Websites for games are a common thing, some last the test of time, others are deleted or fade out of existence when the domains expire. Sonic Adventure suffered this fate, it had a pretty good website for it’s day, but sadly as time moved on and the Adventure series ended, so did the site.
Well… it’s back, in an unofficial sense.
A fan has bought the original domain and has almost completely restored the website! It’s almost completely restored, just missing some screenshots and there’s a few missing images here and there.
But if you fancy a trip down memory lane, check it out.
I’m predicting that the Sonic Adventure 3 hype will completely die after this year if SA3 is not the anniversary game for this year.
I don’t think that it will come back from the dead like this website has.
Or the demand will only get stronger if the anniversary game is crap.
I think most fans would stop asking for a SA3 if the anniversary gameplay is as good as the Adventure games (even if it doesnt follow the same formula) AND if they ditch Pontac and Graff bloody humor era for a kind of storytelling resembling anything before Sonic Colors.
You say that, but I don’t know, more hate for the Adventure games has arised after the failure of Rise of Lyric. There seems to be a little bit of a decline of people asking for Sonic Adventure 3, since previous 3D Sonic games are now looked at with more distaste, in an attempt to convince ourselves that 3D Sonic had always been crap, and that this is nothing new. That’s my analysis of a very vocal group, anyway.
Point is, as time goes on, more people believe the Adventure games have aged. It’s still not a vocal majority, but some fans are losing hope or faith that Sonic Adventure 3 could happen. I agree, though, the demand might decrease if the anniversary game captures the good feeling some would get from SA, SA2, and even Heroes.
To be honest I don’t see that big of decline in interest in a Sonic Adventure sequel, so far as I can see in the internet alone (news pages, forums, gaming/Sonic sites, etc.) there is more or less the same quantity of fans that would like an Adventure sequel than fans that wouldn’t, what is pretty obvious though is that the Sonic Adventure 3 Facebook page have received a lot of i criticism lately for their constant clashes with people behind the Sonic series and other fan sites but there is still a lot of love for the Adventure series out there, one of TSSZ polls showed some evidence about it.
Though as I said earlier things may change if at least they change the direction of the franchise the way it was before Sonic Colors, back then at least the fanbase wasn’t so divided in “eras” and the games still sold well even when they got bad reviews (Sonic 06 became Platinum while you can hardly find someone who played Lost World or RoL out of the fanbase), and they don’t have to get the exact same tone of the Adventure games back, there are other great stories like Sonic Battle, Sonic Rush/Rush Adventure, Sonic Chronicles, Sonic Unleashed, Sonic & The Black Knight or they could even go for a similar tone as the Archie comics, personally that’s what I’m hoping for cause I just can’t stand the Pontac & Graff games, to be perfectly honest I enjoyed the story from Sonic Runners more than Colors, Lost World or Generations.
Huh. Yeah, I forgot about the polls. I suppose you have a point. I definitely agree with your second paragraph, though. While I don’t hate the comedy and light nature in Sonic, I think by Sonic Lost World, it was getting pretty old. Again, I want something more than “Sonic stops Eggman after a lot of wacky hijinks.” That should stay in Sonic Boom.
I feel like your second paragraph is viewing the 1999-2008 era with rosy glasses. The Sonic fanbase is just as divided now as it was back then. I mean, c’mon, the last time this fanbase had a clear consensus on anything was 1994, and changing the direction now won’t magically heal that. It’ll just divide the fanbase further.
And there was “era-ism” back then too. It was mainly between Classic fans, Modern fans, and fans of both. Classic fans argued to prove the superiority of 2D Sonic, Modern fans argued to prove the superiority of 3D Sonic, and fans of both tended to see the 2D games as superior but wanted the 3D games to be appreciated too. These arguments got as nasty as you’d expect them to get now, and there was general bitterness all around.
Plus Sonic 06 actually sold pretty poorly, at about 800,000 sales by November 2007. I guess that’s technically more than Lost World, but keep in mind that 06 was released on more popular consoles than the WiiU and 3DS, and thus had a massive advantage sales-wise over Lost World– not to mention that its sales were published later on, 06’s were published a year later, Lost World’s were published within a few months of being on the market. So 06 once again gets the advantage of terms of higher recorded sales. Plus getting a “Platinum hit” moniker actually isn’t difficult– you only need 500,000 sales. Both 06 and Lost World would qualify– its just that Nintendo doesn’t have such a moniker or any equivalents because, well, its nothing more than a fancy looking label. And that’s even assuming that sales correlate to quality. The lowest selling Sonic game that we know of is Sonic Rush Adventure at around 260,000 sales… and that game isn’t terrible at all!
But hey, I wouldn’t call myself “Mad Convoy” if there was nothing good about the Adventure era. In fact, I’m actually bringing this up to help you. If fans could propose a realistic view of what the Adventure era was like, with a balanced mix of pros and cons, then Sonic Team will be more likely to actually apply the fans’ criticisms. Appealing to sales, polls, and fandom drama doesn’t help because Sonic Team knows better than anybody that Adventure era games tended to blow up in its face and become unpopular over time, regardless of what some unverifiable online poll or fancy label says. But demonstrations of how the games’ merits could be capitalized on, with acknowledgement of their numerous mistakes, would be extremely effective. This could be done via fangame or essay, but expressing yourself in a balanced way rather than stretching the truth to fit an opinion would be much more helpful to the pro-Adventure cause.
“I mean, c’mon, the last time this fanbase had a clear consensus on anything was 1994,”
If were talking solely about the games then yes, but for the entirety of Sonic you’d need to backpedal another year to 1993. Y’know the year that introduced 4 completely different continuities (Archie, Fleetway, Aosth, and Satam) with wildly different OCs, plotlines, and tones. Since then we’ve had tons of debate topics that still pop up every now and then (Fleetway vs. Archie, Aosth vs. Satam, should _____ be introduced in the games).
