Shadow: You never cease to surprise me, Blue Hedgehog. I thought that capsule you were in exploded in space. Sonic: You know, what can I say? I die hard. What you see is what you get. Just a guy that loves adventure. Ian: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the InterMillennium Media Project, the IMMP. My name is Ian Porter. Matthew: And I'm Matthew Porter. Ian: He's my dad. I'm his son. And Happy New Year. I've taken over once again. Matthew: It is 2025, and we're getting things started off with you being in control. Ian: It's a Millennial Strikes Back! Because last time at the end of our holiday season, we watched a movie that reminded me of a piece of my childhood in a way I did not expect at all. But I just wanted to get to share it. And it's, as we sometimes are, quite topical because part of this story is coming up in the popular culture once again. But I want to set the scene for everyone first. I liked games as a kid. I played a lot of PC games with my dad here. As we've done before, talking about Myst and Riven and such, but I didn't do a lot of console gaming. Until, I was given a Nintendo GameCube for one of my Christmas gifts, and I was over the moon. And the first game I remember playing on that GameCube was a sequel to a game I'd never played in a series from a Set of games I'd only vaguely known about. I played Sonic Adventure 2 on the Nintendo Gamecube, and it blew me away. I, I kind, I think you remember some of this. Matthew: I do. I remember watching you play this, maybe more than any other game you played back then. Ian: Oh yes. This is, this game has a remarkably wild though, amount of story to it. So, on the podcast, dad will make me watch movies and watch TV shows from when he was growing up, and I get to learn about what made him The person he is now, the wonderful weird guy I love so much. This is an example though of me having him watch a game. I didn't make you play through the whole thing, but you watched playthrough segments and watched a full set of the cutscenes to be able to get the story. Matthew: Right. And I wanted to play it. I looked into that. I didn't have a console ready to go or a platform ready to go on which I could play it. I think it's going to be coming to Switch at some point based on what I hear, but it's not there yet. I have not used my Xbox 360 in so long. It probably would have taken two and a half weeks to update. And that's the only thing I have that could have run any version of Sonic Adventure 2. So I'd be interested in playing Sonic Adventure 2. This just to get a sense of the gameplay, but I'm glad you sent me what you did in terms of being able to watch , a good combination of cutscenes and gameplay to understand and certainly refresh my memory about the game. Ian: So we're going to be treating this game a little bit more like a movie, I think, over the course of this, but I want to acknowledge that this is a game, this is an action platformer. So it is running around, it is, I mean it's a Sonic game as well, it is running, it is jumping, it is almost more rhythm than strategy sometimes because it's about trying to move quickly through an environment, and it's dripping with 90s. There's something, this game was released in 2001. And somehow it is the most 90s thing ever, I think, in the best way, because it is a story about our trick flipping in the air speedster protagonist Sonic and his plucky gang of heroic friends and the edgiest character ever to be created. I think his dark mirror Shadow the Hedgehog and the group of nefarious rogues that he teams up with in parallel plots that wind up converging at various points of narrative. I was so surprised though by how much of this reminded me of Die Hard, because this is a story about protagonists caught in unexpected situations fighting to, to make it out at various times, meanwhile, interpersonal debates amongst the evil villains as they enact a master plan goes increasingly wrong. It, it lines up kind of well. Matthew: And a lot of the gameplay appears to be navigating through the innards of a large, complicated structure. Ian: Oh, yes. Every, every structure is unnecessarily complicated. This is a world that takes the classic Sonic games of like, green hills where you run around loop de loops of mountain structures and everything else, and applies it to a modern city. So it's like, here's the highway under construction. Yeah. It does a full circular loop de loop. Anyone who tried doing that in a car is going to not make it or not make it via g forces. But the hedgehogs can run it. That's what we've got. It's, it, it makes no sense. This is a world full of the weirdest fridge logic. Matthew: It's Ian: like, Matthew: it is all vibe, no engineering. Ian: Exactly. It is pure vibe. But I find it just a fascinating example of storytelling because it is a story, these two stories in parallel and converging into a grand narrative at the end. Matthew: And you're right, they do eventually converge, and I was kind of glad when that happened, because just watching the compilation of cutscenes that you sent me, the first ten minutes or so were a fever dream. I was getting these tiny clips of people I didn't know saying things that appeared to have no context, and it was like a Kenneth Anger movie or something. It was just bizarre. Oh yeah. And yet eventually, I didn't know, is this making more sense? Or, have I learned to make sense of it, which is more frightening. Ian: Yes! And you can imagine also, like, you've got the entire narrative perspective mind of a full adult. You can imagine this just washing over my young, my young mind just going, Yes, it's cool. Matthew: It drops you right into the middle of things. Ian: Absolutely. It drops you right in, no matter which path you choose, because when you fire up this game, and I'm going to say, before you even make a story selection, you fire up this game, and you are blasted with heavy rock guitar of the theme song. Sung by Crush 40, which is like the band that does all the sonic music. And this is just like this massively heavy guitar riff of live and learn. And with all the pedal distortion you can imagine thrown onto this guitar. So it just It smacks you with that and you go through the menus and you are offered the start of the story. You can choose to go Hero or Dark. They don't call it evil. I appreciate that. Matthew: It's always Hero or Dark. The fact that they're presenting kids with this choice at the very beginning of a game, that must have had a great impact as well. Ian: Oh, yeah. Matthew: Oh, that's, that's an option? I can, I Ian: can be the bad guy? Like, I, I, I've watched Disney films, the bad guy falls off a cliff at the end and is implied to be dead, but I'm not told that. I get to be them? Cool! Matthew: And maybe that's what dark means. It's everything that's cool about being the villain without the evil. Ian: It is pure villain aesthetic without always villain intention. Matthew: Yes. Ian: Now, I admit the first character you play, if you go down that dark path, is in fact the classic bad guy, Dr. Eggman. Matthew: Yeah, that surprised me. Ian: Yeah. Matthew: Your, your gameplay and everything else is Oh, it's already, you are playing Robotnik. You're playing Eggman. Ian: You're playing this man who is this technological genius, wearing a giant version of like the robotic trousers from Wallace and Gromit, with a missile