Sonic Heroes
| Sonic Heroes | |||
|---|---|---|---|
 | |||
| Logo of the game | |||
| Original title | ソ ニ ッ ク ヒ ー ロ ー ズ | ||
| transcription | Sonikku Hīrōzu | ||
| Studio |
 Sonic team
|
||
| Publisher |
Sega
|
||
| Senior Developer |
Yūji Naka Takashi Iizuka Tetsu Katano Kazuyuki Hoshino Shiro Maekawa |
||
| composer |
Jun Senoue Yutaka Minobe Tomoya Ohtani Keiichi Sugiyama |
||
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
Nintendo GameCube : December 30, 2003 January 5, 2004 February 6, 2004 PlayStation 2 : December 30, 2003 January 27, 2004 February 6, 2004 Xbox : December 30, 2003 January 27, 2004 February 6, 2004 Windows : November 17, 2004 November 26, 2004 December 9, 2004 PlayStation Network : February 22, 2012 September 17, 2014  |
||
| platform | Nintendo GameCube , PlayStation 2 , Xbox , Windows , PlayStation 3 | ||
| genre | Jump 'n' run | ||
| Game mode | Single player , multiplayer | ||
| control | Gamepad | ||
| medium | compact disc | ||
| language | including German , English | ||
| Age rating |
|
||
Sonic Heroes ( jap. : ソニックヒーローズ, Hepburn : Sonikku Hīrōzu ) is a 3D platformers Run - computer game , which of Sonic Team developed by Sega for the first time in Japan on 30 December 2003 for Nintendo GameCube , Xbox and PlayStation 2 was released. It was the first Sonic game to appear on a PlayStation or Xbox console.
In Sonic Heroes you control a team of three main characters at the same time and you can make use of the various skills at any time during the level. The game has four teams with individual interpretations of the individual levels in continuously intersecting story lines and thus a total of twelve controllable main characters. Compared to its predecessors, the focus was shifted away from the plot to the gameplay and level design.
The game is the sequel to Sonic Adventure 2 (2001) and the predecessor of Shadow the Hedgehog (2005).
action
Sonic is tracked down by Tails and Knuckles , who send him a letter from Dr. Eggman , who announced that he would conquer the world within three days. Although they suspect that this is more of a trap, the three decide as Team Sonic, Dr. Thwart Eggman's plans. Meanwhile, Rouge the Bat reaches a small, abandoned secret base owned by Dr. Eggman and hopes to find treasure. In doing so, however, she discovers the Shadow the Hedgehog, believed to be dead, who cannot remember anything, and the robot E-123 Omega, which was unable to escape from this base and therefore thirsts for revenge for Dr. Eggman felt it. So Shadow, Rouge and Omega also go in search of Dr. Eggman. Elsewhere, Amy Rose , Cream the Rabbit and Big the Cat have come together. While Cream misses her Chao Chocola and Big is looking for his friend Froggy again, Amy misses her crush Sonic. A newspaper article has a photo that shows Sonic, Chocola and Froggy together, which is why Amy, Cream and Big as Team Rose start looking for their friends. In the Chaotix detective office, a package with a walkie-talkie reaches the detectives Espio the Chameleon, Charmy Bee and Vector the Crocodile. A mysterious, voice-distorted agent calls in on the walkie-talkie and promises good pay if the three of them as Team Chaotix complete their assignments. Although Espio has a bad feeling about it, Team Chaotix takes the job.
During the adventure, the paths of the teams often cross and all teams seem to be Dr. Defeat Eggman, who always turns out to be a robot forgery. None of the teams noticed that the destroyed robots turned out to be Neo Metal Sonic who unknowingly copied their data. Shadow, who increasingly remembers his past and the events of Sonic Adventure 2 , also discovers a destroyed Shadow robot image. After a few adventures, Cream finally finds her Chao Chocola and Big his friend Froggy. Rouge and Omega discover a complete hall full of shadow robots and, like Shadow himself, question whether this is real or just a robot. However, Omega warns that there must be an original. Team Chaotix arrives at the location of their caged agent who turns out to be the real Dr. Eggman and has now been released with the help of Espio, Charmy and Vector. However, when he announced that he would only pay his promised generous payment after conquering world domination, he angered Team Chaotix.
