Welcome to the 111th issue of the GBAtemp Recommends Revival Project! This project is a revival of our once-weekly feature where we share our favorite games and applications with you. The titles we recommend may be "old school" games, a piece of Homebrew, a ROM hack, sleeper hits, an application, etc, but one thing's for certain, we think they are fantastic and deserve your attention!

​

​

Back in 1995, the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise was at its absolute peak, enjoying major success on the Sega Genesis, with the latest mainline entry of Sonic & Knuckles. Riding on the waves of prior Sonic titles, a multitude of spinoffs were released during that time; Knuckles the Echidna had his own game in the form of Knuckles Chaotix, and Robotnik even got Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine. At that point, SEGA was contending strongly with its rival, Nintendo, even going so far as to offer their own handheld system to compete with the Gameboy; the Sega GameGear. Though the GameGear would wind up not being a runaway hit with fans, there were still a few hit titles on the handheld. One of those GameGear spinoffs will be what we’re going to be discussing today--a game that stars Sonic’s cute fluffy sidekick, in the aptly named “Tails Adventure”. Let’s get out our six AA batteries, and check this one out!

Tails Adventure isn’t your average Sonic game, as it trades in the classic speedy platforming for slower, more puzzle oriented gameplay. From the moment you boot the game up, you can clearly tell that this is more akin to a Metroidvania than anything else. Instead of rolling around at the speed of sound, you’ll be slowly exploring forests, mountains, and caves in order to find powerups that help you on your quest. Out of the many Sonic spinoff games that existed, this was definitely one of the more creative attempts.

The story, as minimal as it is, actually differs between the American and Japanese release, interestingly enough. In the original, the game takes place before the events of Sonic 2, but in the Western release, Tails Adventure happens after Sonic 3 & Knuckles. This is amusing to point out, because within the game are Sonic, Knuckles, and even Fang powerups, that allow Tails to use their abilities, which is...baffling, if he hadn’t met any of them at that point. Regardless, Tails is relaxing on an island one day, when suddenly, a bunch of birds part of the “Battle Kuku Army” appear, and set the nearby forest on fire. It’s up to Tails to strategically defeat these angry birds and save the island.

​

And thus, the game begins. Starting out, Tails is equipped with only one weapon; bombs. He can throw these at enemies in order to take them out, or use them to blast open secret paths. For the entirety of the game, you'll be relying on the different bombs Tails acquires in order to traverse the levels. Though you lack the ability to run very fast, pressing Up and the A button will let you take to the skies, just like how Tails does in Sonic 3. However, you'll immediately notice that Tails can't even manage to stay in the air for more than 5 seconds and will plummet to the ground astoundingly fast. If you want to fly high, you'll need to be on the lookout through each of the levels, as there's a hidden Chaos Emerald waiting for you. Collecting these will both give you 10 more hit points (denoted by rings), and more stamina for the fly meter. You're going to need at least a few if you plan on beating the whole game. Eventually, you'll collect better bombs, which make the screen shake wildly when used, a Sonic power that lets you spindash, and even a robot, who you can use to explore small areas that Tails can't get into. With the amount of power ups, there's a lot of room to mix and match different abilities and see how they work out, as Tails can only use four at a time.

Tails Adventure, being an 8-bit handheld game, doesn't really have much in the way of graphics. You can't really tell on a small screen, but if you play this on a TV, it's quite apparent how many times background patterns are repeated. The general spritework is a tad lazy, but even that can't stop Tails from looking cute, because this is the most expressive and adorable he's ever been in an "classic" style. Although, for what the game lacks visually, it makes up for with fun level design. There's a good variety of items to collect, and it makes you feel rewarded for your exploration. The puzzles can range from overly simple, to fairly interesting. It won't "wow" people that play the most difficult games of the genre, but what it offers is a fun experience that's definitely worth a play, regardless if you're a newcomer, or veteran to Metroidvanias.

Genre: Action-Adventure/Metroidvania
Release Year: 1995
Developer: Aspect Co.
Published By: SEGA
Average Playtime: 2 hours
Released for: GameGear
Also on: Pack-in title with Sonic Gems Collection (GC/PS2) and Sonic Adventure DX (GC), re-released on 3DS VC.

If you enjoyed this week's edition of GBAtemp Recommends! Please leave a comment in the thread. This helps us monitor feedback and ensures we keep posting these articles in the future! If you would like to see the original archive of our previous entries, you can look at our archived content here.

 

[huntertron1]

http://www.sonichacking.org/entry/17
threes also some rom hacks. for example this one from the hacking contest. for anyone whos been there you already know what im talking about.