launcher attached, breaking into, breaking into a military facility and saying, I'll get whatever this secret project is. I'm generically evil and vaguely European, like, that's, that's what he does, and he does it well, the government has these giant labyrinthine corridors of multiple gates with mecha defending it, and you just start walking through and blowing stuff up, like, welcome to playing the bad guys, explosions. That is what this game teaches you from step one. Matthew: The other game that I've played that this reminds me of, in terms of the way it's structured, the way some of these levels feel, is the Xenosaga series. Yeah! Maybe Xenosaga 2, especially the way you're going through these gigantic structures whose design doesn't make any sense, but it gives you lots of big corridors and grand halls and things in which to stop and have fights. Ian: There's a little bit of that. I'm going to mention another game. There's a little bit, thinking of Sega's other series, of Space Channel 5, where you walk into a room and immediately are presented with five things. And you have to hit the right buttons. Maybe that will launch you forward to it. Maybe you hold the button till it does the count of five and let go and they all explode. But there's a little bit of that where I call Sonic a rhythm game. Cause you walk into a room and presented with a challenge that has a pace to solving it. Matthew: That's very interesting. That's one of the things I didn't really get from watching the video, was that sense of the rhythm aspect of the gameplay, but now that you mention it, it makes perfect sense. It makes sense for the way the levels are designed. It makes sense for the way sound and music are used. Ian: Mm hmm. So the first part you were describing here playing as Dr. Eggman, Ivo Robotnik, as his apparently legally name is breaking into a government facility and playing what is known as a mech stage, but he immediately gets to the end and releases from cryocontainment or whatever. Project Shadow. This dark black with red highlights, evil looking version of our classic Sonic the Hedgehog protagonist. Matthew: What if Sonic but non primary colors? Ian: What if Sonic but day for night? Kind of turn, like, let's just, let's just take all the bright tones and bring them down. And he immediately walks in, he like floats up in the air with this gravelly voice. Hi, professor. He's like, immediately trying so hard and I love it. Matthew: And the professor mistakes him for Sonic. At the beginning, yeah, Ian: which is that's the wildest thing. This is a colorblind world in a wonderful way because so much of the story is shadow goes and does something either for Eggman or for his own benefit Sonic gets blamed for it. This repeats multiple times in the narrative. And it's the first thing that happens in the hero side, which is Sonic the Hedgehog gets captured by the government and Sonic the Hedgehog has to break out of a helicopter, which is also one of the coolest things because he breaks out of a helicopter, grabs a piece of the fuselage and turns it into a snowboard in midair, which is also just the most 90s thing ever. Start as the good guys, you are now snowboarding down a vaguely San Francisco like hill on a piece of stolen government property on the run from the federal agents. What in the world? But The story from here is, it jumps around, because we're going to escape as Sonic, and he's going to try to meet up with his friends, and we're going to have Dr. Eggman and Shadow trying to activate an old super weapon. And so there's this cat and mouse game of trying to prevent each other. Which is very classic. Sonic and Shadow, of course, are counterpointants, they have similar levels they play similarly in the game. Dr. Eggman with his robotic leg suit is mimicked by Tails. Sonic the Hedgehog's tech savvy fox companion who has a transforming plane. Matthew: Yeah, it's sort of a an airplane that can walk around as well. Ian: Yeah, and it's also, like, got a bunch of guns. Matthew: Yeah, a lot of guns in this game. Ian: Lots of guns in this game. The military are literally called, if you see it on all their boxes, G.U.N. Matthew: Does that stand for again? Ian: Guardian Units of Nations. Matthew: Oh, so this is kind of the the global defense force the way we got that in Thunderbirds. Ian: Very much so. It's a Matthew: global military force. Ian: It's a global military force. It's like super UN kind of going on doing with all of their secret projects all across the world. And it's interesting because Shadow was stored in a gun facility, but all of the gun agents don't know that Shadow isn't Sonic. So I guess they thought they had Sonic the Hedgehog stored in the basement, and then were confused why he was running around? Matthew: Or whatever was going on with Sonic, and whatever was going on with Shadow, was pretty high up the chain in terms of security clearance. And not many of these guys running around now have that. Ian: Yeah but There's a lot of the start of this game is just going back and forth with, you know, play as Tails for a bit to help break Sonic out of jail, run around as Sonic, get captured by the military again, run around as Tails. Then it's, run around as Eggman to activate some ancient ruins or break into a facility, run around as Shadow to gather the next piece of the weapon that they need, which are all the Chaos Emeralds. The classic MacGuffins of the Sonic story. Seven glowing gems of bright colors that float around and give you superpowers and apparently can be stored in an interventional pocket, because everyone just holds them and they vanish. Matthew: So you are, you're running around, you're kind of pausing for these fights, but that's when you're gathering these emeralds is through that process? Kind of. That state part of the game? Ian: Yeah, each of the levels is in theory like going to a place an emerald is and getting one. Matthew: Now, are you also leveling up such that you've got to go through this, not just to grab the emeralds, so you have them for the next phase of the game, but so that you're acquiring additional skills or power levels? Ian: Kind of. As you go around, your characters are gaining new abilities. There's kind of ancient pedestals that give you power ups that you can go back and use, even on previous levels, to find new pathways. But the Chaos Emeralds are all narrative objects. They're purely story MacGuffins in that sense. They don't do anything for you character wise. But you are gathering them all, and we get to see the difference between just how Sonic and Shadow are paralleling them. Sonic is running around with his gloves and his shoes. Which, his shoes are important in this one. This game has a sponsorship in it. If you noticed, it was sponsored by the Soap Company, who made shoes that had a grind rail section on their arch. So that there was a metal plate, like a truck of a skateboard, so that you could slide along metal rails, or do tricks with them. And that's why Sonic starts to grind on rails in this game, and it's something he's done from every game ever since. Even after the sponsorship ended. Matthew: That is so turn of the century. Ian: It is so turn of the century. It's like, yes, one of your, one of your character's best power ups is licensed product. But while Sonic is there sliding around on his branded shoes, Shadow isn't fast like Sonic. He's