Sonic Advance

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Sonic Advance
Developer(s)	Dimps Sonic Team (supervising)
Publisher(s)	Infogrames, Nokia, SEGA, THQ
Platform(s)	Game Boy Advance, Nokia N-Gage
Release date	Game Boy Advance JPN December 22, 2001 USA February 4, 2002 PAL March 23, 2002 N-Gage[1] USA October 6, 2003 PAL October 7, 2003
Genre(s)	Platformer
Mode(s)	Single player, multiplayer
Rating(s)	CERO: All ages (全年齢, zennenrei?) (re-release) ESRB: Everyone
Media	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 22, 2001, in North America on February 4, 2002 and finally in Europe on March 23, 2002. Sonic Advance was also ported to Nokia's N-Gage system on October 7, 2003, under the title SonicN.

Contents 1 Characters 2 Gameplay 3 Tiny Chao Garden 4 Reception and follow-up 5 SonicN 6 Trivia 7 References 8 External links

[edit] Characters

The game has four characters, Sonic the Hedgehog, Miles "Tails" Prower, Knuckles the Echidna, and, for the first time as a playable character in a classic-style 2-D Sonic game, Amy Rose. Sonic can have Tails follow him, Sonic 2-style, by entering a special code (Up-Right-Down-Right-L-Right-R-Right-A) at the character select screen. All characters have separate save-games which record their individual progress.

Each character has his or her own unique ability which is a determining factor towards the game's overall difficulty. Their special moves are all retained from Sonic 3 and Sonic Adventure. Sonic can dash in mid-air, Tails can fly and swim, Knuckles can glide and climb walls and Amy has her hammer to attack. Amy is considered to be the toughest character to play as because of her inability to spin-dash or spin-attack. Each character's strengths and weaknesses particularly come into play when fighting bosses or trying to find access to the special stages.

[edit] Gameplay

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. Sonic Advance was the last game in the Sonic series to use end-level signposts and capsules and the sonic leg spin an animation used from the very first game; Sonic Advance 2 used a goal post for the 1st 2 acts of a level, Sonic Advance 3 used a floating star symbol for the first 3 acts, Sonic Rush used giant rings, and Sonic Rush Adventure used a Giant Treasure Chest. In the 5th level Angel Island, you must face Metal Knuckles. The X-Zone and the Moon Zone are only visited to battle Eggman.

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. In the Special Stages, the player must collect a given number of rings by the middle of the stage, and once the player passes it, the target number of rings will be doubled. If the player collects this number of rings by the end of the stage, they will win it, otherwise they will lose and be sent back to where the Special Spring was. 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] Reception and follow-up

Reviews
Publication	Score
Electronic Gaming Monthly	7.67 of 10
Game Informer	8.5 of 10
GamePro	4 of 5
GameSpot	7.9 of 10[1]
GameSpy	88 of 100[2]
IGN	9.1 of 10[3]
Nintendo Power	4.2 of 5
Compilations of multiple reviews
Compiler	Score
Metacritic	87 of 100[4]
Game Rankings	70%[5]
MobyRank	74 of 100[6]

The release of Sonic Advance received a lot of attention as it was both the debut of Sonic on the Game Boy Advance and of an original Sonic game on a Nintendo system.^{[citation needed]} The two video game giants have had a notorious rivalry that lasted for over a decade. It was generally well-received from Sonic fans and critics alike, although some feel that it is "too slow" for a Sonic game.^{[citation needed]} The game's success lead to two sequels, Sonic Advance 2 and Sonic Advance 3 as well as spin-offs such as Sonic Battle and Sonic Pinball Party.

[edit] SonicN

SonicN 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 exactly half the height. Media for the game itself is an MMC ROM, which means that progress can be saved in the deck. English-language versions are not region coded.

The game itself is identical to the Game Boy Advance version except for the exclusion of the Tiny Chao Garden. It runs a bit slower on the N-Gage hardware. The biggest issue is the screen resolution, which was changed to be taller instead of wider like the game was intended. The N-Gage's screen is portrait, so the most notable change in gameplay is the choice between a full resolution mode with a narrow view, or a letterboxed 4:3 mode with scaled-down graphics. Many fans and veterans of the game regard this as a lesser gaming experience.

While copy protected, the protection was defeated within days of the release by a group calling itself Blizzard (no relation to the developer).

[edit] Trivia

Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

• Much of the game's music is remixed from previous Genesis/Mega Drive games. The remixed music includes the Options (Sonic 1's Scrap Brain Zone), Player Data (Sonic 1's Star Light Zone), 2P select (Sonic 2's 2P Emerald Hill Zone), invincibility (Sonic 1's Invincibility), and the first two bosses in the X-Zone (Sonic 1 and Sonic 2's boss musics).
• The picture of Amy on the red drawer (on top of Sonic's picture) in Sonic Battle is the headshot of her pose in Sonic Advance.
• The background at Casino Paradise Zone is similar to the background at Walt Disney World Resort's Magic Kingdom.
• The first zone is called "Neo Green Hill Zone", which may be a reference to Sonic the Hedgehog 2 beta.
• This game was released on a combo pack along with Sonic Pinball Party, and was also released on a combo pack with Sonic Battle and later ChuChu Rocket!^[7].
• One of the bosses is a robot similar to that of Metal Knuckles from Sonic R. The first part of the battle is very similar to the Aquatic Relix boss from Sonic Pocket Adventure.
• The Special Stages are modeled after the bonus stages from Knuckles Chaotix with the addition that Sonic and his friends are sky surfing (possibly a throwback of the opening cutscene in Sonic Adventure 2 where Sonic leaps from a helicopter while riding a makeshift snowboard).
• Originally the prototype version of the game had a different styled HUD, and the Rings scattered throughout the game were chunkier than in the final version of the game. Some Level design and graphics are also different in prototype screenshots.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official Site (Japanese)
• Sonic Advance at MobyGames
• / Sonic Advance at the Open Directory Project
• Sonic Advance page at The GHZ
• Gamefaqs Entry on Sonic N

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