Sonic Adventure finally brings Sonic the hedgehog and friends into the world of 3D. Players can take up the role of one of 6 different characters and enter an amazing 3D world filled with huge, dynamic and colorful 3D areas that will literally blow your mind.

Dr. Eggman has captured the Chaos Emeralds and is using the Chaos monster to take over the world, and its up to Sonic, Tails, Amy, Knuckles, Big the cat and E-102 to stop him.

Each character has their own set of unique moves and abilities that they can use to fight the evil Doctor Eggman and his army of evil henchman, while trying to save all the animals he has imprisoned. Players can run, walk, swim, fly, climb, perform super jumps and even use a variety of different craft to move throughout the 3D worlds and achieve their different objectives.

6 Different characters to play as, each with their own skills, abilities, moves and story. These characters are:

Sonic – The famous blue hedgehog returns with a whole new host of abilities. Sonic can perform many variations of his old spin attack, like the Homing Spin attack, the Spin Dash attack, the Light Speed attack and the good old jumping head-stomp attack.

Tails – Tails the fox, unlike Sonic, has the ability to fly through the stages with his twin tails. Tails has a basic rolling air attack, and a spin attack where he quickly spins around on the ground, whipping his tail out to hit enemies.

Knuckles the Echidna – Like Tails, Knuckles also has the ability to fly, but is most noted for his huge fists (hence the name) which he can use in his various punching attacks. These attacks are: an air rolling attack, a fireball he can throw when standing still, a thrusting fist attack, and a light attack where after holding down the button for a short period of time Knuckles will destroy all enemies within a short distance. Knuckles also has the ability to climb walls and dig into the ground to find hidden objects

Amy Rose – A friend of Sonic, Amy is armed with a trusty hammer that she can use to attack her enemies. Her attacks are: a hammer smash that she can use to kill all enemies and hit switches to unlock doors etc, a hammer spin where she spins on the spot while swinging her hammer, and a jumping hammer attack where she jumps high in the air and dives downwards while spinning her hammer, smashing all enemies nearby in the process.

Big the Cat – a cat who lives only to fish, Big is armed with his trusty rod that he can use to bash enemies over the head with. This is his only attack and it has a short range.

E-102 the robot – a former robot of Dr Eggman, E-102 has turned on his master and has decided to free all the imprisoned robot-animals he can. His attack is a laser sight rocket gun where he targets an enemy with the laser sight and fires a rocket at them. He can also fly and roll along the ground at high speeds.

There is also a hidden character, Super Sonic, who can be accessed after players have completed all of the stories for the 6 characters in the game.

The basic story of the game is as follows: The evil Dr. Eggman (known as Dr. Robotnik in America) is out to harness the power of the water creature known as Chaos to take over the world. Eggman takes animals and converts them into robot soldiers for use in his army. Sonic takes it upon himself to stop Dr. Eggman and rescue the trapped, robotisised animals

At the beginning of the game, only Sonic is available for selection. After completing a certain percentage of the game, other characters become available. The way in which the stories of each of the characters intertwine is very clever and creates a high level of interest in the game. For example, Sonic comes across Knuckles in the game and fights and defeats him. Knuckles discovers that Dr Eggman is the evil one and sets out to joint Sonic and help him in his quest. From this point on players can use Knuckles.

The stories of each of the characters in the game is as follows:

Sonic’s story follows the main plot of the game in that Dr Eggman has taken control of hundred of animals and turned them into robots and is trying to capture the seven chaos emeralds and use the water monster, Chaos, to take over the world.

Tails quest usually involves racing Sonic through the game’s stages (not in the same order that Sonic completes them). As Sonic is super fast, Tails must find shortcuts to beat sonic to the finish line. This can involve flying across water or land where Sonic cannot go, so a good degree of experimentation is called for.

Knuckles has the responsibility of guarding the giant Chaos Emerald, and when the Chaos water monster steals the Emerald and shatters it, hiding it on various stages in the game. Knuckles must explore each stage (go where no other characters are able to go in some cases) and find these Emerald pieces. As such, Knuckles adventure involves more exploration than any of the other characters.

Amy – As Dr Eggman invades Station Square, a little bird is made homeless and Amy befriends it and swears to find its parents. She is later captured by one of Dr Eggman’s robots, Zero, and is imprisoned on his ship. She convinces a robot that Eggman is evil and she makes her escape still intent on finding the bird’s parents.

