Looking Back on the Sonic Advance Series

2D Sonic games tend to fall into two categories: Classic Sonic, or Rush. Classic Sonic encompasses the Genesis games, Mania, Superstars, and anything else that the Christian Whitehead team makes moving forward. Rush is, of course, the duology for the Nintendo DS, Sonic Rush and Sonic Rush Adventure. This is generally taken to be The 2D Sonic Games, but I rarely see people talk about the games that fell in between these two spaces, after the 16-bit era but before Rush. I'm talking, of course, about the Sonic Advance trilogy.

Sonic Advance 1, 2, and 3 were all developed in collaboration by Sonic Team and game studio Dimps, released in 2001, 2002, and 2004 respectively. Their style was based on continuing the Genesis games, while also incorporating modern elements of the series from the Adventure games. All of them were fairly successful, with the first two even appearing on the list of best-selling GBA games. Each of the three games offers its own version of what 2D Sonic could be, allowing each game to stand on their own or as a trilogy.

I remember them fondly, especially because Sonic Advance was my very first Sonic game. All of them are great games, and people rarely talk about them when talking about Sonic, so I wanted to revisit them with the express intent to gather my thoughts and talk about what's what with these oft-forgotten Sonic games.

Let's start with Sonic Advance. I played these games on my 3DS for convenience (and because I've already played them on the GBA and DS before), and my first thought was "Wow, this game looks really good blown up like this!" Not every pixelated game will look good stretched to fit a higher-resolution screen, but Sonic Advance really does! Beyond just scaling, the art is really nice and strikes a fun vibe that combines classic Genesis-era Sonic with the Adventure era character designs. I felt that the soundtrack also went for a more classic style to the sound, giving the whole game the feel of the classic era, more or less.

To continue the comparisons, the speed and playstyle is also akin the the classic games, more specifically I'd say 2 and CD, combining speed with more precise platforming at times. You also get access to the 3&Knuckles mid-air shield move, which gives platforming a similar feel to playing the Genesis games, just with updated aesthetics and designs. The zone aesthetics are the same way, going for more basic themes like Green Hills, casino, mountain tundra, etc. Some of them are really cool, like Secret Base Zone and Egg Rocket Zone, but overall it's a very "New Super Mario Bros." kind of Sonic game, in a good way.

It's shorter and easier than any of the classic titles, even including a difficulty toggle to make boss fights easier and turn off the stage timer. The special stages are somewhat simple to find, needing a hidden spring in most standard zones, but the minigame itself is pretty hard, using a pseudo-3D falling effect that's difficult to gauge depth and location. They can be easier to find, however, by utilizing the four playable characters and their unique abilities to find and access the springs. In additional to Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy are all playable, with a hidden code that even allows you to play as Sonic and Tails like in Sonic 2!

Overall I'd rate Sonic Advance a 7/10 hats, not bad but not fantastic. It has a lot going for it, and I recommend giving it a go!

Moving on to Sonic Advance 2, it's got a lot of the same things going for it as the first game, which makes sense given that it uses a modified version of the first game's engine. It's faster than the first game, much faster, adding a new afterimage stage of speed. There's also a new R-button trick system not unlike the one in Sonic Rush, but it can be used for traversal moves, like forward speed gain, downward bounce, hard stop midair, or even a little Air Jordan pose to gain some extra height off a jump. This movement tech adds onto the new rocket start every level has, and makes for maybe the fastest 2D Sonic game ever. The levels take advantage of this with speed-based set pieces that take you upside-down, sideways, up and down and all around, as well as quick split paths that require precise responses to take different directions. This speed carries over to the boss fights, which are all in active motion, constantly scrolling with Sonic running to catch up with the boss, which adds a much more engaging aspect to the fights and is way more interesting than a static arena.

The zone themes start out more classic, another Green Hill to open, but starts to show its hand more and more as the game goes on, with maybe some of the most original themes in the series, like Music Park. The levels themselves are longer a bit more challenging than in 1, even with the same difficulty toggles from the first game. Some of the levels towards the end, like Techno Base, are less balanced and less interesting to actually play, even when the aesthetics keep going. The special stages are insanely hard to access, requiring you to gather seven "special rings" hidden in a single act. The minigame itself is decent, a good challenge and honestly more fun to play than the other two games. Unfortunately, the Chaos Emeralds in this game have to be gathered per character, where 1 shared emeralds among all the playable characters. This leads into Amy Rose being a secret unlockable character, who only becomes available after finishing the game as every character, each of them having all of the Chaos Emeralds. Yowch. But Cream the Rabbit makes her Sonic series debut! She has maybe the most interesting ability, in the form of her chao buddy Cheese, who can heal her with rings and give her a breathing bubble underwater, as well as being able to flap her ears to fly like Tails. Easy mode? Maybe a little, but keep her abilities in mind when we get to Advance 3.

