I've heard good things about Tails Adventure, which I've gotten the impression is regarded as a gem among Sonic fans. Maybe I'm just listening to the wrong people, because I didn't care for it. Placing Tails in a search-action game is definitely a more worthwhile idea than whatever the hell Sky Patrol was going for (devil's advocate: it was never meant to be a Tails game), but its design is severely encumbered by the Game Gear's hardware, or possibly emulation issues with Sonic Gems Collection. Maybe a bit of both! I have no idea. All I know if it drops frames about as often as it drops inputs, and it's enough to make this a total chore to play.
Not that performance is the only thing dragging this game down. There's some... questionable design elements here. Tails can only carry four items at a time, and you can only change his load-out back at his workshop. In theory this forces you to be more considerate of what you're taking with you, but in practice it fails to gel with the rest of Tails Adventure's search-action design. In these kinds of games, hitting an impassable barrier should encourage the player to explore further. However, too often the barriers I encountered were the result of me not having the foresight to equip the specific set of items I need. As far as I can tell, there's no way to warp back to the map, so if you hit a dead end of any sort you get to slowly trudge your way back through the level or throw Tails into a pit, which for some reason doesn't kill him. How intuitive.
At least this looks impressive for a Game Gear game. I was genuinely surprised by the fidelity of some of the sprite art, and although the bosses are absolutely not fun to fight, they look great. I also love Tails' little submarine, but maybe that's the byproduct of reading the Archie comics as a kid. All of this could only carry me for about 45 minutes, after that I was begging for the game to be over.
I don't know what's up with these sidekick solo outings being so bad, but at least Tails Adventure is a few hairs better than Knuckles' Chaotix. Of course, nothing can beat Shadow the Hedgehog. Now that's a video game. Even if it weren't one of the greatest titles of the sixth gen, it'd be carried off the power of its lead character alone. Shadow the Hedgehog is a gift from the heavens, immaculate and created by God to be a modern day messiah. Knuckles and Tails can't compete with that.
Not that performance is the only thing dragging this game down. There's some... questionable design elements here. Tails can only carry four items at a time, and you can only change his load-out back at his workshop. In theory this forces you to be more considerate of what you're taking with you, but in practice it fails to gel with the rest of Tails Adventure's search-action design. In these kinds of games, hitting an impassable barrier should encourage the player to explore further. However, too often the barriers I encountered were the result of me not having the foresight to equip the specific set of items I need. As far as I can tell, there's no way to warp back to the map, so if you hit a dead end of any sort you get to slowly trudge your way back through the level or throw Tails into a pit, which for some reason doesn't kill him. How intuitive.
At least this looks impressive for a Game Gear game. I was genuinely surprised by the fidelity of some of the sprite art, and although the bosses are absolutely not fun to fight, they look great. I also love Tails' little submarine, but maybe that's the byproduct of reading the Archie comics as a kid. All of this could only carry me for about 45 minutes, after that I was begging for the game to be over.
I don't know what's up with these sidekick solo outings being so bad, but at least Tails Adventure is a few hairs better than Knuckles' Chaotix. Of course, nothing can beat Shadow the Hedgehog. Now that's a video game. Even if it weren't one of the greatest titles of the sixth gen, it'd be carried off the power of its lead character alone. Shadow the Hedgehog is a gift from the heavens, immaculate and created by God to be a modern day messiah. Knuckles and Tails can't compete with that.
I don't know much to say about this game. All I can definitely say though is that if this gsme were to get a fangame Remake akin to something like Triple Trouble, then I'm all in for it because I don't like the way how they've handled progression and the fact that you can only gold 4 or three items and if you don't have the right own you can't just quit the game and go bsck to your home to switch it out.
This really wasn’t what I expected from a Tails spin off on the Game Gear. For starters, the graphics are really nice for a Game Gear game, looking a lot closer to the Mega Drive games than the other Master System/Game Gear Sonic games.
The gameplay itself starts as you would expect, it’s a platformer where you have to reach to the end of the level, slower paced than typical Sonic games. Tails is equipped with a bomb, which can be thrown in an arc, one of the classic frustrating weapon types as when an enemy is close, you just throw bombs over their heads.
As you progress, you’ll unlock new items, such as a remote control robot for activating switches and remote bombs. Tails can only hold 4 items at a time, so you’ll eventually hit a dead end and have to back out of a level to return to Tails house to swap items. As you find more items, you can access more areas – it’s a bit like a linear Metroid game.
