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GBA | Action | Sonic Battle

Boxart for Sonic Battle
Sonic Battle 33 screen shots
  • GRAPHICS: 4.0
  • SOUND: 3.5
  • CONTROL: 3.0
  • FUN FACTOR 3.5
  • AVG USER SCORE 3.0
  • AVG CRITIC SCORE 3.5

Hands-On: Sonic Battle

Hands-On by STARDINGO | 01/05/2004 | 06:05:27 AM PST

Can Sonic Battle do for the GBA what Super Smash Bros. Meele did for the Cube?

Sonic Battle finds our speedy, giant-headed Sega heroes engaged in a Super Smash Bros.?style four-player melee of smacking, hurting, and general mayhem against their fellow mammals and robots. You knew that sweet song of interspecies cooperation you heard coming from Sonic Heroes couldn?t last forever.

Every character in Sonic Battle has a set of unique special moves and a simple melee attack that can be used to smack people around the arena with extra oomph. Additionally, before each round, you can assign your special moves to Ground, Aerial, and Defense slots, significantly affecting how the move behaves. Winning a battle is simple: either get the target number of KOs first or be the last marsupial standing. Despite the rather garish-looking 3D arenas, the graphics in the preview build were fast, smooth, and easy to follow, even with all the chaos.

While Sonic Battle seems to be made specifically for four players, don?t fret too much if you don?t have any friends. The game also boasts a surprisingly deep single-player campaign with unique stories for each character that unfurl throughout an overhead map and a quest to power up a hyper-customizable robot named Emerl by earning Skill Points and stealing the other characters? moves in battle. There?s a surprising amount of depth here, especially for a handheld wacky happy party/fighting game.


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