Though it was a great title, most gamers wondered whether they would ever see their favorite little blue hedgehog with the attitude again... Until 1998, when Sonic Team, headed by Yuji Naka, announced their latest title at a conference in Japan. Made just for Sega's new Dreamcast console, gamers waited with anticipation. A sigh of relief was heard around the world as Yuji Naka revealed Sonic Adventure, the next title in the Sonic the Hedgehog series & the first to be fully three-dimensional. North American gamers, who had waited just as long for another true Sonic title, finally got our chance to play Sonic Adventure on September 9th, 1999, when Sega unleashed their Dreamcast stateside. With the arrival of Sonic Adventure, it seems like I've gotten an old friend back. Don't believe anyone who tries to tell you that the classic, old-school, Sonic gameplay of yesteryear is gone in the three-dimensional arena; on the contrary, it has never been more alive. Not only do the 128-bit graphics make the game more beautiful than its earlier 16-bit counterparts with amazingly crisp textures, thanks to the Dreamcast's astounding graphical clarity, they make the game smoother, faster and more enjoyable. Everything in Sonic Adventure is classic Sonic, with cameos by the Flickies, Mecha Sonic from Sonic CD and Metal Sonic from Sonic 2, even going so far as to include an awe-inspiring, mind-blistering Super Sonic end battle to bring the entire game to a wonderful adrenaline-filled close.

  The fitting soundtrack is also pure Sonic. The developers at Sonic Team have really gone out of their way this time; this time, there are not only some catchy, jamming tunes, there are some of the most fitting, full-vocal theme songs you've ever heard. Everyone in the game has his or her own theme song, all brilliant and unique. This is something very important for other developers to take notice of: Sonic Team cared enough about their franchise to add some great tunes and themes, making it not only a visual treat, but a aural one as well, especially with title songs like "Open Your Heart", which really get you hyped into playing the game and the end battle, for which it was composed. You should know that the soundtrack is very guitar heavy and has a sort of hard rock sound to it, one that will most likely please fans of Sonic's famous attitude. The actual gameplay, however, is the real draw of Sonic Adventure, as it always should be with any game. Realize if you will, just for a moment, that the Sonic Team managed to develop Sonic Adventure without a finished Dreamcast to test it on; the actual hardware wasn't completed yet at the time that they began designing the new game. Considering this, Sonic Adventure for Dreamcast is a major achievement.

  Fans of Sonic will leap with joy when they find out that their old friend has returned with a wide array of movements, such as his famous Spin attacks and Dash attacks, but they have now been fixed or enhanced to make for a much better, more two-dimensional feeling of gameplay, though the game is fully three-dimensional. In other words, Sonic can now use moves, such as Homing, which pinpoints close enemies automatically and Spin attacks them upon two consecutive presses of the A button. Don't think this is just a cheap way to make the game easier, because you will need to master the timing of it before the end of the game arrives. Sonic also has a new Light Speed Dash attack, which makes him zoom along any trail of rings or just zoom period. Also returning, as I said before, is his Tuck and Dash attack, however, fans of the originals should notice that it would be impossible to just press down and jump as we used to. Instead, any Tuck and Dashing, standing still or while on the run, only requires holding down X for a second and releasing. This is a change, but believe me when I say that you will not notice it once you get deep into the game and believe me, you will. There are individual action stages that are traversed by any of the entire cast of characters. Obviously the first difference between the separate character scenarios is that each holds a wide variety of gameplay styles. Sonic's, which is the fastest, is also the best, with ten stages, such as the unbelievable Speed Highway, where racing along at high speed, down ramps, up and down skyscrapers and through loop-de-loops is the norm.

