Sonic Advance Appreciation Topic

Sonic's dash ability of course allows him to beat some bosses (and stages as well, but that goes without saying) faster than Cream ever could. The invincibility of the bosses after being attack is the same, but the recovery of Cream's Chao attack is longer than it takes for a skilled player to rush towards the boss again and just jump onto his weak spot with Sonic. My record for the first boss was also done with Sonic, although I don't know the exact time as it was in regular gameplay (haven't unlocked boss attack mode yet). I think it was just below 10 seconds. Of course, some bosses are exceptions to this, as they are out of reach for quite some time with Sonic, whereas Cream still can shoot at 'em.

But unless you're speedrunning stages you know inside out, Cream makes things to much easier it's not even funny (actually, that's not true - the boss rush is pretty funny when playing as Cream whereas the bitchslap of doom is just pure ragefuel for me otherwise). Especially the last two stages are both a testament to Cream's superiority and the sometimes just puzzling stage design. About to switch gravity? Better hit B with Cream so your Chao will kill potentially awaiting enemies. You're Sonic? Unless you know where those enemies are gonna be waiting, you better have some rings ready in case you'll just helplessly drop into them.

However, the game is the most FUN with Sonic, since speedrunning stages is where the games excels, and he's tailor made for just that since he has a dash. Plus Sonic games always the most right when playing as Sonic (newsflash I guess).

 

I never beat/finished any of the advance games.. but I got the furthest in Advance 1, struggled through most of 2, I remember nothing from Advance 3 except thinking it was fucking irritating. Never got through all of Rush, either.

Advance 1 was probably the most fun, for me... but it might just be the novelty of it in general... a new Sonic game... a new era for Sega... a new Game Boy. It was uncharted territory, so all of these things together kinda made the game maybe a little more significant than it necessarily really was. I still had fun with it, though... And most of the series had good music too, I just wish the GBA itself had clearer sound in general >_< I'd almost be willing to pay/commission someone like Tweaker or GeckoYamori to rearrange them in YM2612 lol

 

She still makes Sonic and Tails look bad, which is why I don't like her. (I think a lot of Cream haters have that attitude, but that's an assumption.)

It's the equivalent of a bad fanfiction where you have a fan character that does the same thing as multiple other characters, overshadowing them, except it's made 10 times worse by the fact that this character is original and someone in SEGA's creative department had a brain fart. I honestly think some dipshit at DIMPS inserted their 5 year old's fan character in the game with no consideration for how it reflects on the other characters.

That's subjective, just pointing that out. Sonic's never my first choice when I want to play a Sonic game, but I do appreciate it when SEGA uses a balanced character lineup. (and by "balanced", I mean they use EXISTING characters to fill certain places instead of making up new ones for the sake of it, adding new ones for story plots others could fill, or putting two characters in the same game that do the same thing.)

 

Ah, the good old advance games. OK I'll give my tought on each one.

Sonic Advance 1: Personally this is what Sonic 4 should have been since not only did Dimps hit the nail on the most critical aspects such as physics, pinball mechanics and momentuim, but also carried out the tradition of introducing a "new" character who brings something new to the gameplay mechanics, being this time Amy Rose. Really fun game tough a little too short.

Still it had quite soe nice features, like fighting against the first bosses of both Sonic 1 & 2, Music from Dreams come True and my favorite little extra: Amy with maracas (which for some reasons reminds me of that pic of Knuckles Chaotix Soundtest menu)

Sonic Advance 2: Out of the three this is my least favorite. Mainly due to the way the levels are made with focus only on speed and almost no platforming. This one relies way too much on memorization of the whole levels plus the location of enemies and traps, tough it also requires a lot of precision in execution to get the best paths. Another aspect I did not like too much is how all boss battles are done by running, which can be annoying at times (unless you play with Cream). Perhaps another bad aspect is the mechanic to access the special stages, which become a nightmare when you realize that to unlock the last character you have to do it with all of them.

On the bright the game had an awesome soundtrack.

Sonic Advance 3: Out of the three this one is my favorite. I liked how there was more balance between the speed sections and the platforming ones, plus the Teram mechanic was quite innovative since not only did it define the skill set the Team leader would have but in a way it also dictated the difficulty level.

In a way I agree here, however one of the problems in the 2-D Sonic games is that some of the recent characters don't really bring anything new to gameplay mechanics. The only time they tried something new was with Amy in Advance 1 and that was almost 9 years ago (Yeah, I know, I like that gameplay a lot and for that I blame you and your awesome hacks XD ), after that they just made characters like Blaze who basically are "reskins" that don't differ to much from Sonic and end up being redundant. Honestly altering some stats like speed cap or jump height no longer cut it.

Personally I prefer character who bring new & original ideas, however when one looks at it from the design point, there is really not much new stuff left to introduce without making the same mistake that happened in the 3-D games: not staying true to the core gameplay.

 

I agree with most of that, but Amy was introduced (as playable) in Sonic Adventure, so she really isn't that new, except to the 2D games, unless that's what you meant. She played pretty much the same way in Advance, without the power-ups.

 

I still love the fight of Knuckles vs. Mecha Knuckles.

 

About that Mecha Knuckles, does anyone else think he looks like the glitch character from Chaotix?

 

Not really, I think he's more of a nod to Sonic R.

 

I think he means more after when the initial purple shell breaks off Knuckles.

The pink color seems to be a nod to Sonic 3's Knuckles having that odd off pink color