a moment and take a look at a Sonic game, a bit closer to that heyday of Sonic 3, that

managed to push the Game Gear to the breaking point. Put aside the fact that we actually

saw this game in the states a month before its Japanese release, which was unheard-of

in ‘94. Disregard the strange history of developer Aspect Digital Entertainment, a

company primarily concerned with making Sonic games for the 8-bit systems (Master System

and Game Gear) well into the ‘90s, as well as porting Fatal Fury to the Genesis a couple

times, producing various Disney and Coca-Cola-flavored licensed games for the Game Gear, and creating

a Wonderswan version of Makai Toushi SaGa, AKA The Final Fantasy Legend. Forget all that.

Here’s