Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 151: Sonic Adventure 2

Episode Date: May 14, 2018

When Sega made their first true leap into polygonal gaming with the incredibly rushed Sonic Adventure, they delivered a fascinating and ambitious mess. Thankfully, the inevitable sequel saw Sonic Team working with more time, resources, and expertise, making it a much more polished game... but one that still has its share of problems. On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Henry Gilbert, and Michal (@Miexriir on Twitter) as the crew digs into Sonic's sophomore stab into the world of 3D gaming.

Hello, everybody, welcome to another episode of Retronauts Micro. I am your host for this one, Bob Mackey, and today's topic is Sonic Adventure. Part 2. Before I go on, let's see who else is here today with me. Who's right over here? Escaping from the city, Henry Gilbert. And our newest guest, special guest. Michelle Schaferre, all the world's gems are mine to keep. Oh, right. I have a sonic thing to say. I am the ultimate life form. But Michelle is an internet friend. She went to our, I think, our second Talking Simpsons live show, and we started following each other on Twitter and sharing sick memes. And through following you, I learned that I don't think anyone knows as much as Sonic about you, at least that I've

ever met, so... Yeah, a little too much, honestly. It's okay, but did you pitch this to me, or did I pitch this to you? Or, like, how did this come about it? I think you pitched this to me. I was like, people don't like when I talk about Sonic the Hedgehog, but I know Jeremy won't, because he's a coward, no. He just doesn't care.

But I wanted to have a real true Sonic fan to talk about the 3D Sonic games because you're a bit younger than us, and I think these games are very meaningful to people that are a bit younger than us. And to us, we were just like, I got my Mario. I live in a Mario house. I live in the Mario lifestyle. Sonic is the new thing. And if I did like Sonic, I wouldn't like when they changed it into something that it wasn't before.

That was how I felt in 1999. Yeah, the 3D Sonic's definitely, like, changed up the formula a lot. And I know that I have a nostalgic lens when I play the games over again. But at this point, I think, like, there's, like, a lot of pros and cons that come to the Sonic adventures that people feel very strongly opinionated on. I would say that I was afraid of offending Michelle because of her Sonic fandom. But she sent me notes that are as they were as comprehensive. as my notes normally there. I'm like, okay, good. She sees some flaws in this. That's good.

This won't be a battle or a debate. Oh, we'll get to that. It's very smart. So let's talk about Sonic Adventure 2. I want to start with Michelle because she has a real attachment to this game. Like, what does Sonic mean to you? What is your attachment to this game? Where did you find it?

Let's hear your Sonic story. Yeah, so GameCube was like one of the first, it was the actual first console we had in my house growing up and it was technically my brother's. But a lot of his games, I couldn't play for a while because they were rated T for teen, but Sonic was rated E for everyone. This is a teen game, I dare say. Actually, there are some mild lyrics in it.

They call Rouge Sexy and Smooth, and that is a note on the ESRB rating. Is there a dam in this game? There's not. I think actually two of the songs say damn, but only on the official soundtrack and not in the version in game. But then in Shadow of the Hedgehog, they do have a lot of dams thrown. everywhere. That game earned its tea, but please continue, sorry. Yeah. So I also really like games of female characters being a woman and like there's not too many games that I had where I could like play as a girl and there's one playable girl character which is reused this game and Sonic Adventure one had Amy.

But just in general, I feel like a lot of the games, the levels and gameplay was super fun for a kid. Like being thrown into cityscape with one of the most exciting ways to start a game for me back then. And also I love the Chows and I have a lot like we can talk about Chows more in up later, but... Yeah, I do want to talk about Rouge later because I'm not sure if Rouge is problematic or what, but she's a much stronger character than Amy, who is just like the shopping and boy crazy pink hedgehog in the first game, who just runs away from things. Who tries to trick Sonic into marrying her.

Yes, that happens in this game. Yeah, she loves to that. Yeah, I played this on the Dreamcast. I was, well, my brother was a Dreamcast day one owner, and as the Dreamcast was slowly dying, the end of 2000, when this game came out on it, I believe we were just, we'd buy anything, but we of course were going to buy this, even though we both agreed, but like, Sonic Adventure had some problems, didn't it? Like, that wasn't the best? And then we got two, we both liked it more in a lot of ways than Sonic Adventure one and liked it less in other ways. It was,

it was mostly superior to it. And I guess to, now that when I've played, it seems a lot more anime than I realized then and maybe that was what was speaking to me in the positive when I played it in 2000 or 2001. Oh boy. I mean, the last boss fight is just the end of an anime where it's like the two characters teaming up together. The song is

playing. They're fighting a big thing. Yes, yeah. Oh, they both go super sane. You're right. Yes. So as for me, I hate this game. No, no, it's fine. This game, I wasn't a big fan of it. I remember my two friends at the time, college friends, they were way into Sonic. And I just assume that they would like this game. So I'm like, oh, yeah, guys.

this game came out. Do you ever play it? And they're like, oh, it sucks. I'm like, well, if they hate this game, then it has to be bad. But I eventually played it. And I, because of the, the Rouge and Knuckles levels, I never made a lot of progress because I hate those. And they sort of force them upon you where the first game, you could just sort of go through Sonics and Tales story without having to touch Knuckles for a while, correct? Yeah, you unlock them one at a time, but you can play through all of Sonic's story and then go back and revisit the other characters if you want the true ending. But. But in this game, there's a linear path for both the hero in the dark sides, and they basically force you to play those levels, and I really hate those, and I still don't like them very much, but that sort of stopped me from ever finishing this game, and that was my experience with it. That's really interesting, because I really like the treasure hunting levels versus I really hated the first-person shooter, Tails, Eggman levels. I don't like either, but I can see what they're, we'll get into it, but I can see what they're

trying to do with those treasure hunting levels. I just feel like they could, there's some things missing that I think need to be there. I will say another thing I didn't like about the adventure game. I don't want to just dump on them. But I didn't like them from my Sonic fan perspective because it's a generational thing. I was super into the 16-bit ones, but also into Sonic A.M. And I was reading the Sonic Comics up to a bad issue 50 or so. So when Sonic Adventure comes out, it basically just like, the sake of Sonic Team in Japan doesn't give a crap about what was going on in

Archie Comics. Like, why would they? So it does, like, dozens of things that just toss out all of that continuity. And it just kind of bug me, especially once, he is always Dr. Robotic to me. But in one scene, you're never at hashtag, hashtag never Eggman. Yes, at one scene at the start of adventure, they're like, hey, hey, Dr. Eggman, I'm Dr. Ivo Robotnik. Shit up. And then he call him Eggman. He calls himself Eggman for that time on. I had this argument at my old, website Games Radar about five years ago

when someone was going to do an article about a funny listicle about Dr. Robotnik and I had to tell them like

he has been Eggman everywhere for 12 years readers don't know who Robotnik is anymore maybe you do but he's Eggman

yeah there's a song in Sonic Adventure too that's just like I am the Eggman like over and over in the scenes in the background I got to that stage

you're right yeah so let's get into the development of this game and I want to talk a bit about that. So the first Sonic Adventure game, as we talked about on a previous episode, it was developed in a grueling 10-month development cycle. They were making, Segwas, had never made a 3D game of this ambition before this, and they have not made a 3D Sonic game before this.

But with Sonic Adventure 2, they had a good 18 months to put it together, and they sort of had a, had more of an idea of what they wanted the game to be, where Sonic Adventure 1 was sort of just like every idea possible. Sonic Venture 2 is like, we'll just narrow down on these three different ideas and build from there. Yeah, you can really see that they, uh, responded to the fan feedback there were, yeah, there was like essentially six different gameplay styles, and of course, one of those was fishing, which everyone loved. And you could see that they were just trying to perfect what they already had in the second one. I don't know if you agree with me, Michelle, but I felt that Big the Cat is sort of like the Jar Jar Jar Binks of Sonic Adventure

and that he's a scapegoat. There are many things going on that are worse than big, but he is like the identifiable problem. Yeah, like the E102 gamma stages aren't great either. Like the shooting mechanics are like still so early on. I completely forgot that guy. Oh, well, he's dead now. Sorry, spoiler, but he's a bird. He kills himself in a glorious suicide at the end of a story. Yeah, he died for her sins. No, I think they really, they were trying out so many things with Sonic Adventure One that it's just, it's a very scattershot game. And so this was part one of a like an unending series of how do we refine a 3D Sonic game to work? And it's just, it's something about the speed of Sonic, it's so hard

to really translate correctly. So this game directed by Takasha Izuka, he is sort of like the Sonic Team Head Honcho. Still the guy, is he. He moved on from being a director. The last game of the Sonic 3D games he directed was Shadow the Hedgehog.

Not a great note to go out on. I think the last game he actually directed was the Knights Into Dreams reboot, which is also pretty bad, pretty bad. But now he's like the main producer for all the Sonic games. And this was revealed at an E3-2000 trailer, with an E3-2000 trailer, rather, and it just with a lot of, like, enigmatic keywords flashing on the screen, like, truth and lies and dark and light.

It was actually light-slash-shadow. Oh, okay. Everyone says that that may have been, like, a hint because it was like, yeah, everything was like polar opposites, like, just as evil. But instead of, like, light dark, it was, like, light shadow. But did they reveal shadow in that trailer or no. Yeah, you could see him at the end. They didn't name him. One of the things about that trailer was like, you never saw Tate.

There's people thought that he wasn't part of the game for a while, but Shadow was there and everyone was like, oh, who's this dark Sonic is the idea behind that? I noticed in the trailer they were really zeroing in on all the more fast-paced elements of gameplay. Yeah. So I think this was the start of the Sonic cycle, as they call it, the Sonic Ring cycle of, I hate this Sonic game. Oh, it's new one. It's promising. Oh, this looks cool. Wait, what's this?

