Sonic Advance Appreciation Topic

Yeah, I'm truly shocked that Nintendo or Sega hasn't tried to port the Advance games over to another system. I'm sure they're old enough to not have to worry about being "delisted" and I remember them doing at least fairly well, ratings wise.

 

Probably in Virtual Console form.

and I'm sure there are a few ports of GBA games on DS... + - coughphoenixwrightcough  

 

Sonic Advance is Sonic 4. And is awesome.

That over-hyped downloadable game doesn't exist, they repeated the same mistake they made when they called the 2006 game "Sonic the Hedgehog".

/flamebait

 

Sonic Advance 1 is more Sonic 4 to me than Dimps' nice little $15 flash game will ever be.

But really, I love the first Advance game. After a few years of not playing Sonic at all, due to our Sega Genesis being lost in storage and me not being able to afford a Dreamcast, Advance 1 is actually the game that got me back into the series back in 2002. It really feels like the next logical step in 2D Sonic evolution to me (save for the absence of Elemental Shields and Super Forms); special moves, added an innovative fourth playable character, new depth to Tails' and Knuckles' abilities (IE Tails actually swimming while "flying" underwater, and Knux's ability to tread water), and of course the ricochet-off-of-an-enemy-and-gain-massive-air physics. Didn't mind the grinding so much in this game, and I kind of liked how it was limited to Sonic and Amy. Mecha Knuckles fight was probably my favorite boss fight. This was the only Advance game where I actually hunted for Emeralds, and the most I've ever acquired was 4.

In my opinion the series gradually dropped in quality with every entry. I liked Advance 2, but it was meh enough to me to not think twice about giving it to my niece as a birthday present. It could be fun, but got boring to me after 10 minutes or so. Sky Canyon is the bane of my existence. It really ticked me off to learn that you had to get ALL of the Chaos Emeralds with EVERY character to unlock Amy and the Chao Garden, especially considering how difficult it was to even ENTER the damn Special Stages...

Advance 3 never really grew on me. One thing that still irks me to this day is that I never managed to unlock Cream. I did what I was supposed to do to unlock her, but it just never worked for me.

 

You have to beat the level with Sonic as the lead to unlock Cream. I think the level was the 3rd act of that cyber zone

 

The fact that Knuckles and Tails got further expansion to their abilities while Sonic's were actually downgraded (no elemental shields and I don't think the insta shield makes him invincible either) kinda bugged me. His unique abilities in all three titles seemed kinda meek and overspecific (eg. grind and ground pound you can use in all of a handful of areas, an extremely low radius homing attack that was useless at high speeds and ineffective on too many objects, in comparison to Cream's game breaking homing chao attack). One of my biggest peeves with the 2D games was how they seemed to discourage you from playing as the weaker title character (ironic considering all the flak the 3D ones get for doing similar things, at least he has homing attack to balance it off in those).

 

That's the thing though - I beat every level with Sonic in the lead, unless I'm simply mistaken (which certainly isn't outside the realm of possibility).

 

I wouldn't call Sonic Advance 1 the real 'Sonic 4'. It's the best game they came out with in the 15 years following Sonic 3 & Knuckles. It's a decent 2D platformer that holds its own against the 8 and 16 bit games. It's still a handheld though and it feels like a mini-sonic game rather than a full fledged title.

Sonic Adventure 1 was the only game that ever felt like a real genuine effort to try to top S3&K, and that's why I think of it as Sonic 4. Of course, the effort failed and it's a game full of boring levels and bad camera shenanigans. Still, after that it felt like they weren't even trying and I still don't think they are.

 

In Sonic Advance 2, Sonic had the fastest tricks. That, combined with his air dash, made him the fastest character to play with if I'm not mistaken.

In Sonic Advance 3... well, yeah, Sonic kinda sorta got the short end of the stick, but I actually play Sonic + Cream the most.

 

Gotta love that bubble shield she gives Sonic.

