Sonic Adventure 2: The Trial

Sonic Adventure 2: The Trial, not to be confused with Sonic Adventure 2: Trial Version, is a free demo of Sonic Adventure 2 for the Sega Dreamcast, which was bundled with releases of Phantasy Star Online. It is an earlier prototype than Sonic Adventure 2 (Preview).

Sonic Adventure 2: The Trial includes one level (City Escape) from Sonic Adventure 2, with dialogue spoken completely in Japanese, accompanied by English subtitles. The translation for the opening helicopter escape cutscene is also slightly different – in this demo, one of the pilots exclaims, “What the hell?”, while in the final version, this line was changed to, “What in the world?”.

This demo differs in several ways from the final version, the most notable difference being that Sonic still wears his original trademark shoes. It wasn’t until a few months before the retail release of Sonic Adventure 2 that Sonic Team revealed a merchandising deal with Soap Shoes. Other changes in Sonic Adventure 2: The Trial include a different logo, different road-side billboards, different sound effects, looser controls and physics, and an instrumental version of the song, Escape from the City.

When the player waits through the title screen, a video plays. This video shows prototype footage, including Sonic in Sky Rail, which Sonic does not access in the final version of Sonic Adventure 2.