Neo Metal Sonic reveals himself in front of the eyes of all the teams, who has threaded everything up to now and thus deliberately let the characters fight and plunged into adventures in order to now get all the data from Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Shadow, Rouge, Omega, Amy, Cream , Big, Espio, Charmy, Vector, Dr. Eggman, Cheese, Chocola, Froggy and thus even from Chaos (from Sonic Adventure ). With a lightning bolt from the raging thunderstorm and the surrounding metal, it takes on its new, larger and more powerful form as Metal Madness . Dr. Eggman explains the seemingly hopeless situation to the characters, but the teams have collected the seven Chaos Emeralds on their way. While Team Dark, Team Rose and Team Chaotix hold out the raging Metal Sonic in its Metal Madness form, Sonic transforms into Super Sonic with the seven Chaos Emeralds, and Tails and Knuckles also receive robust protective shields with which they can also fly freely. Metal Sonic transforms again to take on his Metal Overlord form, but Super Sonic, Tails and Knuckles manage to defeat him. The defeated Metal Sonic transforms completely back to his first form from Sonic the Hedgehog CD and remains exhausted on the ground, but Sonic spares him with the words that he will wait for his revenge. When Amy runs towards him, Sonic runs away. Dr. Eggman tries to escape from Team Chaotix, who want to claim their payment, while Knuckles and Rouge leave together. Shadow and Omega record the damaged Metal Sonic first.
Gameplay
In Sonic Heroes you always control a team consisting of three members. To do this, you select a team of your choice and thus the corresponding story rank: Team Sonic (Sonic, Tails, Knuckles), Team Dark (Shadow, Rouge, Omega), Team Rose (Amy, Cream, Big) or Team Chaotix (Espio, Charmy , Vector). The characters move in formations close to each other or in flight formation hand in hand, whereby one of the three characters is always primarily controlled and the other two follow him. Each member is assigned one of the three corresponding strengths: Speed (Sonic, Shadow, Amy, Espio), Fly (Tails, Rouge, Cream, Charmy) and Power (Knuckles, Omega, Big, Vector). The leading character can be changed at the push of a button in order to play out the strengths of the respective team members fluently within the level, which is still marked in the levels at the beginning of the game, but the requirements increasingly disappear as the game progresses. The speed characters jump with the Spin Attack , have the Homing Attack , can create whirlwinds on poles and jump from one wall to the other on thick walls. Fly characters can fly and attack by throwing their teammates at opponents, and power characters can smash larger rocks and the like and do more damage to opponents. When collecting rings and defeating opponents, the Team Blast bar also fills up . If this is completely filled, a team blast can be triggered at the push of a button , which destroys all opponents on the screen (but only damages bosses at most). With Team Blast, each team also has its own short side effect until the bar is available again. According to Team Sonic's Team Blast called Sonic Overdrive , the attacks Light Speed Attack , Thunder Shoot or Fire Dunk can also be used for a short time, depending on the character . Team Darks Chaos Inferno creates an effect similar to Chaos Control , which means that all enemies, as well as doors and switches, are frozen and immobile for this duration. The Flower Festival provides Team Rose with temporary invulnerability, a protective shield and an additional Power Core , while Team Chaotix receives an indefinite number of rings for the Chaotix Recital . It can happen that one or two team members get lost during a level, for example because they parted ways or an opponent could lock them up. Then you only control the available characters until the characters can be reunited or a team blast has been carried out, which brings back the missing team members immediately.
When touched, the golden rings can be collected; If a team takes damage, it loses the rings. If the team takes damage without owning rings or falls into a deadly abyss, it loses an extra life, of which you have three at the start of the game. The item boxes can contain an extra life, ten rings, a protective shield, temporary increased speed, a fly charge or a power core . Power cores cause a level-up for one of the three strengths up to a total of three times. The attacks of the respective character type become stronger, but only for the duration of the rest of the level or boss fight. Checkpoints in the form of lanterns mark the reset point in the event of a loss of life. In addition, the special stage keys can be found in the levels . If these keys are brought to the goal of the respective level without loss of life or hits, one reaches one of seven special stages , in which one chases after a chaos emerald on a tubular course and balloon-like spheres give more speed while bombs slow down. The seven Chaos Emeralds can be collected across all four story lines. Only those who successfully complete all four story lines and collect the seven Chaos Emeralds can unlock the Last Story , which deals with the fight against Metal Sonic.
