If this one has evil level design, I can't even begin to imagine what you'll say of Sonic Advance 2's design (imagine Egg Rocket, but most of the game...)
Sonic advanced 3 is even worse tho. In advanced 2... collecting all 7 emeralds requires you getting 7 special rings as all characters to get amy and super sonic and chao garden. And ya dont get to play as super sonic in the main game. 3 is even wprse as you need to collect 3 chao per stage and its literally the same after that. Use an emulayor if ya wanna try this. But 2s stages are at least good. and the bosses actually are unique this time. And it feels oh so much smoother. @spontman
@@gamedestroyer112I don’t entirely agree there. If I remember right, Advance 3 saves your chao so that you don’t have to do it in one run, and the levels are better designed for exploration with fewer points of no return. Advance 2 expects it all in one run and often will destroy your chance the instant you pass one of the special rings because why would I want to be able to backtrack when the game is making me collect things?
@@robertlauncher Yeah, Advance 3 levels are very much designed to be explored, and the ways that different character combos modify your abilities makes exploring and re-exploring levels an enjoyable experience. You only ever need to collect each chao once, and going into the chao garden area of the level select shows you a list of all chao in the game, letting you know what levels you still need to explore more and even where the chao are within the levels relative to eachother. Really, I'd dare say that chao collecting in Advance 3 is probably one of the best parts of getting the chaos emeralds in ANY Sonic game. Then the game makes you collect the Special Keys in order to actually enter the special stages. After playing through every level in an area to collect all of the chao, probably going through each stage multiple times, the game makes you replay levels even more in order to collect 1 Special Key per level completion, which translates to 1 attempt at a special stage in the hub area. At the very least, while the Special Keys are technically "hidden" within the levels, I don't think I've ever played through a level and missed one after I'd unlocked the ability to find them by collecting all the chao. Replaying levels while experimenting with different character combos can help somewhat, but even that can only help so much if you need to retry the special stages repeatedly, and these special stages are HARD! Especially near the end, they expect some pretty excellent precision in order to get the chaos emeralds! If the game just let you have infinite special stage retries after finding all the chao, or even just gave you the chaos emerald for finding all the chao at all, that would be the perfect chaos emerald hunt! This middle step with the Special Key adds a layer of tedium that is difficult to ignore, unfortunately.
My least favorite thing about this trilogy is how cumbersome they make getting the emeralds. We had it perfect with Sonic 3, just find one giant ring and jump in. Advance 1, despite being mildly annoying, is also the nicest of the trilogy in this regard. Be afraid, be very afraid.
@@robertlauncher Just remember that these games were designed to be played by children. Because they have a lot more time for games but less money, they're going to play the same games over and over again. So games with "ain't got time for that" completion goals more or less serve as time wasters until they can afford the next game. Of course, you could argue such valuable time is better spent on learning. Well, don't argue with me; argue with kids, lol.
@@fictionalmediabully9830 No, I’d argue time is better spent on better games. Because I was a kid when this came out, and that was my solution, back to Wario Land 4.
As someone who has played Sonic Advance more times than any person should, the more I play it the more Amy's gameplay just feels perfect. She comes off as a character with her own strengths and weaknesses, rather than a gimmick. I get that a more casual perspective can make her off putting, but I also think people place TOO much emphasis on surface level observations and just assume she's bad without even understanding her playstyle. Even after they played the other three. For me, Advance 1 feels like its level design is most suited around Amy's abilities once you understand how they work, especially her useful Hammer vault from Adventure, which can be used to gain speed on loops if you time it right, (In fact I recommend trying this while running, as she can make it up slopes you'd normally spin dash around, there's also a bit of forward momentum to it too) can gain fast horizontal momentum on slopes and hitting springs with her hammer is so useful for shortcuts. All the levels in some way have a use for Amy's abilities, Ice Mountain plays up her ability to hit springs (as she goes twice as far hitting springs, which can make her find Special Springs as good as Tails in some cases) In fact as early as Neo Green Hill Act 2 you can hit the first spring you find with Amy's hammer, then use the hammer spin to bounce off of a badnik and a shield box onto a higher path, and in Ice Mountain her Hammer spin can be useful for mid air descending and springs, so well and proper hammer vault timings (especially how much distance you can gain underwater using it) come on full display and she breaks the boss of that level. Even in Egg Rocket this is also useful. In fact when I play Advance 1 I almost always play Amy with Tails thrown in because he is the second best character after Amy, because of his high airtime and ability to cheese certain bosses. Also if you hammer flip as you're running down slopes Amy will go far horizontially. Amy can also be broken against bosses too, especially the first boss, ice mountain boss and the mecha Knuckles. Even the cosmic angel boss is good for Amy (even though that boss sucks design wise) by comparison the more I play the game, the worse Sonic felt because the game's levels are designed around verticality and the upper paths are designed to be faster, Sonic is the ONLY one of the 4 who lacks any means to scale any level vertically unless you know the level design well. My big issue is he plays the game too honestly and all of its dishonest features hit the hardest because of it. Even his insta shield lacks range because Amy's hammer has range to combat enemies too. Her flaws don't come into play that much once you know how she works. Even the Hop has uses.