using the Emeralds to teleport and speed himself around, and he doesn't run. He starts to levitate and, and rollerblade with like jets of energy. Matthew: That was very disorienting, seeing that at first. Yeah. Then I realized, it was these, like, they could tell if they were rockets or repulsors or what. But he was, he was never actually in contact with the ground. And you're right, it was very much a rollerblade kind of gait that he had. Ian: Yeah, so he's, like, Sonic's there running with his legs turning into a blur, and Shadow just smoothly moving across, but they're keeping pace with each other. It has this very, I'm the high effort one, and I play it cool. It establishes their personalities very front and center. Matthew: Yeah, it's very much I'm walking through the airport, oh, I'm next to you on the people mover. Ian: Yes! And we're keeping pace. That's the vibe at air. Very much so. Meanwhile, I admit Tails and Eggman are just chipper or disgruntled giving you plot information constantly. They are full of exposition, but they are excellent at doing so. And as we have our, our two different sides gather the Chaos Emeralds we have a third little bit of story going on with a pair of characters. We have Knuckles the Echidna, Defender of the Master Emerald, and Rouge the Bat, who is A jewel thief attempting to steal the emerald. The master emerald is a giant emerald the size of one of our characters that acts as kind of a failsafe switch. It turns off the other emeralds, it controls them. It's the Master Emerald in that sense. So, if you're gonna fire up a giant weapon using these seven powerful gemstones, you kind of want to get the gemstone that also can turn them off. Just to pick it up and keep it from happening. Matthew: So that's the control rod for the energy source that is the other emeralds. Ian: Yep. But Knuckles decides the best way to prevent the control rod of the Master Emerald from falling into the wrong hands is to smash it. Matthew: So he wants to keep the bad guys from using the super weapon. And his manner of doing that is to destroy the thing that can contain the power of the superweapon. Ian: Tails is the brains of the operation, Knuckles is not. But Knuckles and Rouge have their own side missions, which is going around collecting the pieces of the emerald. Which is kind of a game of hot and cold flying around, trying to find them in these large maze like environments. It's much less linear than either of the other types of stages. Some people love them, some people hate them. But their story is almost a separate third path because it only vaguely ties back in to the hero and dark stories as they go. What is the super weapon that Dr. Robotnik is trying to set up? The space colony Ark, a giant half a death star, best way I can describe it, Matthew: that's about right Ian: floating around the planet that was made by his grandfather. So apparently, apparently, Giant technological devices that have a vague egg or the shape of the family face, which is a large long nose and large mustache set, runs in the family. This is like a tradition he's following in the family footsteps because His grandfather looks exactly like him. It's the same character model in a different lab coat. And this is where the story gets weirdly dark. And I don't mean dark storyline, I mean like, I'm a kid, and I'm still amazed that this part of the story was in there because it really shook me. We get to learn Shadow's backstory. Matthew: This is pretty heavy. Ian: This is heavy stuff. Matthew: It really is. Ian: Do you want to try to give an explanation? I want to know how much you were able to pick up of it. Because, yeah. Matthew: Very. I, again, I got a lot of vibe. I'm not sure I got the, the story points. But there's a, there was Maria who was on board the Ark. Mm hmm. And. Was it Gunn who came, like, boarded the Ark because , the Grandfather's research was too dangerous? Mm hmm. And they destroyed or took the research and faked an accident to shut down the Ark to cover their tracks? Yes. Which resulted in many deaths, including Maria's. Yeah. Yeah, this is pretty heavy for a game that you're playing at like 12 years old. Ian: Yeah, I'm like, I'm like 12 years old and I get to, I get to watch the story of a, a scientist working for the government to create giant floating super weapon lasers and genetic experimentation creating the ultimate life form. Matthew: Oh, and that's what he was creating when he was building Sonic? Yeah. Sonic. Shadow, excuse me. I get them confused too. Ian: Exactly. Yes. Shadow is one of Gerald Robotnik's creations. A genetically modified ultimate life form. Weirdly happens to be very similar to Blue Hedgehog Hero of the franchise. What are the odds? What are the odds? Matthew: But Maria was just an actual human girl? Ian: Maria was Gerald Robotnik's granddaughter, Eggman's cousin. And so you get the story of like, Shadow the Hedgehog raised by Eggman's uncle as one of his experiments. Watching as his best friend Maria is shot and killed by the government as they raid and shut down the experiments they were funding. And take all the research, which includes a now very traumatized and amnesiac Shadow. Matthew: Now this was the era of the X Files and Trust No One and shadowy government organizations. They leaned into that hard, didn't they? Ian: They leaned in so hard. And, and Gunn doesn't do anything by half measures. If they're going to shut down a thing, they barge in. If they're going to try to capture a hedgehog, they're going to throw an entire branded semi truck that is twice as wide as normal to barrel at it and try to kill it. When that doesn't work, they will send walker mechs full of missile pods at you. They just go all out. But they are shadowy. And not in terms of the hedgehog gets really weird that his name is shadow. Sometimes. Matthew: Yes, Ian: it gets hard to talk. But they, they are just aggressive and they feel omnipresent because their robots are everywhere, popping up in all sorts of locations and attacking you. But they, they are the bad guys through and through. Matthew: Yeah, you've got the antagonist in the form of Eggman for most of the story. But the real bad guys are GUN. Ian: Yeah, eventually everybody makes it to the abandoned space colony ark. This includes Knuckles and Rouge, who have gathered most of the Master Emeralds. Although, I am surprised Knuckles punched Emerald pieces so hard they were in space. That's pretty impressive. Matthew: Well, that is his one thing. Ian: That is his one thing. Matthew: He can punch. Ian: He is literally named for that. Matthew: Yes. Well, yeah, there's a theme there. There, there is, Gun is called Gun. The person with the power of punch is called Knuckles. Ian: The guy who moves fast is called Sonic. His dark counterpart is called Shadow. Yes. The femme fatale is Rouge. Matthew: And have we talked about Amy Rose yet? Ian: No, we haven't actually. Matthew: I don't want to jump ahead if you're getting to her, but. Oh Ian: no, please do, please hop in. First of all, Matthew: I could kind of figure out what kind of animal everybody's supposed to be. What is Amy Rose? Ian: Also a hedgehog. Matthew: Okay, just not necessarily shaped similarly to Sonic, but she's like a pink hedgehog. Ian: Pink hedgehog. And she is classically, like, in love with Sonic in a crush way, but he is He's married to the running and he's not really