Video Game / Sonic Rush Adventure

A high-speed, high-seas adventure!

Life starts with a sunny day,
Let's feel our ocean breath!
We are cruising overseas
Can't wait for a new venture!

— "A New Venture"

Sonic Rush Adventure is a 2007 Sonic the Hedgehog platformer for the Nintendo DS and the direct sequel to Sonic Rush.

On a stormy night, Sonic and Tails are tracking a mysterious, unknown source of energy in the Tornado, when suddenly, the duo are sucked right into a mysterious tornado that suddenly appears in the sea. On the next day, the two find themselves on Southern Island, where they are awakened by Marine, an adventurous and hyperactive raccoon girl who seeks to get off the island to go on adventures.

After fixing her motorboat, which she crashed earlier, the three set out on a high-seas adventure in which they explore several different islands, one of which they would soon meet the returning Blaze the Cat, who reveals to Sonic and Tails that they landed in her dimension, as well as a group of pirates led by the villainous Captain Whisker, who are after a mysterious scepter that belonged to Blaze's family and contains a special multi-dimensional power that the group seeks for their purposes.

With their worlds in peril once again, It is now up to Sonic and Blaze to stop the devious group of pirates, who may be working for an even greater threat.

Being a direct sequel to Sonic Rush, the game plays identically to its predecessor, being a 2½D platformer that has Sonic and Blaze boost through an array of stages using the DS' dual screens. However, while the general gameplay is identical, the structure between the stages is very different.

Unlike the stage-to-stage progression of the original game, Rush Adventure utilizes a slightly less linear structure in which you must use your stylus to draw a course to the zone in question before embarking to the island using a variety of boats, all of which have their own unique properties, from the short-range and speedy Wave Cyclone, the slow, but powerful Ocean Tornado, to the submarine Deep Typhoon. In order to build these boats, the player must obtain the necessary Materials by clearing the Acts in each Zone, and giving them to Tails. The number of Materials the player earns is dictated by the rank they obtain in each Act, and they may find themselves needing to replay previous Acts to obtain better ranks in order to gather enough Materials.

This would be the last original handheld Sonic title developed by Dimps, whose later handheld entries consist of ports of Sonic Colors, Sonic Generations, and finally, Sonic Lost World. While this was the final game to use the Sonic Rush title, the Nintendo DS version of Colors is often regarded by fans as a spiritual third Rush game, as it uses the same game engine and the majority of the same gameplay mechanics.

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Sonic Rush Adventure contains the following tropes:

• Aborted Arc:
  • In the true ending. Tails prepares to use the Chaos and Sol Emeralds to teleport him and Sonic back to their own dimension, when he realizes that the gems, which are normally unstable, are somehow in perfect resonance with each other. This causes him to wonder whether the Emeralds have a consciousness and are actively trying to help him; while Blaze hypothesizes that the heroes coming together when the world was in danger may not have been just a coincidence. No Sonic game has followed up on this plotline.
  • The weird water powers Marine uses at the end of the game have yet to be followed up due to Marine herself being Out of Focus since her debut.
• Absurdly Short Level: Most of the Hidden Island stages are much shorter than the rest of the Acts in the game, being beatable in less than a minute.
• All Myths Are True: Lampshaded when the heroes are told of the legend of an ancient civilization that lived in a city in the sky, and Marine demands they investigate immediately.
  Marine: Think about it, mate: legends! When has a legend ever not been true, huh? HUH?!
• Bodyguarding a Badass: You wouldn't think Blaze would need one, but Rush Adventure introduces us to Gardon, a koala who serves as Blaze's personal guard. Possibly lampshaded though, as Gardon doesn't really do anything except inform Blaze of the locations of Sol Emeralds. He even asks Sonic to take good care of the princess.
• Boss-Only Level: Each of the game's boss battles get an entire Act dedicated to them. Big Swell and Deep Core have no additional acts, making them entire Zones dedicated to their boss fights.
• Brutal Bonus Level: While the first handful of Chaos Emerald races aren't overly difficult, Johnny is nearly impossible to beat in the later ones until the Wave Cyclone is upgraded.
• Continuity Nod: In Sonic Rush, Dr. Eggman and Dr. Eggman Nega described the Chaos and Sol Emeralds as being sort of a north and south pole to each other. In this game, Sonic and Blaze describe them the same way after defeating the very men who first described them that way.
• Creepy Jazz Music: A loud, jazzy tune plays during the Dual Boss battle with Captain Whisker and his Dragon, Johnny.
• Damage-Sponge Boss: Many of the bosses in the game have a lot more health than average for a Sonic game, with the first boss alone taking over twenty hits to defeat. On the plus side, you can usually hit the weak point several times in a row any time they leave themselves vulnerable.
• Deus ex Machina: Marine disrupting the Egg Wizard with a mysterious power. At no point in the game is it even hinted that she has offensive powers of her own.
• Dual Boss: Captain Whisker and Johnny team up as the penultimate boss fight. Both characters have separate health bars and attack the heroes simultaneously, occasionally teaming up for an attack where Whisker throws Johnny as a projectile.
• Eternal Engine: Machine Labyrinth is an industrial complex powered up by steam.
• Evolving Music: The Windmill Village music speeds up and gains instruments every time you craft a new vehicle.
• Fate Drives Us Together: Blaze seems to suggest this to Sonic at the end.
  Blaze: Do you think that maybe you were brought here for a reason?
  Sonic: Brought here? By who?
  Blaze: (smiling) By the Emeralds.
  Sonic: (pauses, looking confused, then smiles) Heh, well, you never know.
• Fungus Humongous: Plant Kingdom, the first zone, is filled with giant mushroom that Sonic and Blaze can bounce on to reach higher places.
• Gaiden Game: This game is about Sonic and Tails being transported to another dimension. Mainstays such as Amy and Knuckles aren't even mentioned, Dr. Eggman doesn't appear until the postgame, and most of the new characters never appear again.
• Gameplay Grading: Similar to other Sonic games, the player is graded with a letter ranking at the end of each Act depending on their score. The highest rank is S, while the lowest is C. The rank the player obtains will determine how many Materials they earn.
• Ghost Ship: Haunted Ship, the four zone, is a decrepit galleon. All the enemies and the boss are robots, but their designs are appropriately undead-themed.
• Guide Dang It!: During the battle with the Ghost Pirate (the boss of the Haunted Ship area), his weak spot can be knocked out of his body. What the game DOESN'T inform you of is the fact that you can repeatedly attack its body until you temporarily knock it out of commission, leaving it in a pile of robo-bones.
• Heroic Lineage: It's stated by Eggman Nega that Blaze's royal family has existed and guarded the Jeweled Scepter for generations.
• Human Cannonball: The Ghost Titan, who is the boss of Big Swell, is in the air, out of Sonic's reach. On the platform Sonic is on, there are cannons protected by force fields. Sonic has to use the Ghost Titan's projectiles to destroy these force fields, since any contact with it will damage him. Once the force fields are gone, these cannons will shoot at Sonic. He then needs to hit the cannon enough times so that he can enter it and use it to launch himself at the Ghost Titan to damage it.
• Hostile Weather: The story starts with Sonic and Tails flying in their plane, the Tornado, in the middle of a storm. In a matter of moments, they're struck by lightning and crash.
• Killed Off for Real: The Ghost Titan's explosion sank Whisker's ship to the bottom of the sea, implying that Whisker, Mini, Mum, and all the other pirates (excluding Johnny) have been killed.
• Lampshade Hanging: The other three heroes are well aware of how annoying Marine can be. Blaze telling her off late into the plot is cathartic to most players as a result.
• Land Down Under: The English-language version of Marine peppers her dialogue with many Australian expressions and slangs. Contrast with the original character, who speaks a dialect from Osaka, which is in the southern area of Japan.
• Leader Wannabe: Marine thinks she's the leader, but her teammates only think of her as an annoying nuisance.
• Lethal Lava Land: Deep Core, the setting for the final battle with Eggman and Eggman Nega in Adventure, is deep underground and above a river of lava.
• The Man Behind the Man: Captain Whisker was actually working for Eggman and Eggman Nega.
• Minor Insult Meltdown: When Blaze calls Marine a nuisance, the raccoon takes a severe blow to her confidence and runs away sobbing.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Captain Whisker is a robot pirate captain.
• Non-Indicative Name: Windmill Village doesn't have a windmill. This is justified because the windmill is damaged behind Marine's house. Completing Mission 14 will rebuild the windmill, and it appears on Southern Island.
• Nostalgia Level: Hidden Island 16 has the same level layout as Leaf Storm Act 1 from the original Sonic Rush.
• Outrun the Fireball: Sonic and Blaze do this after the Ghost Titan goes up in a massive explosion.
