50 Fun Facts About Sonic Adventure

Which sea creature smashes the pier behind Sonic in Emerald Coast, the first stage of Sonic Adventure?

An orca tears the pier apart as it chases Sonic along the boards. A chase from this first level was among the scenes Sonic Team showed off when the game was first unveiled in the summer of 1998.

Big the Cat's Sonic Adventure stages replace running with which pastime that Game Informer called painful and boring?

Fishing came before the character: Sonic Team had already built a working rod with nothing to use it on, so they invented a giant, relaxed cat to hold it.

Which Japanese name for Doctor Robotnik did Sonic Adventure bring to the West as an insult from Sonic?

Dr. Eggman had been the villain's name in Japan all along. The same game stopped calling Tails by the name Miles, which is what Japanese players usually knew him as.

Sonic's redesign for Sonic Adventure made him taller with longer quills and gave his eyes which new iris color?

Green irises were picked to stand out against Sonic's darker blue body and to nod to Green Hill Zone. The artist behind the new look compared its style to graffiti.

Which Sonic Adventure hub area is the first place Chaos strikes and is later destroyed by Perfect Chaos?

Station Square is wrecked once Chaos has absorbed all seven Chaos Emeralds. The monster calms down only when it sees the Chao still living peacefully among the ruins.

The magazine Edge called Sonic Adventure a worthy rival to which landmark 3D platform game of the 1990s?

Super Mario 64 was the yardstick for every 3D platformer of the era. Another critic found Sega's game less ambitious, because its stages run in a line where Mario's reward exploring.

Which Sonic Adventure character glides, climbs walls and hunts for shards of the shattered Master Emerald?

Knuckles was given treasure hunts so that his stages would contrast with everyone else's straight runs to the goal. He was one of the first two characters added after Sonic.

Sonic Adventure was the first Sonic game to make extensive use of which feature, chosen to serve its bigger story?

Voice acting ran through the whole story for the first time. The developers disagreed about how Sonic should sound and settled only on avoiding an anime actor in favor of a film one.

In Sonic Adventure's Casinopolis stage, Sonic curls up to become the ball in which game to earn rings?

Pinball tables pay out the rings Sonic needs to reach a Chaos Emerald locked in the vault. Fall short of the target and he is dumped into a sewer-like garbage area under the casino.

In Sonic Adventure's Icecap stage, what does Sonic ride down the mountain to escape an avalanche?

A snowboard carries Sonic and Tails ahead of the avalanche, past trick ramps and hot air balloons. The stage borrows its name from a zone in 1994's Sonic the Hedgehog 3.

Which Sonic Adventure character, who gives the player hints throughout, is named after ancient ruins in Guatemala?

Tikal borrows the name of a ruin the developers visited on a research trip. Photographs they took there were used directly as textures in the game, instead of artwork drawn by hand.

Which Sonic Adventure robot turns against Doctor Robotnik after meeting Amy and destroys the rest of its own series?

E-102 Gamma exists because fans had asked for a shoot 'em up inside a Sonic game. He was never meant to play a large role, which is why his campaign is so short.

Sonic Adventure players could move a Chao into which Dreamcast accessory to train it on the go?

Visual Memory Unit cards doubled as tiny handhelds, so a Chao could walk through a course in the minigame Chao Adventure away from the TV. The pets were conceived to show the gadget off.

Sonic Adventure's Chao pets grew out of the A-Life creature system in which other Sonic Team game?

Nights into Dreams had a similar virtual pet system. For the Chao, the designers built on it by adding the option to improve a pet's skills and to carry it away from the console.

Sonic Adventure's hub areas, built around exploring to find power-ups, were inspired by which other game series?

The Legend of Zelda gave the team the idea of roaming a hub to uncover new places and upgrades. The hubs were added to pull players deeper into a Sonic game that leaned on its story.

Sonic Adventure's Sky Chase stages, flown in Tails's biplane, are a nod to which Sega rail shooter series?

Panzer Dragoon, a Sega shooter from 1995, is the model for both flights after Robotnik's airship. The first ends with the plane shot down, the second with a crash landing on the ship itself.