looking for a relationship, but Amy Chases after him. That's the entire setup, Matthew: right? Ian: But she's weirdly tenacious and really good at like instigating plot points when needed Matthew: It's almost as if, well, if I make this more complicated, and give us something that a hero has to deal with, that means Sonic's gonna hang around longer to deal with it. Ian: And there's a little bit of the, like, I've been running after Sonic for so long, I wind up standing around where danger is. Yes. I can deal with it now. Like, everyone else is like, I guess I'm the chosen one. Amy. I chose this, but she's kind of immediately trying to chase after Sonic keeps running into shadow keeps telling him. Maybe you're not a bad guy. Did you think of like what you're doing? And why you're trying to like, fire up a super weapon? Why? Why are you doing that? Matthew: It's kind of what's the other You archetypical role for a female character in a story like this is, well, there's the femme fatale in the form of Rouge, and then there's the everybody's therapist in the form of Amy Rose. Ian: Oh, absolutely. There's a little bit, if I'm going back to describing this, like diehard, there's a little bit of the, like the, the person on the good guy side who gets to talk directly to the bad guy that was similar to the wife who is stuck in the prisoner's aspect, where it's like, I'm stuck here and I get to, I get to be the one to like ask you, why are you doing this , are you sure you wanna do this? Yep. You know, you're not gonna succeed at this. But they get onto the, Space Colony arc, which is weird and wild and one, the most complex of all of these complex locations, I think, is the arc, but it has such a cool aesthetic. It is sci fi to the max. This is maximum sci fi going on. Matthew: Yes, it's kind of a post cyberpunk Space Colony kind of of look to it. It reminds me a little bit of what we get in the Bubblegum Crisis TV series, in terms of the way the space colony is designed with the interesting combination of brushed metals and neon lighting. Ian: Yeah, neon lighting and pneumatic tube systems. Oh yes. To be able to like send stuff around via zero gravity, it's kind of, that kind of makes sense. But yeah, Matthew: more sense than a loop de loop on a highway, at least. Ian: More, yeah, more, it makes, space makes more sense than the ground or the ancient Egyptian pyramid they fought their way through to get a missile to go to space. Matthew: Oh right, yeah, there was the pyramid, there were mines, all kinds of things they had to deal with. All sorts Ian: of stuff. Underground. But, as they were hunting for the Chaos Emeralds, but, they plug the, our bad guys are there plugging Chaos Emeralds into the giant central pillar, which is, The most awesome computer room ever. Ha ha ha ha. Catwalks to a giant center full of machinery. Matthew: That's great. And most of the floor is glass looking out into space. Exactly. Very cool. Very cool. Ian: There's so much about this that like, once again, it's so much vibe there's this entire time you get a lot of rock tracks once again by crush 40 but every single character has a theme song that pops up when they're doing stuff, every single character has a aesthetic to their entire, like a color scheme and a vibe of how they explore, and they've got these little tiny audio clips when you're playing that keep their personality going. Almost every level ends with a cutscene. There's a lot of story here, and you're getting more of it in animated movie form than you are in the actual levels. Actual levels might have tiny bits, but you're really achieving the next piece of the movie . Matthew: Now how did that feel when you were playing it? Did it feel as if these cutscenes became intrusive and you wanted to get back to the gameplay? Or were, they the reward for winning the gameplay and you were looking forward to enjoying the cutscenes? Ian: For me, the first time I played it, they were the reward. It was a, I figured out how to solve the puzzle of playing the level, and I get the reward of the next piece of the story. Okay. Later on, the game has a built in challenge system of trying to play the levels better, faster, complete different challenges within them. Matthew: Oh. Ian: So, there's a reason to go back and play each of the levels again. Mm Matthew: hmm. Ian: But the actual, like, playing through it that first time, that narrative is what's driving you forward. And you're never playing the same type of character twice. You're playing Sonic, then you're playing as Tails, who plays like Eggman, and then you, or maybe you'll play Eggman, and then you'll play Shadow, and then you'll get a Rouge level, and then you might get a Shadow level. They're not always in the same order, even, but it's always a different thing, so it gives you this back and forth, and trying the different methods, and learning the different kind of abilities of your characters, which is very fun. And at any point you can pause and if you started the game up again, there is an audio clip with a full text recap of where you are in the story every single time. So if you leave and come back a month later, you'll start up the dark story and you'll get Shadow the Hedgehog reading you an explanation about what's going on. I've gathered the emeralds for Dr. Robotnik, kind of thing. Matthew: Oh, I wish more games had that. I don't know how many Final Fantasy games I played non stop for a month, month and a half, and then I don't touch it for six months, and I come back and try to figure out where was I? What was I doing? Which one was I? Mm hmm. The fact Ian: that they put that in tells you that the story was very important to this. They were telling an entire narrative, and this was not just a new game. It was the sequel to the original Sonic Adventure, which was the first big 3D Sonic game on the Dreamcast console. And this was also, I believe, around the time of one of Sonic the Hedgehog's anniversaries as a franchise. Yeah. So they're kind of celebrating how far they've gotten as a franchise. Matthew: Hmm. Ian: By introducing this dark counterpoint and taking their story extra seriously to that next level. Matthew: Let's have it grow up with the kids who grew up with Sonic. Ian: Exactly. Honestly, the Adventure series, to modern Sonic fans, is a turning point. Where there's a classic Sonic and a modern Sonic straight up to newer games using those distinctions as well. Matthew: And I think it's meaningful that this is not called Sonic RPG. It is not called Sonic 3D. It is called Sonic Adventure. Ian: Mm hmm. Matthew: The story is the point. Ian: The story is the point. Now, interestingly enough, the console they put on that Dreamcast console didn't do great. It faltered, and in the same year that this was released for the Dreamcast is the year it came out for the So that's it. Nintendo GameCube, they ported it over in the same year, because they knew that the console they put on it wasn't going anywhere. But that also tells me more that the story was important. They didn't want to let this story be. Sit on something and not be seen they wanted to share it Matthew: and that's the time. That's that Sega was pivoting to not doing their own consoles and Partnering with Nintendo and other platforms to put their games there Ian: Exactly. Mm hmm So this was the first Sonic game to ever show up on a Nintendo console the blue