No, this was the limit. It had been three years since the first attempt to bring this blue maniac to the Game Gear. From the beginning it was clear that to imitate the older brothers wasn't just technically unfeasible, but also foolish. Imitation is a losing battle. Self-innovation is another story.

Triple Trouble compartmentalized all that had been learned and fought for in the last three years, and blows them all up to the extreme that the Game Gear could handle. You can tell. The performance of the game is a sign of that, but the reward is tasty. Levels were no longer 40-50 seconds, but now 4-5 minutes. Levels were now beginning to square up to the ambition and scope that had bejeweled the home-console Sonic releases. But this game wasn't just Sonic 3, it was its own work of art. It had even innovated on the Sonic formula in ways that the home console games weren't doing. The Special Stages in Triple Trouble are the most impressive the series had seen up to that point.

They finally had cracked the code. It is still a Game Gear game, but it is the Game Gear game that Sonic fans and SEGA were waiting three great years for. It's these three years that set the stage for most future handheld Sonic releases. In 1994, a dream came true.

As we move toward a world where our console games get ported even to our smartphones, the art of capturing the essence of a home-console game on a handheld is becoming a lost art. Sonic the Hedgehog has some history with this topic, but it all begins with a game that takes the wheels of familiarity off, setting the stage for how future handheld Sonic games approach connections with their older siblings.

Maybe the number going away was all it ever needed. Something clicked with this game, and it was the beckoning glimpse of what Sonic could really be in the handheld space. Sonic now finally truly has its own Super Mario Land. Like Super Mario Land though, this is by no means attempting to compete with its contemporaries over at the home-console arena. This is a miniature Sonic game still, and the game won't let you forget that. Even the penultimate level is shorter than the shortest levels in the home-console games. Was this really the limit of what was possible?

Continuing to forge its own path. Interestingly you even see this manifest with characters not serving the same role that they do in their home-console counterparts. Tails strangely goes from Sonic's sidekick to Sonic's very first damsel-in-distress. It's with this game that there is this established line that these handheld Sonic games are not conversions of their older brothers, but their own artistic statements. Is the number even needed anymore?

"Limitation breeds innovation". It's the oldest cliche in the book when talking about video-games of the Retro Variety. It's true, and I believe it. If all the solutions, the late-night, sweat-filled hack-job work-arounds that make the impossible possible are good enough, it's those limitations that can be part of the artistry too. Not just the dream.

What happens when those limitations are taken away? Should they be? Is it messing not just with art, but history to do so? These are important questions, students of art have to grapple with them especially in mediums only as new as the Dwight D. Eisenhower Administration.

The story of the Sonic games on Game Gear and Master System (at least, until Triple Trouble) is not just one of that limitation, but it is also one of avoiding imitation. Imitation was only another limitation in a world where they sure as hell didn't need another. Instead, another path was forged, forgoing even the chalk and numbers that was the last vestige tying the knot of the SEGA ecosystem. Sonic the Hedgehog: Triple Trouble was and always will be a Game Gear game. It couldn't have been a Genesis game.

Noah Copeland dares dream of a world where it was anyway. It's been said that the best way to predict the future is to create it. Mr. Copeland predicts a past by also creating it, but with the respect and finesse to not forget Triple Trouble's roots. It doesn't come out of nowhere, it is rooted in something. Yes, it is clearly a Sonic game that is taking after Sonic 3 & Knuckles, turning Triple Trouble into a sequel of that. But if you're going to imagine a past, you better make it believable. Mr. Copeland and his team understood this, it wasn't enough to just be the Sonic game that all Sonic fans would want to play. It convinced me. For the first time that I had played a Sonic fan-game, and I have played many, I had felt that this really could have existed. Sonic 3 & Knuckles, one of the best games ever made, maybe could have been followed up this way. Had it existed, it maybe would have been considered one of the best Sonic games. Had it existed, maybe I would think it's the best Sonic game ever made. Noah Copeland and his team turned the dream into reality; it is my favorite Sonic game ever made.

This is not just a prettier version of that old Game Gear game. Perhaps that would have been enough or preferable for many, but to me that would not have been faithful to the spirit of Triple Trouble, the blazing spirit to make the impossible possible. It's that same spirit more than anything else that Triple Trouble 16-bit handles with grace.

In 1994, a dream came true. In 2022, a dream came true.