Oh, I hate this game. Yeah, we go through that a lot. Are you still trapped in the cycle? Yeah, I've been trying to keep up. Like, I did kind of like generations, even though it's, like, pretty flawed. I really like generations. There's, like, a lot going on that's, like, good, but it's kind of like, I mean, it's nothing new.

It's just like remastered the good levels. Well, by redoing the good levels again, they're like, we figured it out. We got pretty close by redoing this. But then they did Sonic Forces, and it's, like, the Sonic O.C. game, which is not. You can finally have your main in the game. Yeah, I can make, like, a furry you. Whatever Sonic fan probably wants. To be honest, yeah, I think.

I think lost. world was an all right. That was the WiiU exclusive for a while. I don't know if it still is. It came to the 3DS because I feel like I played it there and it was not a good gameplay experience. Yeah, nothing stays on the Wii U. The Wii version was a little better, as I recall. I haven't played it a ton since then, but they kind of, well, Lost World had to, they ripped off Galaxy, Mario Galaxy. If I may attack Sonic is scary Mario. But no, but it did have like, we're on the more contained sphereoid type idea on that game. Plus, they still would stick in 2D

stages, which is them realizing, like, people, let's give them at least a little 2D in these games. Yeah, I like when they went back to 2D occasionally, especially with generations. You got like the 2D levels and the three levels, which were great. So as Henry said earlier, this was developed in San Francisco by the newly branded Sonic Team USA. Their first project was the localization for Sonic Adventure 1, and they fixed a lot of problems. This is their second project, and you can see a lot of the influence of San Francisco in this game, especially with that first level.

So Sonic Team basically split. say came to SF to develop Sonic games, and Yuji Naka, one of the creators of Sonic stayed in Japan to develop things like Fantasy Star Online. I think, like, Yuji Naka was done with Sonic after Sonic and Knuckles. He was like, Knights will be my thing. And then Knights didn't go anywhere. And he was like, well, fuck, I'll just do something else then. You take Sonic. Yeah, Fantasy, I mean, Fantasy Star was the better of these two properties to me. I mean, they had, instead of trying to figure out how do you make Sonic work in 3D, Fantasy Star was like, well let's just do like Diablo like just fuck it let's just do that and they were great at it

and that was a super influential online game oh man you wouldn't have monster hunter without PSO yeah for sure or any like real console MMO experience I think so this game so the first Sonic Adventure there was like a nine month golf in release between the Japanese and American releases because it wasn't a launch game for the Dreamcast but it came out very shortly after the Dreamcast launch it was like Christmas of 98 in Japan and then it came out in 999 the biggest entertainment day in history, of course, in America. This game had a worldwide release, Sonic Adventure 2, on June 18, 2001. This is not a great time for Sega.

Wow, a summer release, man. I think at this point, the Dreamcast earlier that spring maybe was basically Sega was like we're done with the Dreamcast. The last game will be a hockey game. And it was kind of cool that they at least put this out on the Dreamcast instead of saying this would be a GameCube exclusive. It's sort of like they're sorry to the fans, I guess. Yeah, I came to the GameCube.

But it says, like, I think, February 2002, which is, like, pretty shortly after. And it was one of the biggest, like, Sonic launches for a, it was the first Sonic launch on a game, on a Nintendo console. That's true. It was quite a shock as a Nintendo fanboy to be like, this has happened. This is, my youth is dead now. But I, we were, my house was a dreamcast house. And so when we found out, the, I believe it was January 2001 where they made it official like, this is over. Yeah.

That's when I got my dream cast. And it was just waiting the next six months of, I guess we're going to have some more games while we wait for this to die. And then we get Sonic and you're pitting a lot of hopes and dreams on Sonic, but you also know it's not going to save the system. PSO didn't save the system and Sonic's not going to either. It's dead. Yeah. And eventually, I mean, it was a big deal for Sonic to be on a Nintendo console. But I think the biggest deal was Sonic and Mario finally in the same game.

But that was an Olympics game. But just the photo, yeah, it was a real photo of them shaking hands. Like Donald Rumsfeld and Zadam Hussein. I don't think Sonic would ever shake the hand of Mario. He's like a really bad sport. You think so? Yeah. In his theme song for the game, it doesn't matter.

He's like, it doesn't matter if you're like wrong or right. It's like all about his way. He's all about just his own morality. Yeah. He's protecting. Oh, man, Sonic. He's kind of a dick. Yeah, he's really mean to tails.

Do we know where Sonic falls on the D&D alignment chart? Definitely chaotic. Chaotic. Chaotic neutral? I think he's chaotic good. Okay. Yeah, I'd say chaotic good. A chaotic, neutral.

Surprisingly, Knuckles is not chaotic. No, Knuckles is very lawful good. I mean, he's just like all about protecting the Master Emerald. That's true. But he's not chaotics, right? Is that what you're saying? Yes, that was the joke I was going on. I just want to make sure everyone knew.

So this was re-released. So the GameCube version and all of the HD versions are the battle version of this game, where I could not go over all the changes. If you go to like the wiki, It is literally like 20,000 words of all of the tweaks that they did. Michelle, do you know, like, what are the more substantial additions to this version, the battle version? The only important thing is that they added the black market to the Chow Garden, which was a very big deal for me. Is that where you buy her chow fentanyl or something?

That's where you buy, like, all the eggs and stuff. But, yeah, there's, like, a lot to go over in that list. I think, I mean, they made it, like, cleaner. It's, I don't think it's, like, even worth it to go over, like, each detail. Obviously, they added the two-player mode, which Sonic Adventure 1 didn't have. Sorry, Sonic Adventure 2 on the Dreamcast didn't have And another major thing is like they took away online And there are probably some other

You can't do online on a GameCube Yeah I guess what could you download on the Dreamcast version Maybe like God I don't know It was more about like scoreboards Yeah it was like meterboard stuff And yeah the battle mode That was why we bought it a second time

Was to play the battle mode And it was a good little time But I guess really though It was just the novelty of owning a Sonic game on a Nintendo system. It was a weird time to be alive. Yeah, and I mean, this game, it's not as glitchy as Sonic Adventure, the USA version was, but two definitely needed some cleanup for the re-release.

Then when this got re-released again, I recall the, you know, the PS3 Xbox version of it, the battle was included, but you had to pay $3 more for it. Oh, I forget. It wasn't the full version. You'd got, like, I think it was $15 for just what you got on the Dreamcast. And then if you wanted the two-player battle mode, you had to pay an extra three bucks. What a rip-off. I think, but at the very least, it did port over to the next gen.

So I think I bought it on the 360. And now it's also on Xbox One, so I now own this game on four platforms, including PC. I have the PC one, and it's pretty good. The port of Sonic Adventure 1 for the PC, I just played that for an old episode, and it's not good. But the PC port of this is fine. I think the port of Sonic Adventure 1 is also in, like, 4-3, so you have, like, the frames on either side. You've got a weird, like, Sonic Border going around your game. I'm going around at the speed of sound

Got places to go Got to follow my rainbow Can't stick around have to keep moving on Guess what lies ahead Only one way to find out Must keep on moving ahead No time for guessing Follow my pen instead

Just in what you can see Take my lead out Let you free Follow me Set me free Trust me and we will escape from the sea I'll make it through

Follow Follow me Let's talk about the The differences From the first Sonic Adventure game As I said before That this game Sonic Venture 1

It's like We don't have any time So just do everything We don't have any time Do every idea you have We can't be choosy on these ideas We can't delete a stage If you made it

It is a test We got to just do it Like, you have a prototype for a racing game? Put that in this, too. So Sonic Adventure 2 doubles down on three established gameplay styles from the first game. Action platforming, you get that with Shadow and Sonic. Shooting, you get that with Eggman and Tails. And Scavenger Hunting, get that with Rouge and Knuckles.

And they all are sort of upgraded versions, improved versions of what was found in Sonic Adventure 1. Yeah, I think the, as a fan of Tales, Tales was my favorite character in the classic ones. He's great. I love him, but he that he was sitting in a cockpit for the entire game, I was like, but I wanted to run around his tails. You at least can do that in the battle modes. To be fair,

the Sonic Adventure 1, Tales levels were just like a race between him and Sonic, so it wasn't like you were getting anything new there, but I hated the shooter modes in Sonic Adventure 2, and I was like, yeah, I hated seeing tails in the cyclone, not the tornado. We'll get into it, yes. There's a lot going on with that.

So there's no adventure hub, which is a blessing I consider, because the adventure hub in Sonic Adventure 1 was quirky and kind of had some personality, but it was really just brain-dead puzzles, like bring this token to this thing, and it'll open up another level, now do it with three other characters. It was not very interesting. It was poorly designed, and like, for example, the Mystic Ruins Forest was like, I don't know if you guys have, like, spent much time running around in there, but there's, like, no, like,

landmarks of, like, how to get around. Yeah. Big old maze. And you always have to go back into that cave, right, to, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not very good. It's not very fun. Like, there's not, like, cool secrets to find. Like there's like a few things scattered, but it's not enough to kind of justify this being like an immersive experience. It's true.

I think they saw the Mario 64 castle and thought that was like a good idea. It also could kill time. But also there were lots of fun secrets in that castle. Yeah. I think a big difference there, though, was a Mario 64 perhaps for just technological reasons. There's all, there's basically no one there in it. There's like sort of a shadow toad in walls. Yeah.

But other than that, well, meanwhile, they populate Sonics. hub world with humans and when you, it's freakish enough to see a 3D Sonic because you really hadn't seen that. I mean, okay, yeah, and Sonic R or Sonic Jam stages, you had seen a 3D Sonic, but this was a 3D Sonic like you'd never seen before.