It is very frustrating releasing mid-level that you need a completely different set of items to the ones you brought, especially when you have to return multiple times because you get further and discover you need something else. It’s still a rather interesting game, and has some neat ideas, such as the remote control robot being used for some puzzles.
(Also, I really want to add an apostrophe to the name of the game)
The gameplay itself starts as you would expect, it’s a platformer where you have to reach to the end of the level, slower paced than typical Sonic games. Tails is equipped with a bomb, which can be thrown in an arc, one of the classic frustrating weapon types as when an enemy is close, you just throw bombs over their heads.
As you progress, you’ll unlock new items, such as a remote control robot for activating switches and remote bombs. Tails can only hold 4 items at a time, so you’ll eventually hit a dead end and have to back out of a level to return to Tails house to swap items. As you find more items, you can access more areas – it’s a bit like a linear Metroid game.
It is very frustrating releasing mid-level that you need a completely different set of items to the ones you brought, especially when you have to return multiple times because you get further and discover you need something else. It’s still a rather interesting game, and has some neat ideas, such as the remote control robot being used for some puzzles.
(Also, I really want to add an apostrophe to the name of the game)
Tails' Adventure is an extremely charming game. Tails' more slow and at times outright sluggish controls might be off-putting at first but once you get used to the games more leisurely pace Tails' Adventure is an extremely cute and well put together Metroidvania-lite with intuitive level and puzzle designs and cute spritework. Most of this games drawbacks come from console limitations such as the two-button controls forcing constant pausing to swap items, or the four-item inventory limit with two always taken up by bombs and your little robot leaving both quality-of-life items and a lot of more niche interesting items never worth equipping. Despite it's drawbacks and slow pace it's a fun little game and rarely frustrating.
An overlooked Sonic spin-off. Tail's Adventure is somewhat of a Metroidvania where it had great ideas but fell flat due to the hardware it's on. The screen crunch and jankiness did not help this game at all. I wish Sega expanded on this idea and tried again on better hardware because the idea of a Tails themed metroidvania where you get to use his gadgets to explore is excellent on paper.
Melatonin fuel
É um jogo divertindo, da pra brincar.
I love you Tails, but you have disappointed me so. You might think silly of me to be let down by such a game. Even if a metroidvania with Tails using all his little gadgets and doohickeys is a really cool concept for a Sonic spinoff that gives my boy the spotlight he needs, this is still a Game Gear title after all, so naturally you’d expect something short of stellar.
But the thing is, this game starts off really good!! Apart from it taking me too long to figure out how to change abilities, the levels are fun to go through and Tails controls well. His movement physics aren’t bad and the flight option allows for some unique exploration challenges not typically seen in the genre to this day. I was pleasantly surprised with how much fun I was having!
It’s once you get a few levels deep do the cracks start to show. Eventually you are required to do a fair amount of backtracking, using your abilities to open the routes that you’ve missed. Of course, this should be fine in theory but I found two main issues:
Firstly, Tails can only carry 4 abilities at once, if you want to swap them out you need to leave the level you are in (by walking either all the way to the end or back to the start), then return to Tails’ House and swap them out. Obviously this kinda BLOWS because your time is wasted if you don’t happen to bring the right thing with you. It may have been a hardware limitation, or maybe it was intentional to pad out the play time, but if Tails simply had access to all his abilities at once, he would be able to spend less time faffing about for no reason.
Secondly, Alternate paths are often very camouflaged. You will certainly walk past a mostly regular looking wall without knowing that it could have been blown up with the 3rd or 4th bomb ability that you unlocked. In general, bad level design is more common as you get further into the game, so I resorted to a walkthrough and much more common save states for the second half.
Other than those fundamental problems, the rest of the experience was just alright, the item selection is half creative and fun (abilities based on Sonic, Knuckles and Fang are here!), but half useless or samey (which you probably won’t even entertain trying out because again, your slots are valuable). The story is simple and cyuuuuuute but nothing to shout about. Level theming is VERY underwhelming for a Sonic game (even if we do get to swim in a submarine), and the few boss fights are mostly mediocre with one or two cooler ones.
It may be because I spent more time in the levels but I thought the music was good and for sure one of the better game gear soundtracks! Some nice compositions here! I was a little disappointed to not find many covers / rearranges on youtube, rare sonic fanbase L, but this one I did find was indeed very nice.
So here I am disappointed purely because my hopes surprisingly shot up at the beginning, but it's okayyyyyyy... Tails Adventure may be very flawed, but it was a cool time and as a certified Two-Tailed Fox stan I am quite glad I played through it since it does carry my enthusiasm for his character very well. Safe to say we probably ain’t gonna get anything like this from SEGA again.
