Sonic Advance

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Sonic Advance
Developer(s)	Sonic Team, Dimps (Co-Developer)
Publisher(s)	Sega & Nokia & THQ (Co-Publisher)
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 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, Adventure
Mode(s)	Single player, multiplayer
Rating(s)	CERO: All ages (全年齢, zennenrei?) (re-release) ESRB: Everyone OFLC: G
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. It is the first Sonic game to be released on a Nintendo console. Sonic Advance was also ported to Nokia's N-Gage system on October 7, 2003, under the title Sonic N.

[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.

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 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). 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

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.

[edit] SonicN

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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.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Sonic Advance at MobyGames
• Sonic Advance at GameFAQs
• Sonic Advance at the Open Directory Project
• Sonic Advance page at The GHZ
• Gamefaqs Entry on Sonic N