Advance 3 is my favorite out of the GBA games, the character abilities were awesome and I liked the emerald gimmick. I'm still looking for them all, but I've managed to find one, and once you do, the special stages are a cakewalk compared to SA1 which was just cheap with special stages. I know I got those rings, but it didn't always register so I thought that part of the game was broken. Plus, if you fail, which I did a lot, you had to go find the spring again, one of which is impossible to get to as anyone but Tails (the one in the first level) and the only other one I found was in the sky level by accident and I could never relocate it, and after a while, I gave up.

I do like Advance 1 for its levels and characters though, that code to have Tails follow Sonic was a nice touch, too bad you couldn't make him pick you up. I never experienced multiplayer but it was one thing I really wanted to do in either Advance 1 and 3. The chao garden is one reason I still own the original cartridge (and my SP), it being the best way to fatten up the little bastards before they turn 2 and evolve on me.

Advance 2 just sucks, period. I put it down at the canyon level. I hated the boss fights because I thought they were all too hard and repetitive, I couldn't figure out how to get the emeralds, and I had to beat the game with Sonic just to unlock the chao garden. That canyon level is impossible as Sonic. And the characters were just unbalanced. Obviously Sonic wouldn't be anyone's first choice, but then again, he never was for me, but why be Tails when Cream can fly for longer and why even try to unlock Knuckles? He can't climb anymore so that's a - and you're better off with either Cream or Tails Cream. The only balance is that the easiest character gives you the worst reward and the hardest gives you the best, and that's a horrible balance considering you have to beat the game with all the emeralds with each character. They even messed up Tails and Knuckles in favor of Cream, Tails only flew for five seconds instead of 9/10 and I've already covered Knuckles.

But all three games have awesome art and music, I used to pop in a cart just to listen to the sound test on the bus or on long car rides.

There's that Flash game everyone loves called Ultimate Flash Sonic, which is popular as I understand it, but I think it's a piece of shit for the sheer fact that it's made off Advance 2 except more broken and only containing 2 levels (last time I played anyway), so I don't think anything even made off Advance 2 is enjoyable.

I think Dimps should use the character sprites from Advance 3 in Sonic 4. I said Advance 3 specifically because they're less sloppy than the last two games. I'm not saying the other two sprites were bad, but the art quality only improved as the games went on, and from my time with messing with sprites, I remember a lot of strange deformations in Advance 1's sprites. (Such as one of Sonic's snowboard poses looking warped by how he's bending or the fact that Tails' tails don't spin when he's at full speed) but of course, this will never happen, as it's probably faster and cheaper to render from horrible models.

This makes me want to go dig around for a Gameboy pallet...

 

Well, technically, you don't HAVE to beat Advance 2 with all of the Chaos Emeralds for each character, only if you want the extra stuff.

Beat the game with all Chaos Emeralds once: Unlock Chao Garden
Twice: Sound Test
Thrice: Boss Time Attack
Four times: Unlock Amy
Five times: Nothing! Bragging rights.

 

That was what I meant; the unlockables. Besides, whatever happened to "OMG getting all teh emroldz = SUPAR SAWNIK! (and co.?)" I would think beating the game once with each character would have been sufficient.

 

That's typically only if the Emeralds are already plot devices. They aren't in Advance 2 since you have to collect them, so it makes sense that you don't get Super Sonic until you collect them with Sonic.

 

The canyon level is impossible if you don't know how to use tricks. Granted, there actually is a path that you can use as Sonic without the use of tricks because I remember beating the game with Sonic before I learned what tricks were, but it's a rather specific path in both acts. Doing the tricks, however, change that entire game imo... you could say that the game is developed around them, but if you didn't read about them, you wouldn't know about them.

Knuckles can definitely climb in that game, I have no idea where you got that from.

If I remember correctly, Tails does fly for a longer period of time than Cream, but Cream flies not only faster, but with more control (such as the ability to end your flight with the press of the B button). And yes, Knuckles does climb walls.

 

I can believe this, I didn't know about them until recently, but then again I only skimmed the manual. The upside is that now I know what those sprites are on my sheets that looked unused. I think you can use tricks in Advance 3 as well, but it's not mandatory, and is never required if I remember...

