[Archival] Sonic Adventure is a Masterpiece
Video Script [December 2019]
Sonic Adventure is one of gaming’s great masterpieces. Although the game is almost twenty years old, every aspect of its narrative, aesthetic, and design serve to create an interactive experience that leaves my jaw on the floor every time I contemplate it. Sonic Team and Sega truly created a masterful work of art that rightfully cements the Dreamcast as one of the greatest pieces of gaming hardware ever created. Let’s dive in.
Released for the Sega Dreamcast in 1998 in Japan, and 1999 everywhere else, Sonic Adventure is child-rearing simulator. You choose your fursuit flavor and raise creatures called Chao. They look like little blue babies and are extremely cute, and you can raise them up to compete in fierce racing competitions. There are eggs placed all over the place, and you take them back to one of the three gardens, shake that motherfucker, and make a baby Chao come out. You feed the Chao the flesh of cute little animals to genetically engineer them to whatever purpose you desire. You can even breed the Chao and control entire ancestries of the little bastards. When they are big and strong enough, you pit them against each other in thrilling races.
These simple steps are fulfilling and thoroughly fleshed out in order to remain satisfying for hundreds, if not thousands, of hours.
You’ll notice that I avoided discussing where you collected the Chao food from. Sega insisted that Takashi Iizuka, the game’s director, include 3D gameplay similar to the older Sonic games in order to boost sales. Regrettably, Iizuka caved, and with Quentin Tarantino’s script, full development on Sonic Adventure’s animal collecting side game began.
The poor bastard who actually bought a Memecast and decided to play this game is presented with a character select screen with a single option, the spikey dykey himself, Sonic the Hedgehog. Starting the game, the scene is set by a beautifully animated cutscene and a thrilling boss fight against a puddle as the frightened police nearby have no idea what they should be shooting at. After the fight, we see Dr Robotnik scheming up on a rooftop.
Sonic is chilling, relaxing all cool, when Tails crashes his plane on the beach. Sonic runs through a beach and we are formally introduced to the flawless camera and completely functional and breathtaking set pieces. Sonic reunites with Tails and they head over to Tails’ workshop. Robotnik shows up and Sonic owns his ass in another thrilling boss fight, and then Robotnik shows off what happens when you shove your rocks in the water monster from earlier. It gets bigger and tougher. So Sonic and Tails begin to hunt down the Dragon Balls so that Robotnik can’t feed them to his little pet Chaos.
The duo play in a tornado in a pretty fun level that’s a lot better than the beach, and then they hit up the obligatory Sonic casino level. This one’s not too bad either, although if you are bad at the pinball you’ll end up running through the mini-level way more than I deem acceptable. After delivering the mass of rings to the casino's claw machine, Robotnik sprays his hot gas in these children's faces to get two more Dragon Balls. Then they snowboard or whatever? It's a platformer, there has to be a snow level, alright?
Then plot. Trust me it is absolutely interesting. Sonic and who the fuck meet up with and Knuckles the Echidna, the only good character in this miserable shitstain of a franchise. Due to what may be the most creative and versatile trope in all of story-writing, the characters fail to communicate and thus artificial conflict is generated. Robotnik is able to take the other Chaos Emerald that Dumb and Dumber collected and feed it to Hydroman and turn him into some shark thing with balls. Never seen a waterman swim but I guess I’ll allow it for a boss fight that is so fun you’ll be sad you only get to play it three times.
After a plane minigame that is so fun you’ll be sad you only get to play it four times, Sonic and whatever his name is are separated, and we enter the heartwarming Hedgehog Amusement Park Romance Can’t Be This Cute!! Saga. Pink Sonic asks Sonic to quit saving the world in an attempt to make him become the personal bodyguard of a fucking bird, and after being waterboarded with unwanted attention, Sonic reluctantly agrees. They then flee into a nearby theme park entrance because of some big robot fuck who wants to kill the bird or something. And to get to the actual theme park, Sonic must ride a bumpercar through… space? And then a rollercoaster that has what looks like rockets on it? Many other hazards abound. There is surely some building codes or regulations that these attractions are in violation of.
After Pink Sonic is kidnapped by one of those Eggman’s robots, Blue Sonic is required by law to retrieve her or risk losing his ownership of his property. Sonic takes a bump of Speed and heads over to Fast Highway in a legit for real fun and good level with plenty of both fast and highway. Look, he runs down a building! That how fast he is! Extraordinary.
After seeing Mr Robot, no not that one, also not that one, taking Amy back to the Mystic Ruins, Sonic gives chase and just so happens to end up in a canyon of erupting mountains. Station Square residents are required by law to have volcano insurance, for some reason… After zip lining though immensely hot air and jumping down an immensely hot hole, then Tails comes to save the day with a new plane fresh out of the Chinese factory that is, only a short few minutes later, damaged irreparably by a big LASER CANNON on the EGG CARTON. Sonic and Fox Sonic are forced to make a crash landing and then enter the Sky Dick and get shot at for 3 minutes as the EGG CARTON seemingly destroys numerous essential components for maintaining flight and battle capability.