hedgehog who was specifically designed as an An edgy counter to the classic Mario was now on Mario's home turf. Matthew: Somewhere downstairs in the archives, I've got an early copy of Wired Magazine. With the cover is Sonic sitting behind a big Oak executive desk. And the cover story is about how Sega has now taken control of the video game market. And rested it from the likes of Nintendo. That was a few years before this. Ian: That was a few years before this. Matthew: I think it was around the time that Star Fox was in its ascendance. And that was kind of a Nintendo counterpart to some of the stuff that Sonic was doing so successfully. Ian: Mm hmm. This is where the story gets really weird, I'm gonna say. Matthew: Oh, this is where it gets weird. Okay. This Ian: is where it gets weird. I'm gonna try to explain it properly. Once on the Ark, Tails creates a fake Chaos Emerald. And tries to trick the bad guys into using it, which will destroy the giant superweapon of the Ark. Matthew: Okay, that's the part I hadn't quite figured out. What was the reason for creating the fake Chaos Emerald? I knew it became important. I didn't know why Tails did this in the first place. Ian: So Tails makes like, oh, we'll give him this fake emerald. He'll plug it in and it'll short circuit the whole thing and fry his plans. Oh, that's great. Matthew: And is that before or after Eggman makes his ultimatum demands to Earth and shows off the weapon? Ian: I think that's right after. Okay. Where Eggman just like takes over Times Square and all the TVs on Earth. Yes. And presents the wildest infomercial of like, give me all the money within 24 hours, or I will destroy the earth. And to prove it, I'm gonna shoot half the moon . Matthew: Now here's a, here's a little problem with your plan here, doctor. If, if I may, if you blow up half the moon. You have already destroyed the earth. There's not any real option for them to save themselves by giving you all the money or whatever you want. Ian: It's like, of all the things, it's just like, you get this dramatic scene where he's got this, this weapon at only half power, I believe. They've only gotten some of the emeralds, I believe. Matthew: Yeah, it's it's an impressive scene. It is very powerful. Oh, yeah, it looks amazing. But it's like, oh, did he? Oh, no, the he's warning. He's going to destroy the earth. Ian: Yeah. Okay. This is this is where like the stories of the original games were like, Dr. Eggman captured all the woodland critters and made them the power sources running on little treadmills to run his robots. And now we're at like, I've got this decommissioned military laser, and I've destroyed the moon. Give me money. What? Ha There Even for the amount of time that Sonic had been a franchise, this was an escalation of grand proportions. This was very much showing our bad guys to be bad guys, dark for sure. My goodness. But Shadow is just being aloof and he kind of is doing what Eggman wants because Eggman released him. Shadow seems very eager to just fire the weapon and kill all the humans. He's really not into this whole like, Caring about others thing Matthew: and that's because of what happened to Maria, right? Ian: Yeah, he saw his best friend get shot He's like, well, I have no reason Everybody goes he is he is in not in a good place. No, Matthew: And it's the classic story trope of you had this kind loving person in your life who was your best friend and because you lost her you're going to destroy all life on the planet Like, you didn't take any lessons from this person you say you regard so highly. Ian: Exactly. Although he's kind of fulfilling what he was designed to do. He was being built by a weapons manufacturer. I am the ultimate life form. The ultimate weapon kind of thing. There's a very, like, this is my dark purpose aspect to his thought process. But he's not learning Maria's lesson. Matthew: Is, is this Weyland Yutani? Yes. Did Weyland Yutani combine Xenomorph DNA with Hedgehog DNA and create Shadow? Ian: I'm going to tell you about some later games right now for a moment. Okay. Shadow is in fact part alien. Okay. And Gunn did make a large number of androids of him to try to recreate it. And the fact that he is Hedgehoggy shaped is more. There's a lot of mythology about hedgehogs that are going to save the world. Most of the time it's Sonic, but it means that when you make something super powerful designs to control that it kind of takes the shape of the guy we put on all of the murals that's going to save us anyway. So there's a lot of Weyland Yutani in this. Yes. Shadow the Hedgehog is absolutely like it. Okay. Xenomorph Mickey Mouse, in that sense. Oh, you hit the nail on the head so right. But Eggman and Shadow figure out that there's this plot against them and throw Sonic into space. Which is the most direct version of trying to kill Sonic the Hedgehog I think Eggman has ever done in any of the games. It's like, oh yes, I'll attack you with a robot that has an obvious weak point. I'll throw a mashy spike plate at you. How about I just chuck you into the vacuum of space? Either the lack of air or the re entry fire is going to get rid of you once and for all. But Sonic uses the teleport move he's been watching Shadow use the entire time which adds to the whole we're similar thing Cuz Shadow just watched his signature super ability That's supposed to be only for the ultimate life form get used by this blue faker Matthew: and does he do that with the fake emerald? Ian: Yes, which implies that Tails can make emeralds good enough to be used as power sources, which kind of implies, why do we need the real ones? Matthew: And that also suggests that Tails could make as many of these super weapons as he wants to. Ian: Yes, The secret part of the backstory of Sonic Adventure 2 is Tails is the most terrifying character in the story. Eggman has to go steal his grandfather's creation to actually threaten the Earth. Tails could just do it on a Tuesday if he wanted, but he's too nice. So now we've got The entirety of the teams facing off against each other shadows gaining respect for Sonic Rouge and Knuckles have each completed their own half of the Emerald. So the entire master Emerald is done and Eggman is trying to continue to threaten the Earth to gain his ransom. The moment they plug in the final Emerald though, the entire facility starts up its engines and starts hurtling towards the Earth. Matthew: It's a colony drop! Ian: It's a colony drop! Hey, all you Gundam fans, get ready! Space Colony Ark is falling, and we get Gerald Robotnik, his grandfather, putting up a broadcast, pretty much saying, You took all of my research, government. I'll take all your planets. So, Shadow's actually following gerald Robotnik, not Ivo Robotnik's plan the entire time. It's time to hurtle the entire space station at the planet. Matthew: And Ivo Robotnik starts to have a change of heart at this point, doesn't he? Ian: Yeah, he's kind of like, I'd threaten the Earth, but I'm not gonna shoot it. That's where I keep all my stuff. Right. All the money is useless if I shoot them. Like, I wanted power, not destruction. There's kind of a rationality to Robotnik in there. But this is where you get to the everybody is now at risk. This is also weirdly enough where we get to learn that this entire time Rouge has been a government spy. Matthew: Yes, that took me by surprise. Ian: She's a