Just this week I acquired a Dreamcast, and have finally begun making some headway into a corner of video game history that I briefly intersected with when I was younger and only observed from afar thereafter, until now. Then as now, Sonic Adventure appears as the natural choice in learning the initial personality and feel of the system, and while my impressions of the game as a whole were very glowing--in fact, let's rewind for a moment here:
... right, as I was saying, the game is good; exceptionally so. I don't doubt that people are aware of the longstanding memetic reputation the extended playable cast in this game possess that the thread title is riffing on, but I wanted to talk a little about what makes each of them interesting and worthwhile presences in Sonic Adventure, the video game, speaking as someone who doesn't play or know the series well and has no particular attachment nor revulsion towards its myriad entries. Most assessments still read too cynical by half even to a neophyte's eyes and ears, and well contrary to how delightful I found this first foray into 3D especially because of its ensemble approach. Some thoughts per character and the play experience therein, in the order the game presents them through its interface:
Sonic
The above blurb was written after having completed Sonic's scenario, so the overall impressions mostly pertain to his particular niche and rhythm of play. Every player begins Adventure as Sonic, and his role as the center from which all other types of movement and playstyles branch out is key to his identity as he is the initial lens through which the rules of the game are internalized and taught to the player, through a scenario that is double the length of even the most sizable of the other characters's stories. The extended duration serves multiple purposes in being so frenetic and setpiece-filled that it may be all that one desires to see of the game after it's concluded--and if not, having provided a valuable baseline in the nuances of character control and the quirks of the game's wildly unpredictable level design concepts, ready to be filtered through the unique perspectives of characters with different movesets and priorities than the speed-and-adrenaline blue blur.
When the final leg of the story unlocks, and Sonic returns to the role of player character, the game creates its own bookend not only narratively, but mechanically in the purely experiental way video games as an interactive medium can: Sonic has no new abilities that he's gained in the interim, but he feels like a whole new character as the player now returns to his set of verbs with hours of additional experience that transform the once reckless and wild bursts of speed and explosive dashes into maneuvers of second-nature precision and efficiency.
Tails
Adventure utilizes an interwoven storytelling approach where the same basic events are told from multiple perspectives across characters, and with this inevitably comes overlap both in the narrative of the story and the narrative of the play sequence, the wheres and the hows of what happens. The character affected most by this is Tails, and considering how thematically--should you deign to earnestly consider that Adventure does possess such notions, whatever the thoughts are regarding the execution--his tale is one of following in Sonic's footsteps aspirationally while being swept away by the force of his personality on an individual basis, this might not be accidental or at the very least provides ample resources for such a reading. The narrative is literalized very directly through the game mechanics themselves, as Tails chases Sonic through veritable proving grounds that the elder stateshog of running real fast has already charted in his own telling, and so the overcoming of Sonic is accomplished by making use of the abilities that are unique to Tails as a person--his flight and the shortcut opportunities it provides--and not simply mimicking his role model to a tee. The least interesting of the secondary scenarios for its redundancy is thus contextualized as a cute little story of self-actualization for the perpetual sidekick figure in dire need of such.
(knock knock it's) Knuckles
This was the point at which I truly fell head over heels for Adventure's multi-character design. As a game pumped out in ten months or so, working with completely new technology still in the process of being developed itself, and as a more or less first venture into the intimidating realm of 3D for the people involved, concessions would need to be made and the realities of game development acknowledged as the project expanded in scale and ambition. It's surely why the game has the structure it does, and why characters intersect with one another so regularly, so as to limit the assets needed to contain just all this sheer Game within the boundaries of the depicted world and scenario.
Knuckles as a protagonist sees very little environmentally new or unique to him on a base level, as he exists in the stages Sonic or Tails previously raced through. The difference comes in the objective of his play, in seeking out the hidden fragments of the Master Emerald he's tasked with guarding, in a sort of investigative sandbox challenge for each locale he winds up in. This is a style of interacting with the environment and surroundings totally unfamiliar and contrary to the previous two characters; a slower, more curious experience as the out of the way corners need to be poked into and the weird hidden objects prodded with oversized knuckle spikes. It allows for the sense of place about each location to shine in ways they cannot in the breakneck pace encouraged if not enforced by the expectations of how a Sonic game "should" play, and highlights the dense geometric construction of them all in ways that might pass one by if one is blazing through them without stopping to look around. Knuckles's individual style of movement--dimensionally enrichening climbing and gliding maneuvers--differs from the main duo in the grounded heft he possesses even as his unique maneuverability opens up the world design in spectacular ways: flying over and across practically the entire jungle map after having climbed a tree above forest level, knowing all of the environment tactilely exists below even as it's circumvented... that's a moment etched into my mind when it comes to the sheer scale Adventure imbues its environments with, and how it allows one to test their borders of interaction.