Figures. Sonic fans tore Amy apart for being too different from Sonic because they didn't have the attention span to understand the point, and sega responded by making her too similar to sonic or not playable at all
I hate that modern Sonic stuff has just turned Amy into "Girl Sonic with a hammer." She was always more interesting as the relatively weak character who was full of unique tricks and techniques to make up for it. It played into her character as "The fangirl who pushes herself to impress her superhero crush" really well too. It was inspiring.
I believe Sonic Advance 3 actually is the best of this arc of the story It goes after Sonic Battle and its about eggman discovering how to use the Master Emerald to bend reality
It took me years to figure out the trick to the special stages in this game. Here's the trick; don't go all the way out to the walls, only go partway. If you go out too far, you'll mis nearly every ring. Also, when you fail, you can grab a nearby checkpoint, find 100 rings or a 1up monitor and die, then make your way to the special spring for another attempt. That's faster than trying to do the whole stage over again.
I think the reason this game was so light and had a simple story was because this was the first game after SEGA stopped making consoles, so they had to market to an entirely new audience now by having their games on non-sega systems. I’m pretty sure it’s the same thing with Sonic Heroes
12:59 I found the safest way to beat this boss was to chill on the opposite side, wait for the boss to charge, then hit them and switch sides. Repeat. 12:00 As someone who got the emeralds legit, yikes. Wonder how much time I personally wasted.
The special stages become way better and easier to understand (for the most part) if you use a save state right before starting the special stage. Like, it was able to allow me to figure out where I need to be to be able to collect the rings on the sides of the screen without abusing the spin ability. I guess kinda like playing them because of it.
This game is an essential part of my GBA game collection. Playing through the game over and over with all of the characters is very fun. This was the game that got me through a long flight a few years back. Great game! ^-^ We don’t talk about the special stages though…
I prefer Advance 1 over 2 and 3 because it actually feels like it stays within the capabilities of the system, whereas the sequels feel compressed and bloated on such a small screen. 2 locking the Tiny Chao Garden behind Game Completion is also obnoxious and it’s a shame it was completely cut from 3.
Knuckles in Advance is less about harder routes and more like Tails in the sense of “Enjoy the extra abilities.” I think that may be why you enjoy him more here.
"This game is clearly trying to keep things simple to appeal to older fans." Not quite. Sonic Advance was the first Sonic game not released in a post-SEGA Hardware world. They basically thew Advance 1 out there as a soft reboot for people just coming in. You also missed an ability Advance Sonic has. Jump and doubletap forward or backward.
I enjoyed Sonic Advance as a kid and even 100% completed Sonic Advance 3. I never had Sonic Advance 2, though, and wound up trying it years later. Boy howdy, did I *hate* Sonic Advance 2.
Man i cant tell you how fking happy i was to get all the emeralds when i was a kid. It was such a painful journey. Btw a lot of people dont know this but if you go to the character select screen, go to sonic, and then press up right down right L right R right A you will hear a ring collect sound and tails will appear as a follower kind of like in sonic advance 3. Its pretty useless in practice but its a nice find!
Something tells me you'll either love or hate Advance 3 (which is my personal favorite of the 3). Probably love but you can never really know with these things. Also whoever said "fuck no" to getting the chaos emeralds in Advance 2 They were right. Don't even bother. If you think the grind for Advance 1 is bad...
Thank you for making this video. I thought something was wrong with me when I was grumbling about the cheap 'beginner trap' setups to myself. I feel seen now. Hopefully Sonic Advance 2 surpasses my expectations, I've heard it's fast paced.
I enjoyed your music selection while you reviewed Sonic Advance. Most of the tracks I recognize from a couple of atmospheric drum n' bass albums released during this decade. Nice stuff!! 🙌
0:04 THQ Nordic? Weren’t they the dudes behind Cars The Video Game, Cars Mater-National Championship, and Cars Race-O-Rama, and other goated non-cars games?
It's all fun and Games once you try collecting all 7 SP Ring in Advance 2 somehow they made entering the Special Stages evne worse than in the first Advance Game, but he's that's why we have save states lmao
Amy CAN frontflip with the hammer. Hit down+B when either stationary or when running. Also, her hop can be interrupted with B that allows for a sliding attack.
Good to know for future playthroughs. This just further makes me wonder why they didn't make it work like Adventure, where pressing B alone while running performs the frontflip.