Sonic and Tail fight a Mr Robot, yes that one, but no not that one, and then everyone sort of goes off in their own directions. Sonic goes to confront Eggmon and fights Chris 6, the biggest and fattest and most tailed of any Chris yet. After icing that son of a bitch, Sonic chases Eggman to the jungle, and after recuperating from a near fatal fall with time, love, and the wonders of modern medicine, he enters an ancient temple. Turns out the Native pre-Station Squarians discovered such magical wonders as “stone snake monster” and “fire... ball” and “anti-gravity technology”. After realizing the temple was a waste of his time because he knows less than jack shit about archaeology or anthropology and also he is a fucking HEDGEHOG, he goes to the fucking gargantuan Robotnik Base a mere trot from the temple.
After insert attempt at a humorous level description here, Sonic and Egg Sonic finally come head to head for the last time. I like the Robotnik Suicide Bomb Attack. Very classy, you fat degenerate animal-hating fuck.
And that is the side plot of Sonic Adventure in its entirety. I have glossed over nothing or spared single detail. Oh wait.
Fuck.
There are five other characters to play as? Really?
Tails races Sonic through abridged versions of Sonic’s levels, except for the last, where he races Eggman to BIG FUCKING NUKULAR BOMB. He is with Sonic for most of the plot but when he is not he struggles with low self-confidence and feeling like he is unable to step out of Sonic’s blue shadow and be his own person. He is like 8. He also has a sand-boarding minigame. I’m not sure if that is a thing people actually do? But they should probably be doing it regardless.
But who gives a fuck about that.
Knuckles guards the MASTER EMERALD on ANGEL ISLAND all ALONE because he is the LAST OF HIS RACE. I haven’t really touched on the Echidna Flashbacks that every character randomly has in their story because who gives a fuck about that. They slightly explain some of the backstory of the Mystic Ruins and Chris the waterboy but in such a roundabout confusing for now reason way that it is hard to care. After all that shit happened I guess the mystical warrior Echidnas all but died out and now only Knuckles is left. Eggman shows up and frees Chaos by shattering the BIG GEM and Knuckles spends his storyline collecting the pieces in various locations. His gameplay revolves around open levels and Hot-n-Cold style “radar” that tells you how close you are to one of the three pieces in the level. Nothing happens in his story besides that, haha Knuckles is a gullible dumbass why is his tail crooked moving on.
But who gives a fuck about his big red tail.
Now, my friends, now we are really into the shit. The witches brew of poopoo. Amy’s story is somehow too long but also nothing happens. She befriends a bird and then a robot chases her for a half hour and then she fights the robot and the bird is reunited with its family that is has a PICTURE of, in a LOCKET, around its NECK. Normal bird paraphernalia. The levels are these overly long half-”Amy moves too slow and I’m bored” platforming and half-”these puzzles are dogshit” fusterclucks. Boring. She humanizes Gamma too I guess.
But who gives a fuck about robots having free will.
Big the Cat is a big cat with a weight problem, a fishing pole, and whose only friend is a frog who doesn’t understand not to eat emeralds that weigh more than its body. In what surely was an ad for Sega Bass Pro Fishing, Big fishes fish and frogs in all of his levels and if you know what you are doing they are so piss-easy as to be a total waste of time, but if you don’t know what you are doing then you will waste even more time fucking about and never beating the levels and getting game overs by losing lives by breaking fucking fishing lines. Lovely.
But who gives a fuck about cats going fishing okay I guess that is a little clever 10/10 game best game.
E-101 Gamma is a custom roboi who is pitted against his robrothers in robattles by their dad, Robotnik. After he kidnaps Big’s frog and brings him back to the Egg Carton, his robrothers are all reprogrammed and sent to different corners of the world, and by that I mean different levels that you have already seen with the other characters. After the aforementioned Pink Sonic humanization, Gamma decides to rebel against his creator and “free” all of his brothers by murdering them. Then he does. Then he dies, and only in death can he be free as well. I’m not crying. Also, Amy’s bird’s family were trapped in Beta and Gamma.
But who gives a fuck about bird love. Birds are weird.
Chris is still alive. All is not well. He attacks Robotnik and collects all of the Chris Emeralds, and turns into Perfect Chris, flooding Station Square and generally being a big moist prick. Since he is so vile and prickish, he only absorbs the fucking… NEGATIVE energy of the Chris Emeralds, and therefore Blue Sonic is able to harness to HIV POSITIVE energy of the Chris Emeralds and turn into Super Saiyan Positive Super Sonic. Defeat Chaos 7 twice and you, the player, have finally managed to complete the whole entire game. Wow. All's well that ends well, right?
Who gives a fuck about the massive death toll and the still flooded city, right?
[24 December 2020]