 

[BlueFox gui]

i found this game on PS2 when i bought a pirated version of Sonic "mega collection" (ended up being GEMS collection i'm glad it came wrong hehe) i found this game and some others, it's fun but i never finished

 

[DarthDub]

Lack of SRAM support killed it for me, thankfully Sonic Gems Collection uses save states.

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

OH GOSH YES! Please play this on stream. PLEASE, no let me do it please!! I know tricks.

 

[supergamer368]

please make this weekly again

 

[AxlSt00pid]

I played this game long ago and, still to this day, it confuses me more than it should

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

@Chary So how did you capture your screenshots? Cause they are so small.

 

[Chary]

@Chary So how did you capture your screenshots? Cause they are so small.

View attachment 114615

Emulated them at their original resolution, then screenshotted them. There's a picture or two on there from google image search too, searching specifically for that res when I realized I didn't have enough pictures.

I played this game long ago and, still to this day, it confuses me more than it should

I played it as a kid and it baffled me too. Going back and playing it now, it feels far easier and less obtuse.

please make this weekly again

That's my intention! Or to at least alternate them on and off with the "this week in gaming" threads.

Lack of SRAM support killed it for me, thankfully Sonic Gems Collection uses save states.

*waves cane* back in my day, I had to play it on the gamegear and use the password system! Bad times.

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

*waves cane* back in my day, I had to play it on the gamegear and use the password system! Bad times.

Forget you, passwords was better than nothing at all. Maybe you never played a game where you didn't have cheats to level select or warp pipes like mario. Remember Kid Chameleon? Try beating all those stages in one sitting and if you died you start over. Go ahead, i dare you. Blaster master? another game, no cheats or skipping levels, no passwords. Besides, you can share passwords with friends and skip parts of the game, can't do that with save data.

Yes I know save data is still a great thing but passwords was useful just as much even if it was extra work for us.

Also the emulator i use take screen shots of the game gear border, guess that is cool. Is like I actually did use a game gear to play this.

 

[Zense]

Forget you, passwords was better than nothing at all. Maybe you never played a game where you didn't have cheats to level select or warp pipes like mario. Remember Kid Chameleon? Try beating all those stages in one sitting and if you died you start over. Go ahead, i dare you. Blaster master? another game, no cheats or skipping levels, no passwords. Besides, you can share passwords with friends and skip parts of the game, can't do that with save data.

Yes I know save data is still a great thing but passwords was useful just as much even if it was extra work for us.

Also the emulator i use take screen shots of the game gear border, guess that is cool. Is like I actually did use a game gear to play this.

Funny how you mention Kid Chameleon since that is the only game in my old Mega drive collection that I've never beaten (without that infamous level skip cheat on those platform boxes.)

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

Funny how you mention Kid Chameleon since that is the only game in my old Mega drive collection that I've never beaten (without that infamous level skip cheat on those platform boxes.)

Well of course, only someone who had a lot of time on their hands to master it and determination to do so would have beaten that game. You knew the game was hard when you looked at the box. Look at that "RAD DUDE" Sunglasses, Leather jacket, skateboard, 100 levels 1800+ secrets!? That is just the front! There was enough evidence to know this game was hard core maybe more than Sonic the Hedgehog was.


OOOOOO this game is free on android, I must try and play it, must be cool.




Besides there was other games, Toejam & earl, that was another game that passwords would have been nice. Thank god the second one has them.

Fatal Labyrinth, Gunstar heroes, Dynamite Headdy, the list goes on!

 

[Deleted User]

I've always known about this game, but I've never actually bothered playing it, even after I started using emulators.

I guess I'll add it to my ever-growing "games I want to play through" backlog.

Lack of SRAM support killed it for me, thankfully Sonic Gems Collection uses save states.

I never used save states in Sonic Mega Collection, because, 10-year old me thought that being able to stop at one time and start again a day or so later was cheating.

That, or I was too impatient to wait for the PS2 to load save states from the memory card.

 

[kuwanger]

Played through Tails Adventure on Sonic Gems Collection. Only used Save States for passwords. And, yea, loading time for save states the Gamecube was pretty bad too. The best part about Tails Adventure has to be the robot. The best/worst part, the very glitchy springs. It's really evident in some areas where wind will push you down into a spring rapidly. It's pretty trivial to abuse springs to just clip through walls...and then get stuck.

Really, I quite enjoyed it. It has a simple cuteness and a good variety of weapons, even if by the end a few are redundant and others are..useless.

 

[Veho]

Play nice

 

[demauk]

Thanks for this. The game looks pretty good.

 

[ederenzi78]

Thanks. I've just downloaded the 3DS Virtual Console Version.