The Sega Dreamcast in our house belonged to my brother Brandon. I may have picked up one game for his PlayStation 1, but I contributed nothing to his Dreamcast library. Looking back, I am genuinely surprised he never got any Sonic games for it. What makes it even stranger is that Sega released Sonic Adventure 2 first on the Nintendo GameCube and then waited roughly a year before porting the original Dreamcast game over.

During the Saturn years, Sega never managed to produce a real mainline Sonic title. They could not quite crack 3D Sonic, and Sonic Team chose to make Nights into Dreams instead. When Sonic Adventure finally came out, it launched in Japan in 1998 and reached America in late 1999, which is not the worst turnaround given that Super Mario 64 had only redefined 3D platforming two years earlier. One thing I genuinely credit Sega for is the main villain, Chaos. He remains one of my favorite antagonists in the entire franchise to this day.

Part of what makes him work so well is how he evolves throughout the game. He begins as something close to a humanoid amoeba and becomes progressively more monstrous as the story goes on. Dr. Eggman will always be the signature Sonic villain, but at a certain point he becomes like Bowser in the Mario series, where his appearance no longer carries any real menace or surprise after you have fought him enough times.

Speaking of the doctor, I believe this is the first game, at least in the Dreamcast release, where his name was officially switched from Dr. Robotnik to Eggman in the Western version. Eggman had been his name in Japan all along, and I do not blame Sega of America for the original change, but the reversion with zero context or explanation in the English dub definitely left a lot of millennials confused.

Sonic Adventure gives you several characters to play as. The obvious three are Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, but the roster also includes Big the Cat, and I will be honest, I could not stand him. His English voice was beyond annoying, and his fishing-based levels felt completely out of place and a little pointless.

Amy Rose was also playable, and I think this is where she received her modern redesign following Sonic CD and really settled into her role as Sonic’s relentless wanna-be girlfriend. On a related note, Sonic 06 later produced the bizarre scenario where Sonic was apparently developing genuine romantic feelings for a human woman, which is a whole other conversation. As for Amy’s missions in this game, I do not remember them clearly enough to feel strongly either way.

The more memorable addition to the roster was E-102 Gamma, a robot built by Eggman who crosses paths with Amy Rose and begins developing something resembling human emotion. His story eventually plays out through third-person shooter stages, and they’re pretty fun.

Worth mentioning are the Chao, the small alien creature-like beings you can raise as a side activity. By the time I played this game I was already familiar with them from Sonic Adventure 2, which expanded the Chao system into something far more fleshed out and engaging. I did not spend much time with them in this game, but I do remember that they had some kind of connectivity feature with the Sonic Advance games on GBA, which was obviously not available in the original Dreamcast version.

All things considered, I prefer Sonic Adventure 2 Battle over Sonic Adventure DX Director’s Cut. Both are genuinely great games, and it is honestly a little sad that Sega has never come close to matching them in the 3D space despite all the years and attempts that have followed. The quality and creativity were there when Sega was still a first-party developer, and something meaningful was lost when they went third-party. I find that genuinely frustrating, because I would have kept buying Sonic games without hesitation if they had continued reaching that level.