SONIC ADVENTURE 2

is a video game in the Sonic the Hedgehog series, developed by Sonic Team USA for the Sega Dreamcast, and later ported as an update to the Nintendo Gamecube.
It was released in North America on June 5 2001 and in Japan and Europe on June 23 2001 to mark the 10th anniversary of the release of ''Sonic the Hedgehog''. This game introduces two new playable characters, Shadow the Hedgehog and Rouge the Bat, and is also one of the few Sonic titles to officially feature Doctor Eggman as a playable character.
The game is a sequel to the 1998 hit Sonic Adventure.

Contents

Single player

Two-player mode

Reception

Voice actors

''Sonic Adventure 2 Battle''

Features and Differences

References

External links

Single player

Gameplay takes place between two parallel storylines; the player has the option of advancing in either one or the other at any time. The "Hero" story featuring Sonic, Knuckles, Tails and the non-playable Amy, while the "Dark" story featuring Shadow, Rouge, and Dr. Eggman play similar to each other, with each hero character playing similar to the respective dark character. Levels advance in order for each storyline, alternating between each of the playable characters.
Levels featuring Sonic or Shadow are designed much the same as they were in Sonic's levels in ''Sonic Adventure'',^[1] wherein the player's primary objective is simply to get to the end of the level. Levels with Tails or Dr. Eggman allow the player to control a mechanized robot walker and generally blast his way through to the end of the stage. Knuckles and Rouge are required to scour their levels for shards of the Master Emerald. Interspersed between the levels are various bosses, which one particular character must fight.
Within action stages, players collect rings and defeat enemies, with a timer counting the time spent within the level. At the end of each stage, the player is given a score based on the number or rings collected and time spent within the level. The more rings and less time, the higher the score is. The player is also given a rank-based performance, a letter grade that is either A, B, C, D, or E (A being the highest and E being the lowest, and equivalent to the "F" grade used in American schools).
There are five missions within each action stage; they differ between characters, ranging from "find the Lost Chao!" to "collect 100 rings" to simply completing the level successfully.
Emblems are also given within the game; there are 180 emblems in total. In order to gain all 180 emblems, players must complete all stages, all missions within all stages, and achieve an A rank in all stages and missions.

Two-player mode

There are some characters that can only be played on two-player mode. These include, Amy Rose, Metal Sonic, Tikal the Echidna, Chaos, Chao, Dark Chao (GameCube only), EggRobo (Kart Racing), and Big the Cat (Dreamcast only). However, using Action Replay these characters can be playable in single-player mode.
A multitude of levels from single-player are playable. The levels playable in two-player mode are mostly the same as the normal game; Sonic, Shadow, Amy and Metal Sonic race, Tails, Eggman, Chao, Dark Chao have a shootout, and Knuckles, Rouge, Tikal and Chaos hunt for emerald shards.

Reception

Opinions of ''Sonic Adventure 2'' are variable among both professional reviewers and fans of the ''Sonic'' series. Although the initial Dreamcast release of ''Sonic Adventure 2'' generally received positive reviews^[2], the game faced several criticisms over gameplay and various technical issues.
The GameCube port (''Sonic Adventure 2 Battle'') fared considerably worse in terms of reviews^[3], despite having no single player gameplay changes from the Dreamcast version.

Voice actors

Role	English Voice Actor	Japanese Voice Actor
Sonic the Hedgehog	Ryan Drummond	Junichi Kanemaru
Miles "Tails" Prower	Corey Bringas	Atsuki Murata
Knuckles the Echidna	Scott Dreier	Nobutoshi Canna
Shadow the Hedgehog	David Humphrey	Kōji Yusa
Doctor Eggman	Deem Bristow	Chikao Ōtsuka
Rouge the Bat	Lani Minella	Rumi Ochiai
Amy Rose	Jennifer Douillard	Taeko Kawata
Maria Robotnik	Shelly Fox	Yuri Shiratori
Professor Gerald Robotnik	Marc Biagi	Chikao Ōtsuka
Chao	Tomoko Sasaki	Tomoko Sasaki

''Sonic Adventure 2 Battle''

There was an update to Sonic Adventure 2 for the Nintendo GameCube, called .
This version was released on December 10 2001 in Japan, February 12 2002 in North America, and on the GameCube's launch (May 3 2002) in Europe.

Features and Differences

This game changed a large portion of raising Chao, the A-life form available in both ''Sonic Adventure'' and ''Sonic Adventure 2''. A Chao's stats can be viewed from within the game. The player can transfer one Chao from ''Sonic Adventure 2 Battle'' to the "Tiny Chao Garden" section in ''Sonic Advance'', ''Sonic Advance 2'', and ''Sonic Pinball Party'' with the GCN-GBA Link Cable. (If a Game Boy Advance is connected without a GBA Game inserted, a version of the Tiny Chao Garden can be copied temporarily into the Game Boy Advance's memory.) Also the introduction of Chao Karate, in which the Chao stats are used for stats in fighting, and the Chao fight in a fighting game style, with little influence from the player. In addition, the layout of all three Chao Gardens were changed slightly.
As with the Dreamcast version, after collecting all 180 emblems, the player can unlock a 3D version of the Green Hill Zone from ''Sonic 1'', with a remixed version of the music from the original. Only Sonic is allowed to play this stage and while the player is given a ranking, it is not recorded on the map screen.
New "Battle" multiplayer options were added, like the addition of new characteristics to the multiplayer-exclusive characters (which, in the original, had to be unlocked, but now karts replace their requirements).
In the GameCube version, the boxes in the Crazy Gadget level have a red 'x' on them instead of the Dreamcast's version's green 'x'. This is possibly because the Xbox bears a striking resemblance to the boxes with the green 'x'.
Minor special effects were added to the game, such as rain in White Jungle. Moreover, some cutscenes were redone slightly, with different or improved character animations and camera angles.
Strangely, Big the Cat's humorous cameos did not remain in the stages, but he can still be viewed in some story sequences by rapidly pressing the A button throughout the scenes. He no longer appears in the Hero Side story, however, which means he is not in Sonic's opening scene in any form. He was also replaced by the Dark Chao in the game's multiplayer mode.
Another difference in this version can be found on the 5th Mission for the ''Cosmic Wall'' stage: as opposed to the requirement of 50,000 points for an A rank, (as was the case on the Dreamcast version), 100,000 points are required instead.
To date, the game has done well with sales of 1.44 million units in North America alone, making it one of the GameCube's highest selling games,^[4] and it is still one of the most popular GameCube games.^[5]
This game also made it to Player's Choice.

References

1. Sonic Adventure 2 review on IGN
2. Sonic Adventure 2 on MetaCritic for Dreamcast
3. Sonic Adventure 2 Battle on MetaCritic for GameCube
4. US Platinum Videogame Chart
5. Sonic Adventure 2: Battle at GameSpot

External links

★ ''Sonic Adventure 2 information site''

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