Check it out, it's 14-year-old me with a GameBoy Advance speaker pressed against his ear canal, mouth open while he pipes the most goopy-ass version of Scrap Brain Zone directly into his skull.

You can add Sonic Advance to the growing pile of reviews where I state, "I haven't played this since it came out." It's in good company, the Burger King Trilogy is in there. It's been so long that abandoning my previously held opinions on Sonic Advance and going in with no expectations was easy enough, though I did assume the consensus from my mutuals would be that Advance is among the best and most cherished of Sonic's handheld outings only to find it's pulled around a 3/5 average. A little surprising considering some of those mutuals think more highly of Sonic than I do, but now that I've closed the 20+ year gap... yeah, 3/5 seems about right!

Congratulations to Sonic Advance, because that practically makes it the best "traditional" handheld Sonic I've played.

Like the Game Gear games, Sonic Advance doesn't match the pace and feel of the Genesis titles, but the better hardware does allow for a much closer approximation, one that's pleasant enough in hand and which is only noticeably off to the kinds of people who are entirely too invested in this stuff. Like me. I just bought another copy of Sonic Mania, I'm up to five now, so I'd like to think I'm qualified enough to say that the way Sonic and his friend make contact with destructible objects and how they bounce off them doesn't quite pass the sniff test with me but it hardly ruins the game.

In fact, Sonic's physics feel perfectly in place with the way levels are designed, and that's really the most important thing. For the most part, stage design is pretty good. There's a nice mix of platforming and speed and plenty of routes that are made or less accessible depending on who you play as. The game does completely hit a wall and burn most of its good will by the time you get to Angel Island, though. The introduction of numerous bottomless pits, many of which the level directly funnels you into, is aggravating, and it's a problem that persists into the two single act zones that follow.

Also, not a fan of Amy. Dislike playing as her immensely. She felt bad in Adventure and she feels even worse here. These zones aren't improved by shafting you with a character that has a lower speed cap and movement abilities that purposefully feel bad. I'm sure there's some lunatic out there waiting in the wings who has dedicated a significant portion of their time to perfecting Amy's tech and will insist that it's not the game, it's the player. I don't care, I'm putting Amy in the contraption now.

Despite Sonic Advance's sloppy end game, I was pleasantly surprised with it overall, and that maybe says more about my insanely low expectations for a handheld Sonic than it does the game itself. Uh, end of review.