Sonic in the Third Dimension: Sonic Adventure (Dreamcast, 1998) Review

NOTE: This review is part 6 in a retrospective of the Sonic franchise. Feel free to read the other Sonic reviews I’ve done here - https://expithecat.blogspot.com/search/label/sonic%20retrospective

To be honest, I kind of wanted to cover Knuckles’ Chaotix and Sonic 3D Blast before I got to Sonic Adventure, but after playing through the former I really didn’t feel like I had much to say and I ultimately came to the conclusion that I wanted to focus on the main series for now. So here’s Sonic Adventure.

As we all know, Sonic was once a great series of 2D games for the Sega Genesis. But the series sure has had a rocky transition to 3D. I mean, just look at this game and these weird glitches that happen in this loop dood. And then after this game, Sonic would kiss the girl and turn into a Werewolf. In fact now that I think about it, Sonic was never actually good. Everyone just simultaneously were brainwashed into thinking the series was good when the level design is all wrong. I mean come on, what are these loops, this ain’t right - Mario never had loops after all.

...alright I’m done.

Background and History

In the 1990’s, Sega had basically established the Sonic franchise as a gaming icon. The first Sonic game was a hit, and was one of the games that put the Genesis on the map even after the Super Nintendo Entertainment System came out. It’s sequels, Sonic 2, Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles were also hits, and the series was frankly popular, definitely one of the biggest trends of the 1990’s in general. But with the Saturn, Sonic had not quite made the jump to 3D. While Nintendo and Sony both had offerings - Super Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot in particular - Sonic was a bit late to the party. There were a couple attempts at 3D - those being Sonic R and the Sonic World in Sonic Jam, but obviously both of those were spinoff games and not full, major 3D platformers. There was an attempt at a 3D Sonic platformer for the Saturn - Sonic Xtreme - but that ended up being cancelled due to a tight development.

Ultimately, Sonic wouldn’t make the leap to 3D until Sega would release it’s next major console - which ended up being of course the Sega Dreamcast. And Sonic’s first 3D game would be released alongside it. Kind of. I looked up the release date for both the Dreamcast and Sonic Adventure on Wikipedia and apparently Sonic Adventure came out about a month after the Dreamcast came out in Japan although it was still a launch title for both the US and PAL releases of the system.

As the first major 3D Sonic game, Sonic Adventure received positive critical reception at release and was the best-selling title on the Dreamcast overall. That said, as time has gone on and this game’s been ported to other platforms, that has been called into question. While the game along with it’s sequel still have quite a cult following and fanbase of it’s own, many also argue that the game hasn’t aged well in regards due to the game’s lack of polish, camera system and not so great story presentation.

But of course, that just leaves it to me to form my own opinion and decide if I agree with that sentiment.

Personal Experiences

This game was one of the first games in the series that really got my attention after getting into the Sonic franchise in 2011 and 2012. I had often heard that this along with Sonic Adventure 2 was one of the few really good 3D Sonic games, and one of the last really great ones before the series had hit it’s rough patch in the mid to late 2000’s. And of course since I was getting into the games I definitely wanted to try it out. I spent a lot of time looking up footage for the game and felt that it looked really good, and I eventually got around to installing a Dreamcast emulator and downloading a ROM of the game. Playing it for the first time I actually found myself quite liking it as I expected, and not long later I actually ended up buying the game on my brother’s Xbox 360, still having the same feelings I did after playing it on an emulator. But I never got around to actually finishing the game and eventually my brother’s 360 broke down which kind of prevented me from beating it even if I had really wanted to.

I didn’t do a full playthrough of this game until 2016, not long after I built my first computer. I had the game on Steam, which was the same as the 360 version, but after playing through the game my original opinion of the game kind of… declined. Keep in mind this was around the time when the hate bandwagon towards the Sonic Adventure games was at it’s peak within the fanbase, and I was still feeling some hype backlash towards Adventure 2 (which I’ll get into my review of that game) and it kind of rubbed off on me. I had noticed glitches and bugs that I didn’t really before and kind of jumped on the bandwagon saying that only half the game’s modes were actually good. I still enjoyed the game, but I also came to the conclusion that the game didn’t hold up well.

That said, going back to this game later on, I actually found myself enjoying it greatly once again to the point of considering one of my favorite Sonic games. So basically, I went from liking the game, to being “meh” on it, to liking it again. But that leads me to this review, do I still enjoy the game, or do I find myself slipping into the mindset that it hasn’t aged well?

