Video Game / Sonic Advance

Sega's celebrity hedgehog makes his Nintendo debut in a hyperkinetic epic that looks like classic Sonic but has made the quantum leap to brand-new cool.

—Nintendo Power promo for the first game◊.

On December 20, 2001, pigs flew in the video game industry when Sonic the Hedgehog finally made his debut on a Nintendo system with the release of the first ever original Sonic/Sega game to appear on a Nintendo system after Sega's switch to software manufacturing. The game was also released the same day in Japan along with the Nintendo GameCube port of Sonic Adventure 2, known as Sonic Adventure 2: Battle, with the Western version being released a few months later.

Sonic Advance is the first game of the trilogy in the Sonic the Hedgehog series for the Game Boy Advance. Co-developed by Sega and Dimps and designed in the vein of the classic side-scrolling platformers on Sega Genesis, Sonic Advance trilogy is essentially lip-service for older fans, with some elements of Sonic Adventure thrown in.

The first Sonic Advance is perhaps the most reminiscent of the older games. The plot is very minimal (thwart Dr. Eggman!) and the gameplay is a bit slower than its successors but features a little more emphasis on platforming. This was the first 2D side-scroller in the series to feature Amy Rose as a playable character. The game was also ported to the short lived Nokia N-Gage as Sonic N, but suffered from being transposed from the horizontal screen of the GBA to the vertical screen of the N-Gage (it also removed the Tiny Chao Garden). It features a special condensed Chao Garden (from the start in the first, unlockable in the second), and the GameCube-GBA link cable can be used to import/export Chao from and to the GameCube ports of Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2.

It was followed by Sonic Advance 2 (2002) and Sonic Advance 3 (2004).

Sonic Advance provides examples of:

