That was pretty informative. In all the reviews I read, I never saw mention of DX being based off the Japanese release, nor did I know that the American release of the original Adventure had fewer bugs! I agree with what you said about Tails’ color.

I’m not saying my high expectations let me down, but when Sonic Adventure 2 was first being developed, the up-close screenshots of Sonic were taken in a way you could almost see his fur. I thought the graphics would be mindblowing in comparison to SA, but of course that wasn’t entirely the case. So I thought for sure DX would go the route of Star Fox Adventures and be one heck of a good looking remake, but of course we just got a very awkward-looking Sonic and crew, as you said, especially in comparison with their world. The models just look plain horrible when they open their mouths.

@Rock

Well, I’m not meaning to brag when I say this, but I beat it with 130 emblems or however many there were to get(unlocked *Secret character here?*), and had no problems. Maybe it was because I’d memorized the levels and most of the emblem locations, or maybe it was because the glitches were insignificant enough to not be a hindrance to me.

DX is inferior due to the frame rate issues alone.

It scored so low because it was a poorly ported four year old game with new technical problems and zero gameplay fixes/improvements. It deserved the scores it got.

The DX rerelease was based around the original Japanese release, therefore they started with the version that had more bugs, and in the end while they did fix up some issues, but the Dreamcast release that came to America and Europe actually had considerably less. Among other new technical problems.

This is not my main issue, however. I, as well as many many many people I know just outright hate the new models used for the game. I can understand that at the time DX was coming out many other games that had come out looked much better than Sonic Adventure, but they only overhauled some of the cast, not the minor ones, not the humans, not the robots, not even Robotnik. This leaves some of the characters having a significantly higher polygon count than almost everyone else and it just clashes horribly. Sonic has around 500,000 polygons while the people he walks next to have about 2000. I am not sure how anyone could think this is a good idea, but leave it to Sonic Team.

Not only that, but a significant amount of the art had been changed. A lot of the new models had new textures and had now looked shiny… Which is one of the dumbest looking things I have seen done in a game in my entire life. Why is Tails so shiny he looks half pure white? Fur is not shiny!

Sorry if that came off as rant-ish, but I really hate the DX release… Still getting this. I have been waiting a very long time for Sonic Adventure to be released on an Xbox platform.

How is Sonic Adventure DX the “inferior version”? I remember when reviews started popping up for SA: DX and SA2: B. For the first time ever, I began to disagree with reviewers, and finally started forming my own opinion with strong foundations to support it.

Whether or not the framerate was better or worse or whatever for the Dreamcast version, all SA: DX is, is a port with revamped graphics, an added mission mode, and an option to transport chao to the GBA instead of the VMU.

Ok, graphically, admittedly the speech animations look a lot -more- awkward in SA: DX than in the original, but the original still had awkward mouth movements. That’s honestly the only knock I can say about the ports for the Gamecube. How in the WORLD the ports universally received lower review scores than their originals, I’ll NEVER be able to figure out. Once you upgrade something, it should automatically be rated higher(with few technicalities). As a different example, if a 10 year old game is ported with no modifications to today, it should receive the same score it got 10 years ago.

The reason I’m so stubborn with this is because I hardly ever buy games new. When I look up reviews for older games, they are normally reviewed compared to other games of its time; I’ve never played a Dragonball Z game, I guess I’ll pick up the original Budokai since its sequels got lower scores(looking at you, Game Informer), since I’ve never played Chrono Trigger, I guess I’ll try to look for the PSX version instead of getting the DS version(please, it makes no sense why the DS version got a lower score than the PSX when it has the exact same features plus more, PLUS faster loading times), and I could go on.

Seriously, if you were to recommend a gamer to either get SA: DX or the original, I’d hope you recommend the Gamecube version. I loved the Dreamcast version for what it was, but who can argue against more features for an already great game? You’d pretty much be recommending the Windows 98 versus Windows XP. It was great for its time, but come on..

Not to sound hypocritical, but I would have preferred Sonic Team to have taken the Dreamcast version, given it a unique XBOX Live online multiplayer mode to keep gamers coming back(even if it were only chao vs chao), given it its own unique modes and features seperate from the mission mode, and possibly more. Hell, even name is Sonic Adventure Arcade. It’s just disappointing to see this as a direct port of the GCN version that I already own, but I hope more productive news is uncovered as Sega gets closer to releasing it.