GBA ROM: 0906 - Sonic Advance 2 - USA

525055 2008-05-11

This game SUXX0RZ!

Strife89 2009-12-07

Really, ROMulation? Only one screenshot and two comments?

Sonic Advance 2 is a package of pure joy for the Game Boy Advance. The levels are fast paced - like a Sonic game probably ought to be! - and platforming is pushed to secondary gameplay. Even the bosses (with the exception of one) are fought while in constant motion; this is probably the only 2D Sonic game to do so.

The game introduces "Trick Actions" to the 2D games - little stunts one can perform in midair after launching off a spring, or a similar action. The tricks allow the player to get a boost in the desired direction, and possibly take out a robot or two in the process. (These moves are optional, with - you guessed it - one exception: a spot in Sky Canyon Act 2 requires the player to boost upward in order to get sucked up by a fan, lest they fall to their death. Fortunately, the spot is marked with an arrow made of rings.)

The graphics are wonderful, featuring TONS of sprites for very smooth animation, and beautiful foregrounds and backgrounds that can rival some of the best of 'em on console games - and I'm not talking about the SNES or the Genesis.

Sound effects are a mixture of old and new, but not one of them ever becomes grating or otherwise annoying (unless you count the drowning theme - but no player is ever likely to hear that unless they deliberately stand underwater in Leaf Forest). The music is some of the best my ears have ever been treated to by a GBA game - catchy tunes, good instrument set. The only downside is that every last one of them is very short, clocking in at right around a minute before looping. Depending on your skill (and in a couple of cases, your luck) and on how fun you find the gameplay, this can become slightly irritating.

Nonetheless, I would call this game darn-near *perfect* were it not for one gravely major flaw: the Special Rings. The player must find all seven Special Rings in a stage in one run before they can go to the Special Stage to try to collect a Chaos Emerald (all seven Emeralds are needed by each character to unlock the locked features, like Sound Test and the boss-mode Time Attack; and for a bonus boss for Sonic). The trouble is, there's a reason as to why I've never seen the Special Stage: the Special Rings are *agonizingly* difficult to find, and a player will need to either get extremely lucky or memorize the entire level in order to have any hope of retrieving them all. The problem is compounded by the fact that, if the player quits mid-search (i.e., completes the level; has a Game Over; powers off), any Special Rings found are not saved. Because of this, most players will resort to a map, a cheating device, or will simply give up searching.

Still, anyone who is a Sonic fan, or just enjoys fast-paced side-scrollers, will likely find this title a joy to play when all is said and done, and may well keep coming back to it long afterwards.

Score: 8.2 ------ Strife89

nintendofandude 2010-01-27

good game but still nothing compared to the classic sonic megadrive/genesis games