The late 1990s early 2000s were a very transitional era for the Sonic series. Years of mistakes from Sega had left their console business in shambles, and that of course included Sonic. The series was somewhat refreshed by the release of the Dreamcast and its first true 3D game, Sonic Adventure, but the console would ultimately not be able to outrun the company's previous mistakes. That, and the release of Sony's Playstation 2, which would go on to become the world's best selling console. Even the release of a sequel to Sonic Adventure wasn't enough to save the Dreamcast. Sonic was in dire straights, and the only thing Sega and Sonic Team could do was bring him to other platforms and hope for the best.
Thankfully for them, a release of a port of Sonic Adventure 2 to the Gamecube was just the spark they needed. It became the highest selling game on the system the week of its release, and introduced a new generation to the series. While a solid start, however, it quickly became clear that Sega and Sonic Team couldn't stick to the Gamecube alone. The PS2 was still selling an astronomical amount of units, and even Microsoft's then-new Xbox managed to hold its own. Keeping the series restricted to the Gamecube wouldn't be a wise financial decision, so they began development on the first true multiplat in the series, Sonic Heroes. They aimed to make this game more beginner-friendly to ease newcomers from the other consoles into the series, which they accomplished by returning to basics in many ways.
That being said, this game had more in store than just being a carbon copy of what the old games were doing, but in 3D, and played around with a unique three-person gameplay concept. While generally received well, this game saw somewhat more mixed reception than the previous games. To this day, that's more or less how it remains. While 3D Sonic in general is rather divisive, Heroes is one of those games in the series that people either love or hate. As always though, that doesn't concern me. I'm here to explore my own thoughts on Sonic Heroes, and as you can tell from the title... yeah, I'm quite fond of it. It's not that cut and dry though, and my history with this entry is more complicated than the others, something I wish to explore today. So sit back, relax, and listen, if you'd like, as I spend way more time than is probably necessary explaining my feelings towards yet another fast blue hedgehog game.
That's about it, thanks for watching. My next Sonic video may take a little while, and will likely be the last one for a bit, but anyway I hope you enjoyed and will stick around for what's to come regardless. Have a good one... and I promise I'll try to make the next one a bit shorter but no guarantees lol