Hey, all. Sorry for the lack of updates, but writing for the midseason premiere is chugging along at a pretty slow pace. So, I thought I’d offer a little bonus content in the meantime.
I’ve never played a Sonic Advance game. (Unless you count “Sonic Ultimate Flash.”) I owned a Nintendo DS and a small handful of GBA games for it, but the Sonic titles just never caught my eye for some reason. I say “some reason,” but I was actually pretty adamantly anti-2D Sonic for a significant portion of that time. Honestly it’s a miracle that I was somehow convinced to buy Sonic 4 on launch day. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the Classics that I started off with, it’s just that I saw 2D as outdated and irrelevant. Or maybe it was Sonic 4 that created that opinion? I don’t know, it was a long time ago. Anyways, what little I knew of the Advance games came from a combination of minor references in the instruction manuals like Sonic Heroes, adaptations from Sonic X, the fanmade attempt to recreate it for PC in “Sonic Ultimate Flash,” and the occasional screenshot or Youtube clip of the first game seen over long periods of time without much context. I think it was that last thing that really colored my opinion of the series as a whole. It looked like a dull, repetitive 2D game that existed for the sole purpose of being another 2D game. So I was never really interested.
Finally, this week, I decided it was time to break down those assumptions. With Metal Sonic now having a Gizoid-based skill capture system, there were research purposes involved, but I chose to finally bite the bullet and get myself educated. And here I’ve taken down my impressions. Do keep in mind that I still haven’t played any of it, so these impressions are all based on the gameplay footage that I studied.
Sonic Advance 1 seems to be exactly what I thought it was. It still doesn’t look like much fun to me, and I can see why. The screen is too small, the level design seems just okay, and the story is nonexistent. Even the Super Sonic boss looks pretty forgettable. And I guess Super Sonic just decided to fly around in orbit for a few straight days after that? So that was weird. And the music, oh, the music, if you can call it that. One consistent trend through this series is that the composer(s) clearly didn’t have a clue how to use a GBA sound chip properly. The tunes themselves get better and better under these self-imposed limitations as the games go on, but the soundfront remains nearly intolerable. I see the same thing said a lot more often about Sonic Chronicles, and I do see the comparison. Except that a poor use of the DS sound hardware is, at worst, inoffensive, while the poorly-used GBA is just…grating. And then there are the battle themes and title theme of Chronicles which are all fire, I don’t care what anyone else says. The GBA games definitely had their share of catchy tunes as well, but unlike in Chronicles, the sound quality didn’t get any better. The Advance Trilogy also has this weird fetish with Angel Island, that started in this game with, well, Angel Island Zone. It was actually pretty cool seeing a medley of S3&K stage gimmicks mixed into one level, I’m just not sure what the point of it being here was. I guess it’s supposed to explain why Knuckles is here? And the reveal of Mecha Knuckles I guess, which was even weirder and more random. It’s not like they bothered to tell a story anywhere else. Anyways, if I’d bought and played this, I probably wouldn’t have been too excited to pick up a sequel. But that would’ve been a mistake.
Sonic Advance 2 quickly turned around my assumptions about the trilogy. With the full range of aerial tricks, Sonic’s moveset feels diversified and fleshed out in a way that truly feels like a proper step up and evolution from the Classics, without completely rewriting the book on what the core gameplay elements need to be (looking at you, Sonic Rush). Sonic, for the first time ever in gameplay, looks like the action hero he was always meant to be, with tricks and backflips under full control of the player, and they’re actually useful! Honestly, I’m so disappointed that Sonic’s moveset got nerfed so hard in Sonic Rush, with tricks being for a different purpose and only useable under certain conditions, because I think I would’ve enjoyed that game more if it played more like Sonic Advance 2. They also…sorta tried with the story, I guess. I was expecting there to be a lot more fanfare around the introduction of Cream as a character, but she’s just kind of there, and you’re supposed to accept that. It’s even weirder that it’s just Sonic’s story, except that you can also play as other characters minus the story. No complaints about the action movie endings though. But the coolest thing about this game, I think, is how they really came to embrace the pixel art style. Given that I’ve made some sprite animations myself, it should be obvious that I have an appreciation for the style, which this game pretty much singlehandedly created. Seeing how Sonic moves in this game (and perhaps even more so in Sonic Battle, more on that in a minute), the existence of all those good old fashioned Newgrounds flash animations makes so much sense!! I saw it said in the Youtube comments that, controlled by a skilled player, this game looks more like a quality sprite animation than it does like a game, and I wholeheartedly agree. It’s amazing what they managed to pull off, compared to just about any game on comparable hardware. It’s like these sprites were born to be used in sprite animations, and it would be such a waste if things like Super Mario Bros. Z didn’t use these sprites to their fullest. Anyways, Advance 2’s use of Angel Island comes in the form of Sky Canyon Zone, which isn’t explicitly stated to be Angel Island, but you find Knuckles there and the map depicts it as a floating island. Once again, probably meant to be the excuse for why Knuckles is here? Still doesn’t make a lick of sense. Of course, if a well put together story was what I was looking for, then I was about to get it.
