Why Sonic Adventure DX is a Bad Port

you know i'll never forget just how impressed i was the first time i saw sonic adventure it was the first dreamcast game i had ever seen and it completely blew me away obviously it goes without saying that by today's standards the graphics are not that impressive whenever i look at this game part of me will always see it through the eyes of a child who had never seen a game that looked this good to this day i still think the game looks great i really dig the overall aesthetic in art design so i was a bit disappointed when some years later i played through it again on gamecube and it didn't look quite as good as i remembered i figured i must just be remembering it wrong graphics were advancing rapidly during this time period so it probably only seemed worse by comparison to these newer games it was only recently i went back and checked that no it's not just me the gamecube version actually does look worse when you play these games back to back it's easy to notice tons of little differences in redesigns on gamecube i did some independent research trying to get to the bottom of the situation but i found myself overwhelmed by the amount of differences between the games i began to wonder why hadn't anyone documented all this before i was starting to get really into it that's when i went online discovered actually has been documented before numerous times the cutting room floor is a pretty decent list of changes but the best site by far is this one blog the ultimate guide to sonic adventure dx sends by a dude who goes by the name pkr remember kids the lesson here is never do anything yourself because someone out there on the internet has probably already done it way better than you could what you should do is find that thing and then steal it or if you're a coward like me you can ask for permission first this site is incredibly thorough and comprehensive going into the technical detail and minutia behind most of these differences complete with screenshots and even some videos for comparison i mean honestly if you're interested in the differences between sonic adventure 1 and sonic adventure dx you should just go read about it on this site links in the description i guess i can just end the video here right of course not because even if i tell you to go read this site you won't do it that was your one crucial mistake pkr assuming people still the attention spans to actually go to a website and read a thing no in today's age people need information mashed up and regurgitated to them like little baby birds i'm not going to cover every change listed on the site just the ones that really stood out to me which happened to be a lot of them anyway in case anyone isn't familiar with the whole dx situation sonic adventure originally came out for the dreamcast in december 1998 in japan while north america was released in september of 99 the game was remastered and ported to the gamecube in june of 2003 under the title sonic adventure dx director's cut a pc version based on this gamecube port was released in japan later that year releasing in america in 2004. in 2010 this pc port served as the basis for the xbox 360 and ps3 ports of the game and these ports were used as the basis of the version released on steam in 2011 each of these ports introduces some new issues and glitches however most of the major changes in remastering happened during the original port of the game to the gamecube so most of the comparisons will be between the dreamcast and gamecube versions with occasional references made to effects looking even worse on pc or discussing some pc exclusive problems when it comes to the actual game itself although it has some flaws i still think it's a really fun game however that's not what this video is about i literally do not have time to get into my whole sonic adventure apologetics routine today and i don't want to get into the whole philosophical issue of how exactly games age i mean when you think about something like a carton of milk aging the actual thing itself turns sour and rotten with a video game the game itself is the one thing that isn't changing its society and our expectations and all that [ __ ] luckily whether you think sonic adventure is a good game or not actually doesn't matter you should still agree with the fundamental point that a remaster should you know improve the game or at the very least not make it any worse let me just make this abundantly clear if you never played the dreamcast version and only played dx growing up then this is not a personal attack on you you don't need to defend your version's honor if you didn't have a frame of reference to compare it to then obviously most of this stuff wouldn't bother you i'm just giving my opinion to someone who played the dreamcast version first you can feel free to disagree with me and prefer the dx version all you want and i anticipate many of you will i'm going to preempt this by saying yes a whole lot of the changes i'm about to discuss are fairly minor points that when taken on their own really do not significantly impact the quality of the game but this is really a death by a thousand papercuts type scenario it's only when you look at the totality of all the changes can you really see the issue by the way this isn't really that important all things considered but i just gotta say sonic adventure dx director's cut is a pretty [ __ ] stupid name for a port i mean did it really need to be deluxe and a director's cut i mean it's just called sonic adventure deluxe in japan why did they feel the need to add director's cut to the title for the western release and if it was necessary why couldn't they have dropped the dx from the title and just called it sonic adventure director's cut well that wouldn't