He's already weird looking to a degree. And then if you see him next to humanoid people, you're like, what the fuck is this? Why aren't they all panicking? That's why they, the less he's around people, the better as he is in this game. Yeah, the NPCs were not executed very well, though I

will say my favorite one. There's only, like, one interaction I like with the NPCs in that game is, and it's that, there's this mom who lives in the casino, essentially, and, like, all of her lines are like, I go to the casino every night, and there's, you can find her son who's always like, oh, I haven't seen my mom in, like, days. Like, she hasn't come out of the casino yet, and, like, all of their lines are just about his mom has his gambling addiction. So somebody on the staff was working through something at the time.

I think they played Majora's mask, and they were like, how can we make this Sonic themed in the casino? Yeah, wow. You're right. It's rather Majora's. mask as well. Or I guess maybe Majora's mask is Sonic Adventure because it came out after the first Sonic Adventure. Oh, yeah.

The one story I remember is a guy getting really mad that another guy is bringing a different girl to the amusement park every day. He's with another woman. I do remember. Oh, there's also this woman who's in Station Square and she's like, I haven't seen my husband. I hope he's okay. And then you go to the Mystic Ruins Forest and he's like,

I'm like so lost. I'm never getting home. Oh, boy. I'm like, well, I'm not telling this lady. You solve your own problems. That's why it was great that adventure just dumped those NPCs, dumped the hub world. It's just stage after stage after stage, a linear travel for stages. And you can choose either the light path or this. Is it hero in dark or light or dark?

It's hero and dark. And each set of levels unfolds from there in a linear fashion. As I said, as I complained about having to suffer through knuckles levels and roosh levels. I feel like this is an issue for me because I love the sonic and shadow levels, but they are so stingy about giving you those. I didn't know the level order from memory. So I'm like, okay, get to the Sonic level. It's like, nope, now your tails, now your knuckles, now your tails again. It's just, yeah, it's just, I want the sonic stages.

Shadow has the least number of stages in the game, which is actually pissed me off just because I think when they marketed it, it's like, you know, Sonic versus Dark Sonic, which just ended up being Shadow. And Eggman just has like so many levels and I fucking hate the Eggman levels. Yeah, you know, that's a double lie of an advertisement because if you had played Sonic Adventure and you were pissed off of like, well, wait, I play, I play. I don't want to keep talking about Mario. If you play Mario 64, you are Mario the entire time and you get the Mario experience. If you bought Sonic Adventure thinking, I'm going to be Sonic this whole time and get Sonic stages and you don't get many of those, then if you see a trailer for a game that's like, well, you've got two Sonics in this. You're like, then I'm definitely going to have a ton of Sonic stages in this. I'm seeing double here.

Four Sonics. And yet, you get, they are very stingy with them and they repeat a couple as well, just to fill up on time. And I think the game, Sonic Stage is peak early with City Escape as well. I just came off of Sonic Adventure 1, and this still has some of those same problems, but I feel like they build in safety guards for some of those problems. So in Sonic Adventure 1, you could always, it was really easy to just go off into oblivion, like fall into a pit. It wasn't telegraphed well.

In this game, I feel like they give you some chances. Like, I found myself going off a pits, but then a gust of wind would blow me up. And I'm like, oh, okay, that's good. Like, I feel like they recognized that was an issue. They didn't make better levels, but they at least, like, put the bummer. In for bumper bowling or whatever, my analogy is for that. Yeah, I think they learned a little bit there, but it's, it, it is a tough bouncing act. I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to take on that kind of responsibility of, well, how do you, the 3D platformers were at least like, they were well established by 99 and into 2000, but one, in 2001, but they never moved as fast as Sonic is expected to be.

So you have, how can you go that fast and also figure out platforming? Anytime you have to slow down and actually platform in the Sonic stage, even with the homing jump, it can be, it can be tough. And I think one of the things that makes that really difficult is the camera in both games, which is like, you know, really the, like, seventh playable character in a way. But it doesn't actually let you. That's, that's, you're always, yeah, you're always controlling the camera alongside with whatever character you're controlling at the same time. It's really interesting. it's like it the game tries to make the camera like a cinematic thing and like uh especially like in the sonic levels you'll notice like you jump to a new platform it'll like completely like pan with you and at this

point like i know where all the camera pans are but like i've played this with friends who like have never played the game before and they just have no idea like how to keep that momentum going when it just keeps shifting and then you like turn it around like yourself and then it'll just shift right back yeah and you also i mean so that i guess the battle version does have a uh camera you can move maybe the dreamcast one does too but you can only move it left and right you can't actually move it like on the Y axis, which also sucks. Now, the Sonic stages as well, I worked with a games radar, a gentleman named Justin Towell, who is big time Sonic fan, fun guy, and at least at the time we worked together,

he held multiple world records in Sonic and Sonic Adventure games in speed runs. And I saw why he loved it of like, yeah, you play this 800 times and you perfect your run, but I'm somebody who I want to have fun the first time. and not have to, like, plan out my space through it or test my best time against myself in kind of an arcadey fashion. So I always felt like they even, even a well-made 3D Sonic stage was not made for me so much. Yeah, the camera doesn't, like, it's not very much pace to go with you at the sonic and shadow levels. And even the treasure hunting levels, like, you don't have to go as fast, but, like, if you're trying to look around, it's kind of difficult to you.

Which is the point of those stages is to look around. They're so confusing. Let's go through some more comparisons. So I think we all talked about this But they were trying It seems like they were addressing criticisms of the first game Which is funny because there were a lot of the same issues Because this was the era

And I believe it was Penny Arcade that popularized the term And I said it on the last one But it was Sonic and his shitty friends Like nobody wanted the shitty friends I like tails I like Knuckles Rouge is fine But their gameplay was not what people wanted They wanted the Sonic and Shadow gameplay

Or just I mean they wanted the Sonic gameplay They didn't even know about Shadow But again And Sega did not have the resources to make a lot of sonic levels that would build a substantial game because those are the most resource-intensive levels because you're building a lot of geometry that you're going through very fast. So you have to put a lot of work into those. Building an Eggman stage, less work. It's just these boxy rooms where you shoot things.

Or a treasure hunt stage, it's several rooms you're going to spend a lot of time in. And I know they, multiple producers have said outright of like, yeah, look, it's just a lot of real estate to make and it takes a while. But also, I do wonder if they're like, well, what, that's like having every meal will be chocolate cake and it just gets the specialness of a, if it was just four-hour campaign of just those sonic stages, I feel like 90 minutes in, you'd be like, whew, okay. I mean, that's kind of what the 2D sonics are like. It's a sonic after sonic and they just get progressively harder. Yeah, sometimes though they stick you under water and make you like wait a long. Yeah, I just go, okay, I'm trying not to die here. But I guess Sonic Mania was what people wanted all along, right?

Yeah, and it was. It was great. Sonic Mania was very good. Though I stopped playing when I got to a stage where I just kept like instantly dying. I was like, this part wasn't bug tested too well. Did you play Sonic Mania? Yeah, I don't think I beat it either. Honestly, the 2D Sonics are a lot more like challenging. They are tough. They have to pay like a lot more attention, which I don't always have.

So let's get to the gameplay. As we said, there were three different types of gameplay. the first one, of course, is the Sonic and Shadow gameplay, and this is what you would expect. If you've been alive for the past 20 years, you know what this is like, you run forward very fast, you attack enemies, and you grind on things. That's the newest

addition to this game. With... Soap shoes, baby. With licensed shoes, right? Yep, soaps. Are they still around? I don't know. I feel like they would have gone bankrupt right now. I'm not too sure how many people want, like, specific shoes for grinding on rails. That astounded me, because I'm like, what, you grind on

rails without a skateboard? Is this something people do? Because the shoes are made to grind without just your shoes. I've never known someone with soap shoes for actual use. But I'm not the extreme target audience of Sonic Adventure. I imagine that probably killed children so they took them off the market. Like, don't jump onto rails with just your shoes. I mean, I got to give it to Sega for getting the, you know, closing that deal

and getting so much needed funding to their game. Yeah. Yeah. The ads in the background of the, of the city escape. Everywhere, yeah. Yeah. I believe they took the shoe. shoes out, though, because in the HD version, there's no more soap ads. So they might have

redesigned issues, so they're not, like, a literal licensed shoe or footwear? I think they actually, like, um, fix some issues where, like, in a lot of the early cutscenes, like, obviously, I think a lot of people know the fun fact of, like, you know, Sonic his is, like, classic Michael Jackson red shoes, but then they got the soap deal kind of late in the game, but they didn't finish, um, like, fixing all the textures. Yeah. So you can, like, catch some, uh, points where, like, oh, those are, like, his original shoes when he's jumping out of the plane in the very first cutscene. And I think

in the HD ports, they fixed most of those. I'm not too sure if they took out the soap advertisements, but they definitely like patched up all the issues they had. Sonic's concave shoes are just so weird. Yeah, they're pretty grotesque. I like the classic red boots, but when he became like Sonic Adventure, Sonic,

his feet grew like five times their size. Like the Grinch. Yes, exactly. And we also have Shadow adding some moral complexity to the series finally at Long Last. And he's He's sort of like a rollerblader guy with jet shoes. Yeah, he's like someone who would probably shop at Hot Topic. Exactly.

He doesn't waste his time running and moving his feet against the ground. No way. Chaos control everywhere. So Shadow is hot topic and Sonic is Pacific Sunware in this dichotomy. Sonic didn't have a Vegeta until this point. Though I guess, well... Oh man, that is Vegeta. Knuckles is his piccolo and then that would make Shadow Vegeta.

He definitely is. I guess everything in the series is and Tales is Krillin, right? Yeah, totally. Chi is Amy. Oh, my God. I'll podcast about this later. I've got a grand theory.

