PS2 GameCube

Sonic Heroes

PlatformAdventure

Time to beat: about 10 hours

Overview

Sonic Heroes is a 2003 platform game developed by Sonic Team USA and published by Sega for the GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Windows. The player controls teams of three Sonic characters and navigates levels while collecting rings, defeating robots, and avoiding obstacles. They swap between characters, who each have unique abilities, to overcome obstacles. Sonic Heroes downplays the action-adventure and exploration-based gameplay of previous 3D Sonic games in favor of linear gameplay similar to the Sega Genesis Sonic games.

Sonic Team began working on Heroes following the completion of Sonic Adventure 2 (2001); Takashi Iizuka and Yuji Naka reprised their roles as director and producer. Heroes was the first multi-platform Sonic game, developed following Sega's discontinuation of the Dreamcast and transition to third-party development. Iizuka opted to design Heroes as a standalone game rather than a sequel to Adventure 2 to appeal to a broader audience. Sonic Team revived elements not seen since the Genesis Sonic games, such as special stages and the Chaotix characters.

Sega released Sonic Heroes in Japan in December 2003 and worldwide in early 2004. It received mixed reviews; critics praised the visuals, sound, fast gameplay, and similarities to the Genesis games, but were divided over the team-based gameplay and criticized the camera and voice acting. Some deemed it an improvement over the previous 3D Sonic games, but others felt it failed to address their problems. Heroes was a commercial success; it sold 3.41 million copies worldwide, and was the bestselling 3D Sonic game until Sonic Frontiers (2022).