Sonic Adventure Dreamcast Homepage Restored

Sonic Adventure is a pretty divisive game, but most will agree that it really was a great showcase for the Dreamcast when it was a console in its infancy. It had great visuals and some fantastic set pieces - who can forget the killer whale sequence in the first stage? These days the vast majority deride the game for its bugs and somewhat aimless later levels...but that's a subject for another day. The reason I bring Sonic Adventure up is that news has reached me via Liam Ashcroft of SEGAbits, that somebody has gone to the trouble of purchasing the original Sonic Adventure Dreamcast homepage and restored the site in its entirety. Just for the hell of it.

The news first broke on the Sonic Stadium forum, and out of curiosity I went to have a look...and it's actually true. Everything from the original site that you'd access from a Dreamcast browser or the Sonic Adventure disc is there - all of the guides to the VMU mini games, Chao gardens, level maps...even the community sections and competition winner listings.
Screenshots from the game are expected to be added in time, but for the most part the site is all there in its 1998-flavoured glory! Some links, such as the guides on how to get your Dreamcast online appear to be broken, but as a pure nostalgia hit this is hard to beat. Thanks again to Liam for bringing this to my attention.

Link: Sonic Adventure Homepage

Update: I managed to speak to the creator of the site, a cool guy called Scott. He replied to my email asking for further info on his reasons behind the Sonic Adventure homepage resurrection:

"I run a Chao website, Chao Island. I've always been a big fan of Sonic and Sega, especially the Dreamcast. I still update my Chao website to this day and we have around 10k members registered after multiple forum closures!

I'm always looking for ways to keep the Dreamcast spirit alive and restoring this classic site gave me the chance to do that.

My website has no ads, and I make no profit from it, I just try to do my best to keep a happy community and get as much Chao information out there as possible!"
- Scott, Chao Island

Thanks to Scott for answering my questions, and be sure to visit Chao Island for all your Chao needs!

5 comments:

BlueSwirl said...

This is pretty awesome, I tried this the other week using the Dreampi (direct from the game) but I somehow remember the PAL homepage looking different, I thougt there was a guide section for the Chaos and where you could upload or download other peoples, including the bonus dlc for halloween, rebock and xmas etc - but I might be getting confused with a feature on the Dreamarena, it was a while ago hehe

Tom Charnock said...

Got to be honest, it was so long ago that I can't even remember what the SA site looked like. I didn't go online much with the DC just because it was so slow and it would disconnect constantly. Oh, and I had to get permission from my mother who usually said no haha!

BlueSwirl said...

Haha, to be fair I had the same problem with the folks too!!

B# Major General said...

Aww, dude! I never got to experience that (because of crappy internet only allowing one persona online/on-phone at a time) but that looks hella sweet.

Unknown said...

I remember this so well as it was a launch game that I purchased with my launch console and was the first time I got online at home. I used to utilise the online Chao Daycare. It's a shame the databases weren't available to restore some other functionality but still a fantastic archive and piece of video game history / preservation and a fantastic nostalgia trip.