Advancing the Sonic Speed! – Music Monday – September 20, 2026

It’s wild to think that we are in the midst of Sonic’s 35th Anniversary this year. I also noticed in the big video SEGA did on Sonic’s 35th anniversary that the Sonic Advance games were hardly shown if at all during the montages. While I admit I do prefer the original Genesis games (despite not ever owning a Sega console), the original Sonic Advance was probably one of the Sonic games I played the most growing up. That game was so cool to me because you could play not only as Sonic, but also as Tails, Knuckles and Amy! The only Sonic games I had played at the time were Sonic 1, Sonic 2, and Sonic and Knuckles (my cousin didn’t have Sonic 3).

The game came out around 2002, and there was a lot going on at that time for me. I was in late elementary/junior high school, and the Game Boy Advance was a really big draw as the successor of the Game Boy. Where you had the 8-bit songs of the original Game Boy, this brought you songs that were more complex and had higher fidelity sounds (I think it was 16 bit?)

I wanted to do a song from Sonic Advance because of the shuffler that I’ve been doing on stream, but I was struggling to pick a song that best showed the amazing soundtrack that belongs to Sonic Advance. I ended up deciding to use the first level of the game: Neo Green Hill Zone, Act 1.

Starting up the game for the first time and you get that bass line revving you up for the game as Sonic fades into the level. The music is high energy but not too high energy if it makes sense. It gives beach theme but also a “this is your first level so we’re going to go easy on you” vibe.

I feel like the Sonic Advance series has a bunch of underrated songs that often get missed in the overall celebration of Sonic. What do you think? Do you have a favorite Sonic Advance track? Let me know in the comments!

Thankfully the internet doesn’t disappoint and there are some pretty decent remixes done by people online that I have listed below: