega was determined that this time, things would be different. The first item of business to create this successful console was to finally give people what they had been wanting for several years now, a true successor to the Genesis Sonic games, headed up by the Sonic Team themselves, and so once again, they turned to Yuji Naka.

Naka had expressed a discontent for the slew of bad Sonic spin-offs that had resulted after Sonic and Knuckles and had begun to lose interest in the franchise he himself had created. In 1995 he worked on Ristar and later in 96 and 97 spent most of his time developing the NiGHTS games. However, when word came down that Sega expressed interest in developing a new Sonic title Naka had renewed interest. Upon hearing of the creation of a 128 bit console that Sega was working on Naka decided to take Sonic in a new direction and finally create that 3D game he had been thinking of doing years ago. This time he would expand the Sonic Universe and create an almost RPG like atmosphere. No doubt having been inspired by what Nintendo did with Mario in Mario 64 Naka no doubt had aspirations to take Sonic on his own 3D romp. This was Sonic the Hedgehog and a whole lot more. This was Sonic Adventure.







Fast forward to 1999. The Sega Dreamcast had been making waves in Japan despite some serious problems during the console launch and most of the gaming industry had declared this as Sega’s return to form. By the time September rolled around it was time for Sega to unveil the Dreamcast to the United States market. Now the big question would be answered. Was the US ready to give Sega one more chance? For me, who had been jaded by several years of lousy Sonic games and three failed systems and was ready to swear off Sega forever; just two minutes of playing Sonic Adventure at the store kiosk made me instantly bury my growing loathing and hatred for a company I once loved and I felt the same as I did when I first played Sonic on the Genesis nearly a decade prior. The next evolution of Sonic the Hedgehog was here. On my birthday a month later that year I finally received a Sega Dreamcast and Sonic Adventure.


Sonic Adventure was like no other game that came before it. This wasn’t just a new Sonic game, it was a series reboot. Many changes were made besides the obvious shift from 2D to 3D. For starters, Sonic himself had been given his now familiar modern look. He was more lean, has buckles on his shoes and green irises were added to his eyes. This game wasn’t simply a romp between stages collecting rings. This game had a fully developed story, complete with a voice cast and cutscenes with dialogue. This was the Sonic cartoons from the early 90s come to life in videogame form. This story picked up right where the Genesis Sonic games left off. Sonic was given a new move, the homing attack which allowed the player to automatically target enemies and made the problem of striking enemies that occurred in Sonic 3D Blast a thing of the past. The music was vastly different. This time the music was more rock based instead of the usual pop/techno from the previous games. Each character had their own vocal theme. While most I didn’t particularly care for, I felt that “It Doesn’t Matter” was a great theme for Sonic and one that he honestly should still have to this day. I think it fit the Sonic franchise as a whole very well and it’s a song they should revisit. Also, this marked the first Sonic game where not only were different characters selectable, they had different play styles and objectives as well. Tails had to keep up with Sonic in stages, Knuckles had to search for missing pieces of the Master Emerald. Amy Rose returned this time as a playable character. This time two new characters were introduced as well….




























Gamma was certainly an interesting concept. The ability to play as one of Robotnik’s goons this time around was a nice little spin on the series and certainly felt interesting to battle Sonic instead of play as him. However the other new character marked the first time in the series that I felt they had created an absolutely lousy character, Big the Cat. Big the Cat was an abject failure. I found no fun in this whatsoever. He was slow, boring and stupid; three things that Sonic the Hedgehog was never meant to be about. If I wanted to play a boring fishing game I would have put in River King. Couple that with an absolutely idiotic story about his lame quest to find his pet “FWOGGEEEEE” and you have a recipe for disaster. Seriously, this was the first but certainly not the last of many missteps made by the Sonic Team for years to come.


But don’t get me wrong, there’s still plenty to like about this game and for as many changes as were made to the game the spirit of the old Sonic games was still intact. Dr. Robotnik, who had begun to start being referred to as his Japanese name of “Eggman” was up to his usual tricks. Knuckles was still as dumb as ever falling for his schemes. Tails was sending Sonic flying on the tornado, and Amy still had a crush on Mr. Hedgehog. Many Easter eggs and jokes were present, old versions of Metal Sonic could be seen in Eggman’s lab, and some stages had variations of past stage themes from previous Sonic games. Overall I had fun right up until the very end when Super Sonic destroyed the game’s true Final Boss, Chaos.

Sonic Adventure had an incredible amount of replay value. Stages could be replayed to get a higher rank at any time and should you get bored of that, little creatures named Chaos could be raised.




