Headscratchers / Sonic Advance Trilogy

• In Sonic Advance 2's Sound Test, the invincibility theme is named "UNRIVAL". What.
  • I think it's supposed to be short for "UNRIVALED." As in, having the invulnerability gives you unrivaled strength compared to the basic enemies, or something...
  • It also fits with the naming convention for previous invincibility tracks that had proper titles. The invincibility tune in Knuckles Chaotix was named Surging Power and in Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 it was called (Still) Invincible...No Fear. Unrival fits right in with those.
• Sonic Advance 2: How come that Dimps downgraded the graphics during the development? Just compare these screens:
  • The Leaf Forest background has vibrant colors in early screens◊, but washed out colors in the final version◊.
    • They likely wanted to increase the sense of distance to the backdrop by turning up how "misty" the distant scenery was. It can be a sensible decision in a 2D platformer where you don't want to distract the player from the foreground with a noisy background, but whether it's worth it comes down to personal taste of the player.
    • I agree with the above response, and think it also has to do with the nature of the GBA screen in particular. Remember, the original GBA model has no screen light whatsoever, thus the user is left with only external light sources as an option. A lamp, the sun, one of those dinky little plug-in lights, and such. If you remember what that was like, then you can probably see why that makes foreground-vs-background contrast all the more important.
  • The character's afterimage effect is transparent in early screens◊, but opaque in the final game◊, using the primitive "flickering sprites" effect for pseudo-transparency instead.
• How did the characters survive falling from space to the Earth in the endings of Sonic Advance 2!? Every other game that had the "fall from space" ending had them get rescued by someone in the Tornado, but not this one.
  • Sonic survives falling from space in the intro of Sonic Unleashed, and earlier than Sonic Advance 2, Shadow turns out to have survived falling from space after Sonic Adventure 2 (if a little worse for wear due to his inability to handle his super form the first time). Basically whether characters need any help to survive falling from space or not in the Sonic series depends entirely on what is convenient. The developers probably just didn't want Sonic Advance 2's ending to be literally identical to Sonic Advance's down to every detail.
    • Actually, Sonic was saved by Chip's powers in Unleashed, while Shadow was rescued by Eggman, who sent robots after him at the end of Sonic Adventure 2.
  • The characters are never shown falling through space in the ending, so we don't know at which point they jumped out of Eggman's space station. It's possible this one slowly descended at first, then as it started picking up speed, the characters jumped out, already within the Earth's atmosphere. So the fall wouldn't be as severe as falling from space.
• Why were Cream and Vanilla captured by Eggman in Sonic Advance 2? One would guess that Amy, Knuckles, and Tails were kidnapped because they are Sonic's allies, but the Rabbits are an outlier having not yet met Sonic.
  • Presumably for the same reason Eggman is always kidnapping animals — to use as organic batteries.
  • Cream could have been captured to lure Sonic out, just because he doesn’t know someone, that doesn’t mean he won’t help them. For Vanilla, maybe Eggman was just mad that Cream completely walloped all his machines, and decided that messing with her indirectly was the only method of revenge which would not get him blown up by her in record time again.
• While the real world answer is probably "they hadn't created it yet", its still worth pondering: why was Dark Gaia released when Eggman split up the planet in Sonic Unleashed, but it didn't happen when he split up the planet in Advance 3?
  • He would have had to split the planet to the core. We don't know if he went that far.
• "They don't have fall damage in this game" can (jokingly) explain the normal ending of Advance 2, but what's up with the true ending? Sonic loses his Super form and desperately dives to catch Vanilla, implying that hitting the ground would be a bad thing. But he just lost his Super form! He can't fly now! So how does catching her out of the air even change anything? The ending cutscene seems to read like Sonic is floating gracefully to the ground with Vanilla in his arms, but in that case since when could he do that and why couldn't we use it in Sky Canyon?
• How in the world did Knuckles get tricked into trying to kill Sonic with the Egg Saucer!!? Like if it was a 1v1 melee brawl like in the past, I wouldn't have had any problems, but Knuckles' piloting Sonic's archenemy's ROBOT!? That is completely unforgivable!!
  • Who says Knuckles was trying to kill Sonic? This is Sonic, he smashes Eggman's mechs on a daily basis, and Knuckles knows it. He probably was just trying to beat him up.