Motherfucker got his shoes stole.

Besides the two Tails-centric games, Sonic Labyrinth is the only Game Gear Sonic title I haven't played on real hardware. Not that any of them are worth running out and buying off the secondhand market, especially not for the ~40 dollars people are asking to unburden themselves of Sonic Labyrinth. Why would I cough up that kind of money for a cart when I could buy Sonic Origins for the same price and play it with messed up audio balancing instead? C'mon. Get real!

Back in the early-to-mid 90s, Sonic was known for a couple of things: go fast and roll into ball. There's plenty you could do with these elements - like make a proper Sonic the Hedgehog game - but some developers, like Minato Giken, saw a lot of value in the ball rolling mechanic and its potential application in different gameplay styles. For example, maybe you want to make like, Kirby's Dream Course but starring Sonic. That sounds pretty neat, right? Only you're hamstrung to horrible mid-90s handheld hardware, so you have to strip out every interesting element until you're just left with rolling and bouncing around barren environments. Uhh, well crap. That doesn't sound too fun, actually. Try not to feel bad, though. Worst case scenario your studio goes out of business in two years.

Robotnik stole Sonic's shoes and along with them his ability to go fast, so this entire game is spent rolling around at the speed of whatever through profoundly unimaginative courses. To call these "labyrinths" would be a misnomer considering how small in scale and bereft of challenge they are. Even the last few acts - which introduce teleporters - are so simple as to be navigable without any forethought in where you should go or what you should be doing. Collect three keys and reach the goal, that's your objective. I promise you can do this at 6am with a head cold and four hours of sleep, and all you'll be is 25 minutes poorer for the experience.

The two most common complaints levied against this game are that Sonic moves too slow and is uncontrollable when in a roll. This is something I've heard both contemporary with the original release and echoed for nearly three decades since, and I personally just don't see it. Sonic moves slowly because you aren't meant to be running around by design, and spinning around feels pretty stiff. To Labyrinth's credit, I never felt like I lacked control over Sonic. Even a bad spindash can be easily broken out of, and you really have to go out of your way to lose a life. The real issue is that Labyrinth is so lacking in vision as to be a baby sensory Sonic game. Occasionally you'll see a moving platform you can ride, or a pad that halts Sonic's momentum if he travels over it, or a five-pixel wide pinball bumper awkwardly placed in the corner of a single act that doesn't really do anything. Vestigial level gimmicks, we love to see them.

I don't know if Minato Giken's mandate was to just get a cart out to market with "Sonic" on it, but it certainly feels that way. It's so thoughtlessly designed and empty that I questioned if I was mistakenly playing a beta build more than once. But, no, that's just Sonic Labyrinth. Far from the worst entry in the Hedgehog's Game Gear library but not really worth playing even as a curiosity.