Unlike its predecessors, all four teams experience the same levels and boss fights in the four story lines in the same order, but with differences in content. The exception is Team Rose, which is the only one to complete the Sea Gate tutorial level first . Thereafter, all story strands contain 14 action stages in the order Seaside Hill , Ocean Palace , Grand Metropolis , Power Plant , Casino Park , Bingo Highway , Rail Canyon , Bullet Station , Frog Forest , Lost Jungle , Hang Castle , Mystic Mansion , Egg Fleet and Final Fortress and boss fights after every second action stage against Egg Hawk , Team Sonic vs. Team Rose & Team Dark vs. Team Chaotix, Robot Carnival , Egg Albatross , Team Sonic vs. Team Dark & Team Rose vs. Team Chaotix, Robot Storm and Egg Emperor . The teams differ in their levels of difficulty: While the levels with Team Sonic are experienced regularly, Team Dark encounter more opponents and dangers, which results in a significantly higher level of difficulty. With Team Rose there are significantly fewer opponents and dangers, even level sections have been shortened, which makes the game noticeably easier. Team Chaotix always has to fulfill certain tasks (e.g. collect a certain number of rings or defeat all opponents) in the levels and not only achieve the goal, which is perceived as challenging. In the Last Story , Team Rose, Team Chaotix and Team Dark fight one after the other against Metal Madness and Team Sonic with Super Sonic against the Metal Overlord . After each successfully completed level or boss fight you receive an emblem and a rating from rank A to rank E. If all action stages and boss fights have been completed with rank A, the super-hard mode is activated, with heavier opponents and more hidden switches, without a memory function and exclusively for Team Sonic, free.
synchronization
Except for Tails' voices and Big's Japanese voice, all characters kept their voice actors from Sonic Adventure 2 . For the first time Omega, Cream, Espio, Vector, Charmy, Omochao and Metal Sonic were dubbed, with the latter representing Sonic's voice actor in a distorted version and Vector's English voice actor in the predecessor dubbing the character Professor Gerald Robotnik. It was also the only time that Tails was spoken by a boy rather than a woman. It was the last time that the English Dr. Eggman spokesman Deem Bristow spoke out for a Sonic game before his death on January 15, 2005, although existing sound clips were later included in Sonic Advance 3 (2004), Sonic Riders (2006) and Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity (2008) were further used.
On the Japanese and North American PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions of the game, it was possible to switch between the Japanese or English language output in different ways. Switching is not possible in the European, GameCube and PC versions of the game.
| Voice actor in Sonic Heroes | ||
|---|---|---|
| Figure in the game | English voice actor | Japanese voice actor |
| Sonic the Hedgehog | Ryan Drummond | Junichi Kanemaru |
| Miles Tails Prower | William Corkery | Ryo Hirohashi |
| Knuckles the Echidna | Scott Dreier | Nobutoshi Canna |
| Shadow the Hedgehog | David Humphrey | Kôji Yusa |
| Rouge the Bat | Lani Minella | Rumi Ochiai |
| E-123 omega | Jon St. John | Taiten Kusunoki |
| Amy Rose | Jennifer Douillard | Taeko Kawata |
| Cream the Rabbit | Sarah Wulfeck | Sayaka Aoki |
| Big the Cat | Jon St. John | Takashi Nagasako |
| Espio the Chameleon | Bill Corkery | Yuuki Masuda |
| Charmy Bee | Emily Corkery | Yōkō Teppōzuka |
| Vector the Crocodile | Marc Biagi | Kenta Miyake |
| Dr. Eggman | Deem Bristow | Chikao Ohtsuka |
| Metal Sonic | Ryan Drummond | Junichi Kanemaru |
| Omochao | Lani Minella | Etsuko Kozakura |
development
After the ports of Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 as well as the Sonic Mega Collection , the Sonic Team USA under the direction of Takashi Iizuka began with the development of a multi-platform Sonic game, which should be specially tailored for the current generation of consoles. In order to win fans of the series as well as possible new fans, the decision was made against the name Sonic Adventure 3 in order not to give the impression that one must have played or known the predecessors.
