Sonic Advance for the GBA.....wait, what am I saying? The GBA is a Nintendo console, while Sonic is a Sega character. Surely their console war since the 8-bits hasn't ceased yet, has it? Well, this might be due to the fall of the underrated Dreamcast and the release and popularity of the PS2 at the time, but that's antother story. The story today is a Sonic game that is rather enjoyable. One look at the over and the screen shots on the back made Sonic so epic, I had to get this game. If only his arrogance wasn't in his recent games, but I digress.

Well, the story seems to be rather simple. Eggman is searching for the seven Chaos Emeralds, and it's better if you find them before Eggman. Meh. You get to pick one of four characters: Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and.....Amy...? Ok, I guess that't ok, seeing as they let a big purple cat as a playerable character in Sonic Adventure that allowed you to fish. Each character has a different ability they can use to their advantage. Sonic is super fast, of course, tales can fly for a certain amount of time to reach greater hieghts, kuckles can glide for as long as their is open air, and Amy can....jump without spinning and can swing her hammer. She also jumps lower.

You have to run through six different zones with two acts and a boss at the end of every second act. Each one is Eggman in his Egg-Capsule, with a range of several different ways in trying to kill you. You collect rings, these act as your life, in a way. Get hit and you lose all your rings, wth a chance to pick up what you dropped. If you get hit without any rings, then you die. You can also break open these television screens to gain power-ups, such as shoes that make him run faster or invincibility for a short period of time. The level design is pretty sweet. the first zones allow you to run at high speeds, but the second zone requires some more diligent platforming skills.

Somewhere hidden well in the level, there is a super-spring of some kind that will launch you so far in the air that you will free-fall for a while. Use this time to collect as many rings as you can, and if you collect enough, you'll be rewarded with a Choas Emerald. Find these can be as easy as a poptart, or as devilish as finding poptarts themselves. You only get one shot, so if you fail, you can either die, or restart the level. I do believe pressinf A, B Start and Select at the same time will bring you back to the main menu screen on a GBA (called a soft-reset), and this helps a lot in case I failed this bonus stage.

The graphics are really pleasing to the eye. The attention to detail in the characters, the background and the level itself is pretty amazing. The colours are very bright and colourful, and are far from boring. The way they created Sonic makes him look really awesome, which is odd, as I'm normally put off by his arrogants to appreciate the character itse;f (which in all fairness is epic to the core). Maybe it's due to the fact that he doesn't talk in this one....
The controls are very fluid, although they might take a little getting used to at first,The music is really catchy. The title screen music is nice and welcoming, while the character select music has a nice beat that normally puts me off. The level music suits the mood rather well and the boss music is rather threatening, leaving you to defeat Eggman alone. The levels seem to offer a bundle of secrets to those who seek it. New paths and hidden power-ups wait you if you feel adventerous. You might even come across them if you user certain characters. The game offers some challenge to new players, and also offers a greater challenge to those who seek it. It's in the options menu if you feel the game is too easy.

But there is one thing that makes this game sticks out to me more than anything is the Chao Garden. This allows you to raise an adorable chao in a garden, simply put. You collect rings from the game to buy food to help it grow, and if you save up enough, a Rubber Duckie, a musical intrument, and even a T.V. If your ever ger bored of the main game, you can collect rings via two mini-games, which might include you to throw red and green balls at the celling to clear them up or playing a game of rock-paper-scissors in a fast paced timing game, both of which are super-addictive to play and are rather fun.

You can buy a new egg, as well. The colour is completely random as far as I'm concerned. The chao might say something that you can only say AWWWWW! ^^ to, like "one day, I will take over the world" or something like that. He might try and swim. If he doesn't have the required level to swim, he might struggle, so help him out, will ya? You can upload everything from that game onto Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 for the GameCube, but that won't help much on Vizzed, sorry. I remember when I used to spend hours at a time feeding chao on both gaming systems, slowly working my way to get my three chaos Chao, I became a master at raising Chao (or so I thought).

Overall, I give this game a 9.2/10       With superb graphics, great music, awesome controls and overall enjoyablity, this is one of the finest 2D sonic games I have ever player......ok, it's the only 2D Sonic game I've player, and never really planned on playing another one. But it's a superb game, and any sonic fan will enjoy this game to a million bits, so long as the hard core fans get out over him being on a Nintendo console.