Amy
The simplest way to put it is probably the most evocative one: Amy's scenario is a slice of survival horror game design. The absurdities inherent in framing a game so deliberately and inadvertently goofy as this as a tense thriller in the making are clear for all to see, but here they stand, equally as evident and real. Each of Amy's three stages (the lowest amount in the game) involves an extended chase sequence where the implacable Eggman mech Zero slowly and not-so-slowly closes in on her, attempting to capture Amy and the bird under her protection. Escaping Zero would not be an issue for any of the preceding protagonists, but Amy is notably slower than all of them, and builds momentum more gradually as well, leaving last-ditch swings with her oversized but lightweight hammer as a frequent last line of defense against the encroaching robot. For all that these limitations exist to provide a source of tension for the particular needs of the level design, Amy does have advanced maneuvers that distinguish her capabilities in the running-momentum hammer vault--the largest vertical clearance in the game under standard circumstances--as well as the ability to bounce off enemies with airborne swings of her weapon; a more directed way to rebound and maintain momentum that the preceding characters come by effortlessly.
Amy's movement reads as more technical and limited to maintain the careful balance between a capable platformer lead and a vulnerable stalker escapee, and to the surrounding design's credit that balance is usually preserved. The superficial length of her scenario and its stages may also mislead, because for their slim count Amy's stages are some of the lengthiest and most involved in the game, in how they place her in dangerous and claustrophobic gauntlets full of traps and obstacles as she navigates them while being constantly pressured by the trailing Zero. It is a great joy at the end to have the opportunity to finally square off with the would-be assailant, in a move that further roots her play narrative in that seemingly incompatible but contextually most fascinating of genres.
Big
The most infamous member of the cast, for reasons that are well-justified--a horrifically ableist vocal portrayal by one Jon St. John--and others that are less quantifiable. The pressing argument many have for Big is, well, in his name: he is so large that the speed that's synonymous with Sonic and the games that feature him do not exist in Big's vocabulary nor inform the reality of his existence. The complete remove at which Big exists relative to Adventure's fundamental design ends up forming the core of his character, again in all senses of the narrative: a peaceful woods-dweller who spends all his time fishing and enjoying life at his own pace cannot interact with the game's expressions of violence, however abstracted, in the same ways the other characters do. Big only wants to find his friend, and he has no abilities or tools for inflicting harm on others, except a rudimentary swing of the tool of his trade in a pinch. To so totally reject the principles of the series and its leading figure can then breed resentment for the character itself and all that he's seen to represent, but here again perspectives can differ in just what he's supposed to stand for. For myself, Big was the ultimate realization of the kitchen-sink smörgåsbord mentality fueling so much of the game's creative ethos, where no idea was too insignificant to leave out unelaborated, unimplemented, unloved.
If Big is seen as an intrusion upon the appeal and sanctity of the Sonic concept, then the designers also meet those inclined to that line of thought halfway: all of his stages place him practically at the goal, only requiring to cast a line and try to hook the errant Froggy. If one decides to linger in the spaces that Big inhabits, there's the growing sensation of that most precious of feelings in a creative work to be found--the "this didn't need to be here, but it is" sentiment, in all the fish that Big can try to catch for no reason or gain but his and the player's own curiosity and satisfaction; the lures hidden about facilitating even bigger catches; and the spaces accessible by swimming beneath the waves and discovering some forgotten corner simply to drowse in while letting the lure drift where it may. Perhaps Big could not sustain an adventure on his own, but for an ensemble piece emphasizing differing viewpoints and perspectives, he's invaluably positive a presence.
Gamma
Once again the breadth of the game's concepts stretches the limits of believability as at the eleventh hour a totally new way of interacting with the stages presents itself through Gamma's robotic frame. A humanoid combat machine crafted in Eggman's inimitable stylistic fashion, Gamma is built for efficiency reflected in the strict time limits that pace the missions he undertakes in his creator's, and later his own behalf. The very design of him communicates his adaptability to any situation, as legs retract to be replaced with all-terrain wheels for extended traversal, and as a propeller extends from his mid-section to keep him afloat and shy of water.