Feeling the need to jump on the monster raising bandwagon that was all the rage in the late 90s, Sega too decided to craft their own version of that by creating the little critters known as Chao. While I feel that this was an unnecessary addition to the Sonic franchise many disagree with me and had fun raising the little buggers. I always thought it was a waste of disc space myself.



Sonic Adventure was the first foray into the realm of 3D and in my humble opinion, was a fantastic success. Here’s to Sonic Adventure, a groundbreaking game and a revival for Sonic the Hedgehog. But the question still remains, did it revive Sega?

Thanks to a vastly superior marketing campaign and of course a flagship Sonic game at the helm, the Sega Dreamcast was a commercial success for Sega. Finally after years of flops and bad decisions Sega made all the right moves and had a console that outperformed everything else at the time. Sega was once again the industry pioneers by allowing Dreamcast to be the first console with online capability. It had every reason to be a successful console for years to come…..but it wasn’t. Sony was well at work on it’s next big console that would release a year later.




Yup, it finally arrived and the Dreamcast had no chance. Unlike Sega Sony made all the right marketing decisions in the 90s and promised to continue those successes into the next decade. No one was willing to give Sega a chance. Too many failed missteps and bad ideas in the early 90s finally took their toll. They could not escape the trauma of their past and not many were willing to forgive them for their bad mistakes and eventually just two short years after Sonic and Sega looked ready to take the gaming world by storm once again, they were right back to where they were in 1997, a fledgling company with a franchise hanging on by a thread. But that didn’t mean they didn’t give it the old college try. Sega still had Sonic Adventure 2 up their sleeve.

Dreams of a Sonic Adventure are Cast Act 2

Well, at this point its summer of 2001 and Sega had pretty much abandoned the Sega Dreamcast. It was a commercial failure despite a few months of early success. But this time I wasn’t angry or upset with them. They made all the right moves with the Dreamcast and it’s not their fault no one could see what I saw in a great console that sadly never got the chance it deserved. Still, I clung on to my Dreamcast for the follow up to the first Adventure game, Sonic Adventure 2.




This game was probably the last of the decent Sonic storylines before it’s eventual descent into madness and gave us probably the last decent new character of the bunch as well, Shadow the Hedgehog and his companion Rouge the Bat. While many old school Sonic fans weren’t very receptive to Shadow I didn’t mind him so much. Mario has Wario and now Sonic has Shadow. Of course, I do get some of the criticisms. Shadow’s background is somewhat overdone and a tad too dark for a Sonic game, and Sonic already had two rivals previous in Metal Sonic and later Knuckles. Still after ten years I think resentment towards Shadow has died somewhat and he’s slowly been accepted into the Sonic universe by even a few of the older fans now. Looking back on it given the characters they’d come up with after Shadow, his really wasn’t all that bad in retrospect. Oh and Rouge? She can take a long walk off of a short pier.

At least you aren't Big the Cat I guess...

While Sonic Adventure 2 was a marked improvement over the first game, refining the gameplay in areas where the original was a little rough, this was also the first major Sonic game Yuji Naka wasn’t a major part of and the game feels like a disconnect from the past Sonic games as a result. My feelings on it are a mixed bag. It’s both the swan song to the respectable era of credibility that Sonic and in fact Sega once had as well as the game that ushered in this loathsome new era we’ve been subjected to for the past 10 years. Still overall, this is still to this day my favorite of the 3D Sonic games and while none of the Adventure games can compare to the Genesis originals I still felt that Sonic was overall my favorite videogame franchise and I was excited to see where Sega would continue to take it.

Well, despite a short history the Sega Dreamcast produced two new outings for Sonic the Hedgehog and created a successful reboot for the series as it garnered a whole new generation of Sonic fans. Just when times seemed at their most bleak, Sonic pulled through and closed out the decade that he made his own and ended it in spectacular fashion. The Sega Dreamcast had every reason to rule the world and Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 were classic games. Give yourselves a pat on the back Sega you did right by me and re-instilled my faith and hope in you for at least two years. Fast forward ten years later and the Dreamcast is often on many peoples favorite consoles lists and for good reason. It paved the way for the next decade to come as they were simply ahead of their time, but their own reputation wasn’t enough to save them and they were eventually done in by the juggernaut known as Sony. Sega announced that they would no longer create consoles but would now focus on just software for existing platforms. Well, at least this is good news for Sonic fans right? Now we can continue to get our Sonic fix on multiple platforms. Sonic will live forever! Glory be to Sonic!





……Right?




Next Time: The dark ages begin. Sonic becomes the laughing stock of the gaming industry and the butt of several jokes as many wonder what in the hell has become of our famous Hedgehog, culminating in their biggest disaster ever. Yup, I’m talking about that game. And boy do I have a rant for that one you won’t wanna miss.

Sonic and Shadow argue over who is responsible for Sonic 06.