Up until now the Dreamcast's VMS unit has promised a lot and delivered little; the Godzilla VMS game was as mind numbingly boring as the actual Godzilla Generations game, the other launch titles didn't really make any use of it. Luckily for owners of the Dreamcast's LCD-equipped memory, Sonic Adventure's VMS offering finally starts delivering on the hype.
The Sonic Adventure VMS revolves around the Chaos creatures found throughout the game environment. The creatures can be grown in the game and in the VMS to varying effects. While in the actual Sonic Adventure game, one can mutate a Chaos creature, race them, or feed them with food brought from the VMS game. In the VMS game one can strengthen the creature, rename it, and run it through a quest.
For those having trouble using the VMS game, let me give you a brief tutorial. First, find an egg in the Sonic Adventure world and take it to one of the Chaos breeding places (Mystic Ruin take the mine-cart, City take the elevator up in the hotel). Once you got a hold of an egg by using the spin-dash button, jump and throw it against a hard surface to hatch it. You now have a chaos creature to interact with; you can branch of in several directions here. Remember the animals that pop out after you "kill" an enemy? Well, if you collected them, they should be in the Chaos/VMS room; pick one of them up and rub the animal against your Chaos creature - this mutates the creature, giving it the ability of the creature you were rubbing it with.
Now let's put your Chaos creature into the VMS; simply go up to the controller in the breeding room while holding your Chaos creature, stand on the red button and let go of the creature dropping him through the grill and into the VMS. Turn off the Dreamcast and pop your VMS unit out and set it to game mode (go to the graphic of the playing card and press "A"). A Sega logo and title screen will scroll; press A+B. You'll know see your Chaos creature walking; press "A" to bring up the options menu. You'll see different Japanese options, scroll to the last one to set the name of the creature. After naming it go up to the first option and press "A"; this shows the statistics for the creature. After you're done browsing through that, go to the third option; this will let you play a game of memory to earn fruit for your creature. Remember the layout and win some fruit! If you mess up more than three times you'll have to try again. Once you win some fruit, you can feed it to your Chaos creature by going to the second option and picking a fruit; this increases the creature's statistics and health.
After you're done messing around with this you can start on the VMS quest game, when you finish the quest you'll have a fully mature Chaos creature. The quest is pretty simple, just let the little guy walk; keep the unit nearby, it will beep when you are needed. Usually the thing beeps when your creature falls down or meets someone; just press the "A" button to keep going. There are three other events that might occur: a fight, a treasure, and fork in the road. When meeting a fork in the road you have three options: left, right, or letting the Chaos select. The treasure also gives you three options, pick the wrong one and you come up empty. Random fights against other Chaos creatures are turn-based; the goal is to get the little selector thing to end up in the white square - hit the "A" button when it's a square or two to the left of the white one.
At anytime during the quest you can switch on Sonic Adventure, go to the Chaos breeding room and pop the Chaos creature out of the VMS. This allows you to pick him up and take him to the room adjacent to the breeding room in the hotel. This is the racing room where you'll test your Chaos creature against 7 CPU creatures.
While the tutorial might not make it sound that exciting, it's fun to leave the VMS on as the Chaos creature runs through its quest while you're doing something else (such as writing a paper, watching television, etc.). Give it a go, I guarantee you'll be hooked after a few minutes!
Chao Race (1:05 Min) - 6.73 Meg MPEG Format
