Sonic Advance

The first Sonic game made for the Gameboy Advance. Clearly nowhere near as good as the classic Genesis games, but it does have some quality in it.

Levels

• Neo Green Hill Zone
• Secret Base Zone
• Casino Paradise Zone
• Ice Mountain Zone
• Angel Island Zone
• Egg Rocket Zone
• Cosmic Angel Zone
• X-Zone
• The Moon Zone

Release Dates

• JP: Dec. 22, 2001
• US: Feb. 4, 2002
• EU: March 23, 2002

New things

Like most Sonic games, Sonic Advance contains a single extra move for each character that isn't available in older games, and this is the B-button attack. This is useful not only for attacking (duh) but also for quickly stopping to perform a spindash (so you don't waste time rolling when you're going extremely slow).

Amy

Without a spindash, Amy is considered by many people to be the hardest character. However, there are some little-known strategies that you can only use while playing as her:

• It's easy to beat the Ice Mountain boss, as you can simply use Down+B to get air.
• There is a way to get up those annoying curved walls that expect you to spindash up. Use Down+A, and then just after you hit the ground use Down+B. This is tricky though; if you press B too early you skid and if you do it too late, you jump perpendicular to the wall rather than up.
• You can use Down+B while in the air to smash powerups/badniks below you.