Tails's sandboarding level in Sonic Adventure, Sand Hill, was inspired by sandboarders the team saw in which country?

Peru supplied the idea when the developers came across a group riding the dunes near the city of Ica. They wanted moments in the game that nobody would expect from a platformer.

Who directed Sonic Adventure, having pitched it in 1996 as a story-driven, role-playing-style Sonic game?

Takashi Iizuka directed while series co-creator Yuji Naka produced. Because the game was built alongside the Dreamcast, he was able to ask for more RAM in the console itself.

Which composer led the soundtrack of Sonic Adventure, swapping the electropop of earlier Sonic games for rock?

Jun Senoue was sound director for the first time and said he felt more comfortable writing rock. Two of the stage themes are rearranged from his earlier music for Sonic 3D Blast.

Sonic Adventure's lead composer and the singer of its main theme went on to form which rock band together?

Crush 40 began under the name Sons of Angels, after the pair had worked together for the first time on this game. They have carried on making music together ever since.

Which song, sung by Hardline's Johnny Gioeli, is Sonic Adventure's main theme and its final boss music?

Open Your Heart was saved for the last battle because films often bring back their main theme at the most dramatic moment. It was also performed live when the game was unveiled in 1998.

Which Sonic Adventure stage, set among city skyscrapers after dark, was remade for Sonic Generations on consoles?

Speed Highway came back in 2011 for the series' 20th anniversary, alongside a new take on the Perfect Chaos boss fight. In the original, Sonic runs straight down the side of a large building.

In Sonic Adventure's Twinkle Park stage, what must Sonic steal from an enemy and drive around a racetrack?

A bumper car gets faster the more rings Sonic collects, topping out at 99 of them. The stage itself is a gigantic theme park, one of the city's major tourist attractions.

Which Sonic Adventure stage, a booby-trapped ancient temple in the jungle, did the designers rebuild dozens of times?

Lost World took so many attempts because the team was learning by trial and error how to turn left-to-right Sonic levels into 3D spaces. A stone mural of Perfect Chaos sits at its center.

Jon St. John, who plays two characters in Sonic Adventure, is best known as which hero of a shooter series?

Duke Nukem and Big the Cat share a performer, who also played one of the game's robots. He came back as Big a few years later in Sonic Heroes.

Which actor played Sonic in English in Sonic Adventure and kept the role in the games until 2004?

Ryan Drummond was hired after an American branch of the studio was set up to translate the Japanese script. The later anime Sonic X used a different English cast.

Because jumping on enemies is harder in 3D, Sonic Adventure gave Sonic which move that targets them in mid-air?

Homing Attack solved a problem the 2D games never had, since beating an enemy there only took landing on it. In 3D, players could move in every direction instead of simply heading right.

Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut brought the game to Windows and which Nintendo console in 2003?

GameCube owners got sharper graphics and a higher frame rate, plus Chao that could link up with a Game Boy Advance. Reviewers were still disappointed that old problems had not been fixed.

Sonic Adventure DX lets players unlock all twelve Sonic games released for which older Sega system?

Game Gear classics were added to tempt players who already owned the original release. One review praised the port for keeping their multiplayer modes intact.

Sonic Adventure's villain Chaos was designed as something older hardware could not show, a being that resembles what?

Water fit the director's wish for a villain that was liquid and transparent. A plan to give the final form realistic blue scales was dropped as too much for the Dreamcast.

In Sonic Adventure's Windy Valley, what swallows Sonic and forms the dark, debris-filled second section of the stage?

A tornado sucks up the platforms of the first section, and Sonic climbs the floating wreckage to get out. The stage's music is reworked from the Genesis game Sonic 3D Blast.

Which pet of Big the Cat swallows a Chaos Emerald in Sonic Adventure and is hunted by Robotnik's robots?

Froggy also swallows part of the tail of Chaos, so Robotnik sends an entire series of robots to catch one little frog.

In Sonic Adventure, what kind of creature takes refuge with Amy while a robot hunts it for its Chaos Emerald?

A bird, a little blue Flicky known as Birdie, carries the gem. Its relatives turn out to be sealed inside two of Robotnik's other robots.