  Tails' is probably second best, in that on top of having its own unique stages like the Panzer Dragoon-ish Sand Hill sub game with its challenging high speed slalom-like desert boarding, it also allows you to try and beat Sonic to the end of a few of his stages, including Speed Highway, in which you have to fly to beat none other than Eggman himself. Knuckles also returns, but his adventure is fairly easy and short, considering there is no real speed required, as his only goal is to find all of three Master Emerald pieces in each stage. While this gets a bit repetitive, there is one stage that really stands out as his best, namely Red Mountain, where Climbing, Gliding and, Knuckles' newest skill, Digging are put to very good use. Amy Rose, Sonic's self-inflicted "girlfriend" has a fairly interesting role in the story, as you help her to guide a lost little birdie to its relatives. Can you say Flickies? She also has one of the coolest sub games ever, Hedgehog Hammer, in which you play a Whack-A-Mole style game with Sonics, Super Sonics and Eggmen popping up periodically. Of course, being Sonic's "girlfriend", Amy can only hit Sonics and Super Sonics, as hitting Eggmen results in loss of points. Other than that, Amy has an short adventure, which basically entails running from one of Eggman's robots, ZERO, who wishes to catch your little birdie friend and take it back to his master. This may sound boring at first, but as I found out, Amy Rose has a handy little weapon, in the form of her huge Piko Piko Hammer, that she can swing in a variety of ways to smash both her objects and opponents, including her robotic stalker, ZERO.

  Big the Cat, while adding more variety to the overall mix is a bland character scenario; while important to the storyline, all his stages entail is the fishing for, hooking and catching of his friend Froggy and any hapless fish that happen to meander by. While his quest in pretty neat, it's short-lived and basically another viewpoint and addition to the storyline. However, probably the coolest new character in Sonic Adventure would have to be E-102 "Gamma", the token playable robot. His quest and role in the game's plot are much less innocent than Sonic's and his friends', as it starts with him under Eggman's control and being taught to kill Sonic and his friends with deadly precision. Of course, good old "Gamma" realizes that Eggman is an evil moron and seeks another employment opportunity: "rescuing" his brothers by destroying them. This is definitely one of the darker, much more fascinating scenarios on the game, as it ends on a very surprising and unexpected note. Gamma's style of play is very different from Sonic and crew, as he doesn't really focus on speed at all, so to speak, but on insane, lock-on, Run & Gun, shoot 'em up action. In Gamma's scenario, the more enemies you lock-on to at a time and blast away, the better. That said there are some problems with Sonic Adventure, albeit small ones for true Sonic fans. Real-time cinematic events cannot be skipped at all. This is only really annoying if you replay the game or are not a big fan of cinematics in games. They do convey the story well, but if you're uninterested in the plot in general, then they are a real pain in the neck. There are also some problems with graphic collision; when you're running along at high-speed, the camera will occasionally get stuck or out of place or you just might run right through a solid object. However, of the three problems listed, the last two don't occur very often, if at all. If you want to talk challenge, try this on for size: a total of one hundred and thirty Sonic Emblems await even the most skilled Sonic players. Some emblems are simple to get, while others require a lot more effort and, at times, thorough knowledge of the level's layout, any shortcuts and a whole lot of skill and speed.

  If you want to talk replay value, try the completely optional A-Life simulation known as Chao Adventure, which stands alone as a portable, simplistic life simulation/role-playing title, yet also interacts with Sonic Adventure. The Chao, pronounced "chow", can be hatched and downloaded into a Sega Dreamcast VMU, or Visual Memory Unit, and then named, raised, played with, battled, bred, taken for a walk, et cetera. You can also upload them back into Sonic Adventure and enter them in Chao Races, to earn Emblems, breed them with each other and let them assimilate animal abilities. Chaos take on many different attributes and unique abilities when given animals which are rescued from action stage enemies. There is even a way to get a Chao that looks like Sonic... In closing, Sonic Adventure is a truly great title which, while not perfect, stands as a shining example of Sonic Team's dedication to the Sega Dreamcast and an excellent sample of the Dreamcast's abilities to come. Sonic Adventure, like all true Sonic titles before it, is a speed-based game that surpasses all other platformers that even try to get close to its level of stylized presentation, with Sonic's trademark loop-de-loops, red star bumpers, addictive mini-games and expeditious gameplay, clocking the game in at around twenty well-spent hours. Sonic Adventure is also an exceedingly great game, a classic that should be remembered as the brilliant title that brought Sonic the Hedgehog and friends from the great 16-bit platform of old to the new 128-bit realm of the Sega Dreamcast unscathed. What a rush.
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