I beat Sonic Labyrinth for the first time ever. As I mentioned in the tweet thread, while the Pocket did help in just being a joy to mess with in general, softening the experience as a whole, a lot of me appreciating the game more came from playing a lot of Disc Station games for the PC-9801.
My original experience with the game was playing it on an original Game Gear. I got it a long with Drift 2 and Tails’ Adventure when Toys ‘R’ Us was having a “We need to get rid of our GG inventory” sale. The game gear is already a harsh piece of hardware to play on with its absurdly blurry screen, pair that with the somewhat hard to see keys and boss attacks and it was a bad time.
Any attempts later with the game via software emulation would be met with a lot of distractions. But playing it now, after playing a bunch of those bite sized Disk Station games, it feels 100% like a Sonic flavored Disc Station game for the MSX or PC98. Good music, attractive visuals, and a simple design that finally clicked with me. I love it! Now if only the concept had a Kirby Tilt and Tumble version…