Heck, one could argue that Sonic has never had any general consensus judging from the difference in character designs and backstories from Japan and the West. (Japanese Classic Sonic vs. Mohawk the Assface, Japan opting for no real backstory whereas the West tried giving him that stupid origin story about Sonic originally being brown, Dr, Kintobor, the ROCC, and whole mess of nonsense that was thankfully only contained in the Fleetway comics).
It’s honestly no wonder the fanbase is as fractured as it is. In just 25 years Sonic has managed to amass just as many different takes on him as a DC or Marvel character thanks to Sega constantly bouncing back and forth between different gameplay styles, art styles, story tones, and continuities.
@Mad Convoy
I know the fanbase was divided back in those years, I only meant to say it just got divided further with the humor focused games and I think that changing the direction of the main games to something a little more serious, adventurous and action oriented will heal things considerably since fans of that direction would get what they asked for while fans of the humor and internet references will still have Sonic Boom, I think a variety in content in the franchise could really bring some balance to the fanbase.
And I agree, I might have stretched things with that example, especially considering Wii U sales and I just quoted polls and sales to demonstrate that there is still some interest in the Adventure formula, not saying is the best era or that its the way to go, I completely agree with everything else you said though, about the more proactive approach to Sega, I think that’s something every kind of Sonic fans should embrace right now.
@Andrew Tuell
I was just referring to stuff on the games front, but you raise a good point. A surprisingly large amount of the issues with Sonic today can be traced back to the Classic era.
@Raw
The problem with just throwing Boom at the fans of lighter content is that not every fan of lighter content likes Boom. Boom does its own thing in a lot of ways– it has a fair amount of sitcommy elements, redesigns for imported characters, unique characteristics assigned to Eggman, Amy, and Knuckles, a more subdued artstyle than the mainline games, and it doesn’t work off of mainline canon or use a lot of its characters. Not all fans can be expected to like that stuff, and they’d be pretty offended if they were just directed to Boom every time they wanted some comedic, light Sonic regardless of if they liked how the show handles its writing and humor. Not to mention that the fanbase would still be incredibly divided as they’d have reason to debate even more frequently and strongly regarding the matter of if the dark or light style should be considered superior.
I think that what Sonic needs tonal consistency. This would mean sticking to the lighter content– not because its always superior in quality but rather because its what Sonic Team is currently doing. After all, a key part of establishing a strong balance is being reliable, which Sonic Team undeniably lacks. Now, don’t panic, this doesn’t mean that we have to keep Pontaff. Writers can be replaced as needed. Besides, if the lighter story is written well, then fans of darker Sonic will at the very least respect what its doing. Granted, the same could be said for darker stories and fans of lighter Sonic– but again, Sonic Team should really avoid dramatic changes, at least until Sonic has a solid balance and identity. But if experimentation was still desired, perhaps small games relating to Boom could be used to test how people would receive new ideas before incorporating them into the mainline games.
But hey, that’s just one solution. There are many right answers to the Sonic problem. 🙂
@Mad Convoy
I guess we will have to differ in that regard my friend as I seriously believe that making both the main Sonic and the Boom series more different would benefit Sega greatly as it now would feel like 2 separate franchises instead of the same stuff with a different paint coat, also I feel that the kind of stories told before Colors were much more balanced as they contained comedy, drama, action, danger and joy in a more equal way, also is not like they were overboard dark, they don’t need to be darker than a Pixar movie and they could still be awesome, not to mention the comedy was so much better back then, have you played Sonic Battle? Rush/Adventure? Chronicles? The comedy was so much funny and natural because it came from the characters personalities and how did they clashed with each other and not from situations like with Pontac & Graff (looking at you wisp translator), though I completely agree that the series need better writters, good writers that at least know the charracters and understand what make them work, I’m pretty sure that if they get those any direction they take will work just fine.
“anything before Sonic colors” totally agree with you. I miss those days when Sonic didn’t act like a complete tool.
Hopefully we can get that Sonic back for the 25th. I’d like to hear Roger’s Sonic voice with a good script.
Oh wow, this is so cool. And so “early Internet.” Gotta love how they had to put “Links are underlined” back then.
Hahaha, I know right? He sounds like a lame nickelodeon cartoon reject.
Wrong reply, sorry.
Theres also Sonicadventure3.com
Neat.
This website fills me with a lot of fascination, even nostalgia… although I had never seen the original. Isn’t it interesting to see how… dated, yet detailed the website was? I love this.
give this guy a promotion
I’ve seen this one before a while ago of Sonic Adventure for Sega DreamCast has a online internet back today from 1998 same year. I was born to in 1998, I am so lucky is that I have Sonic Adventure for Xbox Live Arcade for my birthday in five years ago I won’t never forget you Sonic Adventure you always my favourite Sonic game forever!
Huh. I like looking at the old websites– it gives an interesting insight on what the internet landscape was like in the days before Web 2.0. This is shockingly well done, though still makes use of some garish colors and cheap-looking backgrounds. But hey, that was common for the time, so I give it a pass.
Gotta love you have to click a button to access the homepage. 😛
This is great to aid in the preservation of historical games industry information. I remember accessing the original site via the Dreamcast many moons ago and accessing the Chao Daycare. Its a shame a crawl couldn’t pull all of the site / it wasn’t all indexed by the Wayback Machine to pull (or was DB driven content thats not available), but still a great feat.
Cool! Now I need to get a DSL/Broadband adapter for the Dreamcast. yea I still have the 56k on the system. Also hopefully some one brings back the Sonic Adventure 2 site.