A couple months back I played all three Advance games on their original cartridges with the Gamecube's Game Boy Player (specifically the fan made GBI that makes the visuals and framerate not suck. Also no save states or advanced features of course) and had a lot of fun with this one. I am extremely split on how I would rank the three games imo because they all have their ups and downs but I also got all the chaos emeralds in each game and it was a horrible slog for ALL THREE!!! Tentatively gonna say Advance 1 is my favorite right now
This was one of my first ever video games as a kid and for the longest time I thought I just sucked at video games (I was also playing sonic 06 at the time) but low and behold it turns out both of these games were just brutal, much more for a literal child. I did end up beating both games but it took me literal years. 😂 After knowing that it’s difficult even for adults it does make me happy that I was able to finish these games at such a young age
i guess i at least know to stay away from SAdvance's special stages, considering how Rush was the only one to get the halfpipes somewhat right (it took me so long to get every emerald in that, but i did it. thankfully, DIMPS wasn't evil that time around and made it to where you can attempt special stages infinitely just by finding something to perform tricks on and... well, performing tricks. the amount of boost you get resets after exiting, so it's a cheese)
you definitely get used to the special stage perspective after a while, and you'll find that they're not that bad (except the last one). also you can press A+B+Start+Select to go back to the title screen without resetting also the secret final boss IS indeed that easy
to be entirely fair to the special stages in this, they're only awful until you figure out the depth perception, and you'll have that basically down pat by the time you are able to successfully complete the first one on my playthrough, the first special stage is the one that took me by far the longest to complete, it was relatively smooth sailing from there (until stage 7 anyway, which is always a jump up...)
I kinda feel like sonic having the hatdest time against bosses is kinda thematic since eggaman would be designing them to be so instead of against his friends
@@spontmanWhen I played the game as Knuckles and made it to ice cap zone act 2, I actually saw water in the underground cave (even though the water just covers a bottomless pit so I have no idea why they even added water in ice cap in the first place. Maybe just for the floating platforms on the water).
If I remember correctly you can have Tails follow Sonic like Sonic 3 I don't remember the code for it but I know it can be used in the character select screen. But I do agree that Sonic Advance was hard back then.
This was a good video especially since Sonic Advance was my first game and yea the more times i go back to it i know how to avoid the beginners traps but its very BS with its level design i still have a fondness to it but i rather play other 2D Sonic games for me this was a good introduction back in 2006. Also that little moment where you talked about the music was literally you after eating Taco Bell I've never laughed this hard in your videos despite you having very funny out of context moments and this really had me on the floor. Keep up with the videos ☺️🤣
Never struggled with the Sonic Advance 1 special stages, they are quite easy, the hardest part is finding them. Still hasn't beaten the 7th stage in Advance 3, and I won't talk about the Advance 2 ones.
I remember playin all 3 with everything unlocked on the original gameboy advance and this made me realize just now how much effort my uncle put into those games when he was playing em back then 😅 No i didnt erase his files thank god i was not that dumb
Can we talk about how nefarious it was, that the first new sonic game to come out after Dreamcast died, and the first nintendo exclusive original sonic game, was named after a nintendo system Literally Nintendo posing in front of Sega's grave
A mi forma de ver, el sonic advance es para mi la verdadera continuación del sonic 3 & Knuckles como si fuese el inmediato Sonic 4 luego de ese salto desde 1994 al 2001, mucho antes de ese otro sonic 4 del que me parece no debiera haber existido
I have not played Sonic Advance 1 in years because of how goshawful the Special Stages are. You have to be pixel-perfect to get the rings you need to get the Chaos Emeralds, and it's simply not worth my time and frustration.
I'm glad to see that you recognize the spikes coming out of nowhere as bad game design. So many people nowadays excuse things like that just because some game journo failed the Cuphead tutorial years ago. You're right, the game shouldn't just come at you out of nowhere. And for a long time, that was just understood by devs and gamers. 10:49 You missed an opportunity to put in one of Eggman's "Get a load of this" lines. 12:11 It's a good thing you added "yet" there, because oh boy, you're in for a treat with Advance 2. The stages themselves WOULD be fine, but... well you'll see.
Never played Advance 1, but Adv 3 is the first sonic game I ever played and I replay it from time to time. Just like you said about Adv1, Adv3 also shines in exploration, but punishes you unfairly in the level design department. Let me explain myself a bit, it isn't exactly the level format that is the problem, but the enemy and hazard placement (which is part of level design of course). If there were less punishing spikes, pitfalls and weirdly placed enemies, those games would be masterpieces! Can't say the same about Adv2 though, I hate that game, specially the bosses.
10:01 And here we are at the worst part of all of the Sonic advance games. Emerald hunting was always a chore, and Advance 3 is the most egregious! I just know I'm never going to 100% Sonic advance 2 ever again!