But yeah, the shadow stages are cute and all. I like his, he definitely smolders with rage all the time at the world. And though, how can he, well, his whole journey through this game is kind of a very anime one of like amnesia, revenge, re-contextualized revenge to know that he was not supposed to get revenge on people, save the world, heroic sacrifice. But not really. If I was Sonic, I'd be really pissed off if the ultimate life form was the opposite of me. I'd be like, that's insulting. I think it's really interesting that, like, I don't know, you'd think that the ultimate life form was, like, maybe modeled after Sonic the Hedgehog because he's great, but you find out in the game that Shadow was made, like, 50 years earlier, and Sonic is, like, 16 years old.

So Shadow came first, so that's kind of weird. We will get into the story because I have a lot of questions and I will have questions after we're done talking too. But, okay, the stages of Sonic, his first one, City Escape is my favorite of the game. And I think they started the best there. And I have a funny City Escape story of that I was at the 25th anniversary party of Sonic at San Diego Comic Con, where they both revealed Sonic Mania and the game that would be, would end up being Sonic Forces. I'm so sorry. And so not only did I get to see live, the Sonic's ring cycle begin again. If people like, no, Project Sonic 2017, they're really going to figure out Sonic.

I just know it, guys. They're going to do it. And everybody excited for Sonic Mania. And they were all satisfied of like, oh, this is the real game. Okay, this is what I was waiting for. But before they did that, they said, guys, we're going to do a sing-along. You all know the words anyway, but follow the bounce in Sonic. And they play City.

They have a cover band, play City Escape Live. And it's hundreds of Sonic fans in the House of Blues in San Diego singing City Escape. It's so you follow me. Well, were they serving chili dogs at that event? Free tons of free chili dogs. So Sonic fans get an enclosed space eating all the chili dogs they can eat. Every girl's dream. Yes.

The blues are now dead. Admittedly, that song is a banger. And anyone should go off the second one year. It's great. I also love the main thing. theme for this this game. Live and Learn.

Yeah, it's good. It really makes like a great like penultimate moment. Yeah. But not every Sonic and Shadow Stage is creating equal.

I have the jungle stage I liked all right. Sonic or shadows. I guess they're both good. They're kind of the same. I think I like Sonics more. Yeah. Just personally. And the,

but those space stages, I just watched a full game play of this. I didn't play it myself. But just watching it brought back like, I just cream. I tinsed up in memory of like, I play these forever because they fucking sucked. It took forever. Yeah, pretty difficult.

But I think, I mean, yeah, Sonic definitely had the best levels of, like, between him and shadow. Like, Metal Harbor was great. Pyramid Cape was also, like, pretty fun, though there was sometimes that kind of slowed down and you had to, like, pick up that little key to put in the, that was not great. But even, like, Crazy Gadget and Final Rush, yeah, they're a lot more difficult, though I think they did some interesting things that were kind of ambitious, like the part with the gravity and crazy gadget, which is very, like, galaxy-ish, but...

But before galaxy. Yeah. There were some cool... Yeah, I agree. There were some cool concepts in the space areas there, yeah. Yeah, people seem to sing the praises of Final Rush online a lot when it comes to this game. I think, to be fair, if you compare the space levels of, like, Sonic and then the other kind of gameplay of, like, the shooters versus the treasure hunting, like, well, Sonic and

the action stages are best overall, but it's just, like, not as frustrating. as like treasure hunting like in all space and trying to find the right planet. Even if you jump off into nowhere, it's still like, I'm not as frustrated as when I'm trying to follow a gem, sorry,

an emerald radar. Well, there's an alarm going off. Can we move on to the knuckles and roo stuff? You have anything more to say about Sonic and Shadow? No, I mean, those were just, they were fun stages. When I had to repeat a couple, that's also when I was like, come on.

I expected at least original. stuff, but they repeat multiple stages not just for the Sonic and Shadow guys. So Knuckles and Rouge, of course, these are very similar to the ones from the last game, the knuckle stages. I feel like these are better designed than the Sonic Adventure One stages in that this is sort of the Sonic

team's interpretation of Zelda Dungeons in the Sonic context. You can definitely see that in the aquatic mine level. It's pretty much the Water Temple. Why would you want to re-recreate the water temple? What's the thing people hate the most about Zelda? Let's do that. I mean... I don't think the Water Temple was that bad. I'm one of those people too.

Well done. Well designed. I mean, it's fine and all. I had a better time with it the second time I played through it on 3D. No, sorry. And the third time I played through it was on the 3DS version. And that's where I could just tap on and off my boots and not have to go pause, pause, pause, pause. But yeah, now this actually, back to the Dragon Ball thing, Rouge would be Bulma.

Oh, man. And they have a Dragon Ball radar for their emeralds. Well, there's a lawsuit pending. I didn't watch Dragon Ball, but I can make some like Gurren Logger. on comparison scenes I feel like I want to hear them all yeah so um uh Sonic is Kamina yes and Tails is whatever the main guy's name is but he's like you know believe in the youth that little weiner kid yeah like the Simon yes so ultimately spoilers Sonic is Yoko Sonic dies and they build it like what say it again sorry

Ruge is Yoko because she has boob physics that is true uh so ultimately uh then Sonic has to die for them to have a true cause the fight for is that how it works yeah but also I think um the spiral, like the spiral guy, not the spiral king is essentially Shadow because he's so fucking angsty. Man, I hope anyone out there understands this. I think there's a bit of crossover of anime fans and Sonic fans. We'll do it on what a cartoon, I swear. But yeah, you talked about boob physics.

Let's get into that. My notes I wrote a little something for daddy because I think, and this is like, I love furries. Furries are great. I think Sonic team was like, we know what furries are now. Let's make a character to appeal to, you know, our male audience. I hear you out there. Yeah, yes. We've got your letters.

Stop sending them. Well, in the Sonic games from the beginning, when they're pitched for the original Sonic game, there was a character in it based on Madonna, a human woman who was kind of supposed to be the sex symbol of the game or the little something for daddy. But they cut her out of it, so they didn't have, Amy was your kid's sister or just annoying. Like, she was not, she is the only girl in the game. She was not supposed to be a sex symbol. Like, Rouge was the first, really. and that's what that they did it through they decided not to have a humanoid person be sexy like they planned originally with Madonna instead they go with the with Rouge which like proportionally it's just freaks me out I have to say admittedly as someone like who grew up with this game and like was looking for games with like female characters Rouge does have more agency than like Amy Rose says and she like does work for the government she's a badass actually neither game does pass the back Dell test but it's fine Yeah, the only thing that I think they kind of regressed on in Sonic Adventure 2 with the treasure hunting levels is the fact that in Sonic Adventure 1, okay, you have like the three shards of the Emerald that you're looking for, but in Sonic Adventure 2, it would only ping like the one you're looking for at a time versus in Sonic Adventure 1.

Like if you're near, like the third one, but you haven't found the first one, it'll still tell you you're near one. So you could like pass things and like it just wouldn't even beep and it's just a little frustrating when you try to go fast. I'm so bad at these stages. I feel like even though they're small and I've been playing 3D games for like 20 years I'm so terrible at them I wouldn't touch me again with a 10 foot clownful but the no that yeah

I think I can get from a gameplay standpoint why they made that decision the change from one to two is because they wanted to guide you through what they wanted to make you get the emeralds in a certain order and maybe too in the old one what if the zones

like kind of crossed over with each other it could be confusing if you have like one thing on yellow, one thing on green, and then you keep going back and forth, and they switch. But it's still just frustrating if you've ever flown past like a shard of the emerald. And you're like, wait, what was that? And you just turn around. It's like right there. Yeah. After you've been climbing around

on one like rock forever, like, am I supposed to dig here? Am I here digging here? What the hell? It's actually in the next room. So do you know if these are, are these always in the same place every time you play? No, they're randomized, which I think makes it really difficult to speed run these. And people are pretty frustrated about it.

But there's like, I think like, between 18 to 25 locations per stage and like each thing has like three clues um it's like it always gets like a little wonky when you get to space with rouge and like they have the clues that are like backwards it's like all the opposite of where it is oh my god some of them are like written backwards and then some of them are like not under the moon or something a little little cheeky for you Jesus these are mind games they're playing I mean so we didn't talk about the scoring system it's it's really harsh I was like consistently getting ease on every on every stage Oh, you aren't a gamer, Bob.

That's true. I should be fired from this. But can you explain the scoring system? It's just, it's not very explicit, like, what you're scored on. There's a finite amount of rings in a level. There's a finite amount of animals to rescue. Like, how does that work exactly? Yeah, I don't know it that well in the sense that I also do pretty poorly because I just, I like to have fun.

But, yeah, so it's different for each character. I know that there is some conditions, like if you get all the rings in a level, you get an automatic A. But at the same time, some of the rings are in places where you physically. can't get to, because that's, like, a fun little game design cork. For Eggman and Tails levels, I know it's up, like, obviously, the more people you shoot, like, at the same time, you can, like, lock on to, like, I don't know, 16, I think it's in that. Yeah, a lot of enemies at once. So, like, you know, the more things you do of that, the higher your score is.

For treasure hunting, if you get a hint, because you have, like, all those computers, like, telling you where things are, the more hints you get, like, the lower your score is, kind of, like, handicaps and golf or something. That's the only way to really figure things out. though you know you need those hints cruel like theoretically you could like get one and then know it well enough to find where it is and still like do it fast because also uh time is an element yeah yeah time was bad for time was not on my side in this game and uh did you ever i swear you probably did not unlock so green hill zone is like the ultimate reward that you have to be you have

to become one with sonic i think to even achieve this goal you have to get all the emblems in the game and i believe that entails like you know basically just doing a perfect run on every stage, right? Well, you have to get 180 emblems. I don't think you actually have to ease everything. You know how, like, every stage has five modes? It's like a normal play-through. Then it's get 100 rings and find the lost chow.

