Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3295 in Video Games
• Released on: 1999-09-09
• ESRB Rating: Everyone
• Platform: Sega Dreamcast

Customer Reviews

Sonic, a great game!
Sonic, like all Dreamcast games, has incredible graphics. The first time I played at part when you are flying I felt weightless. To all the people who brag about beating it in two days, this game is great no matter how you look at it and I still want to play it over and over again.

Sonic Great if you can get it to start
I really enjoyed the graphics and play in Sonic. I would really recommend it if I could get one that works. I have exchanged nine CD's so far and still haven't found one that starts when you turn the dreamcast system on. I have to power up and down many times before the dreamcast stops telling me to insert the CD. This is the only dreamcast game that I have that does this.

Yep, I like it!
First off, I really like this game. I have to say I wasn't the hugest fan of Sonic in the past, but this one I absolutely love. The "adventure" aspect really makes it work for me.

It is very playable, quite challenging and it really makes you want to come back for more. The story has been well thought-out, the graphics are excellent, the music is pretty cool and the level designs are nicely done and fun to explore.

Having said that, it can be hard to find your way around the game at some points, but there are plenty of characters to talk to which give hints, which usually point you in the right direction. Bear in mind, I said "usually." Sometimes I've spent around 20 minutes zooming around all the wrong areas of a level because of an obscure or misleading clue. For instance, "Wasn't there something shiny in the caves?" could mean almost anything. (This shouldn't give anything away, by the way!)

There are a lot of video sequences. Some seem gratuitous and add nothing to the game apart from an extra video sequence. It would have been nice to skip them if you'd seen them before. In fact, it would have been nice to be able to turn them off completely. The game is big and sophisticated enough to live without many of them and still make sense.

I found one or two of the levels to have traps which were extremely irritating, where you'd fall through something and die or get stuck without it being clear what had happened (particularly the Egg Carrier level). Generally they were extremely well-planned and very enjoyable to work through.

Almost everyone comments on the camera angles. They are a bit dodgy, to say the least. It isn't just a problem when you've died. Frequently the camera will get "stuck" behind a scenery item. True, you can move the camera around and free it up, but frankly you shouldn't need to do that. It spoils the flow of the game. Sometimes you can't manually move the camera at all (this feature seems to be turned off at some points in the game), and this causes its own problems. For instance, at one point in the Red Mountain, the camera is positioned directly over Sonic which makes it almost impossible to judge the angle of a jump, because as soon as you move, the camera swings round and the apparent angle changes.

None of that really bothers me when I'm playing the game though, because it's fun and there's so many surprises along the way. There are lots of nice little touches (I love the way the characters duck whenever the player jumps near them or zooms by!). After all, it's the little things that matter and make a game playable, and that's where the work seems to have been concentrated.

If you have a visual memory card for your Dreamcast, you can also play a little adventure game on that, featuring the cute chao creatures. I reckon we'll be seeing more of them as time goes on!

Generally, I'd say, if you like arcade adventures where you explore things and solve puzzles, and you have the patience to handle the glitches that are there, get this one pronto. Maybe not worth getting a Dreamcast just to play this game, but if you have one, it's a lot of fun.

Oh, and the chao really are very cute.