City Escape

City Escape is the first stage of the hero story in Sonic Adventure 2 and is playable with Sonic the Hedgehog. This stage takes place on the streets of the capital city of the United Federations, Central City. This can be proven by the fact that the cutscene before the stage says, "Above the capital city," and G.U.N. soldiers in Shadow the Hedgehog mention Central City as being the capital. It also has a two-player battle mode.

History
The game begins with Sonic the Hedgehog escaping from a G.U.N. helicopter, fleeing from the military organization's pursuit. He is falsely accused of stealing the Chaos Emerald that Shadow stole from a national bank.

Stage Layout
City Escape has regular gameplay, as well as a brief boarding section in the beginning. The stage starts out with Sonic riding down hills using a flap he ripped off from a G.U.N helicopter similar to a snowboard. When Sonic gets off the flap, he is introduced to Omochao, a guide that helps you throughout the levels. Then after fighting many enemies and going down rails, Sonic is chased by a G.U.N. truck, chasing him to the end of the level until it crashes into a brick overpass, as Sonic gets to the Goal Ring.

Collect 100 Rings
This mission is very easy due to the number of rings located during the first part of the stage. Also, there are few G.U.N. robots in the level that will cause Sonic to lose all of his rings.

Find the lost Chao
The player must find Sonic's Mystic Melody before the player can take a shot at Mission 3. Find the Ancient Ruin near the bottom of the building Sonic runs down. Stand by the Ruin and play the Mystic Melody to make a Spring appear. Use it to reach the first Pulley. Jump to the next Pulley and the player will be facing a Beetle robot. Use the Homing Attack, but hold down A button to get a high bounce off the robot. It's hard and, unfortunately, the player must do it three times. The third robot is a Spark Beetle and has a force field, so wait until it’s lowered before jumping at it. Grab the Swing Bar and flip into the air, directing Sonic into the alcove. The unhappy Chao will be glad to see the player. Mission accomplished.

Reach the Goal within 3:00
This is a very strict time limit to complete the stage. Sonic, for the first part, must avoid hitting any cars that can slow him down and use the ramps to increase his speed. Afterwards, Sonic must take off running and use any or all grind rails to increase his speed especially in the building with the stairs and two long grinding rails. Sonic shouldn't waste any time fighting G.U.N. robots and collecting power-ups. During the large run down the building, it helps to build up the Spin Dash and allow Sonic to roll down the building at greater speed. During the large truck chase, Sonic must simply evade any hindrances that can slow him down. There are no checkpoints in this mission.

Clear Hard Mode
Hard Mode isn't much different besides the increase number of enemies. However, there are two notable changes about City Escape in Hard Mode. One is that after the sliding part, the stairway is blocked off by a gate meaning Sonic must jump higher to grab a ledge and pull himself up. The other is that after the part where Sonic ran down the building, there are no longer floating platforms to jump on and Sonic must now Homing Attack a beetle and use the Light Speed Dash in order to get to the other side. Otherwise, the rest of the level is the same as in normal mode including the G.U.N. truck chase.

Downtown Race
Downtown Race is a 2-player stage in Sonic Adventure 2. Downtown Race is City Escape covered in snow. No enemies appear, though the usual cars are still there. There are also walls blocking the path. The Downtown Race is a race through City Escape on boards.

Level Up Item
The Level Up Item in this stage is the Magic Hands, found shortly after running down the side of a building. Sonic must already possess both the Bounce Bracelet and the Flame Ring to access it. You must find some silver crates (at least four), and use the bounce attack, then get it. When used, an enemy in close range to Sonic will be captured in a small ball, effectively destroying it. The ball can then be thrown at other enemies to destroy them.

