Sonic Advance Trilogy Gameplay FAQ

Sonic Advance Trilogy Gameplay FAQ/Notes

Sonic Advance 1

RTA-TB

Real-Time Attack minus Time Bonus. 2D Sonic games are notorious for having a strong case for being timed via in-game time instead of real-time, due to the time bonus punishing the player for going quickly. However, in-game time itself poses a lot of issues for Sonic Advance and is a bit of a pain to time thanks to Egg Rocket - RTA-TB takes the real-time of the run, then manually subtracts the frames lost to the time bonus. This conveniently means this can also be used for more involved categories that include special stages. Full-game runs of Advance 2 and 3 typically go by real-time, as time bonus is skippable or nonexistent.

Whoa going through walls?!?!

Every 2D Sonic game has invisible triggers called path-swappers, which determine which parts of the level are solid and which are not. Loops are the most common and intuitive example of having a pair of path swappers. Any of the "going through walls" tricks you see in this game will usually involve standing by a path swapper trigger, scrolling the screen down, then crossing the path swapper without actually triggering it, manipulating the game into thinking the character is on the wrong side of the loop, then shenanigans happen.


Sonic Advance 2

Boost Mode

You enter boost mode after running for enough time, hitting a boost pad, or hitting certain horizontal springs. You lose boost mode if your horizontal speed is too low while grounded. This means I won't lose boost mode anytime in the air as long as I have enough speed upon landing - this is why Sonic's air dash is so crucial to maintaining boost mode.

Ring Mechanics

Rings are more important than in most sonic games, as they heavily affect two core mechanics in this game:
1. The more rings you have, the more quickly your character will enter boost mode after running uninterrupted. Some levels require specific ring thresholds to get boost mode in time, such as ~50 rings by the middle of Egg Utopia 1
2. Air mobility. Your character's acceleration is heavily affected by your ringcount - the more rings, the more you accelerate in the air. This impacts almost every jump in the game - usually it's not a big deal, but there are cases where I have to be aware of if I have too many or few rings for tighter jumps - especially if I'm relying on rings from random ringboxes


Sonic Advance 3

Tag Actions

You control a lead character and have a secondary character following you (like Tails follows Sonic in the genesis games). The second character has an ability to perform an action for your lead character; this is called a Tag Action. The lead character also gets different/enhanced abilities depending on who the partner is. This basically means that you effectively have 20 characters in the game, since they all have their strengths and weaknesses all around!

The Tag Action can be used on ground or in air, and the tag action depends on who the partner character is.

Most notably, when Sonic's tag action is used, the game literally puts an invisible boost pad below your lead character - this means if Sonic's tag action is used in the air, the lead character can do a mid-air jump since they are technically grounded on that frame. This is why you'll see pause buffers - to ensure jumping on the same frame as releasing the tag action.


Version

In the NA version for many bosses, when Eggman flies off screen, you regain control of your team immediately, saving a few seconds on each fight if you get the off-screen kill. This is NOT the case for the JP/PAL versions.

However, the back barrier surrounding a chao in cyber track 1 is NOT a power barrier for whatever reason, so JP/PAL version can avoid an extra team swap in true ending as they can stick with using Amy+Sonic instead of swapping to Knuckles+Sonic for this chao.


Best Ending

Every zone has 10 chao in its 3 acts and sometimes hub. After collecting the last chao, every stage will spawn one of two sets of special keys, which is a 50-50. The Best Ending speedrun is routed to ensure being able to get a special key after the last chao no matter which of the two sets we get - unfortunately, Twinkle Snow is the one zone where the run has to gamble on a 50-50, and if the run gets the wrong set, we have to take a death abuse and try again.