gun agent. Matthew: Yes, and she's been out there to gain intel about Robotnik and his plans and about Shadow, right? Yeah. Ian: Yeah, it's like, okay, we never actually used this thing that we put in the basement. Follow it, find out what it does. I gotta think she's gonna get in trouble for not stopping the whole half the moon thing. Yeah, Matthew: yeah, that was gonna come up in the performance review. Ian: I think so. That's a bit of a mess up. But everyone has to work together now to stop the arc from colliding with the planet because Oh, everybody but Shadow. Everybody but Shadow is like, Don't destroy the earth. That's where we keep our stuff. Let's prevent this. And this is I'm going to the gameplay for a moment. This is a really fun bit because you get every single character in the same level. Matthew: Yes, that looks cool. Ian: As you bounce between them. It is very fun. It's kind of a grand finale of all the gameplay elements you've learned . Matthew: I was glad that this was one component of gameplay that that video you sent me to included a lot of it. That was fun to watch and I could see that would be really exciting to play. Ian: It's kind of the one level that has actual story to it. Meanwhile, Amy Rose, who has ventured onto the space colony as well, stands in the control room and pleads Shadow to go help. And standing there where Maria had died, he finally remembers that she asked him to protect all mankind, not kill them all, and immediately turns around and helps everybody. Which is very sweet. It's a bit of a, it's a bit of a last minute redemption. But it is very sweet. Yep. Then they encounter the prototype of the ultimate life form that's piloting the entire arc into the planet. Yeah. Matthew: It's like, oh, now we're in Dune. Ian: Okay. Yeah. So apparently genetic research to create the ultimate life form goes. Starting material, Giant Lizard Hedgehog. He got it in two. I gotta give Gerald Robotnik that. He got it in only two tries, apparently. But he put the giant lizard as the pilot for Throwing the entire arc at the planet, and it has all of the emeralds to do its powerful thrust towards the planet. Which means they've got to grab the master emerald and perform an ancient ritual to stop the emeralds. Because this is a world of technology and magic. I gotta say, that magical chant section is so cool. Although really odd that there's an ancient temple inside the giant space station. Matthew: Yes. Ian: It's like, hmm, I guess this is needed to run this thing? I guess? I've met enough engineers where it's like, I need you to like, put this piece of sandstone in the back corner of your PC case, and it'll run just fine. Or it's like, hey, can you stand there and just chant? But this ancient thing we found to be scribbled on a wall somewhere and suddenly, you'll have no driver issues ever. They would do it. Matthew: This is the engineering versus science. You know, I don't care how this works. All I know is that when I give it this input, I get that output. And that's what I need. So I'm going to put this in the space station. Ian: I know that if I put a Stonehenge and seven glowing emeralds inside this space station, the laser works. Yes. You know what? Throwing up my hands, submitting the documents. Matthew: Just have the weights guys sign off on it so that we can launch it and we're good to go. Ian: Oh yeah. Between that and the hedgehog sized tubes, we're just fine. And all the grind rails in space. Matthew: That's kind of the opposite of what you want to be dealing with when you're in zero gravity, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Something that you're gonna just bounce off of. Ian: Yeah, it's like, I guess, I guess magnetic? Matthew: Oh, I guess so. Ian: Is there a magnetic grind rail? Matthew: Yeah, maybe. Were there magnetic versions of those soap shoes? Is that what they're plugging? Ian: I think they've got I don't, maybe? I gotta say, it's, it was such an awesome advertisement. I don't know if the soap company is still around. Ah, they went, are they still going? Matthew: I bet somebody has the trademark. Transcribed Even if they're not making the same shoes. They merged with the people who made Heelys. Oh, well, that that's that's kind of makes sense. Ian: Yeah, that makes so much sense. Oh, so you could get soap shoes with skates in them. You could actually act like Shadow. Just skate around grind on rails. Okay don't act like Shadow in the last part though because Sonic and Shadow have to turn into super powered forms using the emeralds and fight off the giant lizard. But they're gonna run out of energy. They don't have enough. So Shadow sacrifices himself, saves Sonic, and plummets to the Earth, fulfilling his promise to Maria. And the game ends kind of on this bittersweet note of a tribute to Shadow the Hedgehog, this great hero that actually did save everybody. Matthew: Yeah, that's also a pretty heavy ending for a game that was mostly for kids. Ian: Yeah, this is like, yeah, 2001, a game for kids off of this, you know, bright title. Animal mascot franchise, and we've got a heroic death sacrifice of plummeting to the surface of the planet after defeating the genetic prototype from your creator who is bent on destroying all of life on earth. Deep stuff. Matthew: Well, it really did make an interesting story. It did. Watching through it with the cutscenes and some key gameplay. Ian: I was hoping that getting to watch it, you'd see how this had that kind of action movie back and forth adventuring through aspect. And it just pulled so much on the same strings in my mind of this situation by situation hero fighting their way through and these, you know, Sinister bad guys trying to fulfill their master plot. Yep. It's, it's a classic formula, but there's something, Yeah. Something very, very core to this version. I think I'm leading into our final discussion, but if there's more you want to say before we get to our review stuff, like any other parts that really stood out to you. Matthew: Well, there is definitely something else that I think needs to be acknowledged here. I think there's another part of this that I watched you play for hours and hours. Ian: The Chao Garden! So yes, in the middle, we were describing about how playing this game was this like, continual action movie of dark and depressing storyline beats and everything else. And this, this grand adventure, in between all of them on every stage, you can get a key and go to the most complicated virtual pet simulation you might ever see. The Chau are little creatures you can raise using pieces of things you picked up from the levels, be that tiny animals you rescue or the, the power cores of the robots you destroy. Hopefully. And you can raise them, teach them how to swim, how to climb trees, how to fight in karate matches, you get to raise them, and the weirdest, the wild thing is like, playing hero in dark even affects this. Where it's like, if you play as the dark characters, you can raise your Chao to look more sinister, and unlock an entire evil, dark garden. Where you can raise them, , or you can play with the hero characters, and make them look angelic, and get an island in the clouds kind of themed room. This is a full thing with like, reincarnation, and crossbreeding, and it's wildly complex. And so it's really weird to play this game and go through the story of like, you finished that