And then there's something. And then there's, like, quote-unquote, hard mode. So I think you just have to pass. I want to say. There might be something else where it is, like, you have to get all-A's. I have not met another human who has done that. And, like, also you get emblems for stuff like chows, I'm pretty sure. Like, if you evolve, the chowl, you get an emblem, come back.

I never set foot in Green Hill Zone, and it did drive me nuts. The idea of it of just like, this is all Sonic fans. The older Sonic fans want this, and you're not letting us have it. Get good at our game, Henry. I know. So mean. That's way more mean than like what it takes to unlock Luigi in the first Super Mario Galaxy. Yeah.

I mean, those Manterrey stages suck, but I can probably do them with some practice. Sure, yeah. So more about these Rouge and Knuckle stages. And I keep wanting to call it Rogue because no one can spell Rouge online. They are very much more design than the Sonic Adventure 1 versions of these. But I think these, they really just need like a Zelda-style map as part of the UI for these stages. Like, there are maps in the stages, but they're sort of like maps in an airport like you are here. It's like a texture on the wall.

And those textures can't convey the info you need. And I think they are only present for the levels that they have in the pyramid. I forget what they're called, but it's probably something. where you is the ones where you have to lower the water level and raise the water level. Yeah, it's like, like, death chamber and, um, Rouge has like, oh, uh, egg quarters. That's what it was. Yeah. And, um, yeah, so you have like the, like, red, blue, green, like, triangles of the pyramid.

But like, all the other stages, you're kind of lost in, especially with the space ones, where you're going, like, up and down. You have no idea where anything is. Like, those are a lot more challenging. They're pretty rough. Yeah. Yeah. And plus, like in annoying Zelda dungeons, there's also occasionally ghosts that just fuck with you. Like we'll just grab you and stop you from doing something.

What is with the weird like Halloween themeing around knuckles in this game? Like Pumpkin Hill Zone and then there are ghosts in every level that give these weird like kind of jump scares. That's true. Like we all are. We're all little knuckles inside. But I just didn't understand that. He's a, he's also, we didn't talk about the rapping in the game, which was like infamous. I think it's become like a people have now embraced it like the Donkey Kong rap.

Yeah. It's like definitely a fan favorite. like the Ghost's Pumpkin Scoop is the one for Pumpkin Hill and I think they're all by this guy Hun P, hunted P, and he actually still makes raps about Knuckles on some YouTube channel out there for the fans. If you're listening, say, uh,

put a stop to this man. Copyright infringement. That sounds like the Stan Bush and Transformers thing. I'm just like Stan Bush was famous for doing Transformers songs in the 80s and then he kind of didn't too. The only time you hear about it again, he's like, well, I made a new Transformer song for two. 2008, and only Transformers fans care.

Yeah, but I think it's always fun to actually listen to the lyrics of those. In fact, my favorite lyric for the Pumpkin Hill song is when he says, The Great Emerald's Power allows me to feel. Like, he doesn't even say anything after that. It's like, it allows him to feel. Let that sit with you for a while and figure that out. I ain't going to let it get to me. I'm just going to creep.

Down in Pumpkin Hill, I got to find my lost piece. I know that it's here. I can sense it in my feet. The Great Emerald's power allows me to fit. I can't see a thing But it's around somewhere I'm gonna hold my head Cause I have no fear

This probably seems crazy crazy A graveyard theory I go's try to approach me And got leery Ask him oppression And he vanished in a second I'm walking through valleys Prying pumpkins in the alley

Didn't seem happy But they sure trying to get me Had to back him up with a fist metal crack I'm hearing someone saying You're a chicken on me scared It had to be the win Because nobody wasn't there I searched and I searched as I climbed up the world

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You know where the danger lies within Avoid the ark A genius and heart Let's what I am the egg man Let's go on the egg man Basically this is the game game play from Sonic Adventure 1 but again the stages are sort of more designed around shooting unlike the gamma stages were a few of them were but this is now just them doubling down on that kind of gameplay so these were not my least favorite i the treasure hunting is my least favorite but when i you know reviewed these again i was like well these are just kind of boring platformers especially with some really cheap jumps especially if you don't have the when you before you get hover unlocked so i i don't judge them to as hard partially as I do the rouge and knuckle stages, but yeah.

I will say, though, the people who designed or approved the sound design on these stages should be tortured, because you're constantly holding in the button to lock onto things, and the second you touch that button, you start hearing a high-pitched whine. Like, who thought, who said, who, I just don't get it. It's, like, so awful. Like, honestly, the game teaches you essentially at the beginning that you should lock on to as many things at once. You just have it always held down, and then when you get to the space levels, you start, like, tripping off some airlocks and it punishes you for something you've been doing for like four

levels straight and it's like really frustrating and it's pretty shit I I really dislike these levels like and oh sorry go ahead oh I was gonna complain about more of these oh please keep complaining so when you're in the pyramid for like hidden bays and sand ocean like you were talking early about how sonic adventure too is more forgiving about like oh if you fall down in your knuckles like a gust of wind picks you back up but like you touch sand like once and you're like dead oh yeah and it's really frustrating. When you're in the mechs. Yeah. And especially you do the same boss,

the Egg Gollum, for Sonic as well as Eggman. And like Sonic, if you fall down to the bottom, you can like just jump a lot and target onto the pulley things to go up. But if you're Eggman, if you touch the sand, like you can't get out. There's like no recovery. I have not actually gotten

that far with Eggman and that sounds like a nightmare. I just actually finished. That was the last thing I did in the game was beat him with Sonic. But I'm just imagining fighting him with Eggman. That sounds awful. Yeah. Because the level is designed to, like, that you should go down to the bottom to avoid the guys' attacks. But, like, you just can't really utilize that. And there are power-ups down there, too, right?

Yeah. You still have that with Eggman. You just have to, like, really hope that you land on the platform to, like, pull yourself back up. They really like making you all fight the same bosses in these games. Yeah. I mean, they went to a lot of trouble making that boss, but maybe he's a twice. Like, it's just economical. Because that one first Bigfoot battle was, like, so creative. Oh, yeah.

And also, Tails has a drive. level in this game and I think the Ruge does too. It's not very good. It takes fucking forever. It was like this could be half as long and this doesn't have to be three five minute laps or something. It's another callback to the

great state of California. It's like Route 101 and Route 280 which are like actual roads here but it's still like as frustrating as it is to drive on those roads here. As somebody who loves California I appreciate the references to it but yeah it's not execution. Maybe the teams coming

over from Japan were just enchanted by all the highways here. Like, yes, let's make a level based on this. There's not a lot of driving in Japan like that. Yeah, now I mean, it's also crazy to think now of like, well, Sega would do or any place would do a triple A level development

of a game in San Francisco. Like, that just doesn't, that barely happens now. There's one studio that does that now? I mean, technically, Ubisoft is still in San Francisco. Yeah. San Francisco proper. Like, it's not even, EA just shut down their stuff, some of their people in San Francisco adjacent space, not in San Francisco. So do anything more to say about the gameplay before we move on to story?

You know, what I, there was also some glitchiness in the boss fights. I do love how the, I love the introduction of the bosses with their names plus letters just typed across the screen and then the big fight. But like, like in the shadow chase battle or that kind of ends it, the before the true finale, you just are like, all right, I hit you. No, I definitely hit you. Why did I fly off the edge? Yeah, I really dislike that boss battle.

I think, like, yeah, it's so easy to fall off. And also, it's not very intuitive because, like, you hit them, like, three times in all of a sudden you can't, like, hit him the same way anymore. And you're supposed to slow down so that he, like, does his attack on you. And then you can get him when he's vulnerable. But, like, you're kind of taught that you should, like, chase him. And nothing really changes in, like, his behavior to teach you that you should do something different. Yeah.

And why would you stop running? You go slow, ever. Like, you're sonic. Yeah. All the rings are there to teach you, like, you should go fast and, like, maybe use the rings to, like, light touch into him. Exactly, yeah. So the story of this game, it's edgy. It's anime.

It's very anime. Like, the first, it's very anime. So, the first Sonic Adventure was envisioned it first as an RPG. It has a very RPG style story in terms of what the characters are doing. This is very super anime. And, like, it's very of the time anime. where, you know, shadows the angsty character

and their rivals fighting each other and the world is at stake and the president is involved and I don't understand any part of this story because it likes Sonic Adventure 1 it is told sort of piecemeal between characters.

It's a little better than essay 1 because with that game there are six characters and their stories are all being told like piecemeal and you have to put it together yourself. Here it's just like two sides but I still feel like it like slides

off my brain. Michelle, uh, what's happening? this game. Apparently there's some prologue to all of these events that involve some sort of disease that is the catalyst. Yeah, Sonic AIDS,

aka NIDs, a neuroimmune deficiency disorder. That's not tone deaf at all of them putting a reference to AIDS in their game. They didn't put it in the game. It's true. That's true. That's true. That we never saw. Yeah. So as far as we know, NIDS is a conspiracy. It's very much real. And it affects Maria Robotnik,

Eggman's I think the cousin. She's the cousin of the grandfather. Yeah, yeah. It's like the grandfather is something. Yeah, so I guess the TLDR is like, this girl has this disease. Great grandfather Robotnik wants to cure it. So he makes this deal with Black Doom.

This is kind of like backstory revealed in Shadow of the Hedgehog. But he makes the ultimate life form, which is shadow. He's locked away for 50 years. All this stuff happens. And then like where you pick up in Sonic Adventure 2 is that Eggman is like trying to do his Eggman thing and destroy the world. He finds Shadow. And then Shadow, like, helps him do that. Eventually, they decide to blow up the moon, which is amazing.

It's canon in the series from then on out. Like, every time you see the moon, they ask the director of this game, like, why is it, like, normal? Like, they blew it up. And he just said that it just turned around. So you see the normal part, as if that's, like, a reasonable answer. The science does not check out on that. It's my favorite thing. He had to make up, you just had to make up an answer on the spot, I guess.

