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@spinningbuster98
Asuka: This is where I saw my mother die, Shadow...
Shadow: Damn, not here...
「artist」 deltalyxarts 「characters」 ayanami rei, hayashibara megumi, ryan bartley, sage and sonic the hedgehog 「from」 neon genesis evangelion and sonic
Sonic Adventure (Dreamcast) Ending: Closure
Sonic Adventure has one of my favorite endings of any Sonic game, potentially of any videogame I've ever played. It's got a few wrinkles here and there which I will get into shortly, but they can't really ruin the overall narrative impact of this ending.
To kick things off in a funny way: Sonic's one hell of a heavy sleeper huh? Angel Island crashes back into the ocean and he just....snoozes through the whole thing
Y'know the same Angel Island that's LITERALLY A FEW METERS FROM WHERE HE'S SLEEPING!? Holy SHIT man how did you not hear that? How did you not get blown away by the crash!? Now I get how Eggman was able to sneak into his "house" in Labyrinth! I'm surprised Shahra was able to wake his lethargic ass, my GOD!
So one thing I've been failing to mention until now has been Tikal's "messages". My opinion is a bit split on them:
In general narrative and atmospheric terms, these are phenomenal: the way they slowly build up the mystery of Chaos and the Echidnas' demise, the way they're not always shown in a clear chronological order, thus pushing the player to piece the puzzle together, it's genuinely masterful!
....from the player's perspective. Because from an in-universe perspective it makes Tikal look like a complete plank: why is she wasting her time with these cryptic messages rather than just telling the characters the truth all in one go? Why is she even wasting her time with the likes of Big and Gamma, especially the latter, who wasn't even a good guy at that point yet??
This one in the ending is perhaps its clunkiest example: Tikal literally incapacitates Sonic for a while to show him a flashback she'd already partially shown him before....all while the characters are all in a hurry to look for the last Chaos Emerald before Chaos finds it....which he does. Nice job, ghost girl. But overall I really like this approach, as the narrative impact is strong enough to make me overlook its clunky implementation in-universe.
This leads me to Chaos himself, finally: he's my favorite Sonic "villain". I use quotation marks because he's not really "evil" the way Eggman ot many other guys are, despite his destructive and even deceitful nature. He's an animal. An extremely dangerous and intelligent animal, but there's no explicit malice or sadism in his intentions, just unmitigated destruction as a way of coping with the burning hatred of his tragedy. He doesn't even want people to suffer, he's nust lashing out because it's not about causing suffering per se, it's about having this unhealthy amount of pent up rage and grief without any other way of letting it out, and since Chaos is more of a force of nature than a person, a being that is "intelligent" but doesn't necessarily have the same level of sentience as most others, this is the only way he knows how to make his pain hurt less. He's a creature of feelings, not reason. The fact that all of this can be gleamed from a purely mute and unemotive character might be one of the greatest and most overlooked storytelling achievements of this franchise.
Of course this all comes at the cost of Eggman being reduced to little more than Chaos' Emerald gatherer without even knowing it, thus starting a very long running and tired trend. Sure, Eggman has his cool moments, like the missile scene, but his plan was doomed from the start since Chaos' goals of destroying the world were never going to align with Eggman's goals of world domination. Do you really think that Chaos would have kept obeying him even if everything had gone smoothly? That he would have politely avoided flooding all territories conquered by Eggman aka the entire world? Chaos' actions in the ending make it rather clear that who was truly in control all along, and the fact that Eggman woke up an ancient destructive entity which every wall in a temple claimed was extremely dangerous and destructive, and thought about no real leash to keep him obedient save for another dinky little Egg Carrier, when Chaos could have killed him in his Egg Mobile at any point as seen here, is not the greatest of looks for the Doctor. I won't focus on this critique, because SA1 is far from the worst when it comes to Eggman getting the short end of the stick in favor of other bad guys, but I can't just ignore the genesis of one of the most recurring narrative annoyances in the series
And finally: the final battle
To start off: I love the way that the Chaos Emeralds are recontextualized here
People forget (because nobody cares about Classic stories and Sega has always been shit at providing their original, non-US versions) but originally the Emeralds were essentially a metaphor for natural resources. On the one hand they can grant life, as shown in the ending of Sonic 1. On the other hand they can also be used to power weapons of mass destruction. The manual of the first game flat out states this. The Emeralds are like electricity, fire or water: natural elements that serve their purpose in the cycle of things but can easily be corrupted to serve evil ends.