All in all, Advance 2 might be my favorite of the Advance games, despite its shortcomings. I think the highs are high enough that I overlook the downsides, and it's really a great game that takes what the first game was and expands it. Overall, an 8/10 hats.

Let's wrap things up with Sonic Advance 3, the most experimental of the three games here. Advance 3 is in a lot of ways a middle ground between 1 and 2. It's still faster than 1, but not as fast as 2, removing the rocket start from the last game and balancing itself with exploration and obstacles like the seesaws from Sonic 2, or breakable walls that take a couple attacks to break. 3 goes for some more out-there level designs, taking some well-known aesthetics like a cityscape for it's first zone, and giving it that Advance 3 flavor.

Granted, I didn't get too far in this game, so I'm not as familiar with it. However, after running around the new hub world a bit, playing through zone 1, its boss, and the first act of zone 2, I'd venture to say that the experimental side of this game lends itself to a somewhat higher difficulty level. The first boss in particular kicked my ass for a while. However, this may be in part due to the fact that I have yet to play around with this game's main gimmick: the teamup system. At the start of a game, you can select one character to play as, and another character to partner up with, à la Sonic 2. This allows your player character to utilize their special abilities, while also allowing a new team power to be used that combines the strengths of two characters. For example, pairing Sonic with Tails let's him do tricks like in Advance 2, but pairing anyone with Cream allows them to breath indefinitely underwater. This can also be changed depending on which character is player-controlled, like if you play Cream then pairing up with Amy lets you do tricks, or pairing up with Sonic gives you a life ring in the water. So clearly there's a lot of metagame here to build the "perfect team" for what you need in your current position. There's also so many combos and abilities I don't know about, so don't take this as an exhaustive list, give it a try for yourself!

To get to the special stage in this game, you need to 10 hidden chao in each zone. They'll be scattered across all 3 regular acts (oh yeah, this game has 3 acts like in Sonic 1), and finding all of them unlocks the big spring to access the special stage. It's just another pseudo-3D thing, hard to gauge depth and hard to succeed in.

Oh yeah, and this game has voices! Specifically, it's the last time that the 4kids cast of Sonic voice actors voiced all these characters together, this being Ryan Drummond's last game as the voice of Sonic. It's really fun to hear character voices in a GBA game, I love that it's here! Sadly though, it means they cut sound effects from things like Sonic's mid-air tricks, so the move itself is totally silent while he goes "All right!!" which is a tradeoff. Overall, Sonic Advance 3 gets a 6/10 hats from me, it could definitely be higher if there was a Sonic Advance 4 to polish up a lot of the more experimental aspects of this game.

And that's the Sonic Advance trilogy individually! As a collective though, there are a couple things you could say about it. For one, Dimps doesn't design the best levels, which becomes a bigger and bigger problem the longer their run was. Advance and Advance 2 were pretty good, but Advance 3, the Rush games, and their later work on things like Sonic Unleashed for PS2/Wii, or Sonic Generations on 3DS, show their over-reliance on death planes underneath the entire level, and cheap kills that artificially up the "difficulty". They keep alive the 16-bit dream of "Random enemy that you can't avoid that makes you drop all your rings, oops :)" which isn't very fun in the long run. Those things aside, however, the art is great, they nailed the style and aesthetic of all three of these games, and the soundtracks are pretty banger too. I only mentioned it with the first game, but all of these games look pretty decent when blown up (I think 1 looks the best, but still, decent).

The Advance trilogy are a sorely overlooked part of the Sonic franchise, and they hold up incredibly well! Better, I think, than something like the Rush games. They all have their own pros and cons, and liking one doesn't automatically mean you'll like the others, but they're all fun in their own right, and I recommend checking them out and giving them a chance!

~ Alex Amelia Pine

This post is a part of the series Game Reviews