Story

While the Genesis games did have a bit of storytelling here and there, Sonic Adventure definitely takes it to an entirely new level due to the capabilities for 3D character animation and voice acting. As a brief synopsis, Dr. Robotnik discovers Chaos, an entity sealed within the Master Emerald that grows more powerful with Chaos Emeralds that he intends to use to destroy the city and build what he refers to as Robotnikland. And of course, Sonic and his friends have to stop him. But as the game progresses on, you learn more about Chaos’ backstory, and that he was originally a caretaker of the Chao, and that at one point, an echidna tribe attempted to steal the Master Emerald leading to Chaos wiping them out. Before it destroys the world, one of the echidna, Tikal seals Chaos inside the master emerald along with herself.

To be honest I’ve never really put that much thought into the stories of Sonic games (or really any platformer) and as such I’ve never really been that invested in that side of the Sonic series, but I will say a good Sonic story is still welcome and as far as this game goes I think the overall story and writing of this game is pretty good, honestly one of the few really good Sonic stories within the series. Considering how this game is structured, I definitely feel each character plays a part in the overall plot and the story is also good about character development and whatnot. Each character kind of goes through an arc of their own - for example, Tails develops into a more independent character and one that learns about being heroic even on his own. And on top of that I definitely find the lore with Chaos and the Echidna tribe pretty interesting. The structure of that part of the plot is kind of mixed - the events are placed pretty much out of order if you play through certain stories before others, but I do think it adds to the overall lore of the franchise.

I will say that one major issue I have with the story is the presentation of it all. I still like the writing and everything about it, but the presentation of the story has definitely dated quite a bit. The lip syncing is just straight up bad, I don’t think I really have to go into that, and the animation of the characters often just looks awkward. To be fair, I can kind of cut this game some slack here - animation of this sort wasn’t really that common in video game cutscenes at the time and honestly the only game that really came out at least a year before this game that I felt did in-game cutscene character animation and lip syncing well was Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, so I can’t bash this game’s presentation too much, but I don’t think many would disagree that this is one aspect of the game that hasn’t held up. The voice acting I think is decent, especially again for what was there around the time, although I will say the moments where the characters scream or whatever sound really bad and flat, and also I feel like most of Robotnik’s in-game dialogue is the exact same. Of course, I can still respect this game just for being the first to really use voice acting to assist the game’s story and whatnot. There was some voice acting before - obviously the cartoons as well as some of Sonic’s phrases in CD, plus a, uh, certain edutainment game, but this was the first to have it full-on and utilized within the story and everything and I can definitely respect that.

Graphics

I think one thing to note regardless of how you feel about Sonic Adventure is that the game had pretty damn good graphics for the time. Obviously, this was probably the biggest title out of the Dreamcast’s launch, and with the power upgrade over the likes of the PS1, N64 and Sega Saturn, this was definitely one of the best looking games at the time of it’s release. The game was colorful, vibrant and the environments and character models looked pretty nice when compared to what was available around that time.

And honestly, even though this game’s graphics are obviously dated, I still find myself liking Sonic Adventure’s visuals. I don’t really know if it’s the charm towards late 90’s early 3D games that I like, but I’ve always found myself liking how everything looks. The character models are pretty good considering this was the first 3D outing of the game and they definitely pop out to me with the game’s use of colors. And the environments, again while they don’t necessarily hold up to today’s standards, are still pretty good looking, especially for when this came out. Honestly this game always kind of gave me Half-Life 1 vibes, albeit obviously a lot more vibrant and colorful, and after looking up information about this game it apparently was created with 3DFX’s Voodoo 2 graphics chip so I guess that isn’t much of a surprise.

Obviously, this game is nowhere near to the likes of today’s graphics, but for what it is I do think this game’s visuals have held up decently well, especially when considering the time it came out. I still find this game nice to look at so I think that alone should cover my feelings towards the visuals.

Music

The soundtrack is great. I love how all the characters have their own themes and the stage themes plus hub world themes are really nice. And the game’s main theme, Open Your Heart, is probably one of the best Sonic songs in the entire series. Not too much else to say here.