I feel like ur complaint on the spikes thing is jus u not realizin the game is tellin u to be smart & not hold the stick in 1 direction all the time. It's a punishment for poor play but not unfair cus u should be aware after the 1st few times. If u feel it out it can be predicted easily. Like any Classic sonic game
@@nightlydata2181 Except avoiding obstacles in the classics is about reaction time and mastery of the game's physics, neither of which help against spikes that come out of the ground under you with no telegraphing.
@@spontman I think they're telegraphed by the fact that after the 1st couple times they set a pattern. The classics always did that. There's no way to "react" in a solely 2D plane so all u can do is predict. They set up a pattern at the start. U follow that pattern & predict. Don't hold the stick in 1 direction all the time, take guesses, the classics were similar they jus used diff hazards & wutnot. Ofc replayin after u learn is also part of the equation
Idk I like these games but in my personal list sonic advanced is on the lower tier . I think Sonic Rush easily takes its place for Nintendo handheld sonic.
you used that title too soon, advance 2 is pits galore and has the most cumbersome special stage entry in the entire series, only closely matched by 3 which doesn't require you to meet the requirements in one attempt.
If Sonic Advance hates me, then Sonic 2 wants me dead. Seriously, Advance 1 is not that bad, I 100%ed it with android touch controls. No idea about Advance 2 or 3 tho, never played them.
![[#2024MAMA] ROSÉ (로제), Bruno Mars - APT. | Mnet 241122 방송](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/dgGqD28J6aQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Fun fact not related to Sonic Advance whatsoever: I have a Twitch channel now! www.twitch.tv/spontman
You've obviously never played Advanced 2. That game hates you and proto boost chucks you into the endless pits of Sky canyon to prove it.
"Sonic Advance" is an enjoyable game, despite its hostile behaviour towards newcomers. Fair warning: the sequels are even more evil. 😈
I just started playing them on my Delta emulator, and I can definitely see why. (CRUSHING BARRELS! ALWAYS THE CRUSHING BARRELLS!!!!)
And the botomless pits you can almost NEVER see in Advance 2@@CharaIsNotEvil
You'll learn why "Dimps Level Design" is a meme
Ah yes the "Pits Advance" series is truly a classic. How great it was that it extended to Rush and (ESPECIALLY) Rush Adventure
Dimps Sonic is 2D Sonic for advanced players.
@@kingstarscream320ah, i see what you did there
Wouldn't be surprised if they made a kid Icarus game
It is especially egregious in the Sonic Rush series. Idk about Colors DS, tho, cuz i never got to play it.
Ok "Twitter Zone" got me I'll give you that
Agree 😂
If this one has evil level design, I can't even begin to imagine what you'll say of Sonic Advance 2's design (imagine Egg Rocket, but most of the game...)
@@kakhome1 Oh boy...
Sonic advanced 3 is even worse tho. In advanced 2... collecting all 7 emeralds requires you getting 7 special rings as all characters to get amy and super sonic and chao garden. And ya dont get to play as super sonic in the main game. 3 is even wprse as you need to collect 3 chao per stage and its literally the same after that. Use an emulayor if ya wanna try this. But 2s stages are at least good. and the bosses actually are unique this time. And it feels oh so much smoother. @spontman
@@gamedestroyer112I don’t entirely agree there. If I remember right, Advance 3 saves your chao so that you don’t have to do it in one run, and the levels are better designed for exploration with fewer points of no return. Advance 2 expects it all in one run and often will destroy your chance the instant you pass one of the special rings because why would I want to be able to backtrack when the game is making me collect things?
@@robertlauncher Yeah, Advance 3 levels are very much designed to be explored, and the ways that different character combos modify your abilities makes exploring and re-exploring levels an enjoyable experience. You only ever need to collect each chao once, and going into the chao garden area of the level select shows you a list of all chao in the game, letting you know what levels you still need to explore more and even where the chao are within the levels relative to eachother. Really, I'd dare say that chao collecting in Advance 3 is probably one of the best parts of getting the chaos emeralds in ANY Sonic game.
Then the game makes you collect the Special Keys in order to actually enter the special stages.
After playing through every level in an area to collect all of the chao, probably going through each stage multiple times, the game makes you replay levels even more in order to collect 1 Special Key per level completion, which translates to 1 attempt at a special stage in the hub area. At the very least, while the Special Keys are technically "hidden" within the levels, I don't think I've ever played through a level and missed one after I'd unlocked the ability to find them by collecting all the chao. Replaying levels while experimenting with different character combos can help somewhat, but even that can only help so much if you need to retry the special stages repeatedly, and these special stages are HARD! Especially near the end, they expect some pretty excellent precision in order to get the chaos emeralds!
