Sonic Adventure 2: Battle

[Updated on February 3rd, 2025]

So I wouldn’t really call myself a huge Sonic the Hedgehog fan. I didn’t grow up with the original 2D games (and bounced off them fairly quickly when I eventually tried them), I’ve never owned a Sega console, and I’ve never really engaged with the fandom. Despite all that, the GameCube release of Sonic Adventure 2 is absolutely one of my favorite games of all time. Let’s talk about it.

First Encounter

I remember first seeing Sonic Adventure 2 at a local Toys “R” Us demo kiosk. My sister and I walked over to check it out, but there was a kid already playing it so we stood back and silently judged. The kid was very loudly singing along to the song “Escape From The City” from the game’s opening level, and my sister and I were absolutely mortified. There he was -in public- belting out the lyrics with reckless abandon. Why was he doing this? What was it about this game that could awaken such raw passion in this Toys “R” Us? I couldn’t understand it, but it stuck with me.

The Purchase

Getting a new video game console is a big deal when you’re a kid, so prior to buying a Nintendo Gamecube I’d done a fair bit of research by reading various gaming magazines that covered the console and it’s game library. I had only saved up enough money to buy one game along with the Gamecube, which was of course going to be Sonic Adventure 2: Battle. I can’t remember exactly what led me to choose Sonic as my first Gamecube game, but I imagine the advertisements and previews in the gaming magazines at the time were oozing the kind of style that made it irresistible for a kid my age. Shadow the Hedgehog also looked like a cool dude, so that probably helped too.

On the day of the big purchase I actually came down with some kind of cold or flu, but I had waited too long and done too much research to be stopped by a mere fever. I managed to convince my mom to take me to the local Circuit City (RIP) to spend my hard earned allowance money on the game and console despite being barely lucid. I ended up feeling too sick to actually play any video games that day, so I passed out from sickness and excitement on the couch with my new console and game at my side, likely dreaming some glorious dreams about going really fast with Sonic.

City Escape

When you start the game’s Hero campaign, you’re met with the legendary and now iconic song “Escape From The City” as Sonic skydives out of a military plane and proceeds to skate down the hilly streets of what I now realize must have been San Francisco. You then go from skating down hills and doing tricks off of conveniently placed ramps to grinding on railings with Sonic’s strange looking Soap tie-in shoes and eventually find yourself sprinting away from a giant military truck barreling toward the screen. Everything the game does right gets thrown at you all at once right off the bat - speed, memorable music, style, this level had it all and it made sure you knew it. As far as first impressions go, it’s probably one of the best in video games (and it likely permanently burned “Escape From The City” into the brains of an entire generation).

The Music

Musically, the game starts off strong with “Escape From The City” and it somehow manages to keep up the quality the whole way through. The soundtrack is filled with high energy tracks that burrow deep into your brain and refuse to leave, which is good because it’s a lot easier to restart a level for the 20th time and overlook some cheap deaths if the looping background music absolutely refuses to get old. Another standout earworm is the surprisingly decent and somewhat meme-able Pumpkin Hill rap, which single handedly helped immortalize an otherwise forgettable Knuckles treasure hunting level. Then there’s the game’s legendary main theme “Live and Learn”, which plays when you first boot up the game on the main menu screen but then does one of my favorite things in media where it comes full circle and plays again during the climactic final boss battle. There’s a lot you can say about the general quality of the Sonic development team’s output throughout the years, but they never miss with their music.

Shadow The Hedgehog

Sonic Adventure 2 was our glorious introduction to Shadow, everyone’s favorite brooding hedgehog. Nothing more really needs to be said since that alone should raise Sonic Adventure 2 into the upper echelons of video game royalty.

YOU GO TO SPACE

This game was probably my first experience with a stupidly over the top video game story that gradually escalated the stakes/drama until you finally found yourself in space protecting the earth from a world ending threat. I now recognize this setup is a somewhat common trope in a lot of (especially Japanese) media, but I will never not get hype for it. Both main campaigns of the game end inside a giant space station with the long awaited final rival battle between Sonic and Shadow. That then unlocks a third and final story path that has both rival teams set aside their differences and team up (YES) in a series of levels that have you utilizing all the characters and abilities you’ve collected thus far. This all culminates in an incredible final sequence that has you controlling both Sonic and Shadow, who have each transformed into Super Saiyan Hedgehogs, in order to fight a giant mutant space lizard that’s fused with the space station and is hurtling towards the planet - all while the game’s main theme is blasting in the background, but this time WITH LYRICS. It’s SO COOL, and I still get chills thinking about it.

Chao Garden

I also remember getting somewhat invested in the Chao Garden where you raised these little alien looking baby things. It was… kinda weird? Especially since you could choose to raise them as “good” Chao or “evil” Chao, and the main way I remember getting them to turn evil was by basically abusing them by throwing them around and just generally treating them like garbage. One particularly traumatic memory is when I for some reason had decided to get rid of one of my little Chao buddies by deleting them from the game, and the game made sure I felt as guilty as possible by playing some gut wrenchingly depressing music as I watched them leave my game forever. There are mental wounds from that experience that I don’t think will ever truly heal.

I think you could also play little minigames and compete with your Chao against other people, which led to some fond memories of trading Chaos with a friend from school and nerding out/bonding over our little mutant babies.

The Ugly Bits

I know someone is going to want to point this out, so I feel like I have to briefly address the fact that this game is kinda janky. Some of it was a bit easier to overlook at the time the game originally came out, but a lot of that jank was there from day one and even my kid brain could feel it at times. But you know what? It was fun jank. At times, hilarious jank. Sometimes frustrating jank, but enjoyable jank nonetheless.

Visually, the game looks kinda rough. That’s kind of par for the course for an early-ish 3D game of that era, but looking at it now you can’t help but chuckle at the stiffly animated models awkwardly interacting with each other in cutscenes that have some of the most bafflingly bad audio mixing and lip syncing I’ve ever seen in a video game.

You’ll frequently find yourself dying in levels due to inconsistent controls and weird glitchy collisions with the environment, sometimes moving so fast that you just clip right through the platform you’re running on and right into the void. Still, I look back on all the jank fondly. They tried, and despite the numerous issues the game somehow ended up being something much greater than the sum of its parts.

Live And Learn

Something about Sonic Adventure 2 seems to have left a pretty big impression on not just me but a lot of people around my age, so clearly there’s something special going on here. The characters and their designs, the music, the story - everything comes together to create a memorable experience that still somehow takes up a sizeable chunk of my now adult brain.

I also still find myself thinking about that singing Toys “R” Us kid a lot, especially now that I’m the one frequently rocking out and singing along to the game’s soundtrack. Back then my sister and I saw that kid singing his heart out in public to a video game and thought to ourselves, “what a fool”. But no, it turns out he wasn’t the fool. We were the fools. He was a prophet, a hero. Any game that can make you loudly sing along to cheesy hard rock in public has to be special somehow, and that kid knew then what I came to know much later: Sonic Adventure 2 is RAD.

December 21st 2024, Update After Seeing The Sonic 3 Movie

It was a movie made for Sonic Adventure 2 fans. Ten out of ten, best film of 2024.