Gameplay

And so here we finally get to the core of this review. Sonic Adventure is split between six different character stories, with a seventh being unlocked after playing through all the other’s that pretty much just serves as an epilogue and the game’s “true” final boss. I’ve decided to start off by going through each of the different character stories and playstyles while talking about other aspects of the general gameplay. So, without further adieu,

Sonic’s Story

Sonic’s playstyle takes up pretty much the bulk of the game, having the most stages out of all the characters and just being the longest overall. And I will say that this game actually translates Sonic’s gameplay to 3D pretty damn well. One of the things I said I really liked about the classic games is that the levels generally just felt “open” and “expansive” compared to a lot of other games around the time, which just made the classic games so fun to go back to for me. And as far as the stage design here goes, it does carry a lot of that open-ness that the classic games had. Sometimes there’s different pathways you can go through, and the game rewards every so often for exploring the stages a bit and going off the intended trail, which I really like to see. 

And each stage tended to be a lot of fun for me. Emerald Coast is one that I’ve always found to be iconic at least on the basis of it being the first real 3D Sonic stage, with another highlight definitely being Speed Highway. Windy Valley is also pretty fun, although I have heard the “beta” version of the stage had a bit more to it but was cut down. I don’t really know much about it, although I can guess that Windy Valley was likely cut down on due to being a bit too big for the game and what it was setting out to do. Casinopolis is one that kind of breaks the trend, and is pretty much completely non-linear as you’re intended to get as much rings as possible and I’ve always liked playing the pinball minigames, especially with one of them being themed around Nights Into Dreams, one of my favorite non-Sonic Sega games. I do wish there was a bit more to do in this stage considering the Casino setting, but I think what’s there is pretty fun to play. And Final Egg serves as a decent “final level.” There are more Sonic stages than this, 10 in total, but I found most of them to be pretty good and well-designed. I didn’t care much for Lost World and Sky Deck, while I think it could be a fine stage, is kind of hampered by glitches and bugs and is one point where I feel that the game’s lack of polish becomes a big problem, but I’ll get that when it comes to the general gameplay stuff.

Sonic’s control also feels pretty good here, especially for this game’s stages. I can’t really explain controls well, but I’ll just say that they felt good to use for the more open ended nature of Sonic Adventure’s level design. I do have one complaint though - I don’t like how you have to “rev up” the light dash to use it as opposed to having it used with the push of a button like in later games and I feel like as a result it becomes a really situational power-up. On the other hand, the spin dash is pretty fun to use - you can basically spam it and in some cases it makes speedrunning certain stages easier if you learn to master it, so that’s definitely something. I’ll also point out that I’ve always felt turning as Sonic has always felt awkward to me and just kind of touchy, but with how these stages are it doesn’t really become an issue with this game compared to Sonic Adventure 2 which had more focus on straightforward, speed-based stages. But of course, I’ll get to that when I review the game.

As far as Sonic’s gameplay goes, I really don’t have a lot to say that hasn’t already been said. This definitely feels like a really good translation of the classic games into 3D, and honestly Sonic Adventure kind of feels like one of the only Sonic games to at least try to do that. I mean, I would imagine it’s not exactly easy to translate classic Sonic style gameplay into 3D, but this game probably comes the closest to doing so. I do think it has it’s problems - and there are some that apply moreso to the game in general which is why I’m not talking about them just yet, but I think as far as transitioning Sonic into 3D, it feels pretty good here. Stage design is pretty great in general, and Sonic’s movement and control just feels really solid to me.

Tails’ Story

Tails’ playstyle is similar to Sonic’s gameplay, but this time has you trying to race Sonic (as well as Robotnik in the game’s final stage) to the end of each level. Stage design is largely the same but also modified - in particular boosters are used to make Tails fly for a bit longer and go faster. And honestly I think this is a really good use of Tails’ abilities in a 3D setting and this is probably the only game I can think of that really did this. It’s not the deepest gameplay out there, but I kind of wish Tails’ abilities were used like this in later games, allowing for Tails to be a playable character that can use his flying ability to find shortcuts and a bit more of the stage - kind of like the classics again. I will say that this game doesn’t really go much further than having Tails use shortcuts and whatnot to beat Sonic to the end of a stage - again this playstyle really isn’t deep or anything, but I would’ve liked to see Sega attempt to improve upon what they had going here kind of like they did with some of the other playstyles in this game, particularly in the game’s sequel.