The seamless transformations and moving parts on display in Gamma project an impression of an unstoppable force able to handle any situation, and the search-and-destroy rhythm of his play makes true the promise as he crashes through exploding scenery at wild, but controlled abandon, facilitated by honestly shockingly well-realized, intuitive targeting mechanics that prioritize always staying on the move even as a countermeasure is readied and deployed. As a pure adrenaline rush and a contrast to the more passive player characters, it would've sufficed admirably, but the added factor of the time limits and the extensions granted through optimized chained destruction wreaked along the way frame Gamma's exploits as a tantalizing twist on the standby score attack time trial style of play that Sonic is thought to lend itself to so naturally. To latch onto a so compatible yet distinct an expression of the fundamentals so late in the game is no small feat by any measure.
As alluded to earlier, all of these individual characters and their stories culminate at the end for an effective victory lap and last hurrah as Sonic, and ultimately Super Sonic, in a spectacle worthy of the moniker. For all the bombast, it's also a time to reflect on everything the developers accomplished with Sonic Adventure, in all its occasionally bizarre self. That's also perhaps a crucial aspect of why the game holds the appeal it does, at least for me: that it is novel, even after over twenty years have passed. So many things about it wouldn't be done the particular way they ended up being here a sequel later, a few years of game development trends later, after addressing and "fixing" the many well-documented issues that are brought up in relation to it now, in hindsight. It comes from a time of re-examining and expanding the conceptual limits of reliable video game icons that coincided with the new frontiers represented by unprecedented technology and hardware leaps that gave developers means to push those boundaries in ways that hadn't been possible before. For all that it stumbles as it's learning to run, I would not trade those tentative steps for anything, and sooner still might wish that others borrowed a turn or two from its gait.
Years ago I'd played some of the game through one of the various ports, and mostly dismissed it as an awkward relic. The difference now is that my tastes in video games have changed much over time, and the contextual appraisal and appreciation of such comes more naturally these days. As a piece of media seen in its original context, this might as well be a faultless game--I've rarely seen anything be this excited to exist in 3D; it's exploding in every direction at all times, and carries with it the sort of setpiece thrill mentality that presaged years or decades of showpiece game development, but here expressed through the loose, colourful abstractions and impossibilities of its makeshift world instead of the dull would-be plausibilities and fake realisms of future industry tentpoles. There is a lightness to everything the game does, because it's interested in everything all at once but not too exhaustively; any odd idea that exchanged minds and hands that day among the developers seemingly found a place in the game, and creates a toybox-like quality of always being surprised by the diversions that come to represent much more than intimated by the designation: all the status quo-breaking segments and interludes become integral to what the game is because they grant it its sense of liveliness that comes to define it. The ambition at play in the stage layouts similarly speak to a game existing beyond its seeming borders for the scale suggested and presented, and how it all congeals despite appearing at times to be held together by prayers and gumption. It's a reckless game, and it's a daring game, and it's representational of its home system more than mere default mascot status suggests.
... right, as I was saying, the game is good; exceptionally so. I don't doubt that people are aware of the longstanding memetic reputation the extended playable cast in this game possess that the thread title is riffing on, but I wanted to talk a little about what makes each of them interesting and worthwhile presences in Sonic Adventure, the video game, speaking as someone who doesn't play or know the series well and has no particular attachment nor revulsion towards its myriad entries. Most assessments still read too cynical by half even to a neophyte's eyes and ears, and well contrary to how delightful I found this first foray into 3D especially because of its ensemble approach. Some thoughts per character and the play experience therein, in the order the game presents them through its interface:

Sonic
The above blurb was written after having completed Sonic's scenario, so the overall impressions mostly pertain to his particular niche and rhythm of play. Every player begins Adventure as Sonic, and his role as the center from which all other types of movement and playstyles branch out is key to his identity as he is the initial lens through which the rules of the game are internalized and taught to the player, through a scenario that is double the length of even the most sizable of the other characters's stories. The extended duration serves multiple purposes in being so frenetic and setpiece-filled that it may be all that one desires to see of the game after it's concluded--and if not, having provided a valuable baseline in the nuances of character control and the quirks of the game's wildly unpredictable level design concepts, ready to be filtered through the unique perspectives of characters with different movesets and priorities than the speed-and-adrenaline blue blur.
