The scenario, I'm sure, is quite familiar to all of us. Practice until you're
as blue in the face as Sonic himself, memorize every nook and cranny in the Zone to the point
where you can literally play the whole thing in your head backwards and forwards, and antagonize
years off your life just to win a place in one of the notorious Sonic Adventure World
Rankings. And yet no matter how well you do or how good you are, there is always going to
be some SCHNOOK who can lick your absolute all-time best score by twenty stinking seconds. From
the beginning we all knew someone was doing some cheating, but nobody knew exactly how. It was
suspected that people were taking advantage of various glitches, which may still be the case, but
it turns out that's not the entire problem...
Recently posted on the SA World Rankings splash page is the truth. A certain
third-party controller available in some parts of the world actually allows the characters to
move faster than would be possible with other controllers. This is due to differences in
the calibration of the analog components. Here's the official message as it appears on the SA
website:
"Thank you for your participation in the Sonic Adventure community.
Recently, it has been discovered that a non-standard controller sold in some parts of the world
allows players to move slightly faster than those using standard Dreamcast controllers. (This is
due to different analog output values in the non-standard controller.)
In order to keep the World Rankings fair for contestants worldwide, we ask that all participants
only use standard Dreamcast controllers in all future competitions. We apologize for any
inconvenience this may cause.
Also, for future World Ranking events, we will select competitive events and stages very
carefully, to minimize any differences caused by the use of non-standard controllers.
We ask for your cooperation in making sure that Sonic players worldwide can enjoy these
competitions."
Unfortunately, there is nothing Sega can do about this except to request that
all contestants play fair. We wish. If you've been using a third-party controller to play the
World Ranking events, you may have had an advantage over those of us using standard controllers.
I trust everyone reading this will switch to the standard DC controller for all future World
Ranking competitions. Please, let's keep these contests fun and fair for all Sonic players
worldwide. If you had to cheat to win, then you've got nothing to be proud of.
I haven't a clue as to which peripheral controller(s) is/are the culprit, but
if anyone has any ideas, please lemme know so I can
report 'em here.
