Tails Adventure

"A Sonic game with an Equip menu?! Talk about innovations of the century!"

I should probably reword that synopsis, seeing as how it's not a Sonic game at all. The little blue guy doesn't appear at all in the game, besides a cameo appearance as an item. This is all Tails, in the traditional Gamegear style, and it turns out to be a highly underrated success.

GRAPHICS: 6
Seeing as how this is the GG, it's not half bad. Just don't be expecting any major changes from Sonic Triple Trouble.

SOUND: 6
Again, this is all very traditional. The sound effects are the same, or at least close to it. Most of the music is fairly enjoyable.

CONTROL: 10
This may be the best-handling game of the entire Sonic series, due to the slow pace. The main objective in each level is to make it to the end, and sometimes fight a boss. Once you get more advanced items, you can go back and find hidden routes. This, incidentally, is probably the first Sonic game where you can not kill enemies using jumps! Instead, you start out with your Bombs (TAILS uses BOMBS?? Cool!) and eventually build up a collection of items, four of which you can take at a time. The control of the Sea Fox is a little slippery, but forgivable since you only run through three levels with it.

STORY: 7
Not the best, but, um.... original. Once Tails splits up with Sonic to vacation on Tails Island (who thinks these names up?!), a mysterious bird army, led by a red eagle and his green second in command (who looks startlingly like Bean from Sonic Championship!) come to blast it into flames. Of course, all of this is done with no spoken text....

DIFFICULTY CURVE: smooth

REPLAY VALUE: 6
Unlike other Sonic games (oops, another comparison), this has quite a large bit of puzzle solving in it, and I've always loved playing through games like this from the beginning again, just so that I'll be able to try new things on them.

OVERALL: 9/10
This could be one of the best games on the Gamegear, and even outperforms some 16- and 32-bit ones in the fun department. If you're among the few, the proud, the Gamegearers, then I reccomend you seek out this rare game.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 11/01/99