Let's Play! Sonic Adventure DX!! AAAAAH!!!

Put your Let's Plays in here.
Post Reply
User avatar
Let's talk about Sonic Adventure a bit, old/new LP Beach friends. Released in the United States on 9/9/1999, coinciding with the Dreamcast's American launch, the game and the console intertwined made a strong gambit for a game company that stumbled right out of the gate in the transition to the 3D era of gaming. Sega's previous system, the Saturn, had its share of hits and still has quite a few fans today, but it wasn't able to compete against the N64 and Playstation the way the Genesis did against the SNES. There's a ton of speculation why, but reason number one was the complete lack of a Sonic game, at launch or ever.

Sonic R doesn't count, Sonic Jam doesn't count. There was a game in development, the infamous Sonic X-Treme, but it was cancelled late in the Saturn's life in favor of cutting losses and rushing out a whole new game in time for their hot new console's release. It's what Sega should have done with the Saturn, but their capacity for dropping the ball in the best of times has always been strong.

Ah, I remember getting my Dreamcast in the year 2000 from my grandma, as well as a subscription to Sega's very own ISP, SegaNet. I played through Sonic Adventure over a couple of nights at my grandparents' cozy little house out in the middle of nowhere in West Virginia, occasionally interspersed with Quake III Arena matches and early 2000s gamer business (webcomics, FAQs, erotic fanfics). As it was my first taste of regular internet connectivity, I tend to hold the Dreamcast era in high regard.

Fortunately for us, the games of the Dreamcast live on in an endless Capitalist Purgatory of rereleases that began almost immediately after Sega dropped out of the console market. I'm not even joking; the Gamecube version of Sonic Adventure 2 came out six months after the Dreamcast release! What a weird time for gaming, especially for a fan.

It must have been hard for Sega as well, since that same year they also released Segagaga, an RPG/Simulation game that has you running Sega itself as part of a last-ditch effort against a fictionalized version of Sony, which has secured 99% of the market share. You fight in simple turn-based RPG dungeons and then recruit the monsters to develop video games and game systems in a real-time simulation mode. There is a cutscene where Alex Kidd explains how he ended up working at a Sega store after losing his place as mascot. There is also a shooting game section where you battle a boss that evolves through the various Sega consoles and I am not kidding, you need to have that video in your life.

It is my one ultimate goal in my short, tragic life to one day LP Segagaga, but today isn't that day. Today it's Sonic Adventure DX, the PC version, in this the year of our LP lord 2020. Unfortunately, I don't have the equipment to capture the Dreamcast version, and I'm not sure what interest there is in hourlong VMU Chao videos, but I will consider that for another time because I just realized that I only had one VMU as a kid and never had a chance to breed Chao! Not that this version doesn't have Chao, it just doesn't have a VMU analogue so I dunno.

By the way, I've got a box of comics from 2003, when the Gamecube version of Sonic Adventure DX came out, and most of them ran this ad, which I've artfully cropped below to show off the juicy bits:

Image

First off, I'm glad to see the phrase 'Epic Thrills' anywhere near Big the Cat. That rules. Second? This thing here:

Image

My first thought was I want that toy and my second was the faint recollection that once, long ago, I had that toy. It's a very simple three-lane avoid-the-thing LCD game and the screen is like the size of a Barbie doll's face, roughly. What an amazing and weird time to grow up in.

Thrashing childhood nostalgia with the brick of hindsight, or:
Let Us Play Sonic Adventure DX!

My name is Mazo Panku and this is both my very first post on LP Beach and my very first Let's Play on LP Beach. Furthermore it's the first Let's Play-adjacent thing I've done in a good number of years. With the world going to hell the way it is, it's a good time for a bit of optimism, and what is more optimistic than Blue Skies in Videogames?

Joining me on commentary is my old friend Krabbapples, who coincidentally I met through doing commentary on LP videos in Ages of Yore. He too has fond memories of Sega, and a burning fist of justice that cannot be quenched.

Together, we fight Chaos!

Sonic Part One of Four, in which we learn that video game physics are not pinball physics;
Sonic Part Two of Four, in which Eggman's most devious trap, Bad Camera Angles, rears its ugly head.

The plan so far is to go through each character's story in one long shot, take a break with all the Chao-related footage I'm collecting along the way, and then move on to the next, until this whole game is finished. I'm pretty excited to swim deep in this new LP Beach, and it's nice to see a lot of familiar faces. I'll leave it up to crowd consensus and my own shifty moods to decide which order we do the stories in, but we could safely assume that Super Sonic goes last.

Let's enjoy the eternally sweet fruits of the Dreamcast era together! どりカスしろ!
Last edited by Mazo Panku on Mon Jul 13, 2020 4:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
I love this mess of a game.

User avatar
Same here! I almost have more fun with weird physics quirks and glitches than I do actually playing the game, but since it's such a nostalgic game I enjoy remembering my long-forgotten Sonic Adventure thoughts, frequently coupled with more modern, 'what the hell is Sonic even DOING any more' contemplation.


Part 2 is ready to proceed quickly!

Post Reply