Sonic Heroes is a 2003 platform game developed by Sonic Team USA and published by Sega. The player races a team of series characters through levels to amass rings, defeat robots, and collect the seven Chaos Emeralds. Within each level, the player switches between the team's three characters, who each have unique abilities, to overcome obstacles. Sonic Heroes downplays the action-adventure and exploration-based gameplay of its predecessors Sonic Adventure (1998) and Sonic Adventure 2 (2001) in favor of returning to the linear style of Sega Genesis-era Sonic games.