• Adapted Out: The Android version of the first game only allows you to play as Sonic, with the other playable characters being either Demoted to Extra or completely absent.
• Balance, Power, Skill, Gimmick: In the first game, Knuckles was the Balance, with a moveset oriented both for exploration and speed; Sonic was the Power, with a moveset oriented entirely for plowing through enemies and getting to the goal without frills; Tails was the Skill, with a moveset geared for exploration (both flying and swimming); Amy is the Gimmick, since she cannot curl into a ball like the boys and must attack and maneuver with her hammer, which has completely different mechanics and range.
• Border-Occupying Decorations: The Sonic N release of the first game lets players choose between the N-Gage's unusual 11:13 and a scaled-down 4:3 ratio. For the latter, the game fills the borders with blue, plus Sonic and his name at the top.
• Boss Bonanza: The final level of each game consists of one. In Sonic Advance the "X-Zone" doubles as a Nostalgia Level by presenting you with the first bosses of the original Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 before the actual Final Boss, the Egg-X.
• Boss-Only Level: The True Final Boss gets its own stage, "The Moon Zone".
• Boss Rush: In the X-Zone in the first, before you fight the Egg X, you must go through memory lane by battling the ball-and-chain mobile from Sonic the Hedgehog and the infamous drill mobile from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 in that order, both made easier by taking half the number of hits to beat (both bosses are accompanied by GBA-style rearrangements of the boss themes from their respective games).
• Bottomless Pits: Present in all of the regular levels (the only exception being Neo Green Hill Zone). Did we mention that these bottomless pits are insanely long? You find yourself falling for quite a while.
• Character Select Forcing: The 2011 Android port of the first game removes all but one of the playable characters, meaning Sonic is the only playable character in that version.
• Clumsy Copyright Censorship: The 2011 Android port replaces the remix of the Invincibility theme from Sonic 1 with the game's intro theme, and the Sonic 1 and 2 boss remixes in X-Zone with boss songs from Sonic the Hedgehog 4 due to the rights to the music from Sonic 1 and 2 being owned by Dreams Come True and meaning Sega has to pay royalties to them every time they use the songs.
• Collapsing Ceiling Boss: The first game's Egg Spider's sole attack is to drill into the ice ceiling and make stalactites fall on the player's head. These stalactites must be used as platforms to reach the machine and bop it.
• Continue Your Mission, Dammit!: The playable characters actually grow impatient and start scolding you if you leave them idle in Advance 1.
• Continuity Nod: Angel Island Zone in Advance 1 is a throwback to both Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Sonic Adventure. The level itself consists of floating ruins like the Sky Sanctuary Zone from Sonic 3, but with Mayincatec flair adopted from the Echidna civilization depicted in Sonic Adventure—further, the far right of the background depicts the Lost World temple rising out of the forest below, revealing the level to be floating above the Mystic Ruins.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
  • In the first game, pressing down while dashing throws the brake on Amy's momentum by making her crouch, as opposed to having her roll into a ball like it does for the other three characters (see also: like it does in every 2D Sonic game up until then). As you might reckon, this little handicap got removed in 2 and 3.
  • Despite the physics of the game being a close replica of those of the Classic games, there's still a few minor differences that can make it feel off for those who have mainly played the Genesis games. Most notably, the characters feel more weighty than they do in the Classic Sonic games, taking longer to get to top speed and the jump arcs lasting far shorter, making it easy to throw off those expecting lighter physics like the old games.
• Demoted to Extra: Since the 2011 Android version of the first game forces you to play as Sonic, the rest of the playable cast fell victim to this.
• Expy: The rabbit that sometimes pops out of Badniks is an expy of Pocky, one of the animals from the Genesis games. See Furry Confusion below.
• Fan Remake: One exists for the Android version of the first game, fixing the problems the original port had, as well as making all the other playable characters available like in the GBA version. Doubles as a Fan Translation because the original port was Japan-only.
• Fake Difficulty: Even the first game isn't totally free of this. Egg Rocket Zone and Cosmic Angel Zone have very cheap enemy placement, the former has bits where one slip up will send you falling way back down the level (and remember, the time limit is split in half for each part, so every second counts), and setpieces full of leaps of faith which can easily send you flying right into an offscreen spike or enemy.
• Floating Continent: Features in all three games as floating ruins. Angel Island from the first one and Chaos Angel from the third one are set on the very same Angel Island that is featured in Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Sonic Adventure.
• Frigid Water Is Harmless: Ice Mountain Zone, which is half-underwater and allow Sonic to swim freely in the icy water.
• Game-Breaking Bug: Erasing the save file in 1 (sometimes?) causes the Tiny Chao Garden to stop collecting rings. It can only be fixed by collecting as many rings as you had when you erased the file, or transferring your rings to a Sonic Adventure game. Fortunately, Sonic Pinball Party, which also features this minigame, does not have this glitch.
• Guide Dang It!: Some Special Springs in 1 (protip: Ice Mountain has two) might be very difficult for the player to locate. Bottomless pits, pesky speed boosters and unbacktrackable areas tend to make exploration even more difficult.
• Hard Levels, Easy Bosses: What Amy's playthrough in the first game amounts to. Since she moves slower than everyone else, can't turn into a ball to damage enemies, and doesn't have any midair abilities like flying or gliding, she has to take more care when planning routes through stages and fighting enemies. When you get to the bosses, though, the extra attack range granted by her hammer lets her make short work of them, often allowing her to hit the boss at times when the others couldn't quite reach.
• Humongous Mecha: The Super Eggrobo, the True Final Boss of Sonic Advance. It returns as the Super Eggrobo Z and then the Hyper Eggrobo in Sonic Advance 2 and Sonic Advance 3.
• Jack of All Stats: Knuckles. The first game's game guide gives him slightly above average in each of the three stats (Speed, Jumping, Special Skills). It also makes sense when you consider that he's normally a Lightning Bruiser.
• Legacy Boss Battle:
  • A Pre-Final Boss example. In Sonic Advance's final stage, Dr. Eggman reprises the first bosses from both Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2, complete with the boss themes from both games, before the actual Final Boss battle occurs. And there seems to be no other reason for Eggman to go to the trouble of reenacting fights that he had lost before.
  • The first phase of the Mecha Knuckles fight is a direct imitation of Knuckles' boss fight from Sonic 3 & Knuckles.
• Lethal Joke Character: Amy Rose in the first game is slow and can't roll. However, she has a high jump and can attack from standing without needing to build up speed (this includes an absurdly fast dash attack.) She also has a better attack range due to her Piko Piko Hammer. Her skills allow her to completely trivialize some bosses. For example, the underwater fight in Ice Mountain by high jumping to the top of the screen (and catching a breath) and smacking Eggman on the way down.
• Long Song, Short Scene: You're likely to blaze through X-Zone in Sonic Advance and reach the bosses before you hear even 10 seconds of what's a 90 second song. This is likely why XX in Sonic Advance 2 is one long song throughout the entire zone up until the final boss.
• Marathon Level: Egg Rocket in the first game, which has you going through three sections with a 5-minute time limit for each.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Given the precedent for playable characters to mostly play like Sonic, Amy mixes things up in Advance 1 by a significant degree simply by being unable to curl up into a ball at all. In order to damage enemies she has to manually attack with her hammer, and instead of a spin dash she simply does a quick hop forward. She is brought more in line with everyone else in Advance 2 and then regains some of her unique attributes in Advance 3, even passing them on to the other characters if she is chosen as a partner.
• Memory Match Mini-Game: The Tiny Chao Garden features the Chao Memory mini-game, where you try to match up seven pairs of cards while a Chao moves them around.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The first Sonic Advance has a cheat code that allows Tails to follow Sonic in normal play, à la Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
  • Mecha Knuckles, the boss of Advance's Angel Island Zone, initially appears as a Palette Swap of Knuckles—the palette in question is a throwback to Sonic 3 & Knuckles, where Knuckles' NPC appearances gave him magenta fur and, thanks to a glitch, yellow socks. Mecha Knuckles even throws in yellow gloves, either for funsies or as a second throwback to Knuckles' Fighting Gloves from Sonic Adventure.
• Nostalgia Level:
  • Several from Sonic Advance: Neo Green Hill Zone, Casino Paradise, Cosmic Angel/X-Zone and The Moon are all obvious homages to Green Hill Zone, Casino Night, the Death Egg and The Doomsday respectively.
  • Angel Island from Advance 1 is set in the same Angel Island from 3 and Adventure.
• Recurring Boss:
  • The EggHammerTank from Sonic Pocket Adventure appears in both Sonic Advance 1 and 2, and gets a Spiritual Successor in 3.^note The third game's hammer boss also shows up in Sonic Rush. There are other throwbacks as well: Advance 2's Techno Base Boss is a improved version of Pocket Adventure's Secret Plant Boss, for example.
  • It also applies across the games themselves: The boss of Cosmic Angel from the first is slightly altered and appears as Chaos Angel's boss from the 3rd. Ocean Base's boss feels like a cross between the bosses of Secret Base in the first game and Egg Utopia in the second game.
• Revisiting the Roots: The Advance games are heavily based on the Genesis trilogy of old, albeit with a few minor physics tweaks thanks to the Game Boy Advance's hardware.
• Robotic Reveal: Mecha Knuckles in the first game, halfway through the fight.
• Schrödinger's Canon: While the games are not considered mainline platformers which normally have dubious continuity placement, most people tend to consider them canon anyway because of Cream's introduction and first meeting with Sonic in the second game. They were later confirmed canon when the game-canon Sonic Prime flashed back to the third installment in a third season episode.
• Screen Crunch: Sonic N was a victim of the N-Gage's vertically oriented screen—you can barely see ahead of Sonic making the whole game one giant Luck-Based Mission. There is an option to letterbox the screen allowing you to see more but it's too small to make anything out, making it useless.
• Sound Test: All three games feature one in their respective Options menus. The first game has it available from the beginning (with extra tracks unlocked after beating the True Final Boss).
• Super Title 64 Advance: A trademark of the Game Boy Advance was to give the "Advance" title to the games themselves. All three games do this.
• Tactical Suicide Boss: Ice Mountain Zone in the first game. In that boss battle, Dr. Robotnik's only attack in the underwater battle is to drop ice spikes from the ceiling, which allows Sonic to get additional air or in range of making attacks.
• This Is a Drill: The Egg Spider found in Ice Mountain Zone in 1 is equipped with a drill and drills the ceiling to make ice stalactites fall on the player. The player must use the stalactites to reach and hit the machine.
• Timed Mission: As first seen in Sonic Pocket Adventure, this series subverts the trope by letting the player disable the time limit at the options screen. Egg Rocket in the first game makes you go up a rocket and gives you five minutes to reach a certain point. When you reach that point, the timer resets and you now have five minutes to reach the next point. This continues until you eventually reach the goal.
• True Final Boss: It has one if you collect all 7 Chaos Emeralds in the Special Stages. The games all have Sonic become Super Sonic for these fights.
• Turns Red:
  • The first Egghammer in Neo Green Hill Zone Act 2 is simple, but once Eggman's down to one hit, he'll use the hammer to propel his machine into the air and use it as a hammer.
  • After delivering 6 hits to the Egg Press in Secret Base, Eggman will jump off the top of the screen. Be ready to spindash and jump when he comes down, as not only will he track the player, but he'll make the ground shake when he lands, which will damage the player if they are not in the air.
  • After taking enough hits, the Egg Spider will start drilling down more stalactites, with the robot dropping four when it's down to one hit.
  • After hitting Mecha Knuckles 4 times in Angel Island, he explodes, his synthetic skin comes off Terminator-style, and he starts firing homing missiles in addition to using punching attacks.
• Underwater Boss Battle: The fight against Eggman in the first game's Ice Mountain has your character submerged in water that reaches near the top of the screen, while Eggman, from up top, periodically causes icicles to fall into the water. After falling, they embed in the floor temporarily, allowing your character to use their flat tops to get extra height for both precious air and a chance to smack Eggman's machine.
• Warm-Up Boss: It has their first boss be a mech with a giant hammer that tends to be easy.

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