If the game just let you have infinite special stage retries after finding all the chao, or even just gave you the chaos emerald for finding all the chao at all, that would be the perfect chaos emerald hunt! This middle step with the Special Key adds a layer of tedium that is difficult to ignore, unfortunately.
Really? I don't really see that much except for sky canyon.
My least favorite thing about this trilogy is how cumbersome they make getting the emeralds. We had it perfect with Sonic 3, just find one giant ring and jump in. Advance 1, despite being mildly annoying, is also the nicest of the trilogy in this regard. Be afraid, be very afraid.
I only got the Emeralds in 1 after a few months and almost a year with 3. I still haven't gotten them with 2 to this day.😅
@@yusifudo46 I’ve only done it in the first game. Advance 2 especially is the example of “Ain’t nobody got time for that!”
@@robertlauncher
Just remember that these games were designed to be played by children. Because they have a lot more time for games but less money, they're going to play the same games over and over again. So games with "ain't got time for that" completion goals more or less serve as time wasters until they can afford the next game.
Of course, you could argue such valuable time is better spent on learning. Well, don't argue with me; argue with kids, lol.
3 is the only one I ever fully did. I found 3 to be the easiest.
@@fictionalmediabully9830 No, I’d argue time is better spent on better games. Because I was a kid when this came out, and that was my solution, back to Wario Land 4.
the 1st half of sonic's somersault is useful for stopping on a dime so you can use his spin dash more and quickly
As someone who has played Sonic Advance more times than any person should, the more I play it the more Amy's gameplay just feels perfect. She comes off as a character with her own strengths and weaknesses, rather than a gimmick. I get that a more casual perspective can make her off putting, but I also think people place TOO much emphasis on surface level observations and just assume she's bad without even understanding her playstyle. Even after they played the other three. For me, Advance 1 feels like its level design is most suited around Amy's abilities once you understand how they work, especially her useful Hammer vault from Adventure, which can be used to gain speed on loops if you time it right, (In fact I recommend trying this while running, as she can make it up slopes you'd normally spin dash around, there's also a bit of forward momentum to it too) can gain fast horizontal momentum on slopes and hitting springs with her hammer is so useful for shortcuts. All the levels in some way have a use for Amy's abilities, Ice Mountain plays up her ability to hit springs (as she goes twice as far hitting springs, which can make her find Special Springs as good as Tails in some cases) In fact as early as Neo Green Hill Act 2 you can hit the first spring you find with Amy's hammer, then use the hammer spin to bounce off of a badnik and a shield box onto a higher path, and in Ice Mountain her Hammer spin can be useful for mid air descending and springs, so well and proper hammer vault timings (especially how much distance you can gain underwater using it) come on full display and she breaks the boss of that level. Even in Egg Rocket this is also useful. In fact when I play Advance 1 I almost always play Amy with Tails thrown in because he is the second best character after Amy, because of his high airtime and ability to cheese certain bosses. Also if you hammer flip as you're running down slopes Amy will go far horizontially.
Amy can also be broken against bosses too, especially the first boss, ice mountain boss and the mecha Knuckles. Even the cosmic angel boss is good for Amy (even though that boss sucks design wise) by comparison the more I play the game, the worse Sonic felt because the game's levels are designed around verticality and the upper paths are designed to be faster, Sonic is the ONLY one of the 4 who lacks any means to scale any level vertically unless you know the level design well. My big issue is he plays the game too honestly and all of its dishonest features hit the hardest because of it. Even his insta shield lacks range because Amy's hammer has range to combat enemies too. Her flaws don't come into play that much once you know how she works. Even the Hop has uses.
Figures. Sonic fans tore Amy apart for being too different from Sonic because they didn't have the attention span to understand the point, and sega responded by making her too similar to sonic or not playable at all
I hate that modern Sonic stuff has just turned Amy into "Girl Sonic with a hammer." She was always more interesting as the relatively weak character who was full of unique tricks and techniques to make up for it. It played into her character as "The fangirl who pushes herself to impress her superhero crush" really well too. It was inspiring.
that's what i'm Saying
I beat the game with every character and all of them were fun to play. 😭
sonics insta shield is so bad in advance
Isn’t “Ice Cap with water” just Ice Cap Zone?
I think he met more water
Correction: Ice Cap with water as a _gameplay mechanic._
"too much water"
@@GeorgeKpatcha-tt6iu7.8 out of 10
This is a sonic game for experienced sonicplayers.They really challenge the plalyer a lot more than the genesis classics
Why am I just finding out that youtube has sound? AMAZING video, and the first video I ever *heard* on youtube the platform- I will share this
Are you real? Because you seem like you're not.
@@jomon324 woah woah woah chill tf out with that, I hate it when people make me question if I'm real or not
@@jomon324 woah woah woah, and you're telling me you ARE real?!
