Sonic Advance 2 was the first time a sonic game prioritised pure speed over everything else. It’s a precursor to the boost formula while still retaining plenty of what made the previous Sonic Advance so much fun.

There’s not much going in story wise, but the presentation in those comic strip like moments are great, alongside easily one of the coolest Super Sonic transformations ever.

Gameplay is Classic Sonic with a twist, as either Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy (when unlocked) or newcomer Cream, you race to the end of levels designed less to be explored and more to go as fast as possible and keep the speed going. If your able to stay at top speed for a few seconds you enter a boost like state in which you move even faster until you come to a stop, and with the new acrobatic abilities each character have, it’s very fun to just keep moving, honestly I love the levels in this game. Not the boss fights though, the constant movement is energetic but makes most of these fights feel the exact same, unless you’re playing as Cream where nothing can stop you.

This games biggest fault is with the chaos emeralds, collecting them involves hunting down 7 gold medals in a stage, and this requires you to go against the whole games design, forcing you to slow down and explore. Emeralds also aren’t shared between characters so if you want to unlock everything you need to do it with every character, not a fun time let me tell you. The special stages themselves are pretty simply, but it’s really a shame these are so hard to get too.

The game looks great and the OST is ace, Sonic Advance 2 stumbles with its completion process, but as a game to just jump into, it’s fantastic.