Now Sonic has largely abandoned its environmentalist message after CD, so that original interpretation of the Emeralds has been forgotten. Instead SA1 provides a new interpretation that fits the series' more character driven, emotional storytelling going forward, while still taking care to be consistent with that original view
The Emeralds are manifestations of people's will and emotions, their spirit essentially, and as such they can impose powerful enough wills upon the world through "miracles". While not literal life givers like in the classics (unless you count them resurrecting Sonic in 06 I guess), they nonetheless still represent life and its persistence, only now more from a spiritual, emotional sense rather than a naturalistic one. They can still be used for destruction, as proved by Chaos, yet as Tails implies that is not their intended purpose, which is to preserve life by strenghtening and perpetuating positive emotions.
Is it cheesy? Yeah, welcome to Sonic. It's also earnest. My only complaint would be how out of left Field it comes in this story, with only Tails' Tikal flashback serving as foreshadowing before this reveal, but either way It's something that fits the series' spirit like a glove and I so....SO wish that the series would do something more with this idea, as we would almost never again see the idea of the Emeralds' positive and negative energies be brought into focus
This also recontextualizes Super Sonic from a simple power up to a manifestation of pure goodness, both the Emeralds' and Sonic's own, which coincidentially fits the form's design, something I find ironic given how it was inspired by a transformation famously connected to rage and hatred. I don’t know if it was done on purpose, probably not, but it's fun to think about!
What truly shines in the ending is Sonic himself. It's weird: Sonic is pretty "there" in his own story, having no real stand out character moments of his own, yet It's the ending that gives us one of his finest moments ever.
When faced with Tikal's suggestion to immediately seal Chaos within the Master Emerald again, Sonic outright rejects the mere idea. I've seen some fans debating that this was done out of pragmatism, that it would have been merely a temporary solution before someone broke him out again.
With all due respect: that's not what Sonic is saying here. In fact it's quite literally the opposite of what the scene is framing. It's not that the idea is not sound, but Sonic here is questioning Tikal's methods, not their results. He doesn't put into question the potentially temporary nature of the seal, in fact he specifically gives credit to the idea that this might actually work for good when he says that Chaos "would just be trapped forever". At least as far as this scene is concerned, Tikal is the one proposing the more practical, secure solution, but Sonic refuses it. Why is it then?
Because as the game has already established: Chaos isn't really "evil", certainly not in the way that Eggman is, he's a devastated creature lashing out in agony and Sonic even got to see why that is with his own eyes. Sonic detests needless suffering and cruelty, he loathes when people rule over and trample over others, and Chaos, while an agent of destruction, is a victim of that same evil. Sonic may want to stop Chaos, he may not even particularily like the monster as indicated by his attitude towards him, but he's also not ok with perpetuating his suffering. It's just not right, not any more than Chaos continuing his carnage, so while Sonic may be 100% willing to stop him by force, he doesn't want to condemn him to more of the same suffering that made Chaos what he is now, which is why he takes the comparatively riskier option of fighting Chaos directly.
And to be clear: unless Sonic Team has confirmed otherwise, I fully subscribe to the notion that Sonic kills Chaos here, that the Chaos that departs with Tikal in the end is a spirit Now, just like her. I'm not even sure that Sonic knew his positive energies would purify him. What Sonic did know, and what was most important to him in that moment, was finding a way to save everyone from Chaos' wrath, including Chaos himself, even if that meant putting him down like a rabid animal, because even death is preferable to an eternity of suffering if it truly had to come to that. It's not the easiest of choices but it's one that Sonic did not hesitate to take, because Sonic the Hedgehog is not the type of person to concern himself much with matters of complex philosophy, or ethics, or existentialism. He just follows what his own heart tells him is the right thing to do at any given moment, and in this moment it told him to stop Chaos from hurting others as well as himself, at any cost. It's both an uplifting and somber ending at the same time: somber that Chaos' tragedy should end in his violent end but uplifting in the fact that he's finally found peace at last.
Sonic Adventure's ending feels like a perfect thematic ending to the franchise as a whole. Not in the sense that it should have ended here, Sonic as a series is not so narratively focused that it "needs" an ending, but more in the sense that most if not all of the thematic elements that have been following this series since day 1 have either been wrapped up or evolved neatly: Tails and Amy have grown into stronger people, the Emeralds' link to the "ancient civilization" mentioned in the old manuals has been explored, even Knuckles' mentioning of the "Dragon" in Sonic 3's manual was likely reframed as it being Chaos. If Sonic as a franchise had ended here I would not have complained from a narrative standpoint, though I'm glad it kept going, with Sonic still chasing after Eggman and looking for more adventures.