Writers compared Sonic Adventure's Chao, which hatch from eggs and can be raised on the go, to which 1990s toy?

Tamagotchi was the comparison two games historians reached for. They counted incubating eggs on the Dreamcast's little card among the game's most fascinating features.

What does Sonic Adventure call its eleven main levels, which are entered from the three open hub areas?

Action Stages took over from the Zones of the older games. Each one sets a different goal for every character who enters it, from simply reaching the end to hunting for hidden items.

After its opening climb, Sonic Adventure's Red Mountain stage sends Sonic down into the inside of what?

A volcano full of flowing lava hides a strange detail: prison cells are built into its walls, with ghostly figures swaying inside them.

Aboard the Egg Carrier in Sonic Adventure, Amy escapes a locked room by beating Robotnik's score at a game like what?

Whack-a-mole is the model for Hedgehog Hammer, where dolls pop out of eight holes for Amy to swat. Beating the doctor's 2,000 points wins her the Warrior Feather as a prize.

Which Sonic Adventure stage, set inside Robotnik's flying battleship, is the only one that Sonic himself never visits?

Hot Shelter is played only by Amy, Big and one of the robots. One part is an enormous aquarium, and another is a fight aboard the ship's speeding tram.

Which Sonic Adventure stage is Doctor Robotnik's secret base, reached by a long bridge from the Mystic Ruins jungle?

Final Egg is the tenth and last stage of Sonic's own story. Tubes in its entrance hall hold a stored Metal Sonic, a rival from the older games.

Work on Sonic Adventure began in 1997 on which Sega console before moving to the more powerful Dreamcast?

Sega Saturn hardware proved too limited for the first prototype. Rather than waste the finished work, the team tucked it into the compilation Sonic Jam as a bonus.

In Sonic Adventure, what do players collect from defeated enemies and hand to a Chao to raise its abilities?

Small animals carried back from the main levels improve a Chao's status. The pets were meant to add replay value and to appeal to casual players who had never tried a Sonic game.

In Sonic Adventure, what do players earn by clearing level objectives, exploring the hubs and winning Chao competitions?

Emblems come three to a level, earned by replaying it with goals such as beating a time limit. In the later DX version, collecting every one unlocks Metal Sonic as a playable character.

In Tails's Sonic Adventure story, which backup weapon does Robotnik aim at the city before Tails foils the plan?

A missile strike was Robotnik's contingency plan to destroy the city. Tails chases the doctor across the city to reach it and gets there first.

Which American publisher adapted Sonic Adventure in its long-running Sonic the Hedgehog comic book series?

Archie Comics had to account for the characters' new looks, and its version placed the game's city in a hidden spot beneath Sonic's home planet, Mobius.

What falls out of the sky when the Master Emerald is shattered at the start of Sonic Adventure?

Angel Island comes down in the sea just off the coast of the Mystic Ruins. It returns to the sky only at the end of its guardian's story, once the giant gem has been pieced back together.

Which US chain rented out Dreamcast consoles with a special edition of Sonic Adventure before the console's launch?

Hollywood Video struck an exclusive deal with Sega, and the promotion ran in more than a thousand of its stores from July 1999, about two months before the console went on sale.

Most of Tails's stages in Sonic Adventure reuse parts of Sonic's levels as what kind of challenge?

Races against Sonic make up most of Tails's game, since he has to reach the end of each stage first. The idea came from not wanting finished levels to be run through only once.

Which artist redesigned Sonic and his friends for Sonic Adventure, giving them a taller, edgier and more Western look?

Yuji Uekawa looked to Walt Disney and Looney Tunes animation for the new style. He began because the old short-bodied, big-headed designs proved hard to see in 3D.

Which Sonic Adventure robot, the prototype of the E-100 series, relentlessly pursues Amy through her stages?

ZERO was the zeroth model of the series, built before the numbered ones. It keeps coming after Amy until she finally turns her hammer on it.

Which machine does Doctor Robotnik pilot against Sonic as the last boss of Sonic's own story in Sonic Adventure?

Egg Viper is a giant combat machine modeled on a snake, with a main body far larger than its tail and three laser cannons on its front shield.