is a 2004 platform game developed by Sonic Team and Dimps and published by Sega for the Game Boy Advance. It is part of the Sonic the Hedgehog series, and the sequel to Sonic Advance 2 (2002). The game stars the characters Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Cream as they seek to keep Doctor Eggman and his robot assistant Gemerl from building empires on each of seven chunks Eggman has divided the Earth into.
The game is a fast-paced 2D platformer that takes place across seven zones, each divided into three acts and a boss fight. It allows one or two players to control any two of the five characters; each one has different abilities that allow players varying access to parts of levels. While the graphics are mainly 2D, the game features some 3D rotation effects. It sold quickly upon release and received positive reviews from critics, who praised its gameplay and aesthetics, though they were more divided on the team-up dynamic. The game was later released for the Wii U's Virtual Console in Japan in May 2016.
Gameplay
thumb|left|Game screenshot showing [[Cream the Rabbit and Knuckles the Echidna. Shown clockwise from bottom left, the game's HUD features lives remaining, an icon reminding the player of Knuckles' R-button ability, rings collected, and time elapsed.]]
Sonic Advance 3 is a fast-paced 2D platformer featuring similar gameplay to its predecessors. The player controls one of five characters simultaneously with a second one as a sidekick; alternately, a second player joins and one controls each character. The two characters run and jump through a series of seven levels, destroying robots along the way.
The levels contain features like vertical loops, springs, and rails that the player can grind on. Each level is divided into three acts, punctuated by a boss fight with Doctor Eggman at the end; all three acts, the boss fight, and two minigames that grant the player extra lives are bound by a hub world.
The player can select any two-member permutation of its five playable characters: Sonic the Hedgehog, Tails, Amy Rose, Knuckles the Echidna, and Cream the Rabbit, provided the two desired characters have been unlocked; only Sonic and Tails are available at the beginning, while the other three must be rescued from Eggman over the course of the game. Tails can fly using his two tails as a propeller, Amy can smash enemies with her hammer, Knuckles can glide long distances and climb walls, and Cream can fly using her ears as wings and attack enemies with her Chao friend, Cheese. The second player character can also give powers to the first by pressing the R button; for example, pressing and holding R while Tails is the sidekick blasts both characters into the air. In addition, the second character will collect rings and destroy enemies the first has not.
Plot
Prior to the game's events, Doctor Eggman builds a robotic assistant named Gemerl, using parts from the robot Emerl who was self-destroyed in Sonic Battle. Eggman attempts an experiment using the Chaos Emeralds to perform the Chaos Control technique, but it goes awry and tears the world apart. This action separates Sonic and Tails from Amy, Knuckles, and Cream. Eggman intends to create a segment of his impending empire on each chunk of the planet. Sonic and Tails travel through the game's seven levels to retrieve the Emeralds and undo Eggman's actions. Like Advance 1 and 2, its development was shared by Dimps and Sega subsidiary Sonic Team since the latter was understaffed on employees familiar with the Game Boy Advance hardware. Yuji Naka, then President of Sonic Team, had limited involvement in the development of Sonic Advance 3, and he conceived of the team-up dynamic. While the game is fundamentally 2D, it features some sprite scaling to create pseudo-3D rotation effects. The game was later exhibited at E3 2004.
| MC = 79/100
| 1UP = B
| Fam = 30/40
| GI = 6.75/10
| GamePro = 3.5/5
| GSpot = 8.4/10
| GSpy = 3/5
| GameZone = 9/10
| IGN = 9/10
| NP = 3.9/5
Sonic Advance 3 received positive reviews from critics, with respective scores of 79% and 80% at review aggregators Metacritic and GameRankings. and nominated it for the year-end "Best Game Boy Advance Game" and "Best Platformer" awards. It later won Handheld Game of the Year at the 2004 Golden Joystick Awards and sold over 100,000 copies in the United Kingdom alone.
Critics gave mixed opinions to the team-up dynamic. Nich Maragos from 1UP.com celebrated that Sonic Team had "finally [come] up with a way of introducing teamwork and variance between characters that doesn't overwhelm Sonic's bread-and-butter gameplay." Maragos singled this out as the main divider between Advance 3 and Sonic Heroes, a game that he found surprisingly linear in level design considering that it, unlike Advance 3, was in 3D.