Go to 1:29:21 for the start of the panel
At the recent SxSW panel for Sonic The Hedgehog a lot of hints were pointed at Sonic Adventure.
Sega have said that they are working on a new Sonic game for this year but were keeping tight-lipped about it. Considering that Aaron Webber said "Open Your Hearts' For June Senoue, who has worked on most of the Sonic soundtracks over the last 2 decades including 1999's Sonic Adventure. Considering HD remakes seem to be the recurring trend within the video game industry, especially with the very successful Resident Evil 2 remake from Capcom, it does seem logical that one of Sega's best games of the late 1990's would be the subject of a potential remake given that video game technology has come on leaps and bounds since 9.9.99 which was the release of Sonic's debut onto the Sega Dreamcast and marked his return to a main console game story-line that had not been since 1994's Sonic & Knuckles. It should be noted that the Dreamcast ended the last decade of the 20th Century as the world's most powerful console. Something that to this day will never be taken away from them. While the console would meet an early demise a few years later in 2002 with hardware sales not being what they had hoped, they had also innovated online game with their servers so that players could play others from around the world. So anything from Xbox Live, to PS World & on Steam - you have Sega to thank for that with online Dreamcast servers. Had the advent of high-speed internet had occurred much earlier then it would be safe to say that the Dreamcast would have had a much bigger enjoyment factor as those that remember the Internet from the late 90's to the early 2000's do not speak highly of it when you consider the irritation of dial-up and speeds that would take days to download a movie off of iTunes today. Netflix? That would have been laughable to the idea of streaming with those speeds back then. Also, they didn't have this to put up with.....*shudders*
It's why those that have the Internet the way we know it today have it extremely lucky.
Sonic Adventure being remade for a modern audience is something that has been demanded ever since the technology has evolved to the level of XBone and PS4 level of sophistication. That and Sonic Adventure 3 is something else that has been demanded for some time as well... I think given that the replay of the game-play itself was so enjoyable in 99 and to when it was ported onto the Nintendo GameCube in 2003 shows that the game has a lasting replay value. The voice-work of the original has not aged well. but then again we are talking about a time where voice work in video games was not considered as important as the rest of the games themselves. That and Sonic's line of "Hey, I'll play with you some other time!" has aged badly. It was questionable enough in 1999, and probably more so today to where anything gets taken out of context these days.
Now imagine that intro but done with today's Next-Gen technology.
And for graphics from 1999, this still holds up. Yeah, it's not as polished as what we have today, but you have to weigh it up on its merits from the time it was put together. If you have a game that was made today and then compare it with something from yesteryear then yes it's automatically going to be better because the tech has evolved and improved with time and experience. This is why I grow tired of this argument of "it's not as good as today's because it's old-school or retro." Although in the case of modern-music you can make the argument that music has gotten worse with time and most people are looking to the 70's-90s for good music because artists and producers actually cared back then. So, I like I said, I'm weighing up Sonic Adventure on it's merits from 99, and say that it's still a good game for the time it was made.
And when you look at the gameplay, particularly from the opening level in Emerald Coast, which is being the token Green Hill/Emerald Hill from the 16-Bit Era, it gets the player introduced to the game with an introductory level that is reasonable simple, fun and gives you an idea of what to expect from later on in the game.
But that said, the Sonic games have always followed this format from the original Sonic game on June 23, 1991 (His Birthday) to the most recent outing in Sonic Forces November 7, 2017. Although the latter is considered on-par with the less than fan-fave Sonic The Hedgehog (2006), (aka Sonic 360) in which most have deemed that the worst Sonic game ever. Personally I think that "honour" belongs to 1993's Sonic Spinball as I could never get along with that game. It's one thing to have pinball aspects in Sonic 2's Casino Night Zone, but to have an entire game about it didn't appeal to me. I never played the game for too long and quickly got bored of it. That's not to say that SA 1 was without it's faults. The camera suffered a lack of beta-testing to where it would fail to keep up with Sonic on high-speed segments in Windy Valley and Speed Highway and would have difficulty to pan around corners if Sonic and others went too quickly. And as mentioned earlier, the voice acting had a lot to be desired. Because this was the first real Sonic game to have speaking dialogue in cut-scenes there wasn't a huge level of effort put into them. Especially when you hear Ryan Drummond utter "Tails! watch out you're going to crash, aahh!" in such a phoned in line that it would make an episode of Power Rangers blush. By the time it got around to Sonic Unleashed in 2008, there was a much stronger level of competency in where Jason Griffith was putting in a great effort and by that point games were taking the voice acting a lot more seriously, to where we get to Sonic Forces where every single voice actor is putting in a decent effort to where I could not find with anyone. And by this point, Roger Craig Smith had replaced Jason Griffith as the official voice of Sonic and I liked his portrayal from the word go. Much snarkier/sassier and just seemed to be enjoying his work. When a voice actor is enjoying their work, they are more inclined to put more effort and energy into their performance and it shows with Roger. So the possibility of an HD remake of Sonic Adventure is very tempting. And the timing is very perfect taking into account that September 9 will mark 20 years since the original game was released onto the Western World. If that's what Sega wants to do then I say go for it. I would love to see how Sonic Adventure would look done with today's technology. If they do remake it, like many others I will be hitting the pre-order button without hesitation. Want to experience the original Sonic Adventure? It's available from Amazon
Want to experience the Soundtrack?
What are your thoughts on the possibility of Sonic Adventure being remade for a modern audience?
Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.
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