After watching an Amy speedrun, you'd be surprise how easily she can cheese Egg Rocket. Sonic is the true hard mode lol
"They had us in the first half ngl"
I believe Sonic Advance 3 actually is the best of this arc of the story
It goes after Sonic Battle and its about eggman discovering how to use the
Master Emerald to bend reality
something about "super sonic goes back down to earth and oges like mmmmmmmmmmmm!" is just so funny
good video
I do enjoy some Sonic Advance series and hope they bring them back as a collection|bundle
It took me years to figure out the trick to the special stages in this game. Here's the trick; don't go all the way out to the walls, only go partway. If you go out too far, you'll mis nearly every ring.
Also, when you fail, you can grab a nearby checkpoint, find 100 rings or a 1up monitor and die, then make your way to the special spring for another attempt. That's faster than trying to do the whole stage over again.
You’ll love the Advance 2 bosses. They are high octane action all the way through, with the speed of the fight controlled by player skill.
Finally, a review of Sonic Xylophone Saxophone (you started it, you son of a biscuit)
All i need now is your jungle/dnb playlist
youtube.com/@acceliomusic
I think the reason this game was so light and had a simple story was because this was the first game after SEGA stopped making consoles, so they had to market to an entirely new audience now by having their games on non-sega systems. I’m pretty sure it’s the same thing with Sonic Heroes
Sonic Heroes also was on Sony's PS2 though.
@@eightcoins4401 oh I didn’t catch that thanks lmao
12:59 I found the safest way to beat this boss was to chill on the opposite side, wait for the boss to charge, then hit them and switch sides. Repeat.
12:00 As someone who got the emeralds legit, yikes. Wonder how much time I personally wasted.
12:50 elon musk has ruined the letter X now instead of "x zone" is "twitter zone"💀
Evil Con Carne, you say? 😳
seriously though, those special stages are rough.
The special stages become way better and easier to understand (for the most part) if you use a save state right before starting the special stage.
Like, it was able to allow me to figure out where I need to be to be able to collect the rings on the sides of the screen without abusing the spin ability.
I guess kinda like playing them because of it.
14:09 Super Sonic does his best Kazuya impression from Tekken 1 😂
This game is an essential part of my GBA game collection. Playing through the game over and over with all of the characters is very fun. This was the game that got me through a long flight a few years back. Great game! ^-^
We don’t talk about the special stages though…
Mooned by Sonic…. Oh dear…
I prefer Advance 1 over 2 and 3 because it actually feels like it stays within the capabilities of the system, whereas the sequels feel compressed and bloated on such a small screen. 2 locking the Tiny Chao Garden behind Game Completion is also obnoxious and it’s a shame it was completely cut from 3.
Knuckles in Advance is less about harder routes and more like Tails in the sense of “Enjoy the extra abilities.” I think that may be why you enjoy him more here.
This game's horrible Special Stages taught me about depth perception.
Oh ho ho wait until you get to Advance 2
genuinely unbearable game i cant lie
"This game is clearly trying to keep things simple to appeal to older fans." Not quite. Sonic Advance was the first Sonic game not released in a post-SEGA Hardware world. They basically thew Advance 1 out there as a soft reboot for people just coming in. You also missed an ability Advance Sonic has. Jump and doubletap forward or backward.
It's not really published by THQ it's publisheed by SEGA
Differs by the region. The series was published by THQ in North America.
I still don't get why people care about story in a fucking Sonic game.
3:23 as a baldi fan, i got major whiplash with that
I got an ad after seeing a single frame of his face
I think I went into shock and recovery
How do you become a baldi fan
Does anyone else notice how Sonic has peach colored eyelids in Advance 1 and 2, then in 3, his eyelids are blue?
After seeing the first special stage I gave up.
My 11 year old brain couldn't comprehend such travesty (I'm 14 now tho) but still it's dimps😅
I’ll give you a heads up, Advance 3 gets better after the opening stage. I promise
"To Ice Cap with water"
so just ice cap, got it
I enjoyed Sonic Advance as a kid and even 100% completed Sonic Advance 3. I never had Sonic Advance 2, though, and wound up trying it years later. Boy howdy, did I *hate* Sonic Advance 2.
Man i cant tell you how fking happy i was to get all the emeralds when i was a kid. It was such a painful journey.
Btw a lot of people dont know this but if you go to the character select screen, go to sonic, and then press up right down right L right R right A you will hear a ring collect sound and tails will appear as a follower kind of like in sonic advance 3. Its pretty useless in practice but its a nice find!
Something tells me you'll either love or hate Advance 3 (which is my personal favorite of the 3). Probably love but you can never really know with these things.
