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).

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.

A bad game to me is one that's poorly designed, and never really meets its intention. Never once did this game make me feel cheated, or felt like it was poorly designed. The game just felt overall boring. I couldn't even finish it because of how boring it was. I thought it was fair to drop this mid-review, as the game has nothing else to offer. It's honestly just the same gameplay with different key placement and boss gimmicks.

The levels are all vomit-colored, with a nice topping of seizure inducing hues. The music is awful; it all sounds the same! I wouldn't be surprised if it were used in a torture chamber somewhere.

By all means, this game isn't good at all. It's just a cheaply made puzzle game with "WHAT IF SONIC WAS SLOW" used as a marketing tool. The gameplay feels comparable to that of Sonic 3D Blast, except way worse. It's like Sonic 3D Blast in beta.

All and all, 1.5/5. This game doesn't suck, it just isn't fun to play.

Okey, Labyrinth.

The big butt of jokes constantly perpetuated by primarily Nintendo focused video game reviewers of the early/mid 2010s and beyond.

"Why would you make a Sonic game where Sonic is slow? Why would you name it after the worst zone in Sonic 1? Why is this game so bad lol!"

To which I must ask the question, did you even play the fucking game?

This game is fast, REALLY FAST, it's as fast as your skill level allows it to be!

"But Sonic's running speed is sooooooo slow!" You say, but.

His spindash isn't, his spindash is extremely fast, and much like Sonic Adventure, you can uncurl out of a spindash to kill your speed and come to a halt, so.

It becomes a game of spindashing everywhere at great speeds, properly timing your uncurls, taking the most efficient routes possible through stages, and beating them in less than a quarter of the time given you.

The level design compliments Sonic's controls greatly, the level design is genuinely incredibly fun, with a ton of different routes and paths you can take through levels on repeat playthroughs for you to form an optimized route, and to execute it to perfection... much like every other Sonic game!

So basically, to those who say the game is slow, give it a genuine try, play it with an open mind, don't just fucking walk everywhere, use your damn spindash.

And to those who have played it and still call it slow, skill issue in my humble opinion.

The bosses are utterly atrocious though, that's one part of this game I won't defend.

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.

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...