have worked because then it would have been sa dc and then what we call the [ __ ] dreamcast version what the [ __ ] does director's cut even mean anyways that's a film term right i mean i know some games use it it's not that uncommon to see in a video game title but i mean with the name like director's cut you might imagine there'd be literally any kind of change to the story or something like maybe some edited cutscenes or story content there's literally nothing like that in this game so who was the director of sonic adventure 1 takashi izuka so what is this his cut or something like his original vision well no he's not even the director of the dx version oh when we said director scout we didn't mean the original director's cut obviously okay let's not beat around the bush zx does have some improvements on the dreamcast version i mean it came out four and a half years later on superior hardware you'd expect there to be some technical improvements let's start with the big two dx lets you skip cutscenes and it runs at 60fps compared to the dreamcast version's 30. skipping cutscenes is definitely a nice feature to have i mean personally if i'm replaying sa1 you better believe i'm gonna be watching those cutscenes but i'm not gonna try and argue that not being able to skip them is better or anything psychotic like that similarly for 60 fps it is an inarguable improvement however it's worth pointing out that this improved frame rate was simply due to the improved hardware and the gamecube version often struggles to maintain 60fps while the dreamcast version at least for the most part was maintaining a solid 30. the other issue with dx running at 60fps is that a few instances of the game's internal logic were not updated to deal with the new frame rate nothing game breaking or anything like that but some animations play faster than they should like tails tails and the tornado in windy valley the most famous issue stemming from the framerate is probably the behavior of this badnik leon in the dx version he appears and disappears so fast he rarely has time to get an attack out this can be annoying when he's holding one of the emerald shards in lost world next let's take a look at the extra content in the dx version collecting emblems unlocks a number of game gear sonic games this is the first time some of these games like sonic drift and tail sky patrol were officially released in the west this is a pretty cool feature especially back in 2003 for someone like me who didn't even have a game gear it's certainly better than the reward you get for collecting emblems in the dreamcast game which is nothing however that said at the end of the day it's just a bunch of game gear roms not exactly a groundbreaking feature i wanted to play these games nowadays i just emulate them on pc not to mention these are only the game gear versions of these 8-bit games for some of these you should really be playing the superior master system versions another new addition is the mission mode these 60 optional side missions aim to give players some new things to do in the adventure fields and action stages the only problem is to put it bluntly most of these missions are [ __ ] terrible it's the most hideous and uninspired [ __ ] you can imagine go to the burger shop statue and bring it here go get the balloon collect 100 rings like wow so exciting which brings me to another point these missions include stupid advertisements like [ __ ] man i don't want to see pictures of chris thorndike get that [ __ ] out of here look at this [ __ ] who is chowa good friends with and what is hidden underneath it what oh you have to dig in front of the picture of cream wonderful i hate this dark and filthy place can you find it to complete this one you have to find cream's billboard in the sewers why am i rescuing a picture of cream on a billboard the dx version actually has a model for cream they included a cameo over flying around station square it looks fine on gamecube but in the pc version the texture is all [ __ ] up actually a whole lot of these missions seem to involve the burger shop statue like this one where you have to save him from drowning lonely metal sonic needs a friend there's even one where you have to take him through part of sky deck a fugitive has escaped from the jail of burning hell find the fugitive what in the [ __ ] oh it's talking about one of these weird guys from the jail part of red mountain some of these are mildly amusing like cutting the weeds outside tails house but the vast majority of them are just go to the thing again this is totally optional side content i know it doesn't really make the game any worse just by existing but it doesn't really make it any better either if you manage to collect every single emblem a very tedious task dx rewards you with a playable metal sonic i mean don't get me wrong i like metal sonic as much as the next guy playable metal is pretty cool in my book and like i said earlier something is better than the nothing you get for collecting emblems in the dreamcast version but i mean let's be real it's just an alternate skin for sonic it's not even a new model it's from sonic adventure 2 battles multiplayer overall it's a neat bonus but it's not that amazing as for the chow garden the system in dx is definitely more robust carrying over changes from sonic adventure 2 and battle the original dreamcast version of the ciao garden was more like a tech demo by comparison so dx definitely wins here again by virtue of carrying over improvements made in other games but don't worry i'll talk more about chow later another supposed improvement in dx as the character models instead of using the original dreamcast models it uses updated models based on their appearance from sonic adventure 2 