• Pirate Episode: Sonic and Tails are teleported to an alternate dimension after the Tornado is struck by lightning and crashes. There, they seek the help of Blaze and Marine the Racoon, the latter of whom is the captain of her own pirate ship, while battling a band of robot pirates led by Captain Whisker who is later revealed to be created by Dr. Eggman and Eggman Nega. The game's worlds include tropical islands, ghostly pirate ships, crystal-filled caverns, and the Pirates' town.
• Pirate Girl: Marine the Raccoon is a captain of her own pirate ship, whose group antagonizes Captain Whisker, an evil pirate.
• Pirate Parrot: While Captain Whisker's sidekicks, Mini & Mum, don't particularly look like parrots, they share some traits with them, such as always being seen near their captain's shoulders. In the Japanese version, the only other parrot trait they have is repeating certain phrases twice.
• Prehistoria: Plant Kingdom , while not this in time period, has this feel with giant plant life and all the enemies being prehistoric beings such as dinosaurs, including the stage's boss.
• Punny Name: The names of Captain Whisker's two little sidekicks are Mini and Mum.
• Racing Minigame: In order to obtain the Chaos Emeralds, Sonic must race Johnny on the Wave Cyclone. Collecting rings and performing tricks will fill up Sonic's boost gauge, which he will need to use to stay ahead of Johnny, as well as push away floating mines. Johnny cannot be hurt himself, but can damage Sonic by dropping bombs and firing missiles in addition to using his own boost gauge. Upgrading the Wave Cyclone is a necessity in order to obtain the final two Chaos Emeralds.
• Rail Shooter: The Ocean Tornado is a massive sailboat equipped with a variety of weapons. When using it to travel the ocean, it moves forward automatically, and the player must use the touch screen to aim and fire at various targets in order to protect the ship. The weapons the player can use include bullets, which are weak but have near-instant reload time, cannonballs, which deal heavy damage but cannot be fired rapidly, and a flamethrower, which deal lots of damage but has a lond reload time.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Just before the last zone, a fed-up Blaze gives one of these to Marine when she's acting petulant about being advised not to come for her own safety.
• Rhythm Game: When traveling in the Deep Typhoon, the player fires rockets at enemies that get in the way by tapping them on the touchscreen to match on-screen prompts timed to the music, similarly to Elite Beat Agents. Most enemies simply need to be tapped once, but others require you to follow them with the stylus for a second in order to lock onto them.
• Ruins for Ruins' Sake: Sky Babylon is located on a continent floating within a clouded green sky. It holds the ruins of a city from a long-lost civilization.
• Ship Level: Haunted Ship, which serves as the fourth action stage. This stage takes place on a haunted pirate ship.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Blizzard Peaks is a snow-themed level where Sonic and Blaze must perform tricks while snowboarding.
• Sole Survivor: Before the Final Boss, Johnny leaves Captain Whisker behind, and is only seen again when you race against him for the Chaos Emeralds (which is required in order to face the True Final Boss), making Johnny the only surviving pirate, since the explosion of the Ghost Titan sank all the others.
• Sound Test: A koala musician named Muzy appears on Seagull Beach after the player clears Big Swell, and plays various sounds and songs from throughout the game. The player can unlock more of these songs by clearing Muzy's missions in Mission mode.
• Tennis Boss: The Ghost Pendulum is an interesting example in that you're not hitting projectiles back but rather the boss's own pendulum arms with metal balls attached. Hitting them with enough force will cause them to eventually fly up far enough to strike the boss in the head, and which pendulum you hit determines how much damage he takes (the starting cyan one is the smallest and therefore the easiest to knock up but also does the least amount of damage; the second yellow one is the medium and does more damage but takes more hits to move without a running start; and the final red one is the largest and does the most damage, but is also the hardest to move and can barely move unless you have a running start). Complicating matters is that he can turn the balls spikey at random which makes them impossible to hit without taking damage, and as they're coming back down like wrecking balls they can hurt Sonic/Blaze if you don't intercept them with another attack, on top of several other attacks the boss can drop to mess up the timing of hitting the pendulums.
• Terrifying Tyrannosaur: The boss of Plant Kingdom is the Ghost Rex, a giant robotic T-Rex that stomps around and tries to take a bite out of Sonic. In the second phase of the fight, it stomps so wildly that it creates a giant hole both it and Sonic fall into, forcing Sonic to take it out down there.
• Theme Naming: The names of the majority of the bosses start with the word "Ghost", with the exception of Captain Whisker and Johnny, as well as the True Final Boss, the Egg Wizard.
• Tickle Torture: Lampshaded but averted. Moments before his final boss fight, Captain Whisker threatens to subject Marine to this when she insults him.
• Trapped in Another World: Upon reuniting with Blaze in Coral Cave, Sonic and Tails discover that the storm at the beginning caused them to get transported the Sol Dimension. They need to use the power of both the Chaos Emeralds and Sol Emeralds in order to return home.
• True Final Boss: The game normally ends after defeating the Ghost Titan in Big Swell. Once all fourteen Emeralds are collected, the story will continue with one more boss fight against the Egg Wizard, before the true conclusion of the story.
• Underground Level: Coral Cave is set in a submarine cave littered with colorful gemstones.
• Was Too Hard on Him: Blaze is little quiet after she bluntly told Marine she was a nuisance and can't come with them. Sonic and Tails assure her that Marine will be okay.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: After the Dual Boss fight against Captain Whisker and Johnny, Johnny flees the scene and is never heard from again (aside from the Emerald Races).
• Womb Level: The boss of Blizzard Peaks is the Ghost Whale, a giant robotic whale. After Sonic knocks the Ghost Whale unconscious, he must go inside it and attack its weak point; its mechanical brain. If Sonic does not make it to the brain within the time limit, the Ghost Whale will eject him from its body, but hitting certain targets will add extra time to the time limit.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Marine is convinced she's the hero and Sonic, Tails and Blaze are her sidekicks. Blaze gets fed up with it eventually.

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