The curious case of Sonic Adventure

Unlike your other posts, I'm not sure what the takeaway is here. Is your argument that people retrospectively bash SA (among other titles) simply because gaming has evolved with pop culture and they shouldn't bash it just because of that?

That said, I 100% completed Sonic Adventure: Limited Edition as part of the Hollywood Video rental thing (HUGE DOWN DEPOSIT LIKE $500 or something ridiculous, but you got it all back) and loved it even more when it actually came out. When Sonic Adventure DX came out, I was still miffed that Sega was putting their mascot on their long-term rival's console, and I've never gotten that bitter taste out of my mouth (but it has simmered down). The additional modes and challenges seemed forced and out of place. It was as if they wanted to backport mission segments from SA2 into SA1 somehow and involve Sonic X as a commercial tie-in. Regardless, I remember it doing fairly well and broadening the Hedgehog's dominance in the living rooms for a while before fading out as Sega began to go full throttle as a 3rd party publisher.

 

One thing I failed to touch on were the controls. Playing Sonic Adventure on a Sega designed controller gave you certain sensitivity to the triggers and button muscle memory. I always will associate the controller with the cute little Chao mimicking actions on my controller as having a Sega feel, whereas with Sonic Adventure DX... well... the sensitivity was different and the overall feel of the controls felt like "Nintendo" to me, interpret that as you will. If the SA:DX experience was on the PC, well, I really don't know how those players would feel about the keyboard because truth be told I only touched it a bit for fun and not to play. I can imagine different types of gamers raised on different platforms to have their own unique views on Sonic Adventure, but Sega's handling of the port is slightly strange considering the proto release of SA:DX with many debugging features revealed an interesting amount of cut content.

Also, I'm genuinely curious about what made DX a "Director's Cut" anyway? In our analysis of all the Dreamcast SA protos, have we found any evidence that anything was truly restored in SA:DX, or were all the Chao features for the Advance series shades of what the VMU wanted to be?

 

The way I see it, it's a revision of the original game that the 'director' wanted to change in certain areas.

There's the dragon that's kind-of cut and that was meant to appear in the Sky Level, though that hasn't been restored for the DX version.

Apart from that, that's all from my memory.

 

DX isn't a true director's cut in anyway (unless the director wanted a worse game). The truth is that "director's cut" was added to the name because they thought it sounded cool.

 

It is worth noting that the "Director's Cut" part of the title only appears in the English version of the logo. The Japanese version is simply Sonic Adventure Deluxe.

 

I can't tell which name is less fitting. I guess "Director's Cut" implies something was cut at least, while "Deluxe" is just a flat-out lie.

 

They should have called it "Sonic Adventure: We Don't Give A Shit Anymore Edition".

 

I can't believe I never knew this! Well put as usual MainMemory!

 

I will say this: even though some of the technical details of that blog are over my head, after reading a few pages, I went on eBay and grabbed a copy of Sonic Adventure DC. This'll be a fun nostalgia trip when it gets here. Thanks for that.

 

Wait... Did people think that "DX" meant "Director's Cut"?

 

Sonic Adventure Director's Cut: Director's Cut! :v:

(Although I admit, I thought that's what the DX stood for too)

 

I blindly accepted that a DX was stuck on the end of it to make it "COOL SWEET AND CATCHY". For reals, I thought it was just a term to differentiate between the previous Dreamcast version, nothing more.

 

Some misconceptions:

• The Steam version is not the one getting modded. Period. The "fix" for the Steam version isn't a fix for the Steam version, it's pirating the original 2004 PC release and replacing the Steam version with it. The original 2004 release is the one that is being modded.
• The 360/PS3 versions are the same shitty port-port-port-port-port-port- as the real Steam version.
• DX did nothing even remotely close to increasing texture quality. It did the exact opposite, which is addressed on the site you linked as your citation.

 

As a 13 year old I knew it was wrong but I still questioned it, like when Japanese marketing geniuses think "X" means "crossover" when two companies collaborate.

As for the topic at hand, I feel like Sonic Adventure is one of those pieces of media that has aged horribly, not because its a bad game but because its flaws were forgivable when there wasn't anything to compare it to. Sonic Adventure 2 resolved a lot of the flaws, tightened up the gameplay slightly, still had issues of its own but feels more polished than the first game. Don't get me wrong, I still play both Adventure games once a year or so, but I don't think any kid today is gonna pick up Sonic Adventure and be as blown away as we were when it launched.

 

SA DX is an example of taking changes too far for no real reason, and cutting corners while they were at it.

 

I think SA2 fixed a lot of the technical aspects of the game and slightly improves sonic's high speed gameplay, as well as the multiplayer and bonus features, but it is outright worse in almost every other way. The alternative gameplay options Forced gameplay was even more Forced upon you (2/3 of the gameplay is alternative gameplay???! Compared to SA1 in which sonic had the most levels by far, and tails gameplay although broken is the same fundamentally); the aesthetic went from bright and a bit fantastical (even with the semi-realism) to bland and drab; the music went from a diverse collection of atmospheric themes to oversaturated butt rock; the story went from your standard monster of the week tied into the basic sonic emerald lore, to a weird government conspiracy that had little to do with sonic at all except him being mistaken for shadow.

SA2 I think positively on for the bonus features and the slight improvement on sonic's primary gameplay, but it really is worse in almost every other way. If I were going to do an adventure remake, or pull ideas from one of these games to build a new template for a 3ad sonic game it would undoubtedly be SA1. It's a better game conceptually.

 

Actually I think it's more the opposite. It doesn't actually bother to make many changes (effortful ones anyway), and most of it's departures from the original game are more half assed programming that they likely didn't mean but didn't care.

If we abide by Taxman's claims, SEGA do have a tight leach on what new features and glosses rereleases of their old games can have, but even then I think they could have done more to make it up to date. They did alter the Chao Gardens, add a few more animations, switch sound and music here and there, and fix a few glitches suggesting there were SOME liberties they could take. Even just fine tuning the cutscenes even shrewdly would make the game feel less in-your-face dated in many regards, but if anything they just made them worse.


I mean there's five extra Twinkle Circuit tracks ALREADY in the games' code in complete form, would it really be hard to just add a menu so players could try them? Then it would at least be SOMETHING of a Director's Cut.

I also always wondered why they didn't add in variants of levels for certain characters (which I suppose technically aren't full new levels which SEGA aren't big on adding). Like Big and Knuckles could technically be led into any level without much story segregation so long as emeralds and Froggy are there or Amy's first level could have been Casinopolis to justify her going there to find Sonic.

 

Speaking of curious cases and SA1, why was Oshima's credit removed from DX? I mean that's probably a good thing not to have his name attached to such hot garbage, but still. Did he leave on bad terms with the company?