Big the Cat is sleeping in his makeshift hut when the Chaos monster captures his pet frog. It’s then up to Big to find him in the many stages in Sonic Adventure. Big’s stages involve him fishing for the frog that is swimming in pools of water and small estuaries in the game. Big can also catch any of the fish in the stages for extra points.

E-102 is one of Dr Egmman’s many robots who once were small animals but are now imprisoned in his metallic robot suits. After meeting Amy on the Dr Eggman’s ship, the Egg Carrier, she awakens memories in E-102 and he frees her and sets out to free the rest of the animals Dr Eggman has imprisoned.

After completing all of the stages, players will be able to select Super Sonic. His mission is to defeat Perfect Chaos, who has gained the Chaos Emeralds and formed the ultimate incarnation of Chaos.

Each of the action stages are joined together by large areas that can be fully explored, much like the world in Mario 64. Tips and clues to the location of keys to the next level, extra lives and mini-scenes that unfold the plot story are to be found in these ‘main’ areas. These main areas include:

Station Square. This is the main area where all other sections of Sonic Adventure can be accessed. Inside its location is a train station, a Casino, the entrance to a fun park, a hotel and an underground sewer.

Mystic Ruin. A coastal area that is linked to Station Square via a rail line. Tail’s house and aircraft hanger are located there, as well as the access to Windy Valley (stage 2) and the Ice Cap ( Stage 4). The area is noted for its huge open spaces, waterfall and large lake.

The action stages that the characters access are:

Emerald Coast. The classic coastal level that has been in every Sonic game so far, except now its rendered in full 3D. Starting at the beach resort near Station Square, Sonic runs along the beachfront and then up and along the edge of the coastline to reach Tails at the end of the stage.

Windy Valley. Sonic starts running from plateau to plateau on what appears to be a level that is suspended miles above the ground. Pretty soon the whole valley is engulfed in a tornado. Sonic then travels upwards inside the tornado to complete the stage.

Casinopolis. Sonic must go into the casino and earn 400 rings by actually becoming a ball in a giant pinball machine. Players get to control the pinball machine and try to raise the rings by getting a great score. If you fail you must travel through the Casino’s garbage system in order to get back into the casino again.

Ice Cap. Sonic starts the first section in a large open cavern where he must negotiate jumps and small platforms. The next section has Sonic skiing down a huge snowy mountain with a giant avalanche crashing down behind him.

Twinkle Park. At the start of the stage Sonic has to ride along on a dodgem car while jumping gaps and avoiding enemies. Sonic then speeds through a giant amusement park where he jumps from platform to platform hundreds of feet above amusement rides, and even takes a short trip on a giant roller coaster.

Speed Highway. This level has Sonic speeding across the tops of buildings and along a makeshift highway at incredible speeds. Loop the loops are common here, as well as hitching a ride with a helicopter at one point. Later Sonic runs down the side of a building, which looks incredible. He then comes into a clearing where he runs around a whole town and then finishes the stage by freeing some more animals.

Red Mountain. This area is similar to Windy Valley in that it has lots of plateaus to jump across, but there are also plenty of flame spurts to avoid (due to the volcanic activity in the area). Later Sonic goes underground and into the heart of the volcano where he must leap over pools of molten lava to save the animals at the end of the stage.

Skydeck. This is the deck aboard Dr Eggman’s Egg Carrier and it is absolutely massive. Much more platform-based action is to be found here, rather than speedy action. Sonic must dodge, duck and avoid the Egg Carrier’s defenses while trying to get to the end of the stage. One wrong step and he’ll fall off the Carrier to his doom.

Lost World. Sonic now steps into a world that looks like something out of an Indiana Jones movie. The first area involves Sonic solving a great range of puzzles that has him running up the sides of walls, jumping on a giant stone snake that weaves its way around a water filled room and running down a large corridor while being chase by a massive boulder – Indiana Jones-style. The second section has Sonic running through dark caverns where he has to align large mirrors with small beams of light so he can see his way ahead.

Final Egg. This is the last stage in the game for Sonic where he must make his way through the bowels of the Egg Carrier in an effort to confront Dr Eggman.

Sonic Adventures supports the VMU for mini-games that can be downloaded from the Dreamcast game and the Internet. There are little eggs in Sonic that you can find in various places. These contain un-hatched Chao who can be hatched when you take them to a hatching area in the game. Once they are born you can take care of them and even save them to the VMU where you can play mini games with them like a quest adventure. You can even breed Chao with one another to form new types of Chao.

