Sonic Advance

Sonic Advance
In-game characters clockwise from right: Sonic, a Chao, Tails, Amy, and Knuckles.
Developer(s)	Sonic Team, Dimps (Co-Developer)
Publisher(s)	Sega (Japan) THQ (North America) Infogrames (Europe and Australia) Nokia (N-Gage)
Designer(s)	Yuji Naka & Hiroshi Matsumoto (Producer) Akinori Nishiyama (Director)
Artist(s)	Yuji Uekawa (Art Director)
Composer(s)	Masato Nakamura (Music Composed & Arranger) Tatsuyuki Maeda Yutaka Minobe
Platform(s)	Game Boy Advance, Nokia N-Gage (as Sonic N)
Release date(s)	Game Boy Advance JP December 20, 2001 NA February 3, 2002 PAL March 8, 2002 N-Gage[1] NA October 6, 2003 PAL October 7, 2003
Genre(s)	Platform, action
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer
Rating(s)	ACB: G CERO: All ages (zennenrei) (re-release) ESRB: E
Media/distribution	64-Megabit cartridge

Sonic Advance (ソニックアドバンス, Sonikku Adobansu^?) is a platform game in the Sonic the Hedgehog series, developed by Dimps, published by Sega (in Japan), by THQ (in North America) and by Infogrames (in Europe and Australia) for Game Boy Advance. It was released in Japan on December 20, 2001, in North America on February 4, 2002 and finally in Europe on March 23, 2002. It is the second Sonic game to be released on a Nintendo console (having been beaten by 10 days by Sonic Adventure 2 Battle for the Gamecube). Sonic Advance was also ported to Nokia's N-Gage system on October 7, 2003, under the title Sonic N.

Gameplay

Sonic runs through a loop in the fifth zone, "Angel Island Zone". HUD features clockwise from bottom left: lives, ring counter, score, and time elapsed.

The player must play through 6 normal zones, followed by the X-Zone and the Moon Zone. Each of the normal zones contains two acts. Act 1 is finished by passing a signpost with the face of Dr. Eggman on it. Act 2 is finished by opening a capsule containing animals, which falls from the sky after defeating Dr. Eggman's creations, such as the Egg Hammer Tank.

The game features four playable characters; Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Amy. Each character has the same moveset as they did in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic and Knuckles, with the addition of a melee attack. Each character has a special ability, such as Sonic's splice shield, Tails' flight and Knuckles' gliding and climbing abilities. In her playable 2D debut, Amy cannot perform a spin dash or automatically attack while jumping like the others, making her unique amongst the characters. Grind rails first introduced in Sonic Adventure 2 also make their first 2D appearance. Sonic and Tails can also be used at the same time during the story by inputting a cheat code at the character selection screen. However, the gameplay is similar to Sonic The Hedgehog 2; Player 1 can only control Sonic, while Tails follows Sonic, controlled by the CPU.

Special Springs can be found near the top of certain acts. Each normal zone contains one Special Spring, except for Ice Mountain Zone which contains two: one in each act. By jumping onto these springs, the player can reach a Special Stage - each spring goes to a certain special stage every time it is jumped on. The stages see players fall down a tube on snowboards while trying to earn enough rings to complete the target amount. By winning the stage, the player receives a Chaos Emerald, although there is only one emerald per stage, so the same stage cannot be repeated for multiple Emeralds. Unlike most other classic 2D Sonic games, the Emeralds are "shared" between all the characters. Once the player has collected all the Emeralds and completed the X-Zone with all four characters, they can access the Moon Zone by completing the X-Zone again with Sonic.

Tiny Chao Garden

Sonic Advance, like Sonic Advance 2 and Sonic Pinball Party features an extra game called the Tiny Chao Garden. This is similar to the Chao Gardens found in Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2, and their GameCube counterparts. Players can transfer their Chao from any of the GBA games to the GameCube games and back by using a GBA to GameCube link cable. Unlike the Adventure games, the Tiny Chao Garden is a lot more limited. Chao will not age, can only use fruit and three toys which must be bought in the Tiny Chao Garden itself, and only one Chao can exist in the garden at once. An egg can be stored in the garden too, and will hatch as soon as there is no Chao in the garden. Chao can only leave the garden by being transferred to an Adventure game or by running away (which they will do if they hate the player; this happens very rarely however).

Fruit, toys and eggs must be bought with rings. Rings held by the player when they finish an Act will contribute towards the rings in the Tiny Chao Garden. Also, rings can be earned by playing two mini-games: a matching cards game, and a rock-paper-scissors game. Rings, fruit and eggs can be transferred to the Adventure games, but not from them, which many fans complain about as it is much easier to earn rings in the Adventure games.