Knuckles’ Story

But Knuckles’ playstyle takes a pretty different approach from Sonic and Tails. This time, you’re exploring the levels for missing pieces of the Master Emerald scattered throughout the game’s world. I will admit that I’ve always just wanted to see Sonic Team use Knuckle’s mechanics and whatnot in a more linear setting, but I think the gameplay here is fine. It’s not my favorite, nor is it really something I go back to, but I can still get enjoyment out of it when playing through this game as a whole. For what it is, this playstyle does make good use of Knuckles’ mechanics and abilities, especially as you get upgrades through the game. 

I will say though that I did have an issue with Knuckles’ control, regarding his “dig” ability that you can as you play through his campaign. You’re supposed to press A and X at the same time, but I sometimes found that this ability just didn’t work. Often I would just jump instead of digging. I mean, I was most likely pressing one button a bit later than the other, but it was a slight annoyance that I had with the control and it kind of felt like you really had to precise with pressing A and X at the exact same time.

Otherwise, I found Knuckles’ gameplay to be pretty solid overall. Not exactly what I would have wanted, but it’s still fun.

Amy’s Story

Course, with Sonic, Tails and Knuckles out of the way, that leaves us with the more divisive gameplay styles. Amy being one of those. Although personally, I didn’t really mind Amy’s story that much and in some ways I actually enjoyed playing as her. I think the biggest issue people have with her gameplay is her run speed which is pretty damn slow, but I did enjoy getting use out of her Piko Piko Hammer and making hammer jumps in certain situations. Amy’s gameplay doesn’t have much depth to it, and is the shortest out of all the stories in the game at only 3 stages in total, but I could still have fun with it.

E-102’s Story

I think out of the campaigns, I feel like E-102 has sort of the deepest story here. E-102 is a new character here, one of Eggman’s robots who turns against him and intends to “rescue’ his robot brothers. Of course by rescue that means shooting them. Out of the individual character stories, E-102’s was definitely the most interesting, although in terms of gameplay I don’t really care for his playstyle so much. I mean, it’s not bad or anything, it’s perfectly functional and one could easily make the argument that it does fit within the core Sonic gameplay, but it also just didn’t really “do” anything for me. It’s not like I was frustrated by it or anything or didn’t want to play, it was still perfectly fine as far as this game’s playstyles go, but it’s not necessarily something I’d intend to return to in this game.

Big’s Story

On the other hand, this campaign I actually disliked. I think out of the different play styles in this game, this has the strongest case “why is this even here?” Basically, you play as Big the Cat, a character I’m pretty sure just exists to be a meme, and try to fish for his pet Froggy. Yes, a Sonic game where you have to spend time fishing for something. With that core concept alone, I don’t really understand why this gameplay was a part of the game aside from maybe Sega wanting to make some extra free advertising for Sega Bass Fishing or something. But I could forgive it somewhat if the fishing stages were fun to play. Which… they aren’t. 

Frankly, even looking past the concept of these stages, I could never quite get a grip on how the fishing mechanics work. It often just felt like I was only able to catch Froggy with pure luck and for the most part it kind of just felt like no matter what I tried nothing really happened. Sometimes I would get Froggy close to the surface and then get stuck there, and other times Froggy would bite on to the rod but then immediately let go. This game doesn’t really give you any tips for how to use the fishing rod so after a while I sort of just started throwing stuff at the wall to see what stuck. Thankfully, Big’s campaign is only 4 stages long, but if you don’t know what you’re doing, those can be some pretty long and frustrating 4 stages. If this were just an optional minigame, then it wouldn’t be an issue, but unfortunately it’s required to unlock the true final boss and ending of the game. Frankly, if I wanted a fishing game, I would just buy Sega Bass Fishing for the same console. I really just don’t see any valid reason and honestly I feel like Big could’ve easily just been written out of the story entirely and just feels “there” for padding.

General Gameplay

So yeah, those are my feelings on the six different gameplay styles. Sonic is definitely the best out of bunch, no question, and feels like a really solid translation of the classic style gameplay. Tails and Knuckles also go well with their styles and I do think Sega used their abilities to craft fun styles out of them. Amy I actually didn’t mind too much, E-102 I’m kind of neutral on, and Big the Cat. I guess overall you could say I enjoyed 4 out of the 6 of the playstyles here, 5 out of the 6 I was able to at least tolerate. Even then, Amy, E-102 and Big’s campaigns don’t last very long so with all my issues with those they’re at least able to be finished pretty quickly.