Also whoever said "fuck no" to getting the chaos emeralds in Advance 2
They were right. Don't even bother. If you think the grind for Advance 1 is bad...
Thank you for making this video. I thought something was wrong with me when I was grumbling about the cheap 'beginner trap' setups to myself. I feel seen now.
Hopefully Sonic Advance 2 surpasses my expectations, I've heard it's fast paced.
Little did he know...
I enjoyed your music selection while you reviewed Sonic Advance. Most of the tracks I recognize from a couple of atmospheric drum n' bass albums released during this decade. Nice stuff!! 🙌
Shadow Gens review when?
when i make it
amy can do her hammer front flip. Get her running at max speed where her hammer appears and then attack she will do the flip.
sonic advance's special stages can go take a walk in hell
@SonkDoesStuff They have a special spot reserved for them there, along with Christina Miller, David Zaslav, and the CEO of Mattel.
0:04 THQ Nordic? Weren’t they the dudes behind Cars The Video Game, Cars Mater-National Championship, and Cars Race-O-Rama, and other goated non-cars games?
It's all fun and Games once you try collecting all 7 SP Ring in Advance 2 somehow they made entering the Special Stages evne worse than in the first Advance Game, but he's that's why we have save states lmao
Amy CAN frontflip with the hammer. Hit down+B when either stationary or when running. Also, her hop can be interrupted with B that allows for a sliding attack.
Good to know for future playthroughs. This just further makes me wonder why they didn't make it work like Adventure, where pressing B alone while running performs the frontflip.
A couple months back I played all three Advance games on their original cartridges with the Gamecube's Game Boy Player (specifically the fan made GBI that makes the visuals and framerate not suck. Also no save states or advanced features of course) and had a lot of fun with this one. I am extremely split on how I would rank the three games imo because they all have their ups and downs but I also got all the chaos emeralds in each game and it was a horrible slog for ALL THREE!!! Tentatively gonna say Advance 1 is my favorite right now
I remember this game and Sonic Advance 2 had some sort of cart error that would randomly unlock the final stage for you. Was fucking surreal.
OMG, One of my favourite Sonic games in an evil incarnate of one of my favourite Sonic games?😅
This was one of my first ever video games as a kid and for the longest time I thought I just sucked at video games (I was also playing sonic 06 at the time) but low and behold it turns out both of these games were just brutal, much more for a literal child. I did end up beating both games but it took me literal years. 😂 After knowing that it’s difficult even for adults it does make me happy that I was able to finish these games at such a young age
i guess i at least know to stay away from SAdvance's special stages, considering how Rush was the only one to get the halfpipes somewhat right (it took me so long to get every emerald in that, but i did it. thankfully, DIMPS wasn't evil that time around and made it to where you can attempt special stages infinitely just by finding something to perform tricks on and... well, performing tricks. the amount of boost you get resets after exiting, so it's a cheese)
Sonic Advance seems to be a great test to find out if your sense of perspective is broken or not.
you definitely get used to the special stage perspective after a while, and you'll find that they're not that bad (except the last one). also you can press A+B+Start+Select to go back to the title screen without resetting
also the secret final boss IS indeed that easy
to be entirely fair to the special stages in this, they're only awful until you figure out the depth perception, and you'll have that basically down pat by the time you are able to successfully complete the first one
on my playthrough, the first special stage is the one that took me by far the longest to complete, it was relatively smooth sailing from there (until stage 7 anyway, which is always a jump up...)
I kinda feel like sonic having the hatdest time against bosses is kinda thematic since eggaman would be designing them to be so instead of against his friends
2:02 Ice Cap Zone (Sonic 3) had water in it.
@@esmooth919 Where?! I've never seen a single drop of it.
@@spontmanWhen I played the game as Knuckles and made it to ice cap zone act 2, I actually saw water in the underground cave (even though the water just covers a bottomless pit so I have no idea why they even added water in ice cap in the first place. Maybe just for the floating platforms on the water).
@spontman near the bottom of act 2. You're so good you just never saw it
If I remember correctly you can have Tails follow Sonic like Sonic 3 I don't remember the code for it but I know it can be used in the character select screen. But I do agree that Sonic Advance was hard back then.
music sounds familiar, but I can't for the life of me remember from where
This was a good video especially since Sonic Advance was my first game and yea the more times i go back to it i know how to avoid the beginners traps but its very BS with its level design i still have a fondness to it but i rather play other 2D Sonic games for me this was a good introduction back in 2006. Also that little moment where you talked about the music was literally you after eating Taco Bell I've never laughed this hard in your videos despite you having very funny out of context moments and this really had me on the floor. Keep up with the videos ☺️🤣
There is a reason I only got to the sky zone once as a kid
>Sonic Advance despises you
As it should, really.
