Sonic Advance 3

"Sonic's third handheld outing is his best yet"

Where to begin? This is Sonic's third outing on the GameBoy system, showing that Sonic does have concrete potential in the handheld market.

The previous two Advance series games have shown us that Sonic Team has made their past rivalries water under the bridge. Even more spectacular is the fact that the games were amazingly well designed. But does the third installment continue this treaty by furthering Sonic's handheld capabilities and gameplay? Well let's start by looking at the story.

Sonic Advance 3 starts off with Dr.Eggman splitting Sonic and friend's world into various dimensions, using a chaos emerald. Or at least that's what I gather from the manual as this game is threadbare in terms of plot. The cutscenes don't explain anything, and there is barely enough text between characters to scrape up any sort of cohesion. Even if the game's plot never manages to do much more then serve as a break between levels, the game does strike the target in the most important category… Gameplay.

For this title Sonic Team has introduced a new partner system. Think of Sonic 2, or Sonic 3 & Knuckles. In both games you could have sonic and tails partnered up to fight Eggman together. Well this game takes that idea a step farther, allowing you to pit any pair of characters together from a pool of five. Each character has a unique move set, and depending on their partner those moves can change. For instance, pairing Sonic with Tails allows him to use Tails as a sort of portable helicopter. Whereas pairing Sonic with Cream allows Sonic to float in the air for a time using ballons, and even gives him access to cheese as a homing attack for Badniks. This system plays a large part in the games stages, as you may need to use a specific pairing to acquire a hidden Chao, or to break down a wall and take another route. And how well do those stages play out anyhow?

Sonic Advance 1 had us doing large amounts of platforming in between bursts of speed, whereas Sonic Advance 2 has us doing massive amounts of running and yet hardly a touch of real platforming. Sonic Advance 3 outdoes both in terms of each category. The game manages a steady pace between zipping at incredible speeds along hills, through loop-de-loops, jumping obstacles, riding platforms, zooming through speed tubes, and fighting the Badniks. Every level in the game boasts huge amounts of re-playability, as you will never see an entire level in one quick run through. Multiple paths branch out all over the place, usually offering you a choice between a high, low, or middle route. Some of the stages feel slightly linear and force you to take a specific path to proceed to another area (Ocean Base is one of these) but the stages are all extremely large and offer enough reflexive thinking to make certain that you are always on your toes. Much of that reflexive thinking usually involves being quick enough to make a jump or dodge a bad guy so that you can remain on the higher path (the higher route is always the most difficult and rewarding).

Although Sonic Advance 2's boss system was actually pretty refreshing in terms of gameplay, it is in a way nice to see the older system of boss battles take place again… albeit with a slight twist. Boss battles now take place in a single, tiny stage of their own. You are given a small amount of running room in which to collect some rings, and then the fight begins. As usual, the idea is to hit Eggman on his glass casing several times so that the robot he's piloting may explode and send him scurrying away. The boss battles are enjoyable and well thought out and heck, the Toy Kingdom boss operates differently from the usual battles… But aside from that one fight, nothing has been largely improved or changed. It's well done, just not fresh. The special stages, however, are.

This games special stages take place on a Mode 7 background while you pilot Tails plane and control Sonic. The basic objective is to collect enough rings while flying to collect the chaos emeralds as usual. Although it's a bit difficult at times to tell the distance between Sonic and the objects, once you get the hang of it the level become insanely fun. The music of the game helps as well.

The music in this game goes to great lengths to utilize the Gameboy Advance's sound chip. There is a re-mixed Green Hill theme and tons of new compositions that are an absolute pleasure to listen to. Although the music is still only slightly better then 8-Bit, it is not ear bleedingly bad. The Chaos Angel Act 1 theme had me right into the overall mood of the stage, and I promptly downloaded it upon hearing it. Some of the tunes are that good.

Sonic Advance 3 is an absolute pleasure to play. It takes all the best elements of the second game, and mixes in most of the best from the first game. The game is not perfect however. There are still the occasional cheap deaths and pitfalls lying around. But all those things aside, you cannot miss this game if you like Sonic. It's just too damn good… for GameBoy standards.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/05/07