Sonic Adventure (Dreamcast) Big Fishing Session 3: Let's talk about my history with SA1!
I've been talking at length about Sonic Adventure for....
....oh crap 1 year already....?
Anyway for once, and since I'm finally almost done, I wanted to focus on my own....personal experience with this game. Because for all of the criticism that I've levied against this game , this is actually one of the most important games of my childhood.
I got my start with Sonic back in 2005 with the likes of Heroes, Shadow and especially Mega Collection Plus. Sa1 followed soon after, mainly its PC port since I never owned a Dreamcast or a Gamecube
Believe it or not, but one of my most nostalgic and prevalent childhood memories was trying to make the game run properly on my father's old crappy computer, and later when I got my own I remember my countless, futile attempts at emulating the Dreamcast version because I wanted to play with the Dreamcast models so bad!
I used to play this game quite often in the 2000s: it was way easier than both Heroes and Shadow, way better than 06, I never owned the Storybook games nor any of the handheld games until like 2009, and I only got to play SA2 reliably thanks to the HD port in the early 2010s, so this and Unleashed were my go to 3D Sonic experiences for a long time
Yet as time went on I found myself gravitating away from this game. I actually gravitated away from Sonic in general by the mid 2010s, partly because I was getting into other series but especially out of disappointment and disinterest with the franchise 's direction and fandom drama at the time
Ever since then I have taken steps to re experience this series and, for the most part, have gained a new appreciation for games I didn't think highly of once
I like Heroes despite its flaws, partly because of its unique energy and also for its high level of challenge. I learned to like SA2 despite its 2/thirds of non-Sonic gameplay because I learned to enjoy the singular strengths of those styles. I learned to like Colors more by focusing more on its collection/exploration elements that ensure I'll get the most out of every level instead of just going through as fast as possible. I even learned to get a kick out of smaller games like Triple Trouble, 3D Blast, R, Riders and so on.
You might notice that Sa1 is not on this list. That's because it's the only one of my childhood Sonic games that hasn't improved in my eyes, it's actually gotten worse. Or better yet: my perception of it has gotten worse, I just don't think this is that good of a game anymore, and every time I try to replay this game I come out of the experience more jaded about it, which hurts me personally given how important it was to my formative years. But why? Why this game especially?
Well I think I first realized why was when I was watching a youtuber playing the game and, quite bluntly, being a dick about it
It was your usual shtick: yadda yadda Sonic bad lol, look at the stupid glitches and camera blah blah
But then they called the game a "proto-Sonic 06"
I remember getting peeved at this mainly because it was your typical youtuber bullshit and even nowadays I'm not putting SA1 anywhere near 06 in terms of quality
....yet when trying to come up with a retort in my head I....found that I couldn't come up with anything substantial other than "It's not nearly as bad", which it isn’t, but....
And that's when it hit me: Sa1 has the exact same fundamental issues as 06 for the most part.
I'm not talking about how the two games superficially resemble each other because that's on 06 for wanting to ape the Adventure games' success. I'm also not necessarily talking about any resemblances in gameplay, though obviously the games have similar issues with alternate gameplay styles that don't always stick the landing
What I mean is that SA1, like 06, feels incomplete, rushed and kind of a mess, just on a much smaller scale than 06
Sa1 features reused levels up the wazoo, significantly neutered and underutilized character campaigns, some gameplay mechanics that flat out do not work, like the racing AI in Tails' story or Big's fishing, pacing issues related to having to fight the same bosses multiple times across multiple stories while navigating through mostly empty hub worlds and yes: even some pretty questionable glitches, though 06 obviously has it worse
And Here's the thing about Sa1: some fans will defend it by pointing out that it’s an old game, that its detractors are morons who will single out this game for issues that most games of its era also shared, like the camera or the glitches. It’s not hard to find people mocking SA1's camera and collision detection but then they play Mario 64 or DMC1 and suddenly that stuff is a lot more forgivable. Because Sonic's a fun punching back to hit for easy clicks. This is true and I believe I have also called out this tendency in an earlier video
Unfortunately I have come to realize that SA1's biggest issues have little to do with its age or even with it being a Sonic game.