When the final leg of the story unlocks, and Sonic returns to the role of player character, the game creates its own bookend not only narratively, but mechanically in the purely experiental way video games as an interactive medium can: Sonic has no new abilities that he's gained in the interim, but he feels like a whole new character as the player now returns to his set of verbs with hours of additional experience that transform the once reckless and wild bursts of speed and explosive dashes into maneuvers of second-nature precision and efficiency.

Tails
Adventure utilizes an interwoven storytelling approach where the same basic events are told from multiple perspectives across characters, and with this inevitably comes overlap both in the narrative of the story and the narrative of the play sequence, the wheres and the hows of what happens. The character affected most by this is Tails, and considering how thematically--should you deign to earnestly consider that Adventure does possess such notions, whatever the thoughts are regarding the execution--his tale is one of following in Sonic's footsteps aspirationally while being swept away by the force of his personality on an individual basis, this might not be accidental or at the very least provides ample resources for such a reading. The narrative is literalized very directly through the game mechanics themselves, as Tails chases Sonic through veritable proving grounds that the elder stateshog of running real fast has already charted in his own telling, and so the overcoming of Sonic is accomplished by making use of the abilities that are unique to Tails as a person--his flight and the shortcut opportunities it provides--and not simply mimicking his role model to a tee. The least interesting of the secondary scenarios for its redundancy is thus contextualized as a cute little story of self-actualization for the perpetual sidekick figure in dire need of such.

(knock knock it's) Knuckles
This was the point at which I truly fell head over heels for Adventure's multi-character design. As a game pumped out in ten months or so, working with completely new technology still in the process of being developed itself, and as a more or less first venture into the intimidating realm of 3D for the people involved, concessions would need to be made and the realities of game development acknowledged as the project expanded in scale and ambition. It's surely why the game has the structure it does, and why characters intersect with one another so regularly, so as to limit the assets needed to contain just all this sheer Game within the boundaries of the depicted world and scenario.
Knuckles as a protagonist sees very little environmentally new or unique to him on a base level, as he exists in the stages Sonic or Tails previously raced through. The difference comes in the objective of his play, in seeking out the hidden fragments of the Master Emerald he's tasked with guarding, in a sort of investigative sandbox challenge for each locale he winds up in. This is a style of interacting with the environment and surroundings totally unfamiliar and contrary to the previous two characters; a slower, more curious experience as the out of the way corners need to be poked into and the weird hidden objects prodded with oversized knuckle spikes. It allows for the sense of place about each location to shine in ways they cannot in the breakneck pace encouraged if not enforced by the expectations of how a Sonic game "should" play, and highlights the dense geometric construction of them all in ways that might pass one by if one is blazing through them without stopping to look around. Knuckles's individual style of movement--dimensionally enrichening climbing and gliding maneuvers--differs from the main duo in the grounded heft he possesses even as his unique maneuverability opens up the world design in spectacular ways: flying over and across practically the entire jungle map after having climbed a tree above forest level, knowing all of the environment tactilely exists below even as it's circumvented... that's a moment etched into my mind when it comes to the sheer scale Adventure imbues its environments with, and how it allows one to test their borders of interaction.

Amy
The simplest way to put it is probably the most evocative one: Amy's scenario is a slice of survival horror game design. The absurdities inherent in framing a game so deliberately and inadvertently goofy as this as a tense thriller in the making are clear for all to see, but here they stand, equally as evident and real. Each of Amy's three stages (the lowest amount in the game) involves an extended chase sequence where the implacable Eggman mech Zero slowly and not-so-slowly closes in on her, attempting to capture Amy and the bird under her protection. Escaping Zero would not be an issue for any of the preceding protagonists, but Amy is notably slower than all of them, and builds momentum more gradually as well, leaving last-ditch swings with her oversized but lightweight hammer as a frequent last line of defense against the encroaching robot. For all that these limitations exist to provide a source of tension for the particular needs of the level design, Amy does have advanced maneuvers that distinguish her capabilities in the running-momentum hammer vault--the largest vertical clearance in the game under standard circumstances--as well as the ability to bounce off enemies with airborne swings of her weapon; a more directed way to rebound and maintain momentum that the preceding characters come by effortlessly.
Amy's movement reads as more technical and limited to maintain the careful balance between a capable platformer lead and a vulnerable stalker escapee, and to the surrounding design's credit that balance is usually preserved. The superficial length of her scenario and its stages may also mislead, because for their slim count Amy's stages are some of the lengthiest and most involved in the game, in how they place her in dangerous and claustrophobic gauntlets full of traps and obstacles as she navigates them while being constantly pressured by the trailing Zero. It is a great joy at the end to have the opportunity to finally square off with the would-be assailant, in a move that further roots her play narrative in that seemingly incompatible but contextually most fascinating of genres.