Yeah. I love it. It's like the most ridiculous thing. It's about as, uh, science. school is the Zelda timeline just saying oh the moon spun around it's fine yeah it just split and so shadow has been freed and so people think Sonic is shadow though they look nothing alike other than being hedgehogs which that's like that's discrimination it's kind of like super Mario's Sunshine when you think about it like shadow Mario is what it reminds me of which just

beat Mario Sunshine to the market by like a year in two months so really Mario ripped off Sonic in a lot of ways is what I'm saying so at least in Sunshine Peach kind of recognizes it's not Mario versus Amy like tries to hug shadow and she's like wait you're not Sonic it takes being with like two inches away from him to be like hey wait a minute yeah I guess there is only one giant humanoid hedgehog in the in the universe that they live in that's fair yeah well Amy's a hedgehog oh it's true maybe one one male hedgehog in the universe wait no knuckles isn't a kid now okay that checks out it checks out please continue I want to know more about the story where it goes so Eggman's like trying to take over the world he blows up the moon he gives the president an ultimatum the president is known as the president, by the way, in this universe. That's his name. And, you know, like, surrender the world to me. And otherwise, I'll blow up the earth.

And it's kind of interesting. The president of the United Federation has jurisdiction over the entire planet. I guess so. But Sonic his friends try to save the day. And the hero mode, they do. And the dark mode, they do not. Also, so on the dark story, you have, like, Shadow and Eggman, like, trying to take over the world. And then Ruge is supposedly helping them get the, um, the,

Pieces of the Master Emerald, where Shadow and Eggman are getting the chaos emeralds. But she's also working for the government. And that's just a little fun fact on the side that like at the end of every cutscene, she's just talking to the president. She's like, yeah, they're talking about like this Maria check and like they're doing something, I guess. And she's right. So, Rouge can vote and has the same rights as you then, right?

She's American citizen. It seems so. Probably. I mean, like, you'd have to be to work for the government. So yeah. Well, she's an earth citizen. He's not the president of America, right? He's the president of America.

Yeah, federations. So I, well, and also, yeah, the collection of chaos emeralds are kind of a secondary thing here. They just kind of happen in story points. You don't really collect, well, in stages other than Knuckles' stages, you don't even really collect them. They're just around. My favorite is when Tails made the fake one. And then he's like trying to hand it over to Eggman. He's like, oh, how did you know that one's fake?

You just told me, Fox Boy. I'm fucking got him. Yeah, Tales kill Sonic. He's like, how did you know? He told me, I love how long they, that scene especially, I love how long they, they make you wait and think about it. Like he says, well, give me the, give me that emerald. I'll kill that. He's like, Sonic just says out loud, it seems like, I've got the fake emerald right here, but I'll hand it to him.

Two birds with one stone. Yep, that's going to work. I'm so clever. And the voice acting. Everyone just loves in this game. It's actually I do really think it's charming. Like, I know it's bad, but at this point, it's just like, I look at it through such an affectionate lens. I do like how they didn't solve the problem of the audio, the music being way louder than all the voices.

And like, they're screaming over like a rock concert happening two feet away from them. That's the only thing I don't get. Like, obviously like, okay, they didn't want to redo the lip syncing for the American version. Like, sure, I get it. It's probably like more effort. But for like the audio mixing of just turning down the music a band, like I think it's just, you that we have the technology at least in the GameCube

remake it's like okay now we can just turn down this audio just a little bit I'll tell you in the 2012 HD remake it's still it's pretty bad yeah it's still like the way it was and yeah I mean the the lip sync is off because it was only lip sync for Japanese which is hard enough in well

that's a thing in localization though that's a problem for or an issue to get around in anime all the time but they seem to just like no they're going to say all these words we're going to record them we're going to even try to match the lip sync. So they're just going to talk over each other all the time. Let me eat those words.

One of the, I did interview a while back for you a scammer with one of the people who localized Final Fantasy 10, and this was a common problem of the era when not as much attention was played to localization in that when they were localizing the spoken dialogue for Final Fantasy 10, both the, they could not change the lip flaps, and the audio file had to be the exact same length as the Japanese audio file. and they had they found that out like very late in development so they had to re-record and rewrite a lot of things so uh good lord check that out on the u.s camera I think it's called tales from localization hell something like that but it was it was

like it was this year in uh it was like basically this year that final fantasy 10 came out uh what's the better game I don't know uh what are we missing for the story I know there's like um the arc and things like that yeah so the arc is on the space station where uh grandfather robotic I call him that because, I mean, there's two Robotics when you think about it. He was there, like, trying to get the cure for needs for his beautiful cousin, something. And so he was doing his work there, and he was technically kind of sponsored by the government,

but they didn't realize what he was, like, using his work for. And in the flashbacks that you see in the game, that's the United Federation slash gun, which you see, like, everything is, like, labeled gun in this game. they stormed the ark and that's when maria like sacrifices herself to save shadow so he can help the people of earth be happy and so he thought he remembered it as her telling him yeah revenge and kill all humans yeah please give them a chance chance to be happy that's pretty easy to uh to misinterpret i mean his brain was pretty scrambled i guess yeah so um the arc was like taken over by gun like all this was shut down and then shadow uh was launched to earth and like lost for

50 years. And then you get close to the end of the game. They're kind of like uncovering all this stuff like as you go. You have like name drops of Maria as like Shadow remembers her and she's a password for everything. Rouge is reporting back to the government with that. And then eventually you find out towards the end that technically the ultimate life form could have been the bio lizard, which is the big bad for the game when you unlock the last story. What's his name? It's like fatal something or fatal hazard. It's like fatal hazard, but it's also a bio lizard. It's like he has a two stages, so the first one is biological. So the ultimate life form is a giant dinosaur covered in weak points.

It could be the ultimate life form. Yeah, and the final fight is like a basically Dragon Balls Eve fight. They're flying in space. They're both flying in space and it's like air, almost like air combat when you're fighting the last bus. It's like an up-down kind of mechanic, but the song is so good. The song rocks. You don't even like care.

Yeah, I mean, it's just supposed to be experienced. It really is. It's not a speed runny type thing. It's just like, this is my payoff for getting three. through both storyline. Yeah. And getting to see the true ending. And again, it's very, in Dragon Ball, you don't go super sane by collecting all seven

Dragon Balls, but it's, you know. Yeah, they can only steal so much. And also, yeah, you get to see them as you needed an extra payoff. You got to see Supersonic at the end of Adventure One. So you got to up the ante. So you need two Supersonics at the end of this one. They're friends now. Yeah.

It's so much better than the final chaos, boss battle. of, in Sonic Adventure 1, when you clear everyone's story and you have to fight Final Chaos, it's like, it's not anywhere near as exciting. And it's, I really dislike. I mean, the gameplay for both of the boss battles aren't great. But it feels like way bigger. I'd say, on the whole, I'd say the bosses are better in this game. I'm not a huge fan of them, but conceptually they're better. And they think of more interesting things for you to do. Like, I just replayed Sonic Convention 1. A lot of the bosses were just like easily hit them three times. Just jump in the air and they hit the button again three times and you win. That's like what a lot of the bosses are,

especially with the gamma character. The bosses are so easy with that guy. Like it's just lock on fire, lock on fire, lock on fire, you won. Yeah. And especially, uh, I know they reuse boss battles for the hero and dark story for this game, but it's not as bad as Sonic Adventure one where I think you try to battle chaos four with three different characters. That's the one in, uh, the mystery. Oh, they make it, you wait forever. I forgot about that. Yeah. Yeah. I do really like the, um, the The boo boss, the ghost boss. The guy for the pyramid levels with knuckles, I really like that boss, too. Conceptually, it's really cool.

I feel like it could be designed better because that window, like, again, the camera fucks you when, um, when you like turns around, yeah. Yeah, so you have to shine light in the room and then the ghost turns to a shadow, and then you have to drill into the shadow to reveal the ghost. The camera kept flipping around on me and I kept losing the ghost. So that was the only thing. I mean, it's, the boss fight was all designed. The camera just gets in the way.

The camera's really difficult for the game in general. And, like, again, it's something where, like, if you've played it a hundred times, which I kind of have. Like, I don't mind it as much or, like, I've gotten used to it. But, like, anyone who's new to it, just, like, it completely flax them over. You're going to die, like, a bunch because you're just not going to see it coming. Oh, and another very anime thing about they came to that I love, actually, and right now is when you finish each of the stories, you get, like, a trailer for the other story. Yeah. Yeah.

you should play. And when you get the trailer for the final arc, it may as well be a preview for an evangelicalian episode. It's like truth, light, dark, and shadow. What is it? Find out. Sonic is sitting in a chair. People are applauding for him. I will say like the last story, I think does like a great job of like, even if you hate the shooter levels, like they make it like, it feels like way better. And like, they kind of change up the way the treasure hunting works too because you're just like finding the switch. You're not like finding emeralds. And I think they put it all. together in a really great way.

In which game? Oh, in Sonic Adventure, too. The last story in Cannon's Core. Okay, yeah. That one, like, long level where it's like a little bit of everyone's gameplay. I did not make it there. I don't know if I ever will. Are we missing anything in the story?

I think I watched the ending at least, and it's like implied that Shadow is dead. I mean, Shadow came back. Like, what is the connection between this game and Sonic, Shadow of the Hedgehog? And, like, wasn't Shadow also in Sonic Heroes, the next game? Yeah, so essentially, they, so Shadow, like, falls to the Earth. He died for our sins. and now he's gone. But then everyone loved him so much,

so they were like, okay, let's bring him back. For Sonic Heroes, I never got through a full play-through, but I know that, like, it starts with,

like, he has amnesia, and it is implied that there's, like, a bunch of clones of him. In Shadow the Hedgehog, you find, like, a lot of, I actually, like,

I like the ambition behind the game where it has, like, branching paths, which they thought about doing for Sonic Adventure, too, and then they were like, oh, we can't pull this off

yet, let's wait. And they couldn't really pull it off for Shadow the Hedgehog either, Is it sort of like a morality system in Shadow of the Hedgehog? Yeah, I never played it. It's like Mass Effect for it, but with Shadow the Hedgehog. And there are like 14 different endings versus Mass Effect has like three.

