Like most Sonic fans, we here at Nintendo Life love the GBA’s ‘Advance‘ Series. We have fond memories of playing through the Advance trilogy (and even the tangentially related fighting RPG and pinball spinoffs) in the early 2000s, but bar the SonicN N-Gage port and a Virtual Console release in Japan, we haven’t had the chance to play them on any new hardware since.
With the fan adoration for these games, a remake or remaster feels like a no-brainer, no? Well, in a recent interview with VGC, Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka confessed that he would be very much up for it.
When asked about the potential of an Advance series re-release (be that as a remastered collection or on the GBA NSO library), Iizuka quickly flagged that there are no plans for any such remake or remaster at the moment, but, he cryptically added, “We don’t know what the future holds”.
Bringing up how Sonic Origins reintroduced fans to the blue blur’s original and CD appearances, Iizuka said that Sonic Team would “love” to do something similar for the Advance series, “if we have the chance”.
Here’s the full quote from the VGC interview:
There’s currently no plans for the Sonic Advance series to be remade or remastered, but we don’t know what the future holds.
Katsuyuki Shigihara was a director on Sonic Origins, which took Sonic 1, 2, 3 and CD, and we remastered that and brought it out for fans to enjoy. And if we have the chance, if there’s an opportunity for the Advance series to also get that treatment, or whatever circumstances may pop up, we’d love to do it.
Sure, the “no plans” makes this about as far from a confirmation as you can get, but it’s still an exciting idea! Whatever ‘opportunities’ need to arise, make it happen, Sega.
Elsewhere in the interview, Iizuka teased what we can expect from Sonic X Shadow Generations’ new content and shut down all talk of a Chao Garden spin-off title.