But the thing is, this game starts off really good!! Apart from it taking me too long to figure out how to change abilities, the levels are fun to go through and Tails controls well. His movement physics aren’t bad and the flight option allows for some unique exploration challenges not typically seen in the genre to this day. I was pleasantly surprised with how much fun I was having!
It’s once you get a few levels deep do the cracks start to show. Eventually you are required to do a fair amount of backtracking, using your abilities to open the routes that you’ve missed. Of course, this should be fine in theory but I found two main issues:
Firstly, Tails can only carry 4 abilities at once, if you want to swap them out you need to leave the level you are in (by walking either all the way to the end or back to the start), then return to Tails’ House and swap them out. Obviously this kinda BLOWS because your time is wasted if you don’t happen to bring the right thing with you. It may have been a hardware limitation, or maybe it was intentional to pad out the play time, but if Tails simply had access to all his abilities at once, he would be able to spend less time faffing about for no reason.
Secondly, Alternate paths are often very camouflaged. You will certainly walk past a mostly regular looking wall without knowing that it could have been blown up with the 3rd or 4th bomb ability that you unlocked. In general, bad level design is more common as you get further into the game, so I resorted to a walkthrough and much more common save states for the second half.
Other than those fundamental problems, the rest of the experience was just alright, the item selection is half creative and fun (abilities based on Sonic, Knuckles and Fang are here!), but half useless or samey (which you probably won’t even entertain trying out because again, your slots are valuable). The story is simple and cyuuuuuute but nothing to shout about. Level theming is VERY underwhelming for a Sonic game (even if we do get to swim in a submarine), and the few boss fights are mostly mediocre with one or two cooler ones.
It may be because I spent more time in the levels but I thought the music was good and for sure one of the better game gear soundtracks! Some nice compositions here! I was a little disappointed to not find many covers / rearranges on youtube, rare sonic fanbase L, but this one I did find was indeed very nice.
So here I am disappointed purely because my hopes surprisingly shot up at the beginning, but it's okayyyyyyy... Tails Adventure may be very flawed, but it was a cool time and as a certified Two-Tailed Fox stan I am quite glad I played through it since it does carry my enthusiasm for his character very well. Safe to say we probably ain’t gonna get anything like this from SEGA again.
I've played and dropped this multiple times over my life and I doubt I'll ever run it to completion. They were definitely cooking something here but this is like, the most sluggish way to handle metroidvania-esque elements in a linear platformer. Weatherby's review is on point.
PEAK VIDEO GAME
I didn't beat it, but from what I've played (up to the third level), this is a pretty solid title. It just seems kind of bothersome going through since I couldn't find any command to immediately exit a level, so I had to walk all the way back to the start if I needed a different item. I still think what I played was enjoyable. If you like Metroidvanias you might want to give this a go.
6/10
6/10
The memories I have playing this through the gems collection, on the tiny CRT my aunt lent me, on my noisy PS2...
I'm entirely biased, this is one of my favourite games of all time.
I'm entirely biased, this is one of my favourite games of all time.
Tails Adventure had promise but is brought down by archaic game design and lackluster upgrades that make Tails Adventure more of a chore then a fun Metroidvania.
If there's one entry worth checking out in Sonic's Game Gear library, it's this one. Man, I love the idea they were going for here. An action-exploration game with Sonic characters? Sounds pretty sweet.
Sadly, SEGA decided to make it a Game Gear game. This means plenty of slowdown issues, screen crunch, no map feature, and bog-like movement. It's a shame, because I can see a game like this working wonders.
Thankfully, it's not very long, so I ended up enjoying myself even with the problems I listed above. If it was any longer... Yeah.
Extra 1/2 star for Tails' walk cycle. It's slow as shit but the animation genuinely got a laugh out of me.
Sadly, SEGA decided to make it a Game Gear game. This means plenty of slowdown issues, screen crunch, no map feature, and bog-like movement. It's a shame, because I can see a game like this working wonders.
Thankfully, it's not very long, so I ended up enjoying myself even with the problems I listed above. If it was any longer... Yeah.
Extra 1/2 star for Tails' walk cycle. It's slow as shit but the animation genuinely got a laugh out of me.
Tails deserved better
a slog of a game that loves wasting your time with boring gameplay. wants to be a semi-metroidvania kind of title but doesn't commit to it outside of just spacing things out a ton and making you backtrack. skypatrol may be less polished and shorter, but it's definitely the funner one of the tails spinoff games.