Review Summary: I have a feeling it's gonna be a fun day.
It’s impossible to understate how important and influential the SEGA Dreamcast was to gaming and gaming culture as a whole. It was a powerful, sophisticated system, and during its lifespan it saw support from big-name developers like Microsoft, pioneered online gaming as a whole (paving the way for Xbox Live and PlayStation Network), and had more sales in its first month of existence than any console before it in North America. The little white box is well-loved and has a fairly enormous cult following; indie developers to this day are still making video games for the Dreamcast. Such a system needed a big-name, killer title to back it up, and that particular game was the launch title for the Dreamcast,
Sonic Adventure, and it was by far and away the best-selling game for the system and considered a must-own; it validated the Dreamcast.
However, therein lies an important question. If we strip away
Sonic Adventure’s iconic images and levels, the foreknowledge of the many, many sequels produced trying to copy its success in some way, the awareness that this game fundamentally changed the way SEGA’s games would be marketed thereafter, and the nostalgia of hundreds of gamers mesmerized by the game’s vitality and sense of excitement, what will we find? What is this game, in and of itself, and how does it work? While these questions ultimately yield a subjective answer, the undeniable consensus nowadays (almost seventeen years after the fact) is that “
Sonic Adventure was amazing at the time, but it has aged; but the music’s pretty good.”
And yeah, the music’s pretty damn incredible. Very few things in life inspire such a sense of nostalgia, feeling, and emotion as memorable music does, and the musical minds of the
Sonic Adventure composition team seemed to understand that.
Sonic Adventure’s soundtrack is elegant, fluid, and coherent, far different from the eclectic but honestly disorganized OST of its sequel,
Sonic Adventure 2, or the droning, predominately unmemorable rock that filled
Shadow the Hedgehog.
Sonic Adventure features a selection of music that is just awesome from start to finish. It’s Jun Senoue at his most inspired and grand, and the whole soundtrack just bursts forward with a kind of energy that could have only emanated from a group of people just having a fun time.
“Open Your Heart”, the simultaneous opening and capstone to the album, is a rollicking track atop searing guitars and tight drumming, kick-starting the sense of fast pacing and high energy that pervades the entire album. “Pleasure Castle” is a thrilling, major-key piano rock tune whose dreamy synths and distant ice bells give the track a distinct nightly feel to it; “Mt. Red: A Symbol of Thrill” and “Bad Taste Aquarium” follows close on its heels, the two tracks sharing some unbelievably groovy brass and bass licks. These catchy tunes are the perfect compliments to the heavier, guitar-fueled moments like the hectic “Sky Deck” or the progressive soloing of the aptly-named “Crank The Heat Up!” Some of the best musicianship and writing comes from the album’s slower moments, like the laidback groove of “Mechanical Resonance” and jazzy “Welcome To Station Square”, the dreamlike synths of the slow-burning “Windy Hill”, or the calm, nostalgic disco groove of “At Dawn”.
The soundtrack is just consistently good. The energy level is high, the musicianship (especially the drumming and guitars) is top-notch, and there isn’t a single truly bad song in the whole OST. Even at the LP’s worst moments, it’s still solid, a half-step above anything in Sonic’s waning periods in the SEGA Saturn days and rich with the naturalism of people who know what they’re doing. That said, there are some problems that dot the album from time to time. Some of the vocal tunes are very pleasant to listen to, like the enormous arena rock sound of “It Doesn’t Matter” or the summery, pop-rock vibe of “Lazy Days (Livin’ In Paradise)”. However, the quality is noticeably different on tunes like “Believe In Myself” (which later got a noticeably better re-write on
Sonic Adventure 2), a tune that goes nowhere for far too long. On the other side, however, is “My Sweet Passion”, a song so profoundly weird it becomes memorable, with Nikki Gregoroff’s sultry soprano warbling, porno-style melody, and incomprehensible lyrics:
“I do understand the feelings of a Persian Cat
(But the Sphinx looked so cute I had to shave it...)
He reminds me of parsley when he's standing there all alone”
Ditto goes for the incredibly cheesy, so-bad-it’s-good tune “Unknown from M.E.”:
“Knock, knock, it's Knuckles, the bloat thrower
Independent flower, Magical Emerald holder
I'll give you the coldest shoulder
My spikes go through boulders
That's why I stay a loner
I was born by myself, I don't need a posse
I get it on by myself, advisories get shelved”
None of the soundtrack is awful, however, or even really bad. It stutters from time to time on a musical level, like with the largely unmemorable but decently-written boss battle tunes, the fairly unengaging but creative foreign riffs on “Sand Hill” or “Mystic Ruin”, the latter of which especially has an earthly vibe about it, or the unassailable “Be Cool, Be Wild, and Be Groovy”, which has way too much going on to digest all at once. However, the flaws in
Sonic Adventure’s soundtrack are ultimately minor and irrelevant, because it is really terrific as a whole. It is the perfect blend of complexity and simplicity, a mixture that very few musicians are able to accurately maintain or achieve, and it is awfully refreshing in that regard. Nothing is particularly groundbreaking, and a good deal of it is too “normal” to be a particular landmark in the history of the genre, but at its best moments, it is absolutely essential.