Sonic Adventures is primarily a single player game, but in the game levels a second player can take control of Tails, just like in the Megadrive versions!

Sonic adventures supports the Puru Puru rumble pak for Dreamcast

Sonic Adventure uses the Dreamcast’s high resolution mode of 640 by 480 pixels and runs at a frame rate above 30 FPS.

Sonic Adventure employs nearly every graphical trick that the Dreamcast has to offer. These include:

Texture compression that gives the 3D worlds in Sonic Adventures an almost photorealistic appearance. Tiled floors look totally realistic, sandy beaches have waves that splash against them, city skyscrapers are finitely detailed with coloured spotlights filling the sky with fluorescent colours and the grassy hills of the Mystic Ruin look almost too good to be true.

Excellent lighting that gives some stages an incredibly impressive look. The inside of Casinopolis has its own spotlights that shine over the whole complex, with lighting patterns appearing on every object in the building. More of this is seen on other stages

Excellent use of translucent polygons for flashy visual effects. The Chaos monster is constructed from see-through or translucent polygons giving him and amazing appearance that has to be seen to be believed.

All of the 3D worlds, characters and objects are constructed from a huge amount of polygons giving them an unsurpassed level of detail. The city streets in Station Square are filled with people and cars who are constantly moving about, the grassy hills of Msytic Ruin have huge amounts of finitely detailed trees and disappearing points that stretch as far as you can see, and each of the characters has a fully animated mouth that is synced to their speech.

Reflection mapping is used on all metallic objects (cars etc) as well as the glass in shop front windows that adorn the stores in Station Square.

The level design far exceeds anything ever seen before in a platform-based videogame. Each new level holds some major graphical surprise that will astound and amaze, from the giant killer whale who smashes into the pier in Emerald Coast to the fantastic rollercoatser ride that Sonic takes in Twinkle Park and the absolute mind-blowing enormity of the Egg Carrier craft which Sonic explores in the later stages of the game.

Each of the characters in Sonic Adventures has their own unique musical theme consisting of numerous songs. All of the levels and main areas also have their own music that perfectly suits that game’s atmosphere and theme as well as the particular environment they are played to. From the backing drums of and tribal tone of the music for Mystic Ruins to the bassy saxophone solos that can be instantly head the moment players enter Casinopolis, the music in Sonic Adventures is both atmospheric and highly pleasing to the ear.

Sound effects are 16 bit CD sound quality

All of the favourite old sound samples used in previous Sonic games have been ported over to Sonic Adventures, albeit with significant upgrade in quality and clarity.

Mario 64-like gameplay with more speed, thrills and surprises than any other platform game ever made. Sonic Adventures never fails to surprise with its gameplay, design, graphics and sound.

Each character can find new skills and abilities throughout their story, like more powerful attacks and faster speed and more agility. Finding these extra attacks and abilities is a necessity for players to be able to defeat the end of game bosses.

The different abilities of each character means that no two characters can complete the same level in the same way. Sonic, for example, must get to the finish of the level as quickly as possible and collect as many rings as he can while Knuckle’ adventure is more exploration-based as he much search high and low for the hidden pieces of the Emerald. This calls for players to become skilled in the control of each of the characters, as all of the characters move, fight and have totally different abilities. This game design increases Sonic Adventures’ longevity substantially and makes the game a long-term investment.

Although there are set paths that players can take throughout each level, further exploration reveals that there are many possible routes that can be navigated to take players to the end of the stage. The size and enormity of the levels encourages players to experiment in finding new paths and exploiting the abilities of the game’s characters.

The finding of level keys, hints, tips and new abilities breaks up the normal level action perfectly, and always provides something new and interesting for the player to do.

The Chao VMU function of the game, although a minor addition is actually enjoyable and entertaining, much like the Tamogotchi phenomenon seen a few years ago.

As an overall game, Sonic Adventures is the perfect launch title for the Dreamcast. In the same way that Super Mario 64 set benchmarks for graphics, sound, gameplay and immersion within the game’s environment when it was released in 1996, Sonic Adventures does the same, but better. Its levels are longer, and their design and visuals are unmatched; there are six different adventures to complete and a multitude of hidden bonuses and extra games to extend the title’s longevity. Overall, the speed, attention to detail, and sheer fun of Sonic almost make you forget that it is really just a game.