Sonic Adventure 2 Sees Surge On Steam Post Sonic 3 Release

Whether it’s talked about openly or not, there are certain properties that those in charge hope will not only lead to immediate success via that property’s release but also lead to some “ripple effects.” If we’re being a little too “vague” there, here’s what we mean. When a video game adaptation comes out to TV or films, those who made the adaptation, and by extension, the one who made the game itself, don’t just want the adaptation to succeed but for it to bring more people to the video game and play it. Enter Sonic Adventure 2, which was the inspiration for the recent live-action movie that was #1 at the US box office.

This epic video game featured the birth/arrival of Shadow The Hedgehog and seriously stepped up the narrative quality of the series as a whole. For many long-time fans of Sonic and his titles, this is the best game in the series. Or, at the very least, one of the top 2-3 titles. It just depends on who you talk to.

Anyway, the reason we bring this up is that Sonic The Hedgehog 3 did an incredible job of adapting the game for the big screen, and due to that, there are a lot more people playing the game on Steam right now. According to SteamDB, Sonic Adventure 2 had been doing some decent numbers leading up to the film’s release. Then, yesterday, and technically today, it reached over 1000 players.

Now, yes, that’s a rather small number compared to legions of other titles on Steam. However, you must remember that this is a very old game. It came out in 2001! So, yeah, it’s been around a while, and there are other games with Sonic and Shadow to go play should you want, including the very recent title from SEGA that features both of them. Heck, they even threw in some DLC that features Keanu Reeves as Shadow, just like he is in the movie!

The point is that the movie was so good that fans wanted to see the inspiration behind the hit film. It’s not the first time this has happened, either. Nintendo noted many times over that after the success of Mario’s animated film in 2023, it saw massive spikes in the icons titles, showing that people didn’t just want to watch Mario on the big screen, but play his games at home.

No doubt fans will want another game like this one, but that’s up to Sonic Team and SEGA.