This may seem bad, but it also helps prevent the first game’s biggest Sonic stage failing - falling to your death due to the iffy camera that could easily lead to you having no idea where you were in relation to the in-game world. The original Sonic, however, which if you can believe it was only ten years old at the time as this was Sonic’s anniversary game, is actually another source of inspiration as that had a slower pace for its platforming and SA 2 features that as well when compared to SA 1, while keeping the faster speeds limited to set pieces or areas with a largely-fixed camera and limited movement for your character. These stages, like Sonic’s in the first game, are the most evocative of the original 16-bit classics in that they’re largely about speed. Now, we’ve seen it a ton in franchises like Ratchet and Clank - but it wasn’t commonplace at all in mascot platformers until Sonic Adventure 2 hit. This is something that Sega saw help make their own Jet Set Radio stand out and there were no platformers on the market using it at that time. Both Sonic and Shadow will zoom through loops and flip on rails like a gymnast, but both gain a boost in traversal thanks to not only BOOST PADS! but also grinding. Now, you can have a traditional path throughout a stage or take a riskier approach that can be more rewarding, but will usually also give you more rings and extra life pickups.
The Sonic and Shadow stages are a blend of faster-paced runners ala SA 1, but with more diverse platforming sections and a greater reliance on the homing attack for multi-path exploration. The end result is a game flow that features more fun overall and a ton of variety within the stages themselves thanks to more set pieces and an even larger scale. The gameplay is far more streamlined and has received a lot of polish when compared to the first game. Sonic and Shadow the Hedgehog have speed-based levels, Knuckles and Rouge the Bat have collect-a-thon levels with hidden gems, and mech-based third-person shooters with Eggman and Tails. Unlike SA 1, which featured way too many different kinds of gameplay without many of them being done well, the sequel narrows things down to three distinct gameplay types. Sonic Adventure 2 is itself a more focused game than the first and more fun overall - even if it too has flaws all its own that bog down the experience. The Dreamcast was in many ways the company’s last gasp as a true innovator and its legacy is a game library that showed more life and creativity in a shorter time period than we would see until the indie revolution hit consoles a decade later.
It was alarming to think that in the 21 months that passed from 9/9/99 to Sonic Adventure 2’s Jrelease date, the Dreamcast was on its death bed and Sega would never achieve that level of fame again. Its sequel came at an interesting time as well because in just the time between the first and second games, Sega went from being a big deal in pop culture as a whole thanks to a renaissance period with the Dreamcast hitting right alongside a lot of big arcade ports and making the Dreamcast part of the culture to relative obscurity in near-record time. It was a game that wound up being the jack of many trades and the master of just about none, with a lot of fun to be had amid a highly-flawed formula. You’ll see both good and bad souls unearthed every month as we search through the more… forgotten…parts of history.Īs we covered last month, the original Sonic Adventure was something of a revolution for Sonic the Hedgehog - for better or worse. Inside, we’ll be digging up games that have long been without a pulse. Watch your step, for you’ve just entered the Graveyard.