Honestly, I don't have too much extra to say about Sonic Advance, but I feel like I ought to put my two cents in anyway. Aesthetically, I feel like Sonic Advance represents Sonic at his best. Sonic looked so slick here. They rode the coattails of Adventure, but Advance is honestly better on the eyes than Adventure by a landslide, unfair as it might be to compare their first major 3D game to 2D, territory they had a decade of experience in at this point. The art style of Adventure is just effortlessly timeless, and it makes me wonder what beautiful sprites those artists would be making if a game in that style were permitted to exist today. On a gameplay level, I originally thought little of Advance, feeling like it was just too bite-sized. But I realize that Advance shines the most when you use every character. Especially Amy. She brings a new vibe to 2D Sonic that you ought to pay attention to. Definitely consider spending an afternoon playing Sonic Advance. It's so cute.

Sonic the Fighters is a bit different. It doesn't resemble any fighting game that I've played before, which made it stand out to me.

The game is very simple controls-wise. It has a punch button, a kick button, and... a block button?!

I'm used to a whole different brand of fighter, so a block button is unusual to me. But there's more! It's not just that your block, or rather, your shield, is activated by a button press instead of holding back. Your shields are a limited, finite resource!
Blocking is simply not something to overcommit to, 'cause they can also break! If it happens enough, you're defenseless!

If you're feeling extra risky, you can even sacrifice one of your limited shields and enter Hyper Mode, which gives you a little sparkly aura and makes you more powerful. Needless to say, this game encourages you to be on the offensive, and I think I like that!

Aside from the unique way they handle shields in this game (that I probably wouldn't want to be the norm in a fighting game, despite my intrigue), I found the game to be quite simple to learn. The console port has no Training Mode, which is regrettable, but the cast's inputs are not difficult to learn at all. I'd say there's several attack sequences that feel too much like you're mashing, though. That, plus the attack inputs just being (P) and (K) means that you could, quite frankly, play Sonic the Fighters with an NES controller. Probably be pretty good at it, too!

Enough about the mechanics though. I must also point out how lovely this game is to the eyes. It's so freaking kooky, dudes! The characters are polygonal, but not in the way you'd regularly see... they've got squares going on, man! My description doesn't really do it justice, so have a look. It looks spectacular, both in a still like this and as it moves in-game. The slapstick animation is something you just don't see every day, and it's a treat. Some characters have grabs that initiate very, very funny animations, most especially ones where one character uses another character's trait against them (e.g. Tails carrying you in the air and slamming you on the ground, or Amy pulling Espio's chameleon tongue out and whacking him in the face with it like a tape measure). It's a stylistic choice that honestly defines the game, and I do hope you get to see it in action. With friends, too, maybe? Fighting games are twice the fun when you play with your homies, after all?

This game is cute. I got it off Xbox Game Pass because I did not have any other "couch multiplayer"-type games on my PC.

It makes for a good little afternoon killer with the boys, the physics are amusing to play around with, and the items are hilarious. Its controls adapt well enough to both keyboard + mouse and controller as well.

Funny little spidery game here, give it a go.

The previous PlayStation Spider-Man game is iterated upon, but not exceeded here. It's clear the game was perhaps made with not much time to spare; I was not used to being shown a menu prompt in an open-world game that a particular area was unable to be explored.

Combat-wise, Miles Morales' Spider-Man has a bit more oomph to his arsenal than Peter Parker did, so there's fun to be had on that front, but I find that the game is overall muddied significantly by its ham-fisted political message. Simply put, the plot is very, very hard to jive with. The way it portrays its sympathetic villain this time around makes this game seem like the status quo's ultimate defender. It's not something I can jive with.

But... the Spider-Man video game is still pretty fun.

ADDENDUM: This game was the first game I also let my little siblings have a hand in completing. I had to dial down the difficulty modes eventually, but although I personally wasn't fond of the "Sony game"-ism present in Spider-Man: Miles Morales, I think it did do a good job helping guide along children under the age of 10, who would perhaps be a more suitable target audience for this game than me.