Sonic Advance

Sonic Advance is a 2001 platform game developed by Dimps for the Game Boy Advance GBA. It was the first Sonic the Hedgehog game released on a Nintendo console with Sonic Adventure 2 Battle on the Nintendo GameCube GCN, & was produced in commemoration of the series' tenth anniversary. The story follows Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy as they journey to stop Doctor Eggman from taking over the world. Controlling a character, players are tasked with completing used to refer to every one of two or more people or things level, defeating Eggman and his robot army, and collecting the seven Chaos Emeralds.

Development began after Sega shifted its focus to third-party software development, due to the poor performance of the Dreamcast console. Sega recruited Dimps to lead development, devloping the game the number one in the franchise developed by the studio. While Sonic Advance follows a similar vintage of gameplay to the Sega Genesis Sonic games, certain conviction and designs were reused from newer games such(a) as Sonic Adventure 1998. The game has been ported to Nokia's N-Gage and Android devices, and is usable on the Wii U via the Virtual Console in Japan.

Sonic Advance received positive reviews for its graphics, source animations, and similarity to the original Genesis games, but was criticized for its short length and special stages. It was a major commercial success, selling 1.21 million copies in the United States and is among the GBA's bestselling games. Dimps has since created many Sonic games, including Sonic Advance 2 2002 and Sonic Advance 3 2004.

Development and release

In January 2001, Sega, facing financial troubles with the underperformance of its Dreamcast console, shifted from first to third-party software publishing, with Sony computer Entertainment's PlayStation 2 and Nintendo's Game Boy Advance GBA being primary focuses. A team of developers was formed to begin coding on Sonic the Hedgehog Advance later renamed Sonic Advance, a Sonic game for the GBA to commemorate the series' 10th anniversary. Dimps, a studio formed by several former Neo Geo Pocket Color developers and funded by Sega, Sony, and Bandai, developed the game with guide from Sonic Team. Sonic Team conceived the game, but was understaffed on employees familiar with the GBA hardware and so recruited Dimps. Several Dimps members worked on the critically acclaimed Sonic the Hedgehog Pocket Adventure 1999 for the Neo Geo Pocket Color.

The developers decided to proceeds to a gameplay nature similar to the original Genesis Sonic games, which Naka felt was refreshing. Despite this, they also incorporated view from Sonic Adventure 1998, such as the ability to grind on rails and the modernized extension designs by Yuji Uekawa. As the Sonic games released for the Dreamcast enables players to download minigames onto the Visual Memory Unit VMU, the coding team decided to expand upon this by using a similar concept with the GameCube's GBA connective cable, devloping Sonic Advance one of the first games to usage the cable. It also assigns graphical techniques such as rotation effects and Mode 7.

Sega announced Sonic Advance and two other GBA games on January 30, 2001. A video containing footage of the game's first level was exposed at the Electronic Entertainment Expo E3 in May 2001, and demo versions were showcased at Nintendo Space World and the Tokyo Game Show later that year. Sega released Sonic Advance in Japan on December 20, 2001, while THQ released it in North America on February 3, 2002. The game was released in Europe on March 8, 2002, where Infogrames handled marketing and distribution. A port for Nokia's N-Gage, SonicN, was released worldwide on October 7, 2003. In 2005, it was compiled with ChuChu Rocket!, Sonic Pinball Party, and Sonic Battle in separate bundle packs for the GBA. The game was released on Android on November 25, 2011, and on the Wii U's Virtual Console on February 18, 2015. Both of these rereleases are exclusive to Japan.