Why Did I Forget How Hard Sonic Advance Was
Curled up in front of the living room TV at maybe three or four years old, eating a strawberry cream biscuit, and making a complete pig’s ear of Sonic the Hedgehog’s Marble Zone is my earliest memory of playing games. When you’ve only just learned how to use a toilet, navigating those winding mazes and high-speed jumps can be a nightmare.
When you’re almost 30 and doing the same thing, it should be a bit easier, right? I’m pretty sure I’ve developed a bit more hand-eye coordination since then, and the experience of having beaten most other Sonic games released since should have prepared me for the task ahead. And yet here I am, giving up on a future in gaming because I can’t beat Sonic Advance.
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Before Sonic Advance, the series hadn’t been monstrously difficult. There were some infamously tricky points, like the first game’s Labyrinth Zone and that bastard drum in Sonic 3’s Carnival Night Zone, but otherwise it was all about going fast and enjoying the ‘tude.
On the whole, Sonic Advance plays identically to the first few games. 2D platformers that embrace speed and momentum over precision platforming, you spin and dash your way through various acts before taking out bosses at the end. It’s Sonic, you know how it goes. And yet, for Sonic’s debut on Nintendo consoles in 2001, Sega and Dimps made many players’ first taste of the series the most sadistic, soul-crushingly evil instalment yet.
The Sonic community often latches onto one thing about Sonic Advance that makes it so tricky: its bottomless pits. They appear in almost every level, and are often positioned in such a way that you’re not aware you’re in one until it’s too late and you’re dead. In the latter
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