Sonic Adventure – Cane and Rinse no.696

... Our first correspondent is Tracy Will One from our Patreon, who says, "I was a teenager in the late 90s and happened upon a kiosk in a Best Buy showing off the amazing graphics of a brand new Sonic game. Seeing Sonic Adventure for the first time blew my mind. I actually preordered a Dreamcast that same weekend, even got a Sega Dreamcast branded t-shirt with my preorder. ...

Quote page

... Like, it's it's a tough one. And speaking to that is is our regular correspondent, Andrew Elmore, who also has a complex relationship with this game. From our Patreon, Andrew says, speaking as someone who plays a medically alarming amount of simple 2000 games, Sonic Adventure is absolutely at home in their company. The game is held together with chewing gum and a wish. The environmental texture application rivals Kingsfield 1 at times. The hub world is an incomplete sentence. ...

Quote page

Framerate was aiming for a cap of 30 FPS in the original, and the game aims for 60 FPS on subsequent systems. I think the GameCube version was not always up to 60, but I think if you play the Xbox 360 version on, say, an Xbox Series X, you shouldn't get too many framerate drops. Barefish Pie echoes Tony and myself by saying the strongest memory I have of Sonic Adventure is watching the attract mode in my local branch of game, being staggered by how damned sumptuous and fast-moving it was, near photorealistic…

Quote page

... There are some bits, there are some segments in there which I think have atmosphere and kind of do somewhat conjure that classic Sonic feeling. But the overall soundscape is not something I'm... It's absolutely evocative of Sonic Adventure Dreamcast 1999 for Good and for Ill. Not personally something that I adore, but I'm interested. How do you feel about it, Darren or Leah? ...

Quote page

... Yeah, it's just... So when I was playing Sonic Adventure for the first time, after the sort of the glitz and the glam of the visuals had worn down, I didn't go back to it with the same sort of feverish, sort of, you know, addictions too strong. ...

Quote page

... But this is where I land on it at the final, kind of where my conclusion of here is I was fairly abject that, oh, God, I did not enjoy Sonic Adventure after I'd finished the Sonic. ...

Quote page

... You're swinging him around, you're chucking him onto giant spiky explosives and you win. And I can't believe the Sonic team got to the end of Sonic Adventure and went, we got some bosses in. OK, how do we do them? ...

Quote page

... Yep. There was an OST 2 disk soundtrack, Sonic Adventure Digilog Conversation released in Japan in January 1999 and re-released in 2011 for the Sonic franchise's 20th anniversary. Two volume digital soundtrack released on iTunes and Spotify 2014 2017. ...

Quote page

Tony. Yeah, weirdly, and this doesn't often happen when I go back and play games starting from this era. If I put a game down, then quite often I look at my 19 year old self and go, oh, that's because I was in this headspace then, and maybe wasn't quite in tune with what the game is trying to offer. Back in 19, I put down Sonic Adventure because I thought it was somewhat of an incoherent mess of a game with multiple flaws. And I've re-approached it as a 45 year old with all the knowledge of game structure and…

Quote page

Hello everybody, and welcome to the Kain and Rinse podcast volume 14 issue 696. And today we're going to talk about Sonic Adventure. Joining me, Leon Cox, in this issue, Darrin Gargant. ...

Quote page

... The charge up is really long as well. Too long. I couldn't see what I was doing because the camera wasn't allowing me to see what was going on. To play Sonic Adventure when it's not going full speed is a frustrating experience. And I can see why in Sonic Adventure 2 they added a thing, then in Heroes they added another thing. ...

Quote page

... Literally, in the case of Big the Cat. What starts as a thrilling, fast-paced adventure quickly becomes bogged down by tedious platforming, clunky exploration and gameplay that just doesn't match Sonic's speed. Sonic Adventure had all the potential to be one of the greatest 3D platformers ever, but its inconsistency holds it back. ...

Quote page

... But for you just to dream and maybe I couldn't afford one. So I wasn't going to do the import side of things. But yeah, so so I definitely saw Sonic Adventure because it was the mascot, right? It was that title where can they translate Sonic onto this new piece of hardware in the same vein that obviously Nintendo had done so, so very well with Mario 64. And that was the hope and dream. And it really was. And I'd remember just watching the the track screens playing in the background, being super excited about…

Quote page

So things like Soul Calibur, you know, just felt like my mental shifts in that genre. And I was glued to other games on the system. And I don't really remember playing Sonic more than just maybe a handful of times and never really wanting to fall in love, but never really finding the enjoyment from playing it, certainly back then. So it's always been that kind of spot that weird, you know, blemish in the in the mirror where you're like, Oh, man, I can't believe I've never actually completed Sonic Adventure. Like…

Quote page

... And no, it's just a very, very tiny slice of you being a yellow Sonic. And even then, it's even less interactive than Sonic Adventure has been up till now. It's just a bit like, well, again, just because you could, should you? ...

Quote page

... Exactly my fault. When New Donk City came along and everyone went, whoa, what's this? I felt the same way, but I also felt like we've had we've been here before Sonic Adventure. If you look in the cars, the cars have to represent the skies. ...

Quote page

... Oh, it's insane. But then Sonic Adventure comes out and he just got like here's some things that move around. And you know, you do your your Sonic spinny attack and you you watch the health bar and did you get it down? ...

Quote page

... Or even when you were running towards the camera at a crash bandage, was I supposed to be pressing upward down? Uh, Cormoran Strike from our Patreon says if you put it all down on paper, Sonic Adventure would seem extremely outdated. Why? The fishing levels. The character of Big with that voice is aged like old milk. The camera is flippin' dreadful, though I do think it's worth pointing out that many of the glitches are from re-releases of the game, not the original Dreamcast version. ...

Quote page

And the rock music as well, I just didn't like the pop punky kind of yeah, didn't it was like, not sure that but nevertheless, here we are, here we were a year later, didn't get an import Dreamcast because I couldn't afford it didn't get a launch Dreamcast because I couldn't afford it. But somebody at work was selling there's just a few weeks after it came out with trick style power stone. And of course, Sonic adventure. It just felt inevitable that I ended up having it and yeah, exactly like you Tony at that…

Quote page

... And I think they came across Sonic 3D and you can see the game design team just bashing their head against the wall going, right, what sticks here? And that really is what sums up my entire gameplay experience with Sonic Adventure is like just watching a game developer trying stuff for the very first time and going, does this stick? Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. ...

Quote page

... And I was like, "Why is that wall just exploding for no reason?" And, you know, it got turned into the Golden Gargate. But I do remember, at the time, playing Sonic Adventures and thinking, "Things are just happening for no reason, but it looks nice." Yeah, I remember a screenshot in Edge at the time when they reviewed the game. I think they gave it an 8, 7, or an 8. ...

Quote page