You see, when I was a kid in the 2000s, for the longest time, Sonic Adventure 1 used to be the oldest 3D game I had ever played. Ever. I had no other frame of reference for how early 3D games worked and, as a result, SA1 became my de facto frame of reference. It's not that I never noticed the stuff I nowadays deem to be issues It's that I rationalized them as being stuff that games did back then. Sonic's AI sucks during Tails' stages? Well It's an old game, It's justified. Knuckles' Emerald hunting being trivialized by Tikal's hints? Old game, early players would need the help to explore 3D environments. Big's fishing sucking ass? They likely hadn't figured out good 3D fishing, and so on and so forth
But over the years I have played many games from that same era and come to realize that....no. SA1's issues, mostly, are its own, not the products of its age
3D racing games like Diddy Kong Racing and Crash Team Racing existed, so there's no excuse for the broken racing AI in Tails' stages. Sure I'm not expecting literal racing game-tier AI in a platformer, but even games like Banjo Kazooie were doing a better job at it than this.
Amy and Gamma's gameplay being so simplistic and undercooked has no excuse when there were plenty of more traditional 3D platforming games. Mario 64 and Banjo Kazooie are the most obvious examples of traditional 3D platformer characters with more complex movement than Amy's.
Big's fishing has no excuse being as broken as it is when Ocarina of Time was doing fishing minigames much better only months earlier on weaker hardware to boot.
There's no excuse for having to refight bosses like Chaos 4 multiple times, even Bowser in Mario 64 at least was a bit different each time and could be beaten way quicker.
There are issues here that are genuinely due to the time of release and, as I memtioned a year ago, I cannot in good conscience single out SA1 for them when so many other games at the time were doing them. Try telling me that this game's camera sucks after playing through Megaman Legends or Soul Reaver, c'mon!
However the game's biggest issues are fully its own. The aforementioned stuff, and generally just the stuff I've been moaning about for a year now, has nothing to do with the game's age and everything to do with what I can only assume must've been a messy development cycle and/or planning. I'm not too familiar with SA1's development so I can't make absolute statements on the matter, but this game just reeks to me of unfinished plans, so much about it just feels incomplete on all levels that aren’t story, aesthetics and music. Most characters have little playtime and don't come close to reaching their full potential.
I don't want to accuse Sonic Team of anything. Many call them lazy or incompetent. I may joke about them, but the truth is that you don't get into such a stressful industry like this if you don't genuinely wish to create something you believe has value, and SA1 absolutely has value. However I personally believe that the Team also bit off more than they could chew: I can't say I know how things work Internally at Sonic Team or Sega, but I can only guess they often work on tight deadlines and such, and this isn't such a recent thing either: Sonic 3 had to be split into 2 games precisely to meet a deadline and both it and the other classic games have some noticeable glitches and cut content (especially Sonic 2 in that latter regard) that give the idea of some pretty chaotic and fast paced development habits, at least to me. This is unfortunately normal in the industry, even nowadays. But while the 16 bit games were relatively simple, SA1 is fully 3D, on the most powerful hardware at the time, they wanted this game to have more characters than ever, an interconnected story, hub worlds, more music styles, more minigames, more everything....and corners had to be cut somewhere because what may have worked with 16 bit games in terms of development timelines doesn't work as smoothly with a much more complex kind of game. At least that's my interpretation.
Look: I'm not here to call SA1 a bad game and that everyone who likes it is an ignorant Moron who clearly has no taste in gaming. I have plenty of games that I personally believe to be mediocre but still find joy in playing for one reason or another. That's not even mentioning the inherent subjectivity of my position. My problem with SA1 is that I find it mediocre for how little it truly does with its own mechanics
The game hits gold with Sonic's campaign and then just....peters out for the rest of its game time. I can at least squeeze some enjoyment out of a flawed game that does quite a bit wrong but commits to it, precisely BECAUSE it does something. I have quite a few issues with Heroes but that game never has a dull moment, it's always throwing something at you so I can, at worst, try to adapt and learn to have fun with its insanity. (I have my limits btw, don't think I'm gonna join the 06 fan club any time soon, there are some things that are just too broken even to me). But SA1 often is just content...being. Tails just gets Sonic's partial scraps. Amy and Gamma are cute but then are over in 10 minutes cut scenes excluded. Big just sucks. There's so little for me to actually sink my teeth in, which means I can't really enjoy it. It's not that SA1 is an awful game with incompetent design, a lazy cashgrab thrown out to meet a deadline or whatever. It's that there's barely much game to truly play once you're done with Sonic himself. It offers very little in terms of gameplay and as such I can only enjoy very little
SA1 has a fantastic story (except Knuckles), not just "by Sonic standards", but in general, great art direction, an iconic soundtrack and actually gives Sonic himself a truly solid entry into the third dimension
But everything else feels like so much of an afterthought that, as a complete package, I just....can't really view it highly
....ah. There's a fish! Well enough fishing or reminiscing....
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