battle there's no denying the models are technically more detailed they have higher poly counts for example their hands have clearly defined digits instead of the mittens with textures from the dc version which is nice although amy's hands kinda look weird if you really stare at them this is one of those subjective matters but i personally prefer the look of the dreamcast models being a little shorter and closer to the genesis proportions make the transition into longer-legged modern sonic more gradual i don't think the sonic adventure 2 models look bad or anything in fact i think they look just fine in sonic adventure 2. i just like the sonic adventure 1 models for sonic adventure 1. i don't see why we can't have both and i mean i do have a few little nitpicks like sonic's weird hot dog shoes not quite as cool as the soaps from sonic adventure 2. in addition to her weird hands amy's shoe texture just looks like [ __ ] knuckle sonic adventure 2 model actually looks kind of jarring next to the lower poly echidna citizens his original model actually looked kind of similar with knuckles you can definitely see how the original models had some kind of grain to their textures this was done on purpose to simulate fur again i guess this is one of those aesthetic preference things but i definitely prefer this approach to the completely smooth plasticky look the 3d series ended up going with for the next few games even in the dx version there are still a few instances you can find to them using the dreamcast models like when aiming is picked up by xero or in the tutorial screens or in the final credit screens some of the models are barely any different like gamma and big look basically the same i mean technically big has a higher poly count but can you seriously tell at all eggman only had his hands updated and he arguably needed an update the most his sa1 model is not very detailed another change i don't care for is super sonic he lost his cool golden reflective sheen and now just looks like a deep yellow piss color his foot is also clipping outside his aura or whatever in the dreamcast version sonic's lightspeed dash aura was less bright which made it look less like a weird jagged solid object similarly knuckles maximum heat aura looks fine on dreamcast but looks kind of [ __ ] up on gamecube and really [ __ ] up on pc for some reason an interesting effect in the japanese version of sa1 was when sonic was running at top speed his feet would stretch out and they were rendered multiple times at various transparencies to simulate motion blur for whatever reason they've removed this transparency effect in later releases although you can still see the stretchy foot effect in the us version in dx there is no stretchy foot effect although the coding for it is still present and because of a glitch when sonic reaches top speed the texture is on his buckle in the bottom of his shoe switch this effect is even visible on the steam page in the first official screenshot tails had a similar effect when he's running at top speed multiple instances of his tails are generated with transparencies for motion blur in the dx version they kept the multiple copies of his tails but they removed the transparency effects which makes it look odd overall the texture quality is just much worse than the dx versions you can read more about the technical details and specific reasons why they look so bad over on the blog it's pretty interesting stuff i just don't feel like trying to explain what mit maps are right now one of the other major issues dx has is with transparency many dreamcast textures have been altered in order to remove parts that might have had difficulty rendering properly however the biggest downgrade in dx has to be the lighting system this is another case where i'm not even going to try to explain the finer technical points you're gonna have to read about it yourself if you wanna know the details but the short version is the dx has completely [ __ ] up the lighting system and made the entire game look worse the lighting in the original game was actually pretty impressive for a 1998 game in fact in pre-release footage had even more impressive and dynamic lighting but apparently had to be scaled back for hardware related reasons when it comes to audio quality dx is mostly okay there are some issues and a few missing sound effects and whatnot throughout the game but it's not that bad however in the original 2004 pc port the voice lines were converted to wma files and they were noticeably worse in quality for some reason this is the adventure mode start your adventure here this is the adventure mode start your adventure here this was fixed in the steam version thankfully let's start by taking a look at the adventure fields in station square the iconic clock tower was replaced with some kind of generic looking building seemingly for no reason this change has always baffled me because not only does it look worse and just less distinctive in general it actually [ __ ] with a cool little piece of continuity this building is supposed to be the same building you see at the end of speed highway or where you enter as knuckles i'm not sure why they went out of their way to make the game world make less sense but this was apparently worth changing in their book all the windows which had several reflection textures with distortions that reacted to camera movement on dreamcast have been replaced with boring static textures this is going to be a recurring theme the dx version unable to handle complex reflections or transparencies and instead opting for simplistic looking downgrades the loss of palette lighting makes the three different times day evening and night look worse too for example nighttime lacks the bluish tint it's supposed to