Sonic Advance 3 is the last of Dimps’ three Sonic games for the Game Boy Advance, released by Sega in 2004. Where Sonic Advance 2 has you pick one character, this one has you pick two: a leader you control and a partner who runs alongside. The cast is Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy and Cream, and each zone’s acts are reached from a hub area instead of following one after another. If you own the game, Nagori lets you play it on iPhone and iPad.
What you need
- An iPhone or iPad with iOS 17.6 or later.
- Nagori from the App Store. Your first game is free.
- The game file of your copy of Sonic Advance 3 in
.gbaformat, or a.zipor.rarcontaining it.
No BIOS file is needed.
How to play Sonic Advance 3 on iPhone
- Install Nagori from the App Store.
- Copy your Sonic Advance 3
.gbafile to the Files app, in iCloud Drive or On My iPhone. - Open Nagori, tap + and select the file. If the game is in a
.zipor.rar, add the archive as it is and Nagori unpacks it. - Find Sonic Advance 3 on the GBA shelf with its box art and press Play.
Controls
You steer the leader; the game moves your partner for you. The Standard touch layout gives you the D-pad and the A and B buttons, with L and R along the top.
You run right most of the time, so trouble comes from the right edge of the screen. If your thumb on the jump button keeps covering it, open Edit Layout in the pause menu and drag A and B into the black bar beside the picture.
A controller frees the whole screen. Bluetooth controllers that iOS supports, including DualSense, DualShock 4 and Xbox controllers, work with Nagori. The left stick works as the D-pad too, and pressing it opens the pause menu.
Saves
Sonic Advance 3 keeps your progress through the zones on the cartridge. Nagori stores that save automatically, and adds more:
- Quit any time. Leave the app mid-act and Continue puts you back where you were.
- Save states. Pause and choose Save before a boss or a run of bottomless pits, and Load if it goes wrong. Nagori keeps your last four saves per game.
- iCloud. Save to iCloud and Load from iCloud move your progress between your iPhone and iPad.
Picking a team
The first character you choose is the leader, the one you play. The second is the partner, who follows you through the act. The partner isn’t only company: who you pair with changes what the leader can do, and the two have team moves they perform together. A pair built for speed plays an act differently from one built for climbing or flying, and some paths only open to the right abilities.
So once you’ve cleared an act, go back with a different pair and look for the routes you couldn’t reach. Fast Forward at twice the speed shortens the walk back through a hub you already know; bind it to a controller button in the pause menu, or add the ×2 button to My Layout.
Bosses and the Chaos Emeralds
Each zone ends with an Eggman boss, and the seven Chaos Emeralds lead to the game’s true ending. Both reward practice. Make a save state when you reach a boss, then Load to try again as often as you need. Slow Motion runs the game at half speed, which makes a boss’s pattern easier to read before you take it on at full speed.
Best settings
- Picture Smoothing softens the pixels. Turn it off for the crisp look of the original GBA screen.
- Full Screen stretches the picture. Leave it off to keep the GBA’s 3:2 shape and the black bars your controls can sit in.
- Screen Effects adds CRT scanlines, a screen curve or bloom, from Off to Strong.