Trivia

 * The stage is based on the city of San Francisco, California. The reason it looks much that way is because Sonic Adventure 2 is the first game that was developed by the US branch of Sonic Team. Since the newly established division was so influenced by their headquarters in San Francisco, the level designers, Takashi Iizuka and Eitaro Toyoda, decided to make some of the levels as references to well known locations in San Francisco. The other levels based off of San Francisco are: Mission Street (Mission Street is an actual street in the city), Radical Highway, Route 101 and Route 280 (the latter three were all based off of the Golden Gate Bridge).
 * This is the first stage in any game in the Sonic the Hedgehog series to have fully audible lyrics throughout the entire theme. In comparison, Speed Highway from Sonic Adventure was the first stage in a Sonic game to have lyrics; however, they are not very audible, and are few and far between.
 * In the truck chasing section, Big can be seen running along the right side of the last stretch of road before the truck crashes. He panics and then gets run over by the truck. This only occurs in the Dreamcast and HD ports.
 * When Sonic is being chased by the truck, it is most likely a reference to the movie Duel (1971), Steven Speilberg's first film where the protagonist is being chased by a menacing semi truck.
 * It is possible to reach the lost Chao in the third mission of this level without the use of the Mystic Melody by using Spin Dash tricks to roll up the face of the building in which the Chao is located.
 * In the cutscene before the level when Sonic escapes from the helicopter, the pilot identifies himself in military terminology as Sigma-Alpha 2, which translates from Greek as "SA2," the game's initials, despite real military phonetic alphabets (IE: NATO Phonetic Alphabet) do not feature Sigma to signify the letter 'S' as rather it would be Sierra-Alpha 2.
 * In the Dreamcast and GameCube versions of City Escape, as well as Radical Highway, there were many billboards, blimps, and benches that advertised the shoes.
 * All these advertisements were taken down and were replaced with Sonic Team ADs in the XBLA/PSN/Steam release likely due to licensing issues. However, the ads still exist within the game's files and can be restored into the stage in the Steam version of the game by removing the file objtex_stg13.pak located in Steam\steamapps\common\Sonic Adventure 2\resource\gd_PC\PRS.
 * Despite all the ads being covered up in the HD version, Sonic still wears soap shoes.
 * The stage features many ads advertising a few objects from the Sonic universe, such as rings, springs, and item boxes.
 * City Escape is also a playable stage in the Dreamcast Era of the console version of Sonic Generations as a remake.
 * When Sonic gets to the Goal Ring, he is still in the city, so he hasn't really "escaped" yet.
 * The G.U.N Helicopter in the opening cutscene appears to be based off the Russian Mil Mi-24.
 * The way how the beginning of the stage features Sonic boarding through the city streets on a piece of the helicopter is similar to how Sonic snowboarded in IceCap Zone and Icecap in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic Adventure, respectively.
 * City Escape is Sonic's only stage to have background music with lyrics.
 * During the level, the player can knock out several parked cars while running, sometimes even knocking down moving cars. According to the bonus video for the HD Version, this gameplay element was added in by the developers in response to frequently getting parking tickets from the Angeles Police Department during the game's development.
 * City Escape is Jun Senoue's favorite stage from Sonic Adventure 2.
 * One of the concept art depicts Sonic grinding down the rails of a bridge. This was never seen in the actual level, though it is not unlikely this inspired the rail grind segments of a stage in the same area; Radical Highway.
 * City Escape's music reappears as one of the songs that can be purchased in Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games, Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games, Mario & Sonic at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games and Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

Differences between the Dreamcast and the Gamecube version

 * In the original Dreamcast version, if Sonic is going slow enough while entering the truck chase part, when the truck jumps at the street, Sonic can back-up which shall force the truck to back up as well, the truck then crashes and is immobilized, allowing you to continue the level at your own pace. This was fixed in the Gamecube version.
 * In the Dreamcast version of the cutscene mentioned above, Sonic's model has his original shoes when he escapes from the helicopter, but when he jumps off of the helicopter's wing, he has somehow switched into his Hi-Speed Shoes. In the game, Sonic wears the Hi-Speed Shoes in order to promote the product and the new extreme sport, freestyle grinding, that the shoes were made for. This bug was fixed later in the Gamecube version.
 * In the area after Sonic gets off the Snowboard, there is a Super Ring on the wall. It was worth twenty Rings in the Dreamcast version but was changed to ten Rings in the GameCube version.
 * The word "WELCOME" was removed from the two grassy areas on both sides of the stairs after the first Point Marker in the GameCube version.
 * Omochao appears just before the Goal Ring in the GameCube version. He will say "That big truck scared me." if the player picks him up and jumps into the Goal Ring, unlike in the Dreamcast version.

Music
Escape From The City= The Mad Convoy Race=

Video
Normal= Hard=