Sonic Battle. It’s quite an experience, I’ll say that. A GBA game with actual 3D graphics? I don’t know of any other big name that dared attempt something like that. But the Sonic franchise is nothing if not daring. My impression of the gameplay is that it looks pretty far on the repetitive side, but I suppose all fighting games look like that, and it’s hard to tell how much fun it would be without handling the controls myself. So I’ll stick to talking about the story. And it was…a story. Like an actual one, not just faking it like Advance 2. It’s really hard to figure out exactly what I want to say about it. It was definitely a rocky start. Sonic’s story is contrived and repetitive. Sonic finds an Eggman robot on the beach, and it mutters something about “conquering all,” so he thinks, “Let’s repair it and then give it all seven Chaos Emeralds!” Seriously!? It’s utter nonsense! Even Sonic isn’t that dumb! But at least things pick up from there. The story proceeds to take a deep dive into each character through their interactions with Emerl, developing Emerl all the way through. The attention to detail with each character and how their personalities interact is honestly quite masterful, which makes its fast-and-loose handling of lore and world building all the more confusing. 7 green Chaos Emeralds, 4 of which are casually shattered offscreen? A Master Emerald (as if there are multiple) appearing to Sonic out of nowhere, immediately getting shattered and then never mentioned again? Sonic and Tails living together in suburbia? Knuckles guarding an altar…in the mountains a short walk north of Central City? Rouge owning a casino? Cream sharing an apartment with Amy, despite this seeming to be a part of the Advance Trilogy where Cream clearly lives in a rural home with her mother? It’s all so close, yet so off. And the weirdest part is that it’s canon. I would almost still want to say that it isn’t, but there’s this awkward chain involved. It’s canon to the Advance Trilogy, because Advance 3 follows up on the story. I might dismiss the whole set, except that Advance 1 introduced Cream, a canon character. I might still ignore that, and pretend that Heroes was her introduction, but that still doesn’t quite work. The Blaze who appears in Generations is strongly implied to be the Blaze from the Rush games, and the Rush games, in turn, call back to the Advance games, which call back to Battle. And here I thought Sonic canon was a mess when I was ignoring these games, somehow it’s even worse now. And then there’s Sonic Chronicles, which was clearly meant to tie a neat little bow on the entire Sonic handheld saga up to that point, especially Battle, and yet it has since been summarily decanonized. And I’m in an even weirder position. I’ve already stated that Chronicles just took place in an adjacent timeline/dimension, basically so that I can adhere to the current canon of the Nocturnus not being real. But if they were real in another dimension, and they invented the Gizoids in that dimension, then who invented the Gizoids here? Some potential answers are already brewing, but it is just one more oddity. Anyways, back on topic. Can we talk about the fact that Eggman casually destroyed multiple nearby stars instantaneously? Purely as a means to the end of getting a fighting robot on his side, no less? Eat your heart out, Starkiller Base, Eggman did it first, I guess. But seriously, this is an absurd amount of power for Eggman to have, and it’s almost completely meaningless. A faster-than-light weapon would be crazy enough as it is. For some reason, this game just doesn’t seem to take its drastic contributions to lore in any serious way. I don’t get this game. I like the ambition, but I just don’t get it. What I do understand is how this game led to this whole corner of the universe being held in such high regard, and I’m glad to have experienced it myself.
After the ambitious rollercoaster that is Sonic Battle, Sonic Advance 3 is an awfully lukewarm sendoff to the series. The improvements Advance 2 had over the first title are still here, albeit with level design that seemed to be maybe just a slight step down from its predecessor. The big change is the pair-up mechanic. I love the idea, and it seems like it adds a lot of variety and replayability, but wow does it look like it breaks the game if you know what you’re doing. I like the idea behind the hub worlds, but the minigames, lengthy character switching mechanics, and Chao collecting all look a little bit obtrusive to the flow of gameplay. The story is as bland as the first two. I think it might be inspired by Sonic X, with Eggman intentionally inducing Chaos Control to cause dimensional shenanigans, which is amusingly circular considering that Sonic X used Cream from the beginning because of Advance. And although that sounds like an interesting place to start, it goes nowhere, and it seems like it’s only there to justify the hub world system. As an epilogue to Battle, it’s honestly pretty disappointing. It seems like you’re supposed to care about the fact that you’re seeing this robot that looks like Emerl, but the characters never comment on it, so why should you care? This game’s rendition of Angel Island comes in the form of Chaos Angel Zone and Altar Emerald Zone, and somehow, even though this is the only member of the trilogy to feature the Master Emerald, this is also the only one that doesn’t clearly indicate that you’re on Angel Island, and you’re forced to imply it from the ancient ruins and the presence of the Master Emerald. Seriously, what is up with these games and Angel Island!? It’s certainly not needed to justify Knuckles this time. With the universe being shattered into pieces, the Knuckles and Master Emerald could have been anywhere else. Meanwhile, Sonic Battle, the one that actually tries to have a story where the Emeralds matter, tries to retcon Angel Island out of existence for some reason. I don’t get it. Anyways, the Super Sonic boss is pretty cool, though the design of the final boss isn’t particularly intimidating nor memorable. And then that’s it. I like the idea of Gemerl remaining with Cream at the end of it all, it feels like a nice wrap-up to the story (even though Battle is the only actual story that matters in this context). Which would be great, except that Gemerl proceeds to never be seen nor mentioned for the remainder to Sonic game history, which leaves me asking what the point of it all was, and leaves me wondering again whether any of it is really meant to be canon. Seriously, if they wanted it to be canon, where was Gemerl in Rush? It just confuses me.
In conclusion…this was an interesting experience. It’s always nice to learn more about Sonic lore, but in many ways, I was left more confused than I was when I started. What’s the result in terms of The Chaos Project? I expect to be able to use this lore to some extent, but I feel I may need to leave the caveat that this remains a pretty low tier of canon. Something resembling these things happened, but there are definitely some differences. Assume the obviously non-canon things didn’t happen, and as to the rest, any differences will be made clear at a later time.
-And until next time, remember to live and learn every day!
The Chaos Project: Sonic the Hedgehog 