have the x actually fixes a minor mistake from the dreamcast version originally the time of day would affect the color of the lighting in the sewers which doesn't really make any sense let's take a look at the shoreline area some people might not care for the lower resolution water texture animation on dreamcast dx has this weird bright area where the sand meets the water which looks really strange and almost acidic in the pc version on dreamcast the color of the sea changed depending on the time of day in dx the evening looks alright but the sea looks weirdly lit up at night some people might prefer the more realistic looking car textures in dx or the incredibly shiny cars in the dreamcast version but i personally prefer the original here the police car flashers definitely look worse than the dx version as they lack their transparency in the dreamcast version the pool chairs have an almost unnoticeable transparency effect which has been removed in dx how dare they downgrade these beautiful pool chairs there's also a strange bug in dx where the crosswalk texture is drawn on top of sonic's shadow the textures of the new standard were since stretched out for some reason and the building next to the newsstand was also redesigned to add some new signs not a bad idea although this ss book sign is terrible quality and attached to clearly not a bookstore the dx version also adds a giant casino ken sign which isn't the best quality it's just a flat texture compared to the actual casinopolis entrance which is fully modeled for whatever reason the lighting on these doors of the hotel is always rendered as if it was daytime which just looks awful at night mystic ruins also received a redesign with the dx version being noticeably less green for whatever reason in the pc version the lighting of this area is also completely broken at nighttime the stage is still rendered way too brightly the part of the rock ball which eventually blows up to reveal the path to angel island is more noticeable in the dx versions particularly the pc version which really stands out because of material color problems the angel island area was redesigned to remove many of the decorations like most of the trees for whatever reason the master emerald shrine has some details and objects removed as well this is a minor point but the master emerald's pulsating green glow effect is more noticeable and vibrant in the dreamcast version the icecap area had its blue coloration dulled down a bit they also changed this plant simplifying it a bit and removing this fern-like part which had a transparency effect yes those bastards actually thought they could just remove the ferns from sonic adventure and they'd get away with it without getting called out the jungle area looks worse on dx2 the top of the jungle uses a lower resolution texture and in the pc version you can clearly see the outline of the paths you can walk the pc version also uses the area's fog effect incorrectly it's only supposed to be there when you descend into the jungle for some strange reason all the animations on big's house have been removed in the dx version and it remains completely static at all times the final egg based model also has transparency issues particularly with the light beams which go behind the glow effect the lighting inside the base is also noticeably worse removing the original's greenish tint the tubes containing the metal sonics also look worse and are harder to see through in the takal flashbacks the area near the master emerald has just incredibly bizarrely deep blue water arguably an improvement over the simple texture from the dreamcast version but it's so blue and even appears blue during the flashbacks when the area is on fire when the color palette is supposed to be basically all red in the dreamcast version the water and the shrine near the emerald reflects certain objects like the palm tree and columns by using transparent objects this effect was removed in the dx version the worst downgrade in the dx version is the fire in the original game the lighting flickered by transitioning between two pallets to create a striking fire effect the dx version has no such feature and the pc version is full of this gross looking red fog character lighting also received a heavy downgrade overall the atmosphere had impacted the scene is considerably dulled in the dx version the egg carrier didn't receive much of a redesign compared to the other two adventure fields the lighting changes means it lost its slight purple tint and there are a few minor mistakes like they made this monorail animation invisible they removed the animation on the captain seat and the green barriers and the doors don't display for some reason but apart from the overall standard lighting downgrades there's not too much to complain about here so let's get into the action stages before going over emerald coast i need to explain the changes dx made to the way it handles water it uses new surface textures and has an underwater distortion effect this is definitely a technical improvement it certainly looks more realistic although it is a little distracting and it makes some of the biggs underwater sections kind of annoying the dreamcast version uses a simple blue tint to convey the feeling of being underwater however this distortion effect is only in the gamecube version pc ports of dx keep the new surface textures but have no distortion or blue tint underwater which looks kind of odd while some may prefer the gamecube's distortion effect to the simple way of handling water in the dx version the effect is not perfect in addition to distorting things under the water it also appears on objects in front of it which creates a very bizarre looking effect so let's take a look at the ocean and emerald