Big
The most infamous member of the cast, for reasons that are well-justified--a horrifically ableist vocal portrayal by one Jon St. John--and others that are less quantifiable. The pressing argument many have for Big is, well, in his name: he is so large that the speed that's synonymous with Sonic and the games that feature him do not exist in Big's vocabulary nor inform the reality of his existence. The complete remove at which Big exists relative to Adventure's fundamental design ends up forming the core of his character, again in all senses of the narrative: a peaceful woods-dweller who spends all his time fishing and enjoying life at his own pace cannot interact with the game's expressions of violence, however abstracted, in the same ways the other characters do. Big only wants to find his friend, and he has no abilities or tools for inflicting harm on others, except a rudimentary swing of the tool of his trade in a pinch. To so totally reject the principles of the series and its leading figure can then breed resentment for the character itself and all that he's seen to represent, but here again perspectives can differ in just what he's supposed to stand for. For myself, Big was the ultimate realization of the kitchen-sink smörgåsbord mentality fueling so much of the game's creative ethos, where no idea was too insignificant to leave out unelaborated, unimplemented, unloved.
If Big is seen as an intrusion upon the appeal and sanctity of the Sonic concept, then the designers also meet those inclined to that line of thought halfway: all of his stages place him practically at the goal, only requiring to cast a line and try to hook the errant Froggy. If one decides to linger in the spaces that Big inhabits, there's the growing sensation of that most precious of feelings in a creative work to be found--the "this didn't need to be here, but it is" sentiment, in all the fish that Big can try to catch for no reason or gain but his and the player's own curiosity and satisfaction; the lures hidden about facilitating even bigger catches; and the spaces accessible by swimming beneath the waves and discovering some forgotten corner simply to drowse in while letting the lure drift where it may. Perhaps Big could not sustain an adventure on his own, but for an ensemble piece emphasizing differing viewpoints and perspectives, he's invaluably positive a presence.

Gamma
Once again the breadth of the game's concepts stretches the limits of believability as at the eleventh hour a totally new way of interacting with the stages presents itself through Gamma's robotic frame. A humanoid combat machine crafted in Eggman's inimitable stylistic fashion, Gamma is built for efficiency reflected in the strict time limits that pace the missions he undertakes in his creator's, and later his own behalf. The very design of him communicates his adaptability to any situation, as legs retract to be replaced with all-terrain wheels for extended traversal, and as a propeller extends from his mid-section to keep him afloat and shy of water.
The seamless transformations and moving parts on display in Gamma project an impression of an unstoppable force able to handle any situation, and the search-and-destroy rhythm of his play makes true the promise as he crashes through exploding scenery at wild, but controlled abandon, facilitated by honestly shockingly well-realized, intuitive targeting mechanics that prioritize always staying on the move even as a countermeasure is readied and deployed. As a pure adrenaline rush and a contrast to the more passive player characters, it would've sufficed admirably, but the added factor of the time limits and the extensions granted through optimized chained destruction wreaked along the way frame Gamma's exploits as a tantalizing twist on the standby score attack time trial style of play that Sonic is thought to lend itself to so naturally. To latch onto a so compatible yet distinct an expression of the fundamentals so late in the game is no small feat by any measure.
~~~
As alluded to earlier, all of these individual characters and their stories culminate at the end for an effective victory lap and last hurrah as Sonic, and ultimately Super Sonic, in a spectacle worthy of the moniker. For all the bombast, it's also a time to reflect on everything the developers accomplished with Sonic Adventure, in all its occasionally bizarre self. That's also perhaps a crucial aspect of why the game holds the appeal it does, at least for me: that it is novel, even after over twenty years have passed. So many things about it wouldn't be done the particular way they ended up being here a sequel later, a few years of game development trends later, after addressing and "fixing" the many well-documented issues that are brought up in relation to it now, in hindsight. It comes from a time of re-examining and expanding the conceptual limits of reliable video game icons that coincided with the new frontiers represented by unprecedented technology and hardware leaps that gave developers means to push those boundaries in ways that hadn't been possible before. For all that it stumbles as it's learning to run, I would not trade those tentative steps for anything, and sooner still might wish that others borrowed a turn or two from its gait.