Sonic Adventure on PSN and XBLA won't venture outside of 4:3 aspect ratio

The Xbox Live Arcade versions of both Crazy Taxi and Sonic Adventure were playable at Sega's booth, and both still look great, even ten-plus years after their release. However, each game has one issue that keeps the XBLA (and PSN) version from absolute perfection.

In Crazy Taxi's case, it's the lack of licensed music and locations, meaning that destinations like Pizza Hut have been replaced by generic stores, and the Offspring and Bad Religion soundtrack has been swapped out for sorta/kinda soundalikes. Actually, given how many times we've heard the Crazy Taxi soundtrack in our lives (too many!), that might be a plus.

For Sonic Adventure, the limitation of the XBLA version is immediately apparent even to those who haven't played it before: it displays only in 4:3, with vertical bars (featuring a blue patterned background) on the sides of a widescreen display. A Sega rep told Joystiq that the code for Sonic Adventure couldn't be altered to support widescreen as easily as Crazy Taxi's.

Sonic Adventure (Dreamcast Returns)

Crazy Taxi (Dreamcast Returns)

Reader Comments (67)

@WINterfang

if they fixed that god awful lip syncing in SA1 then all is forgiven

(though honestly it probably won't bother me much... it was originally in 4:3 and that's how i remember it, so hey... keep it that way for nostalgia's sake)

Do they have an option to stretch the game image?

@WINterfang: Knuckles' VA was amazing during his fight with Sonic.

My precious Dreamcast collection looks even more splendid now.

Connected via a VGA box, it's brilliant on my LCD.

Thanks to the parties involved just for giving this system some new life.

I wonder if its because it would cost Sega a hell lot of money to get permission Bad Religion, Offspring and the various fast food franchises to agree to sign over their rights to be this game? Doesn't really bother me that the soundtrack is gone and the franchises will be changed. Its still the same game minus the soundtrack and stores being altered.

Sega released more half-assed on the cheap ports of games they stopped caring about years ago, more at 11.

Ughhh....they are sooooo lazy! I understand all of the music rights and removed ingame ads, but no 16:9 support?!! Lame. No buy.

And don't bother with the "but you can stretch it/zoom it" comments. That just looks terrible.

As long as i get Rival Schools PJ and Shenmue, i'm surely fine with 4:3.

It was too hard to change the code, so they just didn't bother? Poor show, SEGA.

@shaurz

It's not too hard. It's too cost prohibitive. Yes, there will probably be options to stretch/clip it but that's about it.

In order to have actual widescreen support, they would not only have to change the code to display that area but they would have to change the entire game to have area there to display. In some places it would be easy, but in others it would require level design changes and scripted event changes and then testing to make sure that the whole thing functions properly. All of this takes time and money to do.

This isn't a true port, and it's certainly not an improved rewrite (ala Super Mario All-Stars), it's part emulation and part translation layer to make the Xbox/PS3 run Dreamcast code. Any changes in the code are going to be extremely minor. If you don't like it, then DON'T BUY IT. I will not be buying SA and will be considering CT but I know that if they bring out Chu Chu Rocket for $10 then I'll be buying it despite already having it on the DC.

the blue turd is back!

My only complaint is that they really need to update some of the lower-resolution textures. Texture re-authoring is already done in a number of hacked N64 and Dreamcast images that you can play in emulators.

I'll drop a load of cash when they release the Panzer Dragoon games on PSN.

@matthargett
Hell I'll drop a load if it gets released on PSN.

The lack of FILA, KFC and Pizza Hut turns this game from Sale to Fail.

Does the Xbox CT3 work on 360?

@SWGooner Wow, I didn't realize people played Crazy Taxi for the advertisements. Personally I played it for the gameplay, which seems to be intact. But I guess if you're an advertising whore and can't stand the thought of playing a video game without being marketed to constantly... well, I can see how lack of ads would make this distasteful for you.

It sucks that Sonic won't be widescreen, but considering I having been able to get my Dreamcast copy to work in years, I'll take whatever I can get at this point.

I could honestly care less about the Offspring; I love Crazy Taxi. What bothers me more about the audio is the guy they got to play some of the voice actors when the game was ported to the PS2/Gamecube/PC. Please tell me that the DREAMCAST voice for BD Joe is in the game. And be right about it. ;)

Sonic Adventure

Sonic Adventure on PSN and XBLA won't venture outside of 4:3 aspect ratio

Sonic Adventure (Dreamcast Returns)

Crazy Taxi (Dreamcast Returns)

Reader Comments (67)

Posted: Jun 21st 2010 9:25AM skyblaze said

Posted: Jun 21st 2010 9:31AM Andrew12h said

Posted: Jun 21st 2010 9:45AM 831 Son said

Posted: Jun 21st 2010 10:07AM CaptainProtonX said

Posted: Jun 21st 2010 10:07AM Art84 said

Posted: Jun 21st 2010 10:31AM wcarnation said

Posted: Jun 21st 2010 10:41AM LokeSTL said

Posted: Jun 21st 2010 11:09AM vicelus said

Posted: Jun 21st 2010 11:30AM shaurz said

Posted: Jun 21st 2010 2:03PM Psykechan said

Posted: Jun 21st 2010 12:07PM ThePSNGuy said

Posted: Jun 21st 2010 5:04PM matthargett said

Posted: Jun 21st 2010 8:23PM The Aquacharger said

Posted: Jun 21st 2010 5:22PM SWGooner said

Posted: Jun 21st 2010 10:10PM AoE said

Posted: Jun 21st 2010 5:48PM fightbait said

Posted: Jun 22nd 2010 2:57PM derFunkenstein said

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