Never struggled with the Sonic Advance 1 special stages, they are quite easy, the hardest part is finding them.
Still hasn't beaten the 7th stage in Advance 3, and I won't talk about the Advance 2 ones.
I love Sonic Advance 1!
Still have my copy in my GBA to this day
I remember playin all 3 with everything unlocked on the original gameboy advance and this made me realize just now how much effort my uncle put into those games when he was playing em back then 😅
No i didnt erase his files thank god i was not that dumb
Please god I hope Cyberman65 sees this.
I had both Sonic Advance 1 and 2 as a kid and never got to the true final boss of each. Make of that what you will.
The music quality is the one thing not as bad on a real gba compared to emulation or the gba player.
Can we talk about how nefarious it was, that the first new sonic game to come out after Dreamcast died, and the first nintendo exclusive original sonic game, was named after a nintendo system
Literally Nintendo posing in front of Sega's grave
I wouldn’t say it’s evil. But it’s got problems in its level design.
A mi forma de ver, el sonic advance es para mi la verdadera continuación del sonic 3 & Knuckles como si fuese el inmediato Sonic 4 luego de ese salto desde 1994 al 2001, mucho antes de ese otro sonic 4 del que me parece no debiera haber existido
Oh jeez… r we mathing… sonic shouldn’t be that crazy….
Been waiting for this video 👌🏻
Special stage 7, don't try it!!!
The devil made this 😢
I never chose Sonic in those games, Amy is so fun 🎉
Second time watching this video and I only just realized it's about Sonic? Hello?
I've played this game and beat it when I was 8, and reviews like this made kid me go: "get good, scrub". Still agree with that statement.
I have not played Sonic Advance 1 in years because of how goshawful the Special Stages are. You have to be pixel-perfect to get the rings you need to get the Chaos Emeralds, and it's simply not worth my time and frustration.
The feeling is mutual!
I'm glad to see that you recognize the spikes coming out of nowhere as bad game design. So many people nowadays excuse things like that just because some game journo failed the Cuphead tutorial years ago. You're right, the game shouldn't just come at you out of nowhere. And for a long time, that was just understood by devs and gamers.
10:49
You missed an opportunity to put in one of Eggman's "Get a load of this" lines.
12:11
It's a good thing you added "yet" there, because oh boy, you're in for a treat with Advance 2. The stages themselves WOULD be fine, but... well you'll see.
Never played Advance 1, but Adv 3 is the first sonic game I ever played and I replay it from time to time.
Just like you said about Adv1, Adv3 also shines in exploration, but punishes you unfairly in the level design department. Let me explain myself a bit, it isn't exactly the level format that is the problem, but the enemy and hazard placement (which is part of level design of course). If there were less punishing spikes, pitfalls and weirdly placed enemies, those games would be masterpieces!
Can't say the same about Adv2 though, I hate that game, specially the bosses.
*believe it or not the sequel gets worse*
10:01 And here we are at the worst part of all of the Sonic advance games. Emerald hunting was always a chore, and Advance 3 is the most egregious! I just know I'm never going to 100% Sonic advance 2 ever again!
Cool analysis man! God bless ya and Jesus loves ya! :D
So you CAN play as Tails in this game? Got it
I can't comment one way or the other
Me yet again watching the game i enjoyed and loved being destroyed by fanbase
This game is cool.
Based
I feel like ur complaint on the spikes thing is jus u not realizin the game is tellin u to be smart & not hold the stick in 1 direction all the time. It's a punishment for poor play but not unfair cus u should be aware after the 1st few times. If u feel it out it can be predicted easily. Like any Classic sonic game
@@nightlydata2181 Except avoiding obstacles in the classics is about reaction time and mastery of the game's physics, neither of which help against spikes that come out of the ground under you with no telegraphing.
@@spontman I think they're telegraphed by the fact that after the 1st couple times they set a pattern. The classics always did that. There's no way to "react" in a solely 2D plane so all u can do is predict. They set up a pattern at the start. U follow that pattern & predict. Don't hold the stick in 1 direction all the time, take guesses, the classics were similar they jus used diff hazards & wutnot. Ofc replayin after u learn is also part of the equation
Idk I like these games but in my personal list sonic advanced is on the lower tier . I think Sonic Rush easily takes its place for Nintendo handheld sonic.
0:17 lol
you used that title too soon, advance 2 is pits galore and has the most cumbersome special stage entry in the entire series, only closely matched by 3 which doesn't require you to meet the requirements in one attempt.
Give me advance 2 or especially 3 any day
If Sonic Advance hates me, then Sonic 2 wants me dead. Seriously, Advance 1 is not that bad, I 100%ed it with android touch controls. No idea about Advance 2 or 3 tho, never played them.
5:25 bro you didn't even test it
Press down and B at the same time
Nah this that good shit