2-D Sonic games have a charm that I never seem to be able to put my finger on. It's not speed, that's for sure, I don't care if it was the main theme. Maybe it was Tails, Sonic's sidekick who never seems to die. Or Knuckles, whose just cool. Or maybe it was those Pinball stages, I love pinball. Whatever the case, I have a lot of stuff to cover for this game, so I'd better get started!
You all know what Sonic is. A Hedgehog that's blue and can run fast. He's also extremely lazy. Hey, that's what I associate "free spirit" with, don't flame me. His enemy, Robotnik, is mean. He takes animals and puts them into robots. I never really figured out WHY he does that, but Videogames have a lot of strange villains. Finally, we have Amy, who rules all, for reasons I'll explain later.
Right, so all the characters have special abilities. Sonic can grind down rails, Tails can fly, Knuckles can glide and climb walls (another unanswered mystery, how does he do that?), and Amy is, well, unusual. I'll get to that later.
So you run around, really fast. That's what Sonic is known for right? One thing I remember about the original Sonic games (haven't played them in a while, so bear with me), is that they were really easy. I also remember that the Sonic and Knuckles cartridge never seems to work (I'm thinking of getting Sonic Mega Collection). Thus, we have a problem.
Challenge is lost. You breeze through the levels, quickly, and fight a boss (the later bosses can get devious, but still...). So how did Sega increase challenge? 2 things. 1. Chaos Emeralds. You have to search every world for them (scratch that, only most of the worlds you have to search), when you find a miscolered spring (not easy), you're close. Jump on it to be trabspoted to the insane yet fun minigame.
Okay, actually, I enjoyed the minigame. You fall down a shaft on a snowboard (why a snowboard? Cause snowboards are cool!), collecting rings. Lots of rings. Good luck. It's really hard. It's not always easy to see where the rings are. Sometimes you'll miss them for no reason. Too bad. Now for challenge point 2.
2. AMY! Amy is a unique character for several reasons. 1. She can't defeat enemies by jumping into them. 2. She can't spin dash (not too useful anyway). 3. She has a variety of hammer based moves at her disposal.
So, when playing as Amy, you might not want to go so fast. You'll definetly need her special jumping abilites (V+B does a super jump, in the air Amy will spin her hammer around really fast). Once you get the hang of her, it's quite fun. Go Amy!
Ah, but that's all icing on the cake. Well, maybe that's actually cake icing has been put on, but still... Anywho, the Chao Garden. It rules. Rings you collect during your adventure are here, so you can buy stuff for your Chao. Fruit, toys, etc. Okay, let's face it. Chao > Pokemon. Why? Chao can talk. And they do so constantly in the garden. In a funny way, I might add. Phrses like "Someday, I want to rule the world," are common. Chao rule!
Did I mention you can send your Chao to SA2:B on Gamecube? You can. You can raise your Chao there, as well as send them into fights. Yay!
And, the review is almost over, let me just give you a quick cheat to use whenever you play as Sonic. On the character select screen, press the following buttons: ^>V>L>R>A If you hear a chime, you did it right. You'll see it from there.
Graphics are a bit more cartoonish than on the Sega Genesis, which makes sence, since Sonic is a cartoonish character. Sound and Music is nothing special, but nothing terrible.
Also, I noticed some sloppy stuff in here, I'm almost completely sure that Angel Island Zone was originally a tropical island area. It looks like you're in the clouds this time. Yet another unanswered mystery.
Nevertheless, Sonic Advance has a little bit for everybody, Sonic fans will love the speed, Mario people will enjoy playing as Amy, and the Chao suits up everyone else. Enjoy.
9/10
-A Genius (Tails never seems to die when he's following Sonic, did'ja notice?)
[ February 04, 2003, 08:44 PM: Message edited by: A Genius is stupid ]