puzzle. Okay, let's spend 30 minutes raising my virtual pet. Yay! Okay, I'll start the story back up again. Did the government just shoot that little girl? What's going on here? Just in case this wasn't already a heavy story, it is full of tonal whiplash. I love the Chao Garden though. Anyone who comes to see my streams online right now knows that I start every stream now, every Thursday I can, with like 20 minutes of playing the Chao Garden, so you can come and join me on stuff, it's, it's excellent. But it's, it's a completely separate game to some extent, but it is tied directly into how you play this game, and it is completely devoid from the narrative. It is also very fun, though, to see, like, I'm Shadow the Hedgehog. I want to destroy all life on the planet. There, there, little buddy. Pets the chow in the garden, brings them fruit, teaches it to swim. It's like, this is way too nurturing for what you were just doing in that cutscene a little while ago. Matthew: I remember watching you play that for hours. Ian: I loved the Chao Garden. The Chao Garden is, it's a completely separate game, but it is so good, and it is still all the visual aesthetic. The entrance to the room is this weird sci fi teleporter room with a vague ancient aesthetic of some of its technology. It's got these grand green hills and floating islands and such. It's got a daycare with a black market in the corner, just for more, just for more of that weird fridge logic of like, what's going on here? And there's something about like, oh, yeah, I've raised my little guy I can send him on a a grand race against the other chow or I can watch him fight a five part karate match And make the other chow cry. It's like what the yes, it's it's weird and fun But, the story never acknowledges it. Matthew: No, no, it's never mentioned. What these things are, it never is part of the world of the story, is it? Ian: They are actually explained in the original Sonic Adventure. Matthew: Oh, oh, they are. What is that? Ian: The original Sonic Adventure, which was put out in 98, Yeah. Wow. Didn't come to the GameCube until like 2003. Yeah. So you had to wait two years to get a game that was five years old to actually know what they were. And it turns out they're like primordial pieces of a grand beast that would destroy the universe if it used all seven Chaos Emeralds as kind of a grand arbiter of humanity. Maybe? Matthew: Yeah. Okay. It's like the spawn of Cthulhu, but as Cabbage Patch dolls. Ian: Absolutely. It literally, Sonic Adventure is Dr. Robotnik thinks he can unleash Blue Gatorade Cthulhu and control it, and he can't Blue Gatorade Cthulhu just wants to go sit as a puddle on top of a hill and watch over all of the Chao, because Chaos, that's why they're called Chao, they are not quite Chaos. Matthew: Oh, okay. I, I still think they should be pronounced cow then. Ian: Yes. And yeah, they're part of like the Chaos Emerald lore. of these ancient gems of lost civilizations that will be able to, bring judgment upon the planet if needed, which also adds to the weirdest thing. It's like, like, I'm the ultimate life form. I could destroy everybody. Same dude. That's pretty much what the entire interaction becomes. It's like, these actually are kind of similar. Yeah. I like that. There is actually a reference to the Chao in the main game, but it's only in the background. There's a lot of, there is a lot of Signage. Yes. All throughout the game for Chao in Space 2. Matthew: Oh, yes, I saw that. It's like it's a movie ads or something, right? It's a movie ad. Ian: The logo, the logo is parodying some of the early concept art for the Sonic Adventure 2 logo. And it literally, from the first level, tells you the game will end in space by doing so. Chao in space 2. Space 2. Yep. They, they, they, they do that. Matthew: Well, now that we've acknowledged the mighty Chao Garden and its importance to the game. Ian: Yes, the Chao Garden. Matthew: Yeah, yes, you're right. It's we're moving towards our final questions. Ian: We're moving towards our final questions, but before we do, I'd like to thank you all so much for listening to the IMMP. If you like what we do, please subscribe, share with your friends. You can go to immproject. com to see our entire back catalogue we've also got a contact page there if there's things you'd like to suggest, be that things you, you think might have been in my childhood, or for our usual episodes, things from my dad's childhood that he can show me for what we watch next. You can also go to our Patreon. We've got exclusive content there available, and at our highest tier, you can even join the Intermillennium Media Project Movie Club. You want to experience what it's like to be me on every episode, except when I take over, where my dad shows me something I didn't know about before, and I get to experience it for the first time? The Immu Movie Club lets you do exactly that. We'll send you a box with new with a piece of content that we'll be recording about in an upcoming episode, and you can join in and watch it for yourself before it ever comes out. Yeah. Surprise DVD every few months. It's excellent. It's very fun. We've been doing this for years and I've had a delightful time and I'm excited to get to keep doing so more. It is the new year, new opportunities coming around and it's a great time to join in and Try the IMMP experience meanwhile, Dad, where can they find you online? Matthew: You can find me at ByMatthewPorter. com. That's where you'll find links to what I'm doing online. Including my YouTube page, which is also conveniently called ByMatthew Porter. And there you'll find some travel things, and you'll also find the Drafthouse Diary, where I review every single one of my many, many visits to Alamo Drafthouse Theaters around the country. And Ian, where can people find you? Ian: I can be found as item crafting most places such as on Blue Sky or Item Crafting Live on Twitch. Come on over and join me for some chow garden and some video game and crafting fun. It can also be found@itemcrafting.com or item crafting on Etsy. Matthew: Wow. Okay. I guess it's that time. It's that Ian: time. So you did not get to play the game, I want to review this purely as a story. Okay. Having watched this as a narrative story, what did you think of Sonic Adventure 2? Matthew: I, I, I liked the story very much. I found it a little jarring and hard to follow in the format in which I watched it. Which was, again, the cutscenes with key bits of gameplay as a YouTube video. But, between that and remembering watching actual gameplay, I enjoyed it. And it was interesting. And it was especially interesting thinking about it in the context of an early aughts video game. Ian: Oh yeah. So, our standard thing is Thinking of our, our shows as a screen or no screen. I guess in this case it might be play or no play. Yeah. But we'll have to kind of decide. Matthew: I don't know if I would recommend people just kind of watch the cut scenes the way I did unless you're somebody who enjoys games enough that you want that lore, you want that view of this classic and important pivotal game. It's a good way to kind of absorb what's so important about it, but it did leave me interested in playing at least some of this game to get a sense of the immersion that I was missing in watching it on video. Ian: Mm hmm. I'm gonna say play. I love the game. Yeah. I'm gonna be