Sonic Adventure 2: Battle - A Nostalgic Retrospective

So I wouldn’t really consider myself a huge fan of the Sonic series. I didn’t grow up with a Sega game console and never clicked with classic 2D Sonic games when I finally tried them as an adult, but if you asked me to list out my favorite or most influential games from my childhood then Sonic Adventure 2: Battle would absolutely be there as the sole representative of the Sonic franchise. Since it’s the only entry in such a long running series that I’ve ever had any real affinity toward, I’ve often thought about why this deeply flawed game has endured as a personal favorite of mine over all these years. It’s mostly nostalgia, obviously, but indulge me as I reminisce a bit about the only Sonic game that matters.

First Encounter

My first memory of Sonic Adventure 2 is seeing it at a local Toys “R” Us (RIP) demo kiosk. My sister and I walked over to check it out, but there was a kid already playing 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 by this. 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 and release such raw and unbridled passion in this humble Toys “R” Us? I couldn’t understand it then, but the experience stuck with me.

The Purchase

A lot of my feelings around Sonic Adventure 2 are inexorably tied to the core memory of buying a Nintendo Gamecube. I had only saved up enough money to buy one game along with the console, which was of course going to be Sonic Adventure 2: Battle thanks to a successful advertising campaign/game previews in gaming magazines that had me convinced that this was the game to buy alongside this new console.

I remember the day of the big purchase vividly because I had come 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 somehow 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 being far too sick to actually play any video games that day, so I passed out on the couch with the unopened game and console next to me, likely dreaming sweet dreams of going very fast.

City Escape

First (or early) impressions are everything, and the Sonic dev clealry put everything they had into the opening level (of the Hero campaign) making it one of the most memorable sections of the entire experience. As the level starts, we see Sonic skydive out of a military plane and proceed to skate down the hilly streets of what I’m just now realizing must have been San Francisco while the now iconic song “Escape from the City” plays as the level’s musical theme. You then go from skating down hills and doing sick tricks off of conveniently placed ramps to grinding on railings with Sonic’s bizarre 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, and lots of style. It’s probably one of the best opening levels of that era, and it likely permanently burned “Escape From The City” into the minds of an entire generation.

Shadow The Hedgehog

Sonic Adventure 2 was the world’s introduction to Shadow, everyone’s favorite brooding hedgehog. He’s got rocket shoes that he uses to “skate” instead of run. Pretty cool stuff. Nothing more really needs to be said, everyone loves a good rival character.

The Music

A good soundtrack can carry a game, and this game starts off strong with “Escape From The City” and somehow manages to keep up the quality all the way through to the credits. The soundtrack is filled with background tracks that burrow deep into your brain and loop without getting old, which is good because you’ll be hearing them a lot as you restart a level for the 20th time thanks to your character clipping into the level geometry to their death. Another standout vocal track is the surprisingly decent 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 you get a taste of 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.

YOU GO TO SPACE

This game was probably my first experience with a stupidly over the top video game narrative 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. It was a unique experience at the time for me, and one that I don’t think I ever really replicated with another game.

The Ugly Bits

This is a pretty janky game. 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, and despite the numerous issues the game somehow ended up being something greater than the sum of its parts.

Live And Learn

Sonic Adventure 2 seems to have been a strangely formative or influential game for people around my age, so clearly there’s something special going on here. The characters and their designs, the music, the story, the gameplay variety - everything that individually couldn’t stand on its own came together to create an experience that somehow worked, and still manages to take up a sizeable chunk of my now adult brain. It might be a classic case of style over substance, but sometimes that might be all you really need.

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 kinda rad.