coast the dreamcast version uses a simple animated water texture while the gamecube version has multiple layers including its natural water distortion effect the pc port lacks the distortion and uses a different texture and coloration my major issue with the dx version is the shoreline the weirdly bright line where the waves meet the sand and the sand textures are also worse quality they also mess up some of the uv mapping when redesigning the area the pc version in particular just has a strange looking water animation with the ocean flashing every few frames during the iconic scene with the killer whale the dreamcast version has a dynamic model for the water surface which simulated ocean waves in the dx version the water just moved up and down which not only looked strange but they didn't update the bridge's animation causing parts of it to dip underwater also for some reason during biggs cutscene where gamma takes froggy at the end of emerald coast and the gamecube version is missing a bunch of scenery when people want to show off how sonic adventure is such a glitchy game i swear to god 9 times out of 10 it's the same example falling through the ground during the emerald coast loop i've seen this so many times i would say this is the most infamous glitch in the entire game and it doesn't even happen in the dreamcast version in windy valley a lot of random pieces of scenery are missing like a bunch of the wind turbines the dreamcast version has a dynamic fog system which makes the stage darker when the tornado shows up this effect is broken in the dx ports the slight grey fog is also missing from inside the tornado too certain textures are missing in the dx version allowing you to see through some objects and the ropes on the bridge are also way too long for some reason there's color banding visible in all versions of the sky in act 3 but it's more noticeable on gamecube and looks absolutely [ __ ] dreadful on pc this area right here is a good example of how much better the dreamcast can handle transparencies look at the edges of the grating somehow it looks even worse on the pc too the area's white fog effect was also made darker in the original game the chaos emeralds had a glowing effect which is completely missing in the dx ports for casinopolis the most noticeable changes are just in terms of the lighting notice the slight violet coloration on sonic's model in the original version and the more complex lighting transitions on his model looking around certain objects have lost their animation for seemingly no reason like the roof of the knights pinball entrance once again you can see the chaos emerald's missing glow effect the dx version continues to struggle with transparencies the pc version in particular has issues displaying the slotten pinball sign the shiny shower room sign was replaced with an ugly low resolution texture and similarly the information sign has lost its reflective element on gamecube and is nearly unreadable on pc the gear area knuckle stage is actually broken on the pc version one of these spinning cylinders is missing its top texture look at the giant lion statue on the second floor look how much cooler looks in the dreamcast version due to the lighting and texture animations apart from the standard lighting and texture downgrades the pinball boards are mostly okay although the lighting in the knights area isn't quite right on dx now let's take a look at the sewers this area actually has quite a different feel than the dx version for whatever reason it appears to have a white fog added giving it a worse straw distance the water is clear instead of green and has no animation in the dx version on gamecube it had the natural distortion effect but on pc it has nothing the lights in the sewers were supposed to blink and flicker but that only happens on the dreamcast version one of the weirder mistakes is this light texture of the exit grade at the end of the sewers on dreamcast it looks fine but the dx version uses an incorrect blending mode which hasn't come out as a flat texture god that is so disgusting looking i don't know what he noticed that [ __ ] during development i mean a lot of these mistakes i can understand how they missed but come on ice cap zone received a strange redesign it uses the exact same textures as the dreamcast version but all the color was removed making the stage nearly all white instead of white and blue this is the result of making much less vibrant and appealing looking the pc version also has broken material colors which makes the destructible part of the ice really obvious the hanging icicles also lost some of their reflective qualities making them overlapping transparent models which looks much worse another result of the color change is that the avalanche part of the snowboarding section is absolutely blindingly white because of the changes to the lighting system they didn't even attempt to give big's version of the stage the darker nighttime look of the original twinkle park is another stage that got a new look with different textures overall less colorful and more mechanical feeling you can definitely feel the lighting downgrade during the initial bumper car section for example the spinning asteroids has soft lighting from one direction in the original while they have no special lighting in dx version look at the color transitions in the dreamcast lighting compared to the duller dx versions another example of bad uv mapping the roof tile textures on these objects is inconsistent with the rest of the roof in the dx versions amy stage also suffers from the changes to lighting the dark fog that made the mirror room so creepy has been removed in dx and the mirror illusion is more complex in the dreamcast version too additionally the balloon