Wow. Good on Shadow. Well, we'll bring you back for Shadow because I'm now intrigued. I mean, that was the era. It's ridiculous. Yeah. In that era, everything was being infected by Grand The Hotho. So even Sonic the Hedgehog.

Yeah. And like I can think of that and like Jack and Dax. Jack and Daxter. Yeah, Jack and Daxter. Like a lot of games are like now this is going to be violent. violent with guns and stuff like that. Yeah, I think when they were making Shadow of the Hedgehog, they were like looking at fan letters and they were like, one of the number one things was like, let's give Sonic a gun.

They're like, okay, we can't give Sonic a gun. But we can give Shadow a gun. Like, he's edgy enough to pull it off. Yeah, that's the weird way to take that of like, we can't impug the character of Shadow of Sonic. But we definitely should make a game where a hedgehog has a gun. Especially in America. That's what people want. Yeah, I think, I mean, they got stuck in the same thing.

a lot of developers did in the mid 2000s of an assumed want of what a Western audience had in mind and then finding out like no the Western audience at least your most diehards love the anime bullshit they want that they want

more of it and they it took them a while to really figure that out I mean Heroes I guess has that a little bit but Heroes also that when I played I remember when Heroes was the next one of just thinking this whole game is shitty friends they're just up thought about it I'm like, no, you're always going to be the shitty friends.

It's all three shitty friends at once. We found the shitty friends you forgot about. I have, like, real beef with that game because when I played it when I was younger, like I played as Team Rose because I was like, oh, like, female characters. And of course, like, that's the one where Omo Chow, like, mansplains everything to you. Oh, no. It's like it has all, it's like the quote unquote female coded team. It's like all the levels are shorter.

Omo Chow just, like, hands everything to you and I fucking hate Omo Chow. Everyone who's played Sonic Adventure 2 hates Omo Chow rightfully. But it's just like a lot more frustrating. and I didn't love it. But yeah, so Shadow comes back and, like, all of these games and it's kind of like undid the end of Sonic Adventure 2.

They were just like, oh, he survives. He doesn't remember anything. I assume fans were mad. I think the one gift that Shadow gave to us was all of the photos of games journalists being assassinated by the Shadow of the Hedgehog statue. There's like a famous Shadow the Hedgehog statue of him like pointing a gun down at nothing

and people just love to get on their hands and knees with their hands behind their head. I don't have the picture anymore, but I think I did put. were that at like one time when I got to visit the Sega building as well. I think when we were, were you there with me when Sega had a party and they were like, we still exist. Come see your building.

Could they just move buildings? Do you know if they're still there? Boy, I would bet they might be. It was not a small, it was not a big building. That's true. And they sell enough, you know, PC games to keep it going. I think Michelle can live her dream of being killed by Shadow now. That would be great.

Or at least a statue. Someone's got to do it. You know, I'm going to be able to. So let's move on to the Chow Garden. So I know nothing about this. What we learned in the last episode about Sonic Venture 1 is that this was put in because this was a lot of the people who made the game nights in the dreams. And Chow Garden is an extension of the A-life, artificial life, sort of kind of Tamagoland. Rachi-ich thing that they put in the nights.

Yeah. And this was an extension of that. And this is even an advancement of what happened in Sonic Adventure 1. And it was put in by the director because he's like, I want people who can't play action games to have something to do when they play this game. Unfortunately, you have to do a lot of reading to figure out, like, what is even going on here. There's like, there's like an in-game school where you go, like, to different classrooms to learn how to raise chow. So you must be at least literate to play the Chow Garden. But you were way into it. This is so intriguing.

I was really into it. So, like, yeah, I had this game as a kid. I loved all of the gameplay stuff but also the Chow's like I mean it was just like everyone loved Tomogoggi's and it was like kind of a really like flesh out version of that there was this one Chow

Forum site that I love It's called Chow Island Chow dot Hipotank.com This is a plug for them Thank you for all of their service to me over the years but yeah I think it was just like really fleshed out versus like Sonic Adventure one was kind of like

here's a concept like the gardens aren't very great you have like these little things and you feed them stuff and that's kind of all there is But now, like, they have, like, stats and you can, like, evolve them. There's a lot to, like, the different evolutions I found interesting. Like, they look different depending on what is, like, their most recent stat you opt right before you evolve them. Obviously, there's, like, the dark light thing because you have kind of like a hero chow or, like, a devil chow.

You have, like, chow heaven and chow hell. Wow. It opens up a lot more chow options than before. What about the, so do you feed the, or do you still use the animals and things you collect in the stages to, like, grow the, chow's in different ways. Is that how that works? This game also introduced the idea of like the chow drives, which like those like weird rod things that fall out of enemies.

That's the first time you see it in this game. I was wondering what those were because in this game, at least, they try to make this less optional because when you finish a stage, they shove you into the chow garden. If you get the chow key. Oh, I guess I got them all in every stage then because, yeah, yeah. You don't have to get those, so I usually did. Yeah, I really like the chow raising. I think like they had like a lot going on and it was very much like, uh,

feeling of like kids like passing down rumors about like how to get mew and like Pokemon like no one was like really sure of things and people like and they're so time consuming to do all the different like evolution things like you can pass something from like sonic adventure one through tiny chow garden to uh Sonic Adventure 2 and then like if you evolve it like two cycles which takes a long time then it'll do something and it's like to get like the chaos chow you have to go through I think two evolutions and it's yeah I liked it that was It was reminiscent to me of the chokobo breeding

from seven. Yeah. Final Fantasy 7. Though my, yeah, I played around with it a tiny bit. My brother was the obsessive. My little brother,

he, he was frequenting those chow forms as well, going to game facts all the time of like, no, how do I breathe the ultimate chow? And like, replaying stages over and over again. I remember him redoing one stage a million times of like,

I have to get this one animal. I have to. Like, it's, it was a. smart way of them building in replayability to the game as well. To memorize those levels. To memorize levels and to search for every secret to find the specific animal, you've got to take

back to the Chow Garden to then get to have a complete set if you wanted that. Did the Chows have functionality outside of the Chow Garden? Did they do anything into the, add anything to the main game? Not to the main game, but you could do the mini games like there's Chow Karatee and Chow Racing. And did you actually, so you played the GamePue version. Then there was like a Gameboy advanced connectivity. Did you do that too? Yeah. I had a Sonic advance too. And I'm not sure if this is cute or pathetic. I would, uh, when I was like young, I would really like my chow. So I would put them onto my

tiny chow garden and then bring my Game Boy SP to school with me so I could have my chows and like do the little mini games on the go. And then I brought them back. If you were like 53 years old. No, I think it wasn't like second grade. Okay. That makes it cute. It's officially cute. Now my, my brother did that too, but with VMUs. He had, he had done it all on the dreamcast. So when he got to do the VMU stuff, first in Adventure and then Adventure 2. I think that's why even when we got it on the GameCube, and we definitely had those GameCube connectors

because we were stupid and wasted money on those things. Hey, at least, they made at least five games better. Yes, yeah, we had a great time of the Final Fantasy game. But he, I think, he didn't play it like that because he had gotten all chowd out on Dreamcast. He didn't want to continue it there. And for him, it didn't feel the same without the VMU. because VMU, functionality-wise for a child just was a tomogachi, except even fancier, really.

It wasn't, like, too flushed out in the tiny chow garden, honestly. I just liked the idea of, like, bringing them with me because I was that kid. I mean, colors are cooler than little digital black and white style. And you don't have to buy a new watch battery every three hours to power that thing. Man, like, I think everyone's lasted two weeks before they realized what they were in for. Like, wait, what's this beeping? What's going on? Yeah, kids today, you don't understand how lucky you are with all these rechargeable batteries for everything.

Now there's a Chow app. I mean, the Chow's ever going to any other song? I mean, did they just end here, this sort of interactivity with Chow's? There was like some Chow's for like mobile games. The biggest things are like the adventures, it's the one people play a lot. Honestly, I don't know too much about the other gardens, though, if I went to Chow Island, shout out Hippotank.com. They're still around? Yeah, they are.

Actually, I looked them up to prep for this episode, and they're like, they had like an update a week ago. I also like their site because they had like these printable, like, origami papercraft things. So you could like make little foldable, like, chow things. And I really like that as a kid. The chow as well, my little brother, he also obsessively played PSO around the same time. And your mag, you could get a chow mag as well. He worked real hard to get that walking around with them. Very cute.

So I guess Anything else say about the game Before we go into final questions I know you have a lot of notes Michelle I don't know if we covered everything in it But this is the time to do it So do you have anything else you wanted to mention You can find Big the Cat cameos

Yes And everything except for the GameCube port Which is fucked up You're furious about that Okay well actually I do have He's the purple character Why he's not on the GameCube That's crazy

It is crazy Well okay I actually do have beef I like didn't realize That I do have beef but in wild can't okay so there's a big the cat cameo in like every level because everyone hated him so much in the first game that they kind of put him in out of spite is the story I heard that's right um so they put him they took him out of the game cube version then they put him back into the HD ports but not all of them all of the um cameos are there except for the one in wild canyon and I got really mad because I wanted to hunt down every single one and I didn't realize he wasn't there so I spent like 45 minutes to an hour with my friend just like trying like We knew where he was supposed to be, and we're like, maybe we just can't reach that high. Maybe it's like a glitch. Oh, man.

