Game #899: Sonic Advance

 You had to be there, but Sonic on Nintendo's consoles was mindblowing. Life changing.

 From bitter rivals to co-existing on the same console, Sonic Advance was something earth shattering if you were a 90's kid. And it was more than just 'Sonic on Nintendo', as the game was pretty good on its own right, to the point that I think it's sort of a GBA classic, and I played it a lot back when I was into GBA emulation, since getting the proper carts was a bit complicated back then, being at the mercy of whatever our stores decided to import.

 Sonic Advance is not your average Sonic game. It features a completely new artstyle, and, if you ask me, these new sprites are fantastic. Characters look very thin and athletic, which works for a game based on speed. Taking notes from Sonic's Dreamcast outings, you get four playable charactes: Sonic, Knuckles, Tails and Amy, each one having their own unique attributes. Sonic has an aerial bump-thing attack, Tails can fly, Knuckles can glide and climb on walls and Amy... Amy is entirely unique. Amy usually represents the easiest difficulty setting on Sonic games, but in this game she's actually the hardest character to play as. She can't curl into a ball neither on the ground nor on the air, making her exponentially more vulnerable than the other blokes, and her aerial hammer attacks are nothing to write home about. Going through steep slopes without speed requires using her crouching-jump thing, since she can't perform a spin-dash. Amy aside, the other character actually get the offensive spin-dash, aerial spin attacks and.... on-the-ground 3-hit combos(2 in the case of Tails and Amy). These combo attacks are useless in this game, since momentum is important and enemies are designed around hitting them while moving, but when I was younger I thought this close-quarters attacks were awesome.

 The game is set up like classic Sonic games, you get about 8-9 different worlds, each one(Sans the final levels) being comprised of two acts, the second act ending on a boss fight against Eggman. While the game is strictly 2-D, every stage has many higher and lower levels, making for various routes. Hidden in each world is a Spring that can take you to a somewhat dull bonus round where you can aim to obtain a Chaos Emerald. You need all Emeralds to unlock the true final level. Every character plays through the same levels, but their different abilities do play a part in making every campaign feel slightly different. A normal playthrough of the game, which means not hunting for the Emeralds, will take you about 1 hour per character.

 I think most of the game is well designed, but not all levels are winners. The first Ice stage is painfully slow if you can't evade the underwater water routes, and these are anything but fun. Cosmic Angel Zone 1 is incredibly long and boring, taking about 12 minutes to complete, and some parts feel like they loop around each other until you figure out the right way, which isn't very fun when working against the clock. Those particular levels aside, I feel like some hazards are impossible to predict unless you know that they are coming, and some enemies are placed in spots where their attacks are hard to avoid as you approach them without knowing that they are there. An example of this would be an enemy throwing projectiles downwards, but you have to approach the platform they are hovering over through a bumper on the ground. Since it's a game built around speed, you'll try to get onto the platform as soon as it comes into view, only to get hit by a projectile you didn't know was coming because there was no way to know there was an enemy throwing things below. It's that kind of thing that kinda gets in the way of the game's main focus: Speedy platforming. And I think the devs knew that, which is why getting Chaos Emeralds relies on exploration and not amassing Rings.

 The game has a few extras. Time Attack and a Multiplayer VS mode, as well as a raising-sim thing, Chao Garden, in which you feed Chao-chaos with fruit and things and... I didn't really care for it. But I remember when I was younger I thought it was kinda neat, so there's that.

 I don't think Sonic Advance has aged the best, or maybe, I think that scores were a bit overblown at the time. However, I still believe that this is a game that every Gameboy Advance aficionado should have, because in my eyes, this game is one of the GBA's most emblematic game, and it's pretty good to boot.

 7.5