The Tiny Chao Garden does have a glitch, however: if the game data is deleted, rings obtained in the main game no longer contribute to the Tiny Chao Garden sum.

There are two ways to fix this. The first is to use a cheat device such as Gameshark. The second is to collect the same number of rings that had been collected before the game data was deleted.

Storyline

The Story begins as Sonic goes to search for Eggman around the South Island, by collecting Chaos Emeralds. Sonic arrives in Angel Island and he sees a robotic lookalike of Knuckles named Metal Knuckles, and Eggman built the Egg Rocket which will go in outer space, so Sonic goes in and finds Eggman. Later he finds Eggman and chases him outside and defeats him.

UnGood Ending: After Sonic defeats Eggman, Sonic doesn't have enough chaos emeralds. He falls down to Earth and is caught by Tails in his Tornado.

Good Ending: After Sonic defeats Eggman, he collects all the chaos emeralds and he turns into Super Sonic and chases Eggman onto the moon for his first time. After Super Sonic defeats Eggman and flies off the moon, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy wondered what happened to Sonic, so Tails goes to search for Sonic a few days later. He finds Super Sonic who came from the moon, as Tails waves to him.

Reception

Reception
Aggregate scores
Aggregator	Score
GameRankings	84.11%[1]
Metacritic	87 of 100[2]
Review scores
Publication	Score
Electronic Gaming Monthly	7.67 of 10
Game Informer	8.5 of 10
GamePro	4 of 5
GameSpot	7.9 of 10[3]
GameSpy	88 of 100[4]
IGN	9.1 of 10[5]
Nintendo Power	4.2 of 5

Sonic Advance is notable as it was both the debut of Sonic on the Game Boy Advance, and of an original Sonic game on a Nintendo system; the company with which Sega had a notorious rivalry that lasted over a decade. It was generally well-received from Sonic fans and critics alike. The game's success lead to two sequels, Sonic Advance 2 and Sonic Advance 3, as well as handheld spin-offs such as Sonic Battle and Sonic Pinball Party.

In March 2009, Official Nintendo Magazine ranked Sonic Advance as the 75th greatest game ever released on a Nintendo console.^[6]

Sonic N

Sonic N is essentially Sonic Advance for the Nokia N-Gage. It was a launch title for the N-Gage and was released in North America on October 7, 2003. Packaging is a box the same width and thickness as the popular DVD "keep case", but half the height. The game comes on an MMC ROM, which means that progress can be saved in the deck^{[clarification needed]}. English-language versions are not region coded.

Gameplay is identical to the GBA version, except for the exclusion of the Tiny Chao Garden. The game runs slightly slower on the N-Gage. The most apparent difference between the two versions is the screen resolution: The N-Gage's screen is portrait unlike the GBA, so the player is offered a choice of two modes: a full resolution mode with a narrower field of view, or a letterboxed 4:3 mode with scaled-down graphics.

References

1. ^ "Sonic Advance Reviews". Game Rankings. http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages4/516689.asp. Retrieved 2008-04-02. 
2. ^ "Sonic Advance (gba: 2002): Reviews". Metacritic. http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/gba/sonicadvance?q=sonic%20advance. Retrieved 2008-04-02. 
3. ^ "Sonic Advance for Game Boy Advance Review - Game Boy Advance Sonic Advance Review". Gamespot.com. 2002-02-08. http://www.gamespot.com/gba/action/sonicadvance/review.html. Retrieved 2008-04-02. 
4. ^ "GameSpy.com - Reviews: Sonic Advance (GBA)". Gamespy.com. http://archive.gamespy.com/reviews/march02/sonicgba/. Retrieved 2008-04-02. 
5. ^ "IGN: Sonic Advance Review". IGN.com. 2002-02-05. http://gameboy.ign.com/articles/324/324071p1.html. Retrieved 2008-04-02. 
6. ^ "100 Greatest Nintendo Games - The Complete List". Official Nintendo Magazine. March 3, 2009. http://www.officialnintendomagazine.co.uk/article.php?id=7356. Retrieved June 21, 2010. 

1. ^ GameFAQs (February 5, 2008). "N-Gage release dates". http://www.gamefaqs.com/portable/ngage/data/918288.html. 

External links

• Official website (Japanese)
• Sonic Advance at MobyGames
• Sonic Advance at GameFAQs
• Sonic Advance at the Open Directory Project
• Sonic Advance at The GHZ