Beaten on the GG2SMS patch (yes, with all that junk on screen)

My family's moved house two days ago on march 15th 2024, and amidst the memories I had in that other home, fights between my family and all that, I remember waking up early as a kid to go boot up Sonic Gems Collection on the PS2. I even remember trying to beat Sonic Triple Trouble in that collection, the game in which the character I have as a pfp originated from (this pic goes hard, feel free to screenshot) before going to an english exam in the morning and not being able to beat Tidal Tempest Act 2.

And yeah, among all those Game Gear titles there were two that didn't caught my attention so much as a kid, Tails' Skypatrol, which as an adult feels like an unrelated game with weird characters with the character slapped on it; and this one, which sadly feels like a special stage stretched to a whole game, bizarre just for the sake of being bizarre (oh, and with some epilepsy inducing special effects), but damn if I didn't enjoy most other things in that collection as a kid.

With the house no longer of our property, even with the posibilty of being destroyed, at least I hope this review and some videos I recorded in there keep the memories alive.

An isometric maze/platform game made for the Game Gear and it’s quite poor. The object of the game is to find three keys hidden in the level and then make your way though the exit. With it being isometric, is means that the entire game is spent going diagonally, which D-pads weren’t designed to do constantly. Your one move is a spin dash, where you charge up for a more powerful one.

After three acts, you fight a boss which involves avoiding attacks and then spin dashing into. It’s a fairly short game, but some levels are confusing and involve doors that connect to each other differently (so come out of one and go back and you’ll be somewhere else).

Could definitely be worse, honestly. It's not really worth the time but it gets a lot of ridicule primarily due to the dumbass premise. Eggman swaps Sonic's shoes while he's asleep and now he's slow? Alright, man. He's not even really that slow because he still has the spin dash and bounces around all over the place.

Now he's confined to a mediocre, but not terrible, isometric puzzle platformer. It's not that labyrinthine honestly until the last couple of levels, otherwise it's actually pretty straightforward. Not very long at all either. The worst aspect is probably not even gameplay related, I want to say it's the absurd flashing when you pick up a few specific items, like the speed shoes or invincibility. It doesn't really bother me, but I have to wonder why this was so prevalent in the 90s. Surely forerunners such as Sega and Nintendo knew of epilepsy risks by that point. It's more likely they didn't give a shit, actually.

Veredito: Muito estranho, mas é bom, só não precisava ser Sonic.

Imagine Sonic 3D Blast. Agora imagine Sonic 3D Blast sem sessões de plataforma, sem a sensação de velocidade, e com foco em puzzles de explorar a sala, a la Zelda. Este jogo é literalmente isso.

Você não tem pulo, só spindash. Você não corre, só anda e dá spindash. Cada fase tem só um objetivo: encontrar 3 chaves e depois achar a saída dentro do limite de tempo. E rolam umas fases bônus pelo caminho. O limite é sempre bem curto mas as fases são bem rápidas (de 30 segundos a 3 minutos por fase) então isso nunca vira um problema. É um sistema bem arcade, próprio para um portátil sem sistema de salvar: você tem que ser rápido na busca pelas chaves e ter um bom senso de direção. Tem até um extra no final pra quem zerar de perfect.

Os puzzles e labirintos são decentes, os inimigos e chefes são bons o bastante. Com exceção das últimas 2 ou 3 fases, que são obtusas pra caralho e que cada chave tá escondida atrás de 5 bullshits diferentes, a priori este era pra ser um jogo sólido.

O único problema mesmo é... cara, por que isso é um jogo do Sonic? Não é só a jogabilidade. Mas toda a parte visual, sonora, o enredo, os chefes, nada aqui lembra Sonic. Eu não acho ruim os spinoffs da franquia serem experimentais, não ligo mesmo. A lentidão de Tails Adventure e as mecânicas de Sonic Spinball não me incomodaram em nada. Mas esses jogos ainda pareciam spinoffs de Sonic, por mais defeitos que tivessem eles ainda davam a sensação de fazerem parte desta franquia.

Sonic Labyrinth só dá a sensação de um jogo bacaninha que poderia ser qualquer coisa, mas enfiaram Sonic pra ver se vendia mais. E esse, pelo menos pra mim, foi o grande calcanhar-de-Aquiles dele.

Labyrinth, come in.