at the end of amy's stages has lost its transparency in dx speed highway is possibly the most iconic stage from the game and unfortunately it didn't escape unscathed the buildings in the original have some lit up windows but the d exports have incorrect material flags which make the buildings look all dark and ugly the dx version is also missing some of the blinking light effects from the original in the pc version the blinking lights on the missile are broken too here you can see another example of texture degradation across ports the gamecube version is noticeably worse than the dreamcast version and the pc version is even worse than the gamecube version during the running down the building sequence the subtle red fog from the original is missing in the dx port and for whatever reason these floating rings at the end you can collect with the lightning shield has been removed in the dreamcast version master emerald charts have this subtle glow effect but the dx ports made them much much brighter makes it easier to see i guess but it looks worse in my opinion red mountain is also at some of the colors dulled with a redesign although it has a few improved textures too overall the dx version seems to favor a light brown aesthetic in the dreamcast version there were two layers of clouds that moved at different speeds creating a parallax effect this effect is barely noticeable in the gamecube version completely absent in the pc port which has incorrect cloud colors as well the clouds were also placed lower in dx meaning you can see some things you're not supposed to like the bottom of this mountain there's also a thick gross fog in the pc version which just looks like [ __ ] the cloud layer being too low is more noticeable in the knuckles version of the stage the dx version has a longer draw distance which is technically good but creates some weird issues with a level geometry popping in in the distance which wasn't an issue in the dreamcast version once again the sky has some color banding which gets worse each port act 2 really suffers from the lighting downgrades in the dreamcast version the lighting affected both the environment and the objects around them and the dx version objects are no longer tinted red the lack of red object lighting from the lava just makes this area look terrible in the dx versions look at the skull on the wall in this picture without the proper lighting it starts to blend into the wall becoming almost invisible in the pc version look at the lighting on these rock platforms as they fall into the lava and dreamcast now look at how much worse it looks on gamecube the dx version does feature a more detailed texture for the lava which is nice but for some reason the brightness isn't right on the pc version which looks really bad similarly sky deck receives some serious downgrades which negatively impact the atmosphere of the stage immediately you'll notice the lack of lighting but you can also see they adjusted the uvs without changing the texture making the bottom of the canon look wrong they also completely messed up the stage's cloud effect in the original there's a moving cloud layer sense you know you're on the egg carrier a giant floating battleship as it flies through the sky in the dx port the main cloud layer doesn't [ __ ] move just the little cloud objects on top of it as you go through the level the sky gets darker as the egg carrier descends into the clouds in the original version this affected the lighting for the entire environment including the characters and objects in dx although the background changes the environment lighting stays the same this is made even worse in the pc version which has a slight white fog effect added for some reason the final area looks much worse with this brighter lighting the dreamcast version even has a more smooth transition between above and below the clouds additionally on dreamcast you could hear eggman's announcements whenever the ship changed altitude in the first part of act two these announcements were removed from the dx version for some reason this area got new textures in dx but the texture degradation in the pc version makes it look absolutely atrocious like god damn that's gonna be [ __ ] yikes for me dawg this can also be seen in act 3 as well both the gamecube and pc version of different issues with the skybox scale and draw distance issues that make the sky look broken the sky looks fine on dreamcast but has this really weird effect in dx lost world for the most part didn't get mangled too badly the dreamcast version uses a white fog effect for distance areas while the dx ports seem to use dark grey overall the dx version is darker and less vibrant which does sort of fit with the ancient ruin aesthetic i must admit as for the snake room while no version of this game has particularly great collision here it's noticeably worse than the dx version with that weird jitter every few frames the room features large beams of light highlighting the three buttons you have to press which look much worse with nasty color banding in the dx versions the outdoor area had this stone floor replaced with an ugly sand texture that has a visible seam running down the right side the pc port of the game has a serious issue with the dark mirror room it's way way too bright to the point where you literally don't even need to use the mirrors to illuminate the room the water particles look worse than dx because of transparency issues in alpha rejection and for whatever reason this area had all the colorful plants turned solid green final leg is at stage that has numerous issues right at the start you can see the dx version redesigned the stage changing the atmosphere somehow the gamecube version of the x accidentally removed this first egg keeper