But I still do have some points to make about the general gameplay. I will say that I really like the game’s structure - the ability to choose out of six characters with different abilities and ways to play the stages definitely feels like what Sonic 3 & Knuckles was going for. I’ve heard some people point out that each stage is designed around being playable for six characters, but even if that’s the case I think they did a fine job of integrating the play styles of all the characters into each stage. The stages do have some modifications depending on what character to play as, but the core design doesn’t really change, but I think the stages were well-designed for this sort of structure. I also liked how the stories of each character intersected at one point or another with characters running into each other on occasion, really helps the game’s story feel a bit more immersive and gives me the impression of a same story told from six different points of view.

There are also a few subgames you can play throughout the game, although most of them are optional and pretty much only done for gaining emblems towards 100% completion. There is one that is required for beating the game normally, those being the two “Sky Chase” levels in the game which you have to do as both Sonic and Tails. Honestly, neither of these really did anything for me. They didn’t frustrate and cause me to consider dropping the game or anything, but they just sort of felt “there” as a way to add variety. I don’t have much to complain about with it, but yeah. There’s also of course the Chao Garden, which has always been loved regardless of the reputation of this game, especially in it’s Adventure 2 counterpart. Although to be quite honest I never quite cared about doing these. Although with the Dreamcast version you can throw certain Chao onto the VMU where you can name and stuff so that’s pretty cool I guess.

But yeah, when it comes to the gameplay, I generally have a lot of good things to say. Sonic’s campaign in particular feels close to the “classic games” with how the stages are designed and how Sonic controls. The structure of the game I also enjoy with how it is split between six characters, and most of them were still fairly enjoyable to play. That said… I also don’t think this game is perfect, and honestly there are some issues I have with this game.

First off, I’ve never really been fond of the hub worlds. Truth be told, I feel like hub worlds like this are fine when it comes to non-linear platformers (i.e. collectathons), but for a game like this where progression comes with a linear structure, I can’t help but feel like hub worlds are sort of out of place in a game like this. If the hub worlds were limited to just having a bunch of areas where you can go to the next level, kind of like how they are in Crash Bandicoot 2 and Warped or Sonic Generations, I wouldn’t really have much of a problem, but in Sonic Adventure’s case these are full-on hub worlds split into different areas. And when playing the game for the first time, I couldn’t help but get confused on where I go and what I do next to get to the next stage. And to be fair as you do play through the game and go through the different stories and whatnot, you do get more familiar with the layout and where everything is, but I still can’t help but feel that there’s a degree of “where do I go?” with these hub worlds. Sometimes to get access to certain levels, you have to look for an ability or a key to unlock the level, and sometimes there’s a degree of backtracking you have to do throughout the game to get access to certain stages. There is some help on where to go - Tikal will generally point you in the direction by dropping hints on the general area, but I kind of feel like it doesn’t help if you don’t already know where everything is in the first place. There were still occasions where I had no idea where to go, and certain areas don’t have Tikal to help you. 

The “Echidna Temple” flashbacks were a particular area that had this issue, you’re pretty much just dropped into them with no direction and you have to look around for an upgrade or Tikal’s character to progress through the story. Doesn’t help either that the flashback worlds are split between two areas - the temple itself and the Master Emerald shrine, and there were occasions I had to go to the latter area but had no idea that I was supposed to or in the case of my first playthrough that it even existed. Talking to any of the Echidna citizens doesn’t help in the slightest. As a result, there were times I found myself frustrated by just not knowing where to go or what to do, and in general I would’ve preferred a more linear progression where you actually go from stage to stage, like what Sonic Adventure 2 does.

Second of all, the game’s camera sucks. I don’t think anyone can deny that. To be fair, this was a common case with 3D games of this time, and this game is far from an exception. Sometimes I felt like the camera would get stuck in places or move in a way that outright screwed me over when I was jumping or just wanted to move. I feel like the camera issues of this game made Big’s stages especially all the more frustrating to me, and as I had mentioned, I already wasn’t exactly fond of the play style in the first place. It focuses on the end of the fishing rod every time and you can’t look around from inside the water to see where Froggy is. I mean as it is I could hardly see him when out of the water because he’s mixed in with all the other fish but I would’ve at least appreciated it if there was a way to look around from the inside the water so I could know where to cast my rod.

On the plus side the game at least has some camera control - you can move the camera horizontally, but there were many areas where I feel this game could’ve easily benefitted from 360 degree analog control (especially, again, Big’s stages). And for the Dreamcast release, I can understand why this wasn’t a thing - obviously the Dreamcast controller only had one analog stick and no dedicated camera buttons like the N64, but this really feels like something they should’ve added in later re-releases of the game and from what I can tell… they just didn’t.

