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Sonic Heroes

2003 video game

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 15, 2026
Entity authorityQ1068962 ↗
Source-derived summary

Sonic Heroes is a 2003 platform game developed by Sonic Team USA and published by Sega for the GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Windows. The player controls teams of three Sonic characters and navigates levels while collecting rings, defeating robots, and avoiding obstacles. They swap between characters, who each have unique abilities, to overcome obstacles. Sonic Heroes downplays the action-adventure and exploration-based gameplay of previous 3D Sonic games in favor linear gameplay similar to the Sega Genesis Sonic games.

Sonic Team began working on Heroes following the completion of Sonic Adventure 2 (2001); Takashi Iizuka and Yuji Naka reprised their roles as director and producer. Heroes was the first multi-platform Sonic game, developed following Sega's discontinuation of the Dreamcast and transition to third-party development. Iizuka opted to design Heroes as a standalone game rather than a sequel to Adventure 2 to appeal to a broader audience. Sonic Team revived elements not seen since the Genesis Sonic games, such as special stages and the Chaotix characters.

Sega released Sonic Heroes in Japan in December 2003 and worldwide in early 2004. It received mixed reviews; critics praised the visuals, sound, fast gameplay, and similarities to the Genesis games, but were divided over the team-based gameplay and criticized the camera and voice acting.

Editorial summary

“Sonic Heroes” enters the record as 2003 video game. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Sonic, Heroes and video can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2003, 2001, 2004—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—2003-12-30, 2004-01-05, 2004-01-27, 2004-02-06—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Sonic, Heroes and video.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Sonic Heroes” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Sonic, Heroes and video provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1068962. 2 of 11 selected statements include explicit references; 11 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2003, 2001 and 2004.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Sonic Heroes”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Sonic Heroes primary sources, Sonic Heroes archive and Sonic research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Sonic Heroes”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Sonic Heroes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.