very honest. It is not always a great game. It is a game that has its problems. It is a, an attempt to bring a character to 3D that didn't always work in 3D. The game is known for having weird places where you can fly off the map and problems and hangups and some of its later ports and such are not always great. But it is, I think, a fun and excellent game. It's something I go back to a lot, so I'm gonna say it is absolutely a play for me. Alright. The next part is Revive, Reboot, or Rest in Peace. That is discussing the story and whether or not we want more stories that continue its lore, if we want to see a new version of it, or if this is a story that should just be left as it is. As usual, though, I've got to talk about what already exists before we establish that. Oh, yes. Sonic the Hedgehog is a franchise that says it's canon. Everything is canon, except for, I think, one game that got, that got removed. Shadow didn't die. He did die, but he comes back. He was too popular. He keeps coming back. And he always winds up with new amnesia, so he can be moody again. Matthew: I know I learned that I was really a bad guy last time, but I forgot that, so I'm now dark and edgy. Ian: He is Shadow the Edgehog. Just drop the hat. Shadow got his own game called Shadow the Hedgehog, where he comes back, learns he's part alien, works for gun, and runs around using firearms to blow stuff up all the time. Wow. He shows up in new games and just recently there was a new game, which is going back and dealing with time travel and him dealing with his story. But he keeps showing up. He keeps getting in trouble. , he keeps having to question his own existence. He is a walking existential crisis that has shown up in every game almost since 2001. . They cannot let this hedgehog rest or die. And even then, part of the reason why talking about it now works so well is that a lot of you might have actually seen a version that's a lot like this story just recently. Because just for the holiday season the third Sonic the Hedgehog movie came out. And it's, it's inspired narratively by Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, or Sonic Adventure 2's story, introducing Shadow to the Sonic the and I do say they got the right guy to voice him. Shadow the Hedgehog voiced by Keanu Reeves is excellent. That works. It works so well. He can put all of the all of the angsty into it, but they're doing the whole story. They're doing Gerald Robotnik. They're doing Maria. They're doing, I don't, I don't believe they've got the space colony aspect, but they've got the whole like shadow is a projected guns basement thing going on. So it's it's kind of wild that this story is still popular enough. It's getting fresh versions even now. Matthew: And there's enough going on there that we're going to have to talk about that. And that's something you'll find on our Patreon feed. Absolutely. That discussion, because as discussed before, A few years ago on our Patreon feed, and I think we dropped that on the main podcast feed at one point. We are some of the few people who seem to really like, in spite of ourselves, the first Sonic movie. Ian: Yeah! The second one got a lot of popularity later, but the first one was not always the best received. Matthew: Yeah, and the, and I didn't like the second one as much as I liked the first one. But Watching this this video of Sonic Adventure 2, I kind of wished for more of that that sense in the movies, and we finally get some of that in the third movie. Oh Ian: yeah and they also added something else, showing up in sections of Sonic 3. Chau! Chau are in there! They didn't forget them! Matthew: And we're kind of giving away the fact that we're recording this before we've had a chance to see this third movie. We have. This is, this Ian: is recorded before it comes out, but Matthew: We will have, we will have seen it by the time this drops. And that's why I'm confident we're going to want to talk about that for the Patreon. Absolutely. But I am really, really looking forward to getting a chance to see that. Ian: Mm hmm. So, with all of this in mind, with the fact that this story is being retold, the fact that this story is still kind of important to the lore in that sense, what are your thoughts about it as a story? Is this something you'd want to see more continuations of? Is this something you'd want to see a fresh version of directly? Or is this something you think we might have enough of? Is this a revive, a reboot, or a rest in peace? Matthew: I think it is, it is a revive. I like the fact that it added so much dimension to the Sonic franchise when it came out. I am happy for them to continue building upon this and building upon all the other aspects of all the other games that they have have created. Turned into this great big saga. I could maybe see my way towards a Reboot in that remake slash remaster kind of approach not change everything and just use the original Concepts but give us something that solves some of those gameplay issues some of those Coding issues that exist because this was a very ambitious game made 20 years ago, more than 20 years ago. Ian: Yeah, they kind of keep doing little bits of it. They keep on calling back to specific levels. Multiple games have done that opening from the hero's story of falling out of the helicopter and starting to snowboard down a street. And the classic song Live and Learn still shows up in plenty of the games as a fan favorite. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I really would love to see them remake this game completely, so that you could experience that story as it was. I'd love to see them go in and give us the, not the continuation, but the grand version of this. Matthew: Right, and not as a way of changing, The story or its place in the in the the larger story But as like you say in a better way to experience that pivotal point. I think we're we're Reasonably divided on this and that we are each saying. Yes revive keep keep doing it and While you're at it give us a better version of this one that kind of started what we now know as the whole Sonic universe Ian: Yes, please Thank you for letting me take over, Dad. I was so caught off guard with how the tone of, the tone of Die Hard was just so in line with the absolute pure tone piece of Sonic that I, I wanted to share it, and it was so timely. I thank you very much. This was fun. Matthew: Well, I am so glad you did because I find that fascinating because in addition to getting your take on some of the, the old movies and TV shows and books that I, I make you experience for this podcast, the fact that you have different connections that you draw between things is part of what is so interesting to hear about. So the fact that this was such an unexpected connection even for you that you wanted to delve into it more deeply. That was great. I had a lot of fun watching what you showed me on this and and a lot of fun talking about it with you. Why, thank you. And I think I think 2025 is off to a good start at the IMMP. Ian: I think there are some amazing big things coming this year. Matthew: Yes, indeed. Ian: So please join us in a couple of weeks where we'll be back to our regularly scheduled trips into the 20th century with my father pulling me through his childhood in a wonderful way. And I am excited to see what comes Matthew: next. And in the meantime, find something new to play.