City Escape

City Escape is the first stage of the hero story in Sonic Adventure 2. It includes regular gameplay, as well as a brief boarding section in the beginning. Sonic escapes from a G.U.N. helicopter, and now must flee from the military organization's pursuit. 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 cut-scene before the stage says, "Above the capital city", and a G.U.N. soldier in Shadow the Hedgehog mentions Central City as being the capital. The enemies in this stage are G.U.N Beetles and Hunters. The level concludes with a truck chase.

Upgrade
The upgrade in this stage is the Magic Hands, found shortly after running down the side of a building. It is hidden in an underground chamber covered by metal boxes. As such, Sonic must already possess both the Bounce Bracelet and the Flame Ring to access 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.

Video
thumb|250px|left|City Escape

Trivia

 * The stage is based off of the city of San Francisco, California. The reason it looks much that way is because Sonic Team of America is located in San Francisco.
 * 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 ran over by the truck.
 * In the game, Sonic wears Soap shoes in order to promote the product and the new extreme sport, freestyle grinding, that the shoes were made for. In City Escape, there were also many billboards, blimps, and benches that advertised the shoes.
 * In the cutscene before the level when Sonic escapes from the helicopter, the pilot identifies himself in military talk as Sigma-Alpha 2, which translates from Greek as "SA2", the game's initials.
 * In the DreamCast version of the cut-scene mentioned above, Sonic's model has his original shoes when he escapes from the helicopter, but when he jumped off of the helicopter's wing he was somehow wearing his Soap shoes.
 * This is the only speed stage to have music with lyrics.