And finally, I gotta concede that the game is unpolished. You could make the argument that it’s about as polished as most other games from the time, and that the mechanics just make it more apparent, but regardless if that’s the case, I still think it’s worth mentioning that to an extent the game feels kind of buggy. For the most part I think it works fine, although there are occasional clipping glitches you’ll probably run into with the hub worlds, Emerald Coast and Ice Cap, but there are some issues where it becomes extremely noticeable. Sky Deck as Sonic was easily the worst in this regard - one thing I pretty immediately noticed was that with that section of the level that had you going up the staircase ramp thing with speed boosters. I feel like the speed boosters in this part of the level would sometimes just not work, and when walking up the area Sonic would go extremely fast on the ramps themselves but slow down in the corners. It also doesn’t really help that there are some added gimmicks to this stage like the carrier speeding up and Sonic having to hold onto things that I feel contribute to the bugginess of this particular stage. I’ve heard a lot of the glitches are largely blamed due to ports of the game, but after playing the original Dreamcast game, there are still a good amount of noticeable bugs and glitches.

But, with those issues out of the way, and my thoughts on the gameplay pretty much done…

Conclusion

Sonic Adventure does have it’s issues. The game feels a bit on the buggy side, the story presentation has aged like old milk, the hub worlds can kind of break the pace of the game, and Big the Cat exists. And truth to be told, I really feel like this game would benefit greatly from a full-on remake. Not just another remaster or port, but something like the Crash Bandicoot N-Sane Trilogy or Spyro Reignited Trilogy, in order to polish out it’s bugs.

However, with that out of the way… I still really like this game, and honestly I’d probably consider it among my Top 5 favorites. Yes, those issues are there, and sometimes they can get in the way and bring down the game a bit for me, but what this game does right… It does rather well. Sonic’s gameplay definitely feels like a good translation of the 2D games into 3D, and the other play styles this game offers can be fun as well. The stages are definitely well-designed, especially considering they had to keep in mind multiple different play styles, and the story, despite the not-so-great presentation, is still pretty good as far as Sonic stories go.

I will admit though this isn’t really a game I find myself going back to often. Even when it comes to just playing individual stages like I do with Generations, I don’t really find myself doing so, and when coming back to the game as a whole, I often feel somewhat burned out on it by the time I’m almost done with it due to the different playstyles and having to watch certain cutscenes in other playstyles that just kind of lead up to the same point. I mean, frankly I didn’t need to watch Amy saving E-102 from being attacked by Sonic four different times even if they are from different points of view. On the bright side I can skip certain cutscenes in re-releases, although with the original release I can’t say the same. 

But when I do go back to this game, and when I’m having fun with it, I am definitely having fun with it and can recognize what it does well. Honestly, with the game’s movement and level design, I’d probably even go as far as to say that I enjoy this more than many other games from the same era - including Super Mario 64. Granted Crash and Spyro are still my GOAT 3D platformers at least as far as the 90’s and early 2000’s are concerned, but Sonic Adventure is definitely up there. And honestly, if this game was a bit more polished here and there, I would probably enjoy it even more.

Do I recommend the game now? Honestly, yeah. Even if it does have it’s issues and I can understand if not everyone will necessarily get enjoyment out of this game, I’d still say it’s worth playing. As someone who enjoys playing games on original hardware, I would say the Dreamcast version is the one I would personally go with, but that’s not necessarily something I would recommend everyone else to do. I mean, if you don’t already own a Dreamcast and a copy of this game, I wouldn’t go out of your way to buy them if you haven’t played this game. For all the crap later ports get, I still think they are just fine if you want to play this game. A lot of people grew up with the GameCube and 2004 PC ports, and the game was also re-released in 2010 on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Steam. On that note, the Xbox 360 version can be purchased and played through the Xbox One. But I think the best way to play this game now is with the 2010 PC port with the BetterSADX mod. BetterSADX is a fan-made mod to the 2010 PC port of the game that allows for features like widescreen support and mods as well as options for the “Complete Dreamcast Experience” - which adds features like the Dreamcast version’s lighting and models or an “Enhanced Director’s Cut Experience” which contains a good amount of improvements over the original game. Definitely worth checking it out whether you have already played the game or not.

Or you could play the pirated version of the 2004 PC port where all the music is replaced with Windy Valley Act 1.