Behind The Scenes: Sonic Adventure

For the player to fully experience each of these rich virtual environments, Iizuka hit upon the idea of multiple playable characters, each with their own unique gameplay characteristics. While Sonic provided the fast, furious gameplay we all expected, his host of friends could be used to see the world from several different angles. Tails, for example, could fly to previously inaccessible places while Knuckles could climb most walls to reach the heights that Sonic couldn’t. “We wanted to make full use of the 3D play field with various types of gameplay,” explains Iizuka, “which is what inspired the whole idea of having multiple characters. And the characters were designed around the movements and abilities we needed them to have.”

Though most of these additional characters were sourced from previous entries in the Sonic series, two new characters were designed to fit the gameplay that Sonic Team had in mind. The first was E102 Gamma, a flying robot who could lock on and shoot multiple enemies at once, transforming the game into a score-attack target game. The second character, meanwhile, was envisioned to realise a fishing adventure and became Big the Cat, one of the least popular Sonic characters with gamers but a real hit with Iizuka himself. “In comparison to the others, Big does look peculiar,” he says, “but he is one of my favourite characters so I have had him appear in several other videogames since.”

Sonic himself received the biggest facelift since his 1991 debut. Yuji Uekawa’s new design discarded Sonic’s podgy frame in favour of a slimline look befitting his speed. Quite unexpectedly, Sonic also found a voice. “We had a lot of mixed reactions when we first decided to make Sonic talk. Of course, no one knew how he should sound at the time, so we took a long time to choose the perfect voice everyone agreed on. We gathered various samples and I recall continuous discussions with Mr Naka and the team members. However, what we were looking for was clear. We all agreed on Sonic’s simple and cool attitude, so that was one part where our opinions stayed constant and never collapsed.” After several auditions, the role went to Ryan Drummond, an actor whose previous experience amounted to one-off appearances in television shows such as Baywatch, but who has gone on to enjoy several starring voice roles following his breakthrough as Sonic.

While discussing the characters in Sonic Adventure, we must not overlook the other, less-obvious hero who was introduced in the Dreamcast game. We refer, of course, to the Chao, a lovable little AI creature that could be crossbred with other creatures and raised like a virtual pet similarly to the Nightopian ‘A-Life’ creatures of NiGHTS Into Dreams. “The A-Life we used for NiGHTS was very well reviewed by the consumers, as well as us developers, so implementing that into a Sonic world was something I had in mind from the early stages of development,” reveals Iizuka. “In NiGHTS it only functioned to give colour to the world, but in Sonic Adventure I was hoping to make it something the users could actually touch and raise. Moving around in the 3D environment, as well as being able to intentionally evolve the development of the AI, was way more challenging than what we had achieved in NiGHTS. We took a very long time to finalise the Chao design. While being a unique and appealing character, the fact that it has to change form as it evolves meant we also had to make the design as simple as possible. These points actually did contradict each other, but we felt that both features were necessary.”

After nearly three years of inventive design and development, Sonic Adventure launched in Japan in December 1998, followed by a US and European release around nine months later. Despite an initial print run of faulty discs in the US, the game received critical applause, many admiring the sheer scale of the game and the way it retained and expanded upon the essence of Sonic without simply imitating Super Mario 64. And though Dreamcast failed as a commercial gaming platform, Sonic Adventure remained one of its brightest stars, selling more than 2 million copies and spawning an equally successful sequel – a relief for Iizuka and the rest of Sonic Team, who had invested so much time and effort in creating the first real 3D Sonic title.

“We had a lot of strain on the work, more than we had expected,” comments Iizuka. “We had to develop six titles’ worth of different action games, as well as six sequences of computer-generated cut-scenes for each character, so there was an unbelievable amount of work. The game size was always expected to be very big, right from the pre-production phase, and there were times when we thought of reducing the size along the way, but we finally managed to create the game we had hoped for and wanted to create from the beginning. Because of the team’s hard work, we ended up with a very satisfying game filled with rich variety.”

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