enemy from the stage although it was eventually added back into the steam version these little lights scattered throughout the stage are also broken in the dx versions and the pc version features some aggressive grey fog which really makes a few areas look super shitty this area on dreamcast is a thick black fog preventing you from seeing the bottom of the area from the porch you can see all the way down in the bottom if you fall and die you can actually see sonic land on the ground unharmed these tubes you run through via boost pads are also much more simplified than the dx ports and i'm pretty sure that these tubes in amy's stage are using the wrong animation gamma's version of the stage really suffers from inferior lighting losing much of the atmosphere from the original finally there's hot shelter which didn't receive too many changes most of the problems here just come from the natural loss of atmosphere with the simplified lighting but for the most part even the areas that were redesigned look okay this level honestly is not bad for the most part the boss fights also suffer from the lighting downgrades they really affect the mood of some of the chaos boss fights in particular the pc version absolutely butchers the original look of chaos due to some material problems this is most apparent in the chaos 6 fight which looks terrible on pc the perfect chaos model also completely lacks lighting in the dx ports making it look somewhat flat some of his effects are broken as well like his damage animation on dreamcast and gamecube the tornadoes around his body slowly fade in when he reappears from pc they just pop in in the dreamcast version of the egg walker fight the movie poster displayed near the casino is the man 3. instead of the usual chow in space it's only in this one fight and it's kind of hard to notice so it's not really a big deal that the dx versions either cut or forgot about this but it's kind of enough to slightly bother me also it goes without saying but the nighttime lighting is much better on dreamcast for some reason the egg walker model is way too bright on gamecube and the pc version of this fight messed up the skybox by someone making it impossible to see with some unnecessary fog in the egg viper fight one of his attacks is a giant explosion which is supposed to light up the walls this is completely missing in the pc version a similar effect is also missing when you hit eggman another one of his attacks is charging up this blue plasma ball in the dreamcast version the walls flash blue but this effect is totally broken on the gamecube version just messing with the overall lighting and once again completely missing on pc there are more changes i could discuss but i have to stop somewhere at the end of the day you might be thinking why do you care so much about this are there more important things to worry about like [ __ ] war and 911 and [ __ ] well it could be argued in a way that this is more important than all the wars and 911s combined because this is about artistic integrity what would be more important than that i mean sure human rights you might say like the right not to be burned to death by white phosphorus but you know what good is being alive in the first place if you're living in a world without artistic integrity it's just something to think about i mean yes i accept this one particular shoddy port job probably doesn't matter to most gamesters out there but to me sonic adventure 1 is a beautiful game and i will always see it as a beautiful game because i can still vividly remember playing it when i was brand new and it's just a bummer to me that the supposedly improved director's cut is uglier and that's by far the most easily accessible and widely played version of the game look i'm not [ __ ] james tyrell over here but i think lighting is an important and underrated aspect of aesthetic design that often goes overlooked i think the lighting in the original game was actually pretty nice looking for the time so it sucks to just see it thrown in the garbage can so is that it then if you want to play the real version of sonic adventure 1 are you just [ __ ] should we just give up lay down and die well not so fast it turns out the very man is behind this incredible comparison blog has created a dreamcast conversion mod for the pc version this is without a doubt the best way to get the true sonic adventure 1 experience retaining all the gameplay improvements of dx like skippable cutscenes in a higher frame rate with the original aesthetic recreated nearly perfectly for many years better sadx was seen as the default option but now even the creator of better sadx recommends using pkr's mod loader so yeah in addition to making this incredible website detailing the problems with dx he actually went and fixed them too what an absolute lad you've earned a tip of my fedora sir in my opinion pkr belongs in the pantheon of sonic legends along with christian whitehead and co i really can't thank you enough for your contributions towards the preservation of sonic adventure literally done more than sega has for the past two decades in addition to pkr i'd like to deeply thank everyone who helped with the creation of this blog your contributions are much appreciated and i'd like to give a special shout out to speeps highway who creates some of the best and most interesting sonic adventure content of the entire internet for both games i'm not going to do a video like this for sonic adventure 2 and sonic adventure 2 battle mainly because it wasn't butchered as horribly but there were some downgrades changes to the lighting and cutscenes mostly i think speeps has a wonderful video you can check out which shows this off i'll have a link to that and everything else in the description

