Sonic Advance

Sonic Advance is a platform game in the Sonic the Hedgehog series, developed by Dimps, published by SEGA (in Japan), by THQ (in North America) and by Infogrames (in Europe and Australia) for Game Boy Advance. It was released in Japan on December 20, 2001, in North America on February 4, 2002 and finally in Europe on April 12, 2002. Sonic Advance was also ported to Nokia's N-Gage system on October 7, 2003, under the title SonicN. The game has four characters, Sonic the Hedgehog, Miles "Tails" Prower, Knuckles the Echidna, and, for the first time as a playable character in a classic-style 2-D Sonic game, Amy Rose. Sonic can have Tails follow him, Sonic 2-style, by entering a special code (Up-Right-Down-Right-L-Right-R-Right-A) at the character select screen. All characters have separate save-games which record their individual progress.

Each character has his or her own unique ability which is a determining factor towards the game's overall difficulty. Their special moves are all retained from Sonic 3 and Sonic Adventure. Sonic can dash in mid-air, Tails can fly and swim, Knuckles can glide and climb walls and Amy has her hammer to attack. Amy is considered to be the toughest character to play as because of her inability to spin-dash or spin-attack. Each character's strengths and weaknesses particularly come into play when fighting bosses or trying to find access to the special stages.