Retro Review – Sonic Adventures – Dreamcast0

Box shot, thanks to Sega-Club.com

Oh Dreamcast……..sigh, why did you have to die so early? Why?

Well that’s enough pining.

Every now and then I like to rip out one of my two Dreamcast consoles to have a play (yes both work, the console was good enough to buy twice).

When I do that I usually play through one of the many games I have for the console, this time it was Sonic Adventure 1, one of the last great Sonic titles.

It was awesome back in the day, great GFX great gameplay….. so how does it stand today?

Let’s find out as I get reacquainted with the “Blue Blur”.

One of the most WOAH! moments in the game.

To start off with, you are first introduced to Sonic as he is running towards a “New-York” looking city in full high quality CGI… yep the CGI in the game is still up to par with most modern games in quality and animation terms.

You aren’t told why he’s running but you soon see it for yourself, theres a freaking huge water type monster coming out of a sky-rise building in town…… it’s huge and a great scene.

Then you get the menu….. talk about a let down haha….. AWESOME CGI…………. dull menu.

A robot?..... yep you can play as a robot.

First you’ll select your memory card (VMU/VMS unit), then you get to select a character……huh? what? yeh that’s right you can play as one of six characters, one of which (Super Sonic) you can’t get until you 100% complete the other 5 characters.

As everyone would, I choose Sonic first.

The story basically is this; Dr Robotnik (aka EggMan) has gained the trust of a mystical being known as Chaos, this creature is the protector of the “Master Emerald” which some how has been shattered into 7 parts, each emerald holds massive powers….. if sad or angry the Chaos will absorb the 7 emeralds and become a huge beast of unimaginable powers….. this will eventually result in the end of the world.

You don’t want this, obviously, so you are on a mission as Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, E102-Gamma and Big the Cat, to retrieve the emeralds before Egg-Man does and stop Chaos from destroying the world.

You know, the usual.

Perfect Chaos - You don't want this.

Throughout the game, Egg-Man finds (steals) all the emeralds, each one transforms Chaos into something a little bigger until you get to the 7th form, Perfect Chaos. (as seen above)

It’s awesome to see each evolution and eventually battle with it, although a tad easy.

The graphics of the game are actually still really nice, I mean it’s no Call Of Duty: MW2 or Star Craft 2 but it holds up well even today, which is nice.

The gameplay….. Sonic handles perfectly, fast, fluent and nice. However the other characters feel slow and buggy in comparison with the exclusion of Tails, he’s ok.

The sound……. that’s a whole other thing all together, the sound is unbalanced and distorted in some areas, most of the time the BGM over shadows the voice acting and becomes hard to hear, I guess that’s why they included subtitles…but still it could have been clearer and better quality.

Amy Rose.... the most annoying character in SA.

The levels themselves are of great variance which is awesome, you get ICE, Desert, Forest, Beach and Sci Fi type levels and all actually feel nice and have a great look…. Classic Sonic Team at play of course.

What’s nice is when you are finished with the game there is loads of replay value because of something called Chao…..no not the big destroying world guy, but actually little baby monsters you can raise and train to race.

You can do this by entering one of three Chao gardens through the games areas, you can grab animals you release from enemies during the game to alter your baby Chao’s look and status.

It’s nice and lasts ages, think of it as a built-in Tamagotchi….. what makes this even sweeter is that if you have a memory card(VMU/VMS) with 128 free blocks you can transfer a Chao to it and raise it on the go, the VMU unit’s have built in screen and buttons for this purpose, a lot of games had mini games for the device. (I loved the DC, so ahead of it’s time).

The Chao VMU/VMS game plays almost as you’d imagine a Tamagotchi would, you feed it and raise it’s stats, once done transfer back and forth to SA1 as you like.

If your friend has another VMU/VMS unit and a Chao you can battle and mate them…resulting in another Chao to raise.

It’s actually a whole lot of fun.

Baby Chao, you raise 'em and race 'em.

So, Sonic Adventure has aged actually pretty well, besides the bad voice acting and quality it’s an awesome title and well worth a play if you haven’t played it already…. there are more versions out there such as Sonic Adventure DX for GameCube/Wii/PC that is a remake of this title of sorts (Improved Visuals.. slightly) but the real way to play is on a Dreamcast.

Seriously still a good title and one of the reasons the Dreamcast remains in my top 3 consoles of all time.

It died an early death but it shouldn’t have.

As a side note; Sonic Adventure is about to get an XBLA version soon, so if you haven’t played it before, definitely get it online soon.

Score 7/10