What a weird omission. But on all those cameos, he's like being injured in somewhere or in trouble. Like he's, the two that I saw when I was playing, he gets run over by the truck in the first level. I think he's on the sidewalk. And the sidewalk. Well, we don't really know. Maybe I just wanted him to get run over by the truck. He's in jail for like three of them.

He's like behind bars and aquatic mine and prison lane for sure. The one that I like the most was in the Tales space stage. He is looking into the shuttle from outside in deep space. Like, he's dying. Lock him up. That kind of pettiness does remind me of the stories of the, in the console wars book when they talked about how Sonic Team really wanted tales to be miles prower.

And they're like, no, he's tails. That name's stupid. They're like, fine. and then they just had graffiti of miles written on the world in stages and two just as like they're like F you you made us get rid of this guy

I love that passive aggression I think that's about it for the main notes I have okay let's go to the final question and I will ask Michelle first because she's a 3D Sonic expert here how did the 3D Sonic games improve after this

and do you think they did and what did Sonic team learn do you think from this game and the reception because I feel like people were still angry about Sonic convention chapter this. Yeah, I think

I don't know. I think that's like a big question. Because in some ways I really do like how fast Sonic Adventure to move. Like let's talk about just like Sonic stages pretty much. So for that gameplay like in future games like I wasn't as satisfied with how it felt like I really like generations but

I think it felt a bit slower. I think the homing and the boost mechanic. I really disliked that. Yeah. I remember that. So like I think there's like some things that kind of made it a bit clunkier which was not my favorite. And, like, there have been, like, a lot of 3D Sonics after this.

There were, like, not nine more, probably. Like, the level design, I like the level designs for the Sonic levels in Sonic Adventure, but, like, in Shadow the Hedgehog, in, like, Sonic 06, in, um, even, like, Sonic Forces, like, a more recent one, like, something that comes to mind. Like, it wasn't as, it just, like, wasn't as fast. I think it slowed down a bit, in my opinion, but, um, please don't get mad of me. Yeah, no, I feel, I feel like they just kept trying, for every 3D Sonic after this one, they just kept trying to rebuild the box every time and they would keep some things that were good, but toss out other good stuff and add new bad things while getting rid of other bad things. And it was just this continual dance.

I talked about it before, the Sonic cycle, everybody's sort of it. But the closest I felt like they got to figuring it out, and maybe this is just my Nintendo bias. But it was the exclusive Nintendo ones like colors and Lost World. I think those really figured out more. And maybe that's because they also thought they were aiming it at a younger audience. So they didn't have to feel like they needed the grown-up things in it, perhaps. I think a lot of the 3D Sonics like did suffer from like trying to have too much gimmick to them. Like Sonic Unleashed, the one where they make him a wear hot.

Yeah. Yeah. Like there's a lot of like weird mechanics. Like, even, like, forces, like, have, like, someone else playable. And it's not, like, Sonic Adventure 2, like, was great. Like, the gimmick was, like, the other, like, play styles and the other characters. Or the goofy motion control stuff and, like, Sonic and the Black Nights. And Sonic in the Secret Rings, which is so unplayable.

Yeah. I really tried with that one. I thought it would be funny to play, like, a game where, like, like, Tails is Ali Baba canonically or, like, Shadow is Lance a lot. And I thought that it would all be fun. I didn't know this. Generation's got, sorry. generations got the closest but that was just because they were like I said they were remaking other stages and I think the funniest moment for me as as an early Sonic fan who felt aged out of it was when they re they did a sort of reboot with boom and then seeing people who grew up with adventure going like what's this boom shit this is not Sonic to me I was like ah now you know how I felt in 1999 welcome to adulthood yeah I mean I will say uh I didn't

didn't play a lot of the 3D Sonic games because I'm a snob and I'm a Mario lover, but I did like Generations a lot. It's a very safe game, but I feel like I don't mind them repackaging the best levels and refurbishing them. If they did that again, I'd like it too. So, like, I didn't play forces. Our friend Jeremy reviewed it. Apparently it's not very good. And I wish them the best, but I still feel like they still have not completely figured out 3D Sonic yet. It's still something they still are trying to crack. And I don't know if they ever will. I do honestly, like, really love this game.

Like, everything, like, I said that is negative about it. Like, I still, like, look at it through such, like, a nostalgic and, like, loving life. And I played through it, like, all the time, like, way too much. But, yeah, I agree. I think there's definitely work they can do, which is kind of interesting. Like, this was, like, their first experience, like, Sonic Adventure 1 and Sonic Adventure 2 is, it's, like, that's, like, essentially the first 3D Sonics, like, there's, like, Sonic R

and something else. It's technically 3D, but it doesn't count. 3D blast is right in the title. And, yeah, it's, no, it is not. It's hard to be too, Judgy, because you're right. They are, they're still learning to make these games. It's the first time, like, Sonic had, like, a voice actor and everything like that. So it's definitely new.

I'm kind of surprised it's been, like, 10 years or something like that, or probably more. Probably way more. Wait. No, it's been 18 years or 17. Time is very fake, but it's been so long, and I really also agreed that you don't think they've found it. And everyone's always, like, where's Sonic Adventure 3? Like, I don't know if that's necessarily the solution, but just, like, I don't know.

Be a little less gimmicky. Maybe 2019, that's the next one. Like, they go back to every well. Like, they did Sonic 4. And they're like, okay, wait. No, okay, what if Sonic 4 episode 2 was really Sonic CD Part 2? Do you like that? Oh, all right, wait.

What if we, they'll, they'll, yeah, I think they'll just, I think they'll just try to reset every time. I know friend of the show, Retronauts, friend of the show, Chris Kohler, has made the point of like, Sonic is for more kids than Mario even is and he should just be on phones because that's where kids are. Which he is. Yeah. Sonic Adventure Runner.

Honestly, he should just be in a runner game. Like that's made for him. Like the best parts of like city escape, that's a runner, man. Pretty much, yeah. People, I watched a video that was comparing it to Pepsi Man, which is just like running straight in the line. But yeah, uh, I think you're right that, uh, you know,

they might even generations, not generations, sorry, uh, Venture 3 might be the next one because wildly speculating here. I feel like Sonic Generations was, the game for 90s kids who grew up on the 2D Sonics and hated the 3D Sonics so they tried to meet us halfway and maybe the people who grew up on adventure I've been waiting for a new adventure and they're going to give it to them now that they're all grown up and want to buy their childhoods bag that's how all this works ultimately yes uh again a thing of making me feel old of like when generations came out it was the 20th anniversary now we're like seven years past that yeah oh wow uh everyone's world we're all dying so thanks for listening you're You're wasting your valuable time left. I feel like I make most retronauts about how much time is passing out, it's depressing. We've helped you get through another hour. Before I wrap up, let's have Michelle tell us where we can find her.

And I got to say, follow her on Twitter because she's the meme master, posting about Waluigi. And we'd even talk about this. Apparently, this is like a peak level of horniness for Eggman. Oh, my God. Oh, I sent Bob my notes. earlier. And it was like five pages. And the very first bullet point is that Eggman is a horniest character in this game closely followed by Rouge. And I do feel very strongly about that. Can you, uh, I know we're wrapping up. Can you, can you justify this? Because I looked at that thread and I was like, I was skeptical and I'm, now I'm a believer. So I want you to convince our audience. I have like one reason. And it's just, this game is literally about Eggman penetrating the moon. And that's kind of fucked up. And then Rouge is also like super sexy, but I will say that I think that's the lens of the male gaze. That's true. upon her. It's all of us playing the game. It's the game. Yeah. Ruge is about the money.

She's about treasure or she's about working for the president. To be fair, she's also a little bit about Knuckles in that one cut scene. Yeah. There's a lot of attention in that. That's true. Everyone knows what I'm talking about. Well, but she was calling him basically a purve for like, oh, you just wanted to grab my hand. It was like a lot of mixed signals, honestly. And I thought she, well, she at least had like a friendship with Shadow.

She's like, I don't know. Are you it? he's like, it doesn't matter. I think they're on the same team in Heroes and she like kind of looks out for him. I believe, I mean, I believe the robotic stuff or Eggman stuff because like his, his Freudian goals are very fallocentric. He is penetrating the moon.

Well, after exploding a dick out of an asteroid, yeah. Well, after that, please tell us where we can find you online. I know you're on Twitter. Yes. This is the kind of content you'll be signing up for. Absolutely. Yes. Yeah, I'm on Twitter at MiExfrier, which is M-I-E-E-E-S.

R-I-I-R. If you spelled that out for yourself, good job. So as for me, I've been your host, Bob Mac. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. And by the way, Retronaut is a Patreon-supported podcast. We're doing these extra episodes because you pay for them. So thank you so much for paying for those. And if you want to support the show at the $3 level, if you go to Patreon.com slash Retronauts,

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or a cartoon into your podcast app of choice. Awesome. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you Monday for a new full-length episode. See you then. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. There's a face searching for so far and find. Hold on to one end

With Domino's week-long carry-out deal, you can carry out large three-topping pizzas and now, medium-three-topping handmade pan pizzas for $7.99 each. It's Pantastic news. Cut. Cut. Puns? You mean pans? Calling all panatics for two layers of cheese on crispy golden crust. So grab your panty packs

because Domino's large three-topping pizzas and medium-three-topping handmade pan pizzas are $7.99 each. It's pandemonium. Fantastic. Go. Carry out only. You must ask for this limited time offer. Prices participation in charges may vary. The Mueller report. I'm Ed Donahue with an AP News Minute. President Trump was asked at the White House if special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released next week when he will be out of town. I guess from what I understand that will be totally up to the Attorney General.

Maine Susan Collins says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving a President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officers started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral. It's a tremendous way to bear, knowing that your choices will directly affect the lives of others. The cops like Brian don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police say acted as his lookout have been charged with murder.

I'm Ed Donahue.