Sonic Advance 3

"SA3 is easily the best Sonic GBA game out today."

The Sonic the Hedgehog series has been around for almost 15 years now: and it shows no signs of letting up. From the good (like Sonic the Hedgehog 2) to the bad (like Sonic N) to the ugly (like Sonic 3D Blast) and the just plain weird (like Sonic Shuffle,) the blue speed demon is second only to Mario in the amount of games he and his animal friends have been in. Now, Sonic Advance 3 is the latest Sonic game to come to the Game Boy Advance in as many years, and it offers up new gameplay options never seen before on the GBA. Sonic Advance 3 may be the best GBA Sonic game, but it is not as good as the Genesis Sonic games.

The story of Sonic 3 follows Sonic and his buddies on the trail of Dr. Eggman. Eggman has gotten control over all 7 Chaos Emeralds, and has used Chaos Control to turn Sonic's world into seven distinct parts. Sonic now must collect all of the Chaos Emeralds and change the world back to normal. However, Eggman will try and stop Sonic at all costs.

Every Sonic game is based off one thing: speed. While there still are a few platforming standbys like jumping on platforms and avoiding traps, but for the most part, you should just try and be as fast as possible. The faster you can get to the other side of the level, the better. Sonic Advance 3 is no exception. This may actually be the fastest one of them all. Compared to the SA3, the Genesis Sonic are slow, and those were know as the fastest games of the day. Overall, the gameplay is more speed based, with a few slow, precision jumping elements thrown in at random intervals. Depending on your taste, you may like the new change that has been present in all of the GBA Sonics. Each level is huge, though rarely all is seen in one play-through. There are branching paths that lead different ways to the goal, so almost every time you play could be a different experience. Something that can also change your experience is the new team system in Sonic Advance 3 (which has nothing to do with the team system used in Sonic Heroes.) Depending on which support character that you choose, new abilities are opened up. For example, when anyone teams up with Amy, you can use her Hammer for your main attack. Using these new abilities, it is possible to reach new places in the level previously un-accessible to you before. The other thing new to Sonic Advance 3 is that instead just moving to the next level, each zone has it's own Map area, kind of like the Kirby games, where you need to look for the next level instead of just going to it. While interesting, it does not add anything new.
Instead of the standard one-hit-your-dead route of most platformers, Sonic has a unique system, which uses rings to decide your health. If you have at least one ring, then you cannot die. So, the more rings you have, the better. But if you get hit once, then all of your rings are gone, and you need to collect some back before they disappear. Scattered around the level are boxes where you can get more rings, or power-ups (like invincibility or a bubble that protects you.) By doing this, it does make it a challenge sometimes to die by having no rings, because it is pretty easy to pick up the ones you dropped. Most of the time you will die from the huge pits that are easy prey to someone who has not been through the level at least once. Because of the GBA screen, it is possible to just jump into one of these pits without seeing the small little platform that can save you beforehand, leading to many frustrating deaths. If you can get past the somewhat unfair deaths, then Sonic Advance 3 is really enjoyable.

Graphically, SA3 looks usual for the GBA. Each character moves fluidly, and each character has different animations for things like walking, running, and falling. Each character looks like is was hand drawn, because of the dark lines surrounding them. Each scrolling backgrounds (well, one part background scrolls while the rest other does not) are colorful. However, Sonic Advance 3 does not look that much better graphically from Sonic Advance 2, or even the first Sonic Advance. But then, the Genesis Sonics never looked that much different from each other either (except in what the color Sonic was.)

However, something that has changed over the course of the Advance series is the music. The first two had sub-par music (at least, compared to the rest of the Sonic games) but SA3 does it right. Each zone has the main Zone music, the level music, and the same boss music. Some of the music are actually remixed versions of former classics, and they sound almost as good as the originals. Each character also says a couple of things (like “Yeah!” and “All Right!”) and that sounds good as well, not compressed from the GBA's limited storage capacity. Overall, the music is actually some of the best on the GBA, and is up there with one of the best Sonic soundtracks.

The main problem with Sonic Advance 3 is that is lacks enough replay value to hold anyone for long. The game is very, very short, to put it plainly. Though a few of the levels may take you a couple of times to beat a level at first, there are only 21 levels in the main game, each taking on average 3 minutes. A large amount of the time spent with SA3 will be you look throughout the levels for Chaos, where a few are hidden in each level. You need to Chaos to unlock the Chaos Emeralds, so you will need to search long and hard for all of them. There is also a Zone and Boss time attack option in as unlockables, so you can compare your best times to your friends. Also, multiplayer is available, with different single and multi-pack gameplay (like a King of the Hill Chao Scramble, or a Time Attack.) However, at most, you will be fed up with the game after around ten hours.

The Sonic formula has not really changed much for the past 15 years. You run, you collect rings. Simple. It still works with Sonic Advance 3. However, there needs to be something to make the game last longer without dragging out the gameplay. Maybe Sonic Advance 4 will find that?

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/05/04