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Views: 990,681

Rating: 4.8294106 out of 5

Keywords: Cybershell, Cybershell13, Sonic, Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 1, Sonic Adventure DX, SADX, Bad Ports, Why SADX is a bad port

Id: SORYL5J1Heg

Length: 36min 6sec (2166 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 11 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/VaskenMaros]

The absolutely pitiful state of DX has to be seen to be believed. Most people who aren't Sonic nerds aren't aware of how awful the port job was, especially since most people's conceptions of SA1 are of DX and not the Dreamcast original (which is far less glitchy and buggy and also looks better, though admittedly is only 30FPS compared to DX's 60) because the Dreamcast was a failure.

Weirdly enough the SA2 port to the gamecube was mostly properly done, despite coming earlier. So who knows what the hell went on with DX.

[u/Kallum_dx]

Cybershell? I haven‘t heard that name in a long time.

[u/SteveRudzinski]

Yeah almost all of the glitches and game breaking shit people like to make fun of Sonic Adventure for are not actually in Sonic Adventure, they're in the Sonic Adventure DX port. It's a REALLY bad port.

The Dreamcast version has some issues sure, but nothing like what people who only played it on Gamecube thinks it has.

[u/Calactic]

I can't believe Cybershell is back, I can't wait for him to cover half the things that have come out since he vanished, only for him to vanish again later.

[u/Cueball61]

Ah yes, Adventure DX

Where there’s a 50/50 chance you might fall through one of the first loops on the first level and die.

[u/Thomastheshankengine]

considering that he’s still been collecting patreon money steadily for the past 2 years of his absence, I hope he’d at least give some small reason as to why he’s been gone for so long. Love the videos but damn dude.

[u/FZeroRacer]

One of the things I found funny while skimming thru the video was the throwaway comment about the philosophical issues with games aging despite not aging, followed up later by a comment that perfectly demonstrated how Sonic Adventure DX has aged. Which was the reward for collecting emblems being a bunch of Game Gear roms which is a bad reward because you can just emulate them on PC nowadays.

Ultimately I think people kinda dig their heels in on what version they played growing up. I played both versions and both of them are buggy messes that despite the differences end up being mostly the same experience. The dreamcast version is slightly less buggy, but that's sort of like being happy about one less roach in a roach-infested apartment.

[u/Spurdungus]

I know you can mod a lot of the DC models into the Steam version nowadays but I have no idea if there's mods that fix everything else the DX port broke