You beat the allegations, my boy. The worst Sonic game allegations, that is. I’m not sure how I should feel about the fact that I had a somewhat decent time playing this game. I played it as a kid and must have never made it past the 2nd stage and all I remember is it feeling SLOW and AWFUL and I DON’T KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON. Which seemed to be the general consensus among players.

Believe it or not, a big motivation to make me finally throw away the money for Sonic Origins Plus was to have another go at these Game Gear games that haunted me on Mega Collection Plus as a kid, as well as the ones that weren’t included there. When I opened up the menu for them, the first thing that caught my eye was the critically acclaimed masterpiece in question, and you know what? It was alright!!! ?? Bit of a stretch maybe. It certainly was not <good> but it was by no means awful neither.

Laughable story premise aside, Sonic is actually kinda fun to control here? I’m not fucking joking. Slow as shit means spin dash encouraged, and you can go real zoomy zoomy, it’s a satisfying challenge to cancel it at the right time. As a speedrun this could be fun as heck I’m tellin’ ya, the most fun I had here were the couple times where I had just grabbed all the keys and had a small amount of time to bolt it towards the goal. I think if the game was built fully around this concept it could have found a real decent identity.

But this is Sonic LABYRINTH, and hence the levels are LABYRINTHs, with doors taking you to all sorts of places, you gotta keep track of where you’re going, kinda fun right? Like a puzzle or a maze?? NO. This actually describes the level design for about 3 of the 12 regular stages, the rest is just random pointless BS. In general it just feels aimless; questionable teleporters, pointless powerups with straight up bad placement, strange enemies that do not look like they should be in a sonic game (truthfully they do kind of fit I just think this one is really funny), and bosses that really could have been much better had someone but a just a little bit more thought into them.

That said it is mostly just aimless, and not frustrating. The only exceptions being one fuck off hidden platform in 3-3, and the general map in 4-3. I mean f*cking look at this. I understand the vision with this final level to be honest, you gave us our Sonic Labyrinth but it’s just jarring without some semblance of a difficulty curve to precede it. You went from somewhat maze-like levels, to aimless bs, to the world’s most complicated stage that feels like a puzzle in itself trying to figure out where to go even when it’s right in front of you. My mate said we should do a drinking game where we play that level without looking at the map and take a drink everytime you go through a door and I admit that sounds like the best worst time and ohohohohhh I am tempted!!

There is the matter of the true ending being a little obtuse but I forgive that because it added a slight layer of replayability with the hint given at the end. That said, it's still hilariously shallow.

The take home today is that I think the game actually has a solid foundation and controls well, it's just mostly ruined by a number of horrible design decisions that scream like the developers did not give any shits whatsoever. Therefore since it's a Sonic game with “good ideas”, it's actually 5 stars and the most underrated game ever and you guys just don't get it you don't see the vision open your mind for once…

Except it doesn’t have many good ideas, it’s just a worse Sonic 3D Blast.

(Maybe more like a prototype, since this came out first, hm!)

Slow, clunky and tedious. Sonic Labyrinth spends most of it's time being boring with occasional breaks of being confusing or frustrating instead. Sonic is slow and miserable to control when you're not spindashing and when you are he's so wild and bouncy that the only close-to-sensible way to move around it to tap the spindash followed by the brakes over and over again to get where you're going, leaving you vulnerable to clipping an enemy and tossing your keys everywhere. The levels are same-y looking mazes, the key mechanic uninspired, and the whole game just generally not very fun. I went to the bonus stage and should have had the sixth emerald but it gave me the bad ending anyway, fuck you too Sonic Labyrinth.

"We took away Sonic's speed aka the one thing that's supposed to make him unique."

What could possibly go wrong?

Looks at average rating

Oh...

To be positive first, this game has surprisingly nice visuals for what it is, and a solid enough soundtrack. It does a surprisingly good job pulling off isometric 3D, and I'd argue that it's a better companion to the Genesis' 'Sonic 3D Blast' than the tie in 'Sonic Blast'. Obviously, this game is really slow, and trying to correct for that with the spindash maneuver makes you unruly to control in most circumstances. There's really just no purpose behind this game. The level design is fine, mostly too easy, the bosses are fine, it runs fine (although the jittering while moving can be a little rough), overall it's just fine. A very mediocre, fine game, with a short runtime.