Sonic Labyrinth (Game Gear) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
106A playthrough of Sega's 1995 action game for the Sega Game Gear, Sonic Labyrinth.
Sonic Labyrinth is probably one of the least known Sonic games made by Sega, even compared to the somewhat obscure entries in the Game Gear line. It's played from an isometric, faux-3D perspective, and each level has Sonic searching for three keys in order to open the goal. At the end of each set of three stages, Sonic then will go flying down a slope collecting rings before facing off against the area's boss.
It's an interesting concept, to be sure. It reminds me a great deal of Snake Rattle 'n' Roll (NES and Genesis), given the perspective and the general flow of the game play. Like Rattle and Roll's body segments, Sonic's keys give him "health," acting as the rings do in his more traditional games. He can withstand another hit if he is carrying keys, though they will scatter and need to be recollected if he gets hit.
Like so many of Sega's projects in the mid-1990s, Sonic Lanyrinth game didn't fare too well critically or commercially. It was criticized for the limited view: some of these mazes get huge, and because everything is zoomed in so far, the tiny Game Gear screen doesn't allow for looking ahead very far. My suggestion is to draw maps for the levels that are too large to memorize. I did out of necessity for this video, but thankfully there is only a couple of stages that really require it thanks to the timer. The stage graphics look good even if they are a bit simplistic, and the sprites are big and well detailed, so at least the excessively close camera manages to provide an attractive view of Sonic's surroundings.
It was also criticized for its sound and its controls. I didn't think the sound was bad, though I could've done without the constant beeping for certain things (grr... those timer power-ups!), and the music is about par for the course on the Game Gear, and the compositions are generally fine.
The controls seem to bear the brunt of the criticism, and I won't argue that they don't take a bit of getting used to. They aren't bad, but they aren't anything like those in Sonic 3D Blast. Sonic's walking speed maxes out somewhere around -3 mph, so the spin-dash is the only viable alternative to scuffing up the floor with neon red trainers. To spin, you hold down button 1 or 2 and aim in the general direction you want to fly as the power builds up. Once you're ready, let go and pray that you didn't just launch the poor hedgehog into a hazard! The spindash can feel a bit unwieldy at first, but the awkwardness goes away once you realize that you rarely need more than the lowest level of charge to get Sonic where you need him to go. If you let lose after charging him up to four, you're best bet is to write that life off - there's no way you can control him at that speed, and since Sonic will go faster than the screen can scroll, it becomes all but impossible to do anything productive at full power. But like I said, the lowest power level makes Sonic's movements very managable, and since he stops almost immediately when you hit the button again, it's not too difficult to make precision moves if you have some knowledge of the level layouts. While I'd agree that the controls are needlessly difficult to come to grips with, they do work just fine after some practice.
It's a difficult game, for sure, but if you ever wanted to play Marble Madness with Sonic the Hedgehog in place of a screaming marble, this might just do the trick. If nothing else, it's a novel concept that, for better of worse, hasn't be visited again by everyone's favorite erinaceous star.
Almost forgot: that code that is shown in the ending will change the sound test into a level select option!
*Recorded using an LCD shader in Retroarch to mimic the Game Gear screen.
_
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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