They also wanted to implement as many characters as possible after an early trailer for Sonic Adventure 2 did not show Tails as a playable character at the time and fans made the desire for Tails loud. In order to let the team system work, you needed a flying character for Team Rose and designed Cream the Rabbit for Sonic Heroes , but had it previously in the GameCube version of Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut as a cameo and made it into Sonic Advance 2 playable to make them known to the players in advance. The team idea reminded the developers of the Sega 32X game Knuckles' Chaotix , which gave inspiration to reinstall Espio, Charmy and Vector in the series. As a power team member of Team Dark, Dr. Eggman in his Egg Walker , but a decision was made during development for a new, more powerful E-100 robot called the E-123 Omega, after the E-102 Gamma from Sonic Adventure was popular, but could not be built in due to the story it has been destroyed throughout history. The return of Metal Sonic also happened because the developers wanted to respond to the wishes of the fans. Kazuyuki Hoshino, the original designer of Metal Sonic from the 1993 Sonic the Hedgehog CD , was brought in to help with the design of the character.
Sega named 2003 the "Year of Sonic" in order to honor it with several spin-off games, the new anime TV series Sonic X and finally Sonic Heroes . However, the developers had bigger problems with the porting to PlayStation 2 and Xbox than expected because they were not yet familiar with the systems. In order to keep the promise, the game was released in Japan on December 30, 2013, while other regions had to wait for February 2004. The PlayStation 2 version also has graphics and clipping errors as well as a lower frame rate and longer waiting times, which can be attributed to the release time pressure. In some regions, a demo version of Sonic Heroes was on early sales copies of the GameCube game Mario Kart: Double Dash !! contain.
Multiplayer mode
The game has a multiplayer mode in which two players compete against each other with one of the four teams in different gameplay variants. If only the Action Race mode is initially available, up to the 120th emblem, every 20 emblems unlocks another multiplayer mode in the order of Battle , Special Stage Race , Ring Race , Bobsled Race , Quick Race and Expert Race . Each mode has three different stages to choose from. It is possible to compete against each other by mode or randomly in the best-of-three.
New releases and successors
Sonic Heroes was part of 2 in 1 Combo Pack: Sonic Heroes / Super Monkey Ball Deluxe (2005, Xbox) and Sonic PC Collection (2009, PC).
Other main games of the series in 3D were in the episode Shadow the Hedgehog (2005), Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), Sonic Unleashed (2008), Sonic Colors (2010), Sonic Generations (2011), Sonic Lost World (2013), Sonic Boom: Lyrics Rise (2014) and Sonic Forces (2017).
reception
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sonic Heroes received average to positive ratings, with opinions and pros and cons differing more widely. The general, central team system was received both positively and negatively. Due to the technical problems, the PlayStation 2 version tended to receive lower ratings.
The game was also a success from a commercial point of view, with a total of 3.41 million units sold. Sonic Heroes sold 1.60 million copies on the Nintendo GameCube , making it 18th among the best-selling GameCube games. Sonic Heroes sold 1.72 million copies on the PlayStation 2 , making it 84th of the best-selling PlayStation 2 games. The sales of the Xbox and PC versions are below the million mark.
Web links
- Sonic Heroes at MobyGames (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Sonic Heroes for GameCube Reviews . CBS Interactive . Archived from the original on June 8, 2012. Retrieved March 2, 2018.
- ^ Sonic Heroes for Xbox Reviews . CBS Interactive . Archived from the original on June 8, 2012. Retrieved March 2, 2018.
- ↑ Sonic Heroes for PlayStation 2 Reviews . CBS Interactive . Archived from the original on June 8, 2012. Retrieved March 2, 2018.
- ^ Sonic Heroes for PC Reviews . CBS Interactive . Archived from the original on June 8, 2012. Retrieved March 2, 2018.