Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut [GC]

Who would have ever guessed that one of Nintendo's biggest rivals is now one of GameCube's biggest stars? Sega's first Sonic title on the system last year was actually a port of its second Sonic adventure on the Dreamcast. The newly updated Cube version sold straight through the roof so quickly that Sonic himself must have surely lost his lunch. Sega obviously noticed this surprising increase of cash overflowing from its pocketbooks, because the company has decided to revive yet another Sonic Dreamcast adventure, and this time, it's the original.

Known as simply Sonic Adventure on Sega's ill-fated console, the nearly four-year-old game that truly started Sonic's 3D revolution is now ready to debut on GameCube in "Director's Cut" form. What does that mean for Sonic fans? Sega breaks it down like this...

Features:

• Updated and relatively improved graphics in comparison to the original Dreamcast title
• Six playable Sonic favorites including Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and the speedy blue hedgehog himself, Sonic
• Gameplay spans 50 huge levels, loaded with giant bosses and high-speed thrills in classic Sonic fashion
• Chao mini-games allow players to raise (e.g. Tamagotchi) and eventually race against small pets
• Link to one of three GBA titles to aid your Chaos raising efforts: Sonic Pinball Party, Sonic Advance, and Sonic Advance 2
• Brand-new gameplay mode featuring 60 mini-missions that allow players to find secret items and unlockables including a very special treat -- 12 classic Game Gear Sonic titles!

A previewable version of the game popped into our mailboxes late this afternoon, and we dove right into the game headfirst to see how Sega has worked to improve this classic Sonic adventure. Although still considered a work in progress, we noticed that the game isn't running quite as smoothly as it had in Dreamcast form, with occasional frame-rate stutters and slowdown rearing its ugly head all too often. Still, as we said, the game is not yet final, and we're truly hoping to find things smoothed out a bit more in the final build.

It is nice to see that texture detail has been slightly bumped up for the GameCube, and of course, who's going to complain about the chance to unlock 12 classic 2D Sonic games from Game Gear days long past? Certainly not us, although we didn't yet have the time to track them down -- gotta save something for the weekend, right? From what Sega promises in this remake, we're most happy with the inclusion of new "hidden areas," to which it claims that they add a "whole new twist to the original." Again, something we plan to explore for ourselves now that we've got the disc spinning in our systems.

We'll be playing through the game in the coming days and getting a bit further into this nostalgic adventure reborn on GameCube. Check back shortly as we bring you in-depth hands-on impressions of exactly how the classic has been translated to Nintendo's current hardware, and how our outlook on the game sits until its release. In the meantime, we've snagged a first batch of movies showing the title running on GameCube, so check them out for yourselves in the media section. Stay tuned to IGNcube for more soon, Sonic fans.

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