It's been some time since I played Advance 2, having lost the cart and never caring to pirate it. There was something he couldn't do and it annoyed me, I was pretty sure it was climbing. Now I might have to go download it to find out.

That's possible, it might have felt like Cream could fly for longer, and even looked like it when I counted the seconds, which might or might not be entirely accurate.

I suppose pointing out the failed logic in giving a creature that flaps more control than a character that uses rotating limbs as not making any sense is probably pointless, but whatever.

It makes sense for Sonic to need to collect them to turn Super, but it didn't need to be that beating the game with the emeralds was the only way to unlock certain things. (Like the fucking chao garden and sound test.) My complaint here is that it was too hard to unlock everything because instead of just beating the game with a character, you had to do it with all the emeralds. The emeralds were originally used as a bonus for a God mode you earned in-game, I don't think they should be used for anything more, or anything different, and if they wanted to give a reward for collecting them with each character, it should have just been super forms regardless if it breaks continuity or not since it's been established the word is foreign to SEGA anyway and it would have been more fun.

I checked the wiki to see about how you get EGRs, and I was mistaken about having to beat the game with a specific character (though I thought the manual stated such), which slightly lessens my dislike of the unfair requirements for some things (and makes me want to go find the manual again) but anyway...

 

General - Awesome series. It had level art and physics inspired by the classics, but incorporated things such as the title screen, character art, and character movesets from the Adventure games.

Sonic Advance 1 - Loved it, am loving it, and will continue to love it. Unlike the latter two games in the series, getting into Special Stages wasn't extremely difficult and unlike its direct sequel, the Emeralds collected were shared between characters. However, I will agree that the characters accelerated very slowly (though the Spin Dash and Amy's little hop thing more or less circumvent this) and the level layouts in Angel Island Act 1 and Cosmic Angel were absolutely AGONIZING to deal with at times. For the other levels though, designs were close to perfect. They weren't too bare or too busy, and the bosses weren't hard to figure out, but at the same time, you had to think about how to reach their weak spots. 9.3/10.

Sonic Advance 2 - In terms of the basic engine, a step up from the 1st in a lot of ways. More attacks were implemented into characters' movesets such as the Bounce Attack, and most of the attacks from the previous game were simplified (ex. no longer had to multi-tap B for Sonic's slide). Additionally, it introduced ring-based acceleration, so as long as you managed to stay alive, you wouldn't have to go through levels so slowly. It also had many alternate paths which could be accessed with tricks. However, the level design managed to hurt these positive aspects slightly; it's just too bare. In contrast, I actually liked the bosses. They were pretty challenging and really put the MAN in EggMAN. (Yeah, cheesy joke I know. :specialed: ) The only real challenge in the actual levels though is getting the Chaos Emeralds, which I honestly feel no need to explain... 7.5/10.

Sonic Advance 3 - Like Sonic Advance 2, but added the teamplay idea. I actually really liked this; it meant that you could play as a single character 4 different ways. I also thought it was cool that a ranking system was added. Contrarily, the level design was kind of funky to me; it was playable, but sometimes it felt like the game was trying to kill me. Bosses were... harder, to say the least. Special Stages were not as hard to get into as the previous game's, but were still pretty tough to access. 8.4/10.

By the way, there is not anything about the actual Special Stages in the 3 games I did not like; they were all fairly straightforward and simple to complete.

 

Even under the concept it's stats are somewhat different from Tails' I don't think Cream should have had his signiture move, at least not under the same activation and execution (Charmy also flies in Chaotix but his mechanics work far differently, enough to make it a whole different innovation). She also had a homing attack to overshadow Sonic (though it may have been different enough had the latter's not been dumbed down to the point of being near useless). Not only was she a game breaker it was due to being a mish mash of other character's signiture abilities.

 

I don't think Cream breaks the game so much as Cream just makes overall casual gameplay easier. I still beat levels faster with Sonic, and check this out. Dude beat a number of bosses with Sonic faster than I ever could with Cream. wtflol