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....
Time for the big ending!
ANONYMOUS PDA MEME
💖: i have a romantic crush on you!
💜: i want to make sure you’re happy
💙: i have a friend crush on you!
💚: im a little jealous of you
💛: i just think you’re cute!
💘: i wouldnt say no to a platonic marriage
👀: im too shy to talk to you
💗: i want to give you a hug!
💋: i want to kiss you!
💪: id fight someone if they talked shit about you
🔊: im really glad i started following you!
💬: we should talk more!
💭: i think about you a lot
👏: everything you say is great wtf…
🎧: you have excellent music taste!
👑: your blog aesthetic is lovely!
🚨: you intimidate me
37 and 40. :>
37: What's an uncommon/specific, obscure topic you're interested in?
In the realm of storytelling I'm sometimes interested in the idea of how the concept of responsability and accountability plays for a character who has acted purely in the moment in ways they otherwise would not act like and how those moments may dictate the kind of person they are.
If you have a character who is sweet and kind 99% of the time, but once killed a person because pushed to the brink of sanity by circumstances, are they good or bad? Does that 1 bad act under difficult circumstances take precedence over the rest of their life? Or would ignoring that 1 act be dishonest?
40: What's the most interesting item you own?
When I was a child I used to have memories of playing on an SNES which I always found weird because I didn't have one. A few years ago when we moved to a new house and were packing up stuff from the basement, I found an SNES, complete with some games! Turns out it's my father's and he used to let me play with it when I was like 3, then he put it away and forgot about it. It's technically mine now. One of the games was DKC1 and it not only still works, it still has some saved games from when my father used to play it. Those saved games are older than me.
11, 13, 34 :D
11: do you live in an urban, suburban or rural area?
I...guess rural? Kinda? My house is basically placed in between two small towns and there are fields, some even corn, literally as soon as you step outside the gate that groups together the buildings that make up this small "block", but it's not "fully" rural since it takes me barely 5 minutes to reach the nearest town
13: if you had to choose one positive word to describe yourself, what would it be?
I suppose "analytical". I mean I have a habit of thinking things over several times, for very long stretches of time, from multiple perspectives, be it a matter of video games, anime, politics or personal matters. It does cause me to often be impossibly slow and indecisive, but I suppose that's better than rushing in blindly
34: what's your book/movie/tv guilty pleasure?
Yeah see I don't really read books, watch movies or consume lots of tv shows so....got nothing there :P
42 personal questions ask game
how many followers do you have?
when’s the last time you went on a date
how many posts have you made?
What type of shoes do you wear?
what colour are the walls of your room
where are you right now? (not exact location. ex: at a park)
would you consider yourself good at art?
who was your first kiss?
do you still sleep with stuffed animals?
what’s your favourite piece of clothing you own?
do you live in an urban, suburban, or rural area?
what’s your favourite store to shop at? (online or irl)
if you had to choose one POSITIVE word to describe yourself, what would it be?
do you collect anything?
what’s the last thing you ate?
if you go to therapy, do you like your therapist?
what’s one thing you want to buy, but don’t have the money or resources to get?
Who’s the first person you can think of?
how old were you when you found out santa wasn’t real?
If you could revive one tv show that has been cancelled, what show would it be?
do you consider yourself a part of any alternative subculture? if so, which one(s)?
who was your childhood favourite music artist?
CDs or record players?
Do you believe in any conspiracy theories?
would you get back together with an ex if given the opportunity?
favourite kid’s show character?
is the person you call your best friend actually your best friend?
when you’re sad, do you prefer to listen to music to match your mood, or listen to happy music?
what’s the last outfit you wore?
do you have any online friends?
least favourite clothing style that is currently popular
how often do you do your laundry?
do you prefer silver or gold jewelry?
what’s your book/movie/tv guilty pleasure?
if you could change your hair however you want, how would you change it?
do you paint your nails?
what’s an uncommon/specific /obscure topic you’re interested in?
what’s the name of your first pet/what would you name your first pet if you had one?
what’s one feature you would change on tumblr?
what’s the most interesting item you own?
would you rather go on a date at a museum or a concert?
what’s one regret you have?
😊: You’re sweet. You’ve made me smile before.
😇: Every single interaction we’ve had so far has been positive.
😆: You’ve made me laugh out loud before.
😀: I would consider us friends.
🍳: This is an egg in a frying pan!
😂: I’m comfortable around you.
👍: I like you. Just, in general. I think you’re a genuinely good person.
:D
😊: You’re sweet. You’ve made me smile before.
😄: I can always count on you to like/reply to my personal posts.
😇: Every single interaction we’ve had so far has been positive.
😆: You’ve made me laugh out loud before.
📺: We have similar interests!
🌊: You have a lot of personality.
😀: I would consider us friends.
😂: I’m comfortable around you.
👍: I like you. Just, in general. I think you’re a genuinely good person.
Send me an emoji!
💌: I’d love to send you more messages and asks but you make me nervous!
😊: You’re sweet. You’ve made me smile before.
🙏: I’m a little afraid that you’ll unfollow me.
🔪: I’d hate to get on your bad side.
😶: I’m honored that you’re even following me tbH.
👾: Your theme is awesome!
🌄: GO TO BED.
💉: Talking to you or seeing you on my dash makes me feel better.
😐: I don’t understand half the things you reblog but I support you anyway.
🌑: You come off as cold, impersonal.
👒: You come off as very friendly!
🌃: I’d like to spend more time talking to you.
🎭: You sure do get into a lot of drama…
😄: I can always count on you to like/reply to my personal posts.
🍥: Your aesthetic is very streamlined. It’s clear you’re picky about the stuff you reblog.
🍬: You’re sweet, but I feel like I know very little about you as a person.
🐟: Your blog isn’t quite my “type.”
😅: I often worry about upsetting you or scaring you off.
😇: Every single interaction we’ve had so far has been positive.
🐱: You’re cute‼︎
🌱: I’d love to get to know you better.
☔️: You seem unhappy.
😃: I love seeing you in my notifications!
🐸: You act goofy.
💻: Are you ever not online?
❄️: Your BYF struck me as kind of harsh, but I followed you anyway.
😆: You’ve made me laugh out loud before.
💔: You’ve disappointed me before.
📺: We have similar interests!
🔈: We have similar tastes in music.
🌊: You have a lot of personality.
😀: I would consider us friends.
🎀: We have similar aesthetics!
🍳: This is an egg in a frying pan!
🎉: I get really happy when I see positive personal posts from you, even when I don’t fully understand the context!
😈: I know your secret~
🌴: I’m jealous of you.
✨: Could you, like, chill a little bit maybe? Like in general? Please?
🎶: I associate you with a specific song or musician.
👟: I feel as though you’re out of my league.
🐚: I find your blog very calming.
👀: I’ve vagued about you before.
🍰: I might recognize you if I ran into you on the street.
😂: I’m comfortable around you.
🌈: Sometimes I see your selfies and think to myself: “I’m gay.”
🌹: I wouldn’t mind going on a date with you.
😓: I’ve talked to you before and it made me a nervous!
👑: You’re vain.
📝: I know a lot about you just from following you on Tumblr.
🌙: You’re beautiful.
🍓: You remind me of someone…
😒: I honestly don’t know why I’m even still following you at this point.
😳: I’ve learned things about you that have surprised me a lot!
🐭: Please be kinder to yourself.
😑: -__-
👔: I think you’re someone who takes themself very seriously.
🍉: I wish we lived closer to each other.
🍭: You confuse me.
😮: I wish I could give you some advice.
💐: I have a crush on you.
😁: You’re a little awkward, but I find it endearing.
💕: I love you‼︎
👍: I like you. Just, in general. I think you’re a genuinely good person.
what character(s) do you associate with the person you reblogged this from?
what character(s) do you associate with the person you reblogged this from?
Sonic Adventure (Dreamcast) Big Fishing Session 2: Let's talk about game completion!
So one aspect I've barely talked about in regards to Sonic games is the process of overall completion and that's because....well there hasn't really been much to discuss about until now
Around the 90s quite a few platformers started to focus on giving the player optional completion objectives to give players some extra stuff to do aside from just completing levels: Super Mario World had secret entrances to Switch Palaces, secret level exits to find and two whole secret worlds. The DKC games had a whole slew of extra collectibles to find in every level. The 3D collectathon genre started by Mario 64 pretty much hinges on going around levels looking for mostly optional stuff to reach a 100% status.
Sonic games kinda had something like that in the form of Special Stages. After all: you needed all Emeralds to get the Good Ending. However Special Stages were always more....minimal in terms of general gameplay presence when compared to my earlier examples. They were essentially a small number of minigames that you could clear by the half way point of a game. You weren't exactly getting the most out of each level as much as you were doing arbitrary extra challenges to get bonus. That's not bad, just different
SA1 however I feel is the first time that the series has tried to give the player actual extra optional stuff to do with the intent of having the player "get 100% completion", with....rather barebones results for the most part
First off: the Emblems are a pretty obvious nod to the Stars in Mario 64 or the Puzzle Pieces in Banjo. They're the big shiny mcguffin that you collect which symbolize your game completion %. However unlike your typical collectathon, you don't collect Emblems by exploring levels in SA1 (save for those in the Adventure Fields), rather they are given to you upon completing certain challenges. Plus they are fully optional and not at all needed for game progression
I much prefer this approach to Sonic. Exploration is cool, but forcing the player to slow down and look for shiny trinkets in a level in order to progress would kinda go against the flow of Sonic's fast gameplay and risk being a giant pain in the rear, as Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic Unleashed and a few others will gladly demonstrate.
So what are these challenges? Well first we have Level Missions! Basically the idea is to replay levels you've already completed but with different stipulations and challenges in order to give the level a new, fresh feeling.
These are....a crude prototype of the Level Rank system the series will employ starting with SA2 and...boy is it all over the place in quality here...
Level C missions are just your regular story missions that you'll go through, nothing more than that and that's fine, you'll be completing them all as you play through the story
Level B Missions range from uninteresting to complete jokes.
For Sonic, Tails, Amy and Gamma it's about completing the levels with at least 50 rings, y'know as a reference to how you had to access Special Stages in Sonic 1 and CD. Except....
In those games doing this was an actual challenge, because rings, while plentiful, weren't really so numerous in most stages that you were drowning in them, and since they were 2D games that meant you needed to be careful not to accidentally collide with stuff coming from off screen while going fast. Getting to the end of Marble Zone, Labyrinth Zone, Collision Chaos etc was actually tricky
This hardly applies for most of SA1's levels: due to its nature as a 3D game, avoiding obstacles is just way easier in general and even if it weren't? SA1 absolutely drowns you in rings. There are so....SO many ring capsules that you can find by getting just a little bit off the beaten pathway, some of which can give you up to 40 rings in one go! You can get hit pretty damn often and still manage to find at least 50 rings by the end of a stage! Final Egg as Sonic contains over 400 rings! The last section has hidden capsules that can easily net you well over 50, so I don’t even need to play that stage any differently until the end. The only stage that is marginally troublesome is Sky Deck due to the constant bombardments. You'd think that Tails having to collect 50 rings while also having to race against Sonic would make it interesting...but since the enemy AI is still dogshit nah
Amy and Gamma are more interesting with this funnily enough: their levels aren’t as ring-happy as Sonic's, and their slower, more enemy focused gameplay puts you at greater risk of getting hit, meaning the act of getting to the end of a stage with 50 rings is actually a bit tense, hooray!
Knuckles' B Level Missions feel like a comedy. I refuse to believe they didn't just come up with this in 5 minutes. Oh sure "play the level without Tikal's hints" aka "actually play the level without having it play itself", 'cause that's deserving of an extra challenge that rewards you with an emblem right?
Level A missions are more interesting across the board thankfully.
For Sonic, Amy and Gamma they're simple and effective enough: beat the stage under a certain time.
I shouldn't need to explain why this works for Sonic, but it certainly helps that the timing for some of these is genuinely a bit strict, even as early as Emerald Coast. It's actually really interesting for Amy and Gamma precisely because they're slow moving characters, which really puts you in a position to make the most out of them
Tails' A Level Missions are the worst after Big's. Conceptually they should be fine, beat a faster rival character, and they are indeed faster.....and just as dumb. I once had Sonic genuinely reach the end of level capsule in Casinopolis before me....except he kept jumping in place rather than on top of it to actually nab the win so I won anyway. I guess it's still a victory if your opponent is dumber than a box of crayons
Knuckles' Level A's are....surprisingly good, actually! They're timed missions as well, but since the locations of the 3 Emerald shards is randomized each time this means that the challenge stays on every single time. Not only that but this changes Tikal's hints from borderline insulting hand holding to actual necessities: the timing on these missions is very strict and so you kinda need Tikal's guidance to point you in the right direction so that you can focus on getting there as fast as possible without wasting time gliding around. It doesn't detract from the timing challenge, it makes it more feasable
Big's Level B and A Missions all suck because it's more fishing.
Then we have those Emblems that you nab by replaying Side Levels like Sky Chase and Sand Hill...and these too are surprisingly good and challenging!
Getting a high enough score in Sand Hill means actually having to engage with the level by passing through as many arcs in quick succession without losing speed and you really need to be near perfect. Sky Chase used to give me lots of grief until I realized that you need to shoot down the missiles themselves for extra points, meaning you should refrain from immediately destroying the turrets that fire them. A bit counter intuitive but again: I actually have to engage with the levels in a way that the main campaign wasn't interested in making me do, that's great!
This does lead me to an observation I've always had about SA1: this game, for the most part, is absolutely stupid easy, almost braindead at points
Now mind you: Sonic games have typically been rather easy all things considered. Sonic 1 was a bit tough at points, Sonic 2 had its moments, and getting the Emeralds was almost always a challenge, but overall Sonic games tend to be rather lax, even when compared to their contemporaries. Super Mario World is way more challenging than any Mega Drive Sonic game, there's just nothing like the Secret World from that game. And that's fine, not every game needs to be super tough and in Sonic's case a particularily high difficulty level might even run the risk of slowing down the game flow too much. After all: since Sonic games are usually not very combat centric and putting too much or too complex platforming could slow things down too much, it's probably why Dimps often resorted to just spamming bottomless pits and spikes. However even by those standards, SA1 can sometimes feel pathetic
Nowadays people complain that Sonic games are stupid easy, and it's true for the most part: Frontiers' levels and enemies/bosses are mostly a joke, Forces isn't much better, and Gens makes getting S ranks a walk in a sunny park. However funnily enough, SA1 of all games is pretty much on that same level: it drowns you in extra lives and rings, Tails' races are a broken joke, Knuckles gets the option to have his levels play themselves, Sand Hill you don't even have to touch the controller and the character battles speak for themselves. The extra challenges do a better job at giving the player something more, but not all of them. Again: most Level B's feel like filler, and only Level A's feel like decent tests of skill, same thing for beating the records for the Sub Acts. But the main game? You just cruise through most of it with one eye close
Speaking of extra stuff though, you wanna know something that brothers me? The fact that you need to replay each Level 3 times in order to get all 3 levels. The reason it bothers me is because it is totally possible to meet the level B and A criteria while playing a Level C, it's not that hard for, say, Sonic's levels....but even if you do the game won't recognize it. I can complete a stage with 50 rings and in record time...but since it's my first time playing the stage it will only recognize the level C mission. And at that point you start to realize that this whole system exists not just ti give the player something more to do....but to pad out the experience by making it feel lengthier than it really is.
You see children: there used to be a time when Sonic games were blasted for being padded to hell and back with unneccessary extra stuff, because the normal content of an average Sonic game won't typically make it longer than 5 hours and even by the late 90s that was seen as too short for a fully priced game, so Sonic Team often opted to artificially extend game time by either having you play slower paced gameplay style, collect stuff to proceed, do sidequests, grind or some other stuff
Like many other things, you can kind of see the beginnings of this mentality here in SA1 though it's nowhere near as bad as it's gonna get: most of the padding is reserved for optional extra stuff that you don't need to do. It's still not ideal, but it's not that big of a problem.
But on the note of padding there's one last piece on the road for getting all the Emblems: the Chao Garden!
Never been into it, sorry. It's fine conceptually, I get the appeal, It's just not my thing...which is why I think it’s lowkey bullshit that both this game and the next one lock a few Emblems behind it
Again: I suppose I can't complain too much given it's all optional....but I'm really not a fan of locking 100% completion behind a very time consuming minigame that has little in common with the rest of the game and is the definition of grinding. The original Dreamcast Garden in particular is so uninteresting and leaves you pretty much no choice but to stuff your chao inside the VMU and play dozens of fruit matching minigames in order to feed it until it bursts if you want to win those races, which kinda defeats the purpose of having an in-game tamahochi simulator if the aforementioned pet spends much longer inside my portable memory card than in the game proper. At the very least Chao save data is seperate from regular save files, so you don't have to actually raise a new Chao from scratch every time you start a new game.
Hmmm...the fish are plentiful today...
THE DAY OF LANGUAGES!!!
This 7th of May, 2026, we use our own language again!
If your language, native or not, is something other than English, on May 7th you're encouraged to speak that language all day!
You’ll blog in your chosen language(s) all day: text posts, replies, tags (except triggers and organisational tags).
Regardless of what language people choose to speak to you, you can answer in your own.
Non-vocal, non-written languages (like sign language and dialects) are more than welcome!
English native speakers can participate in any other language they're studying/have studied/know.
The tag is gonna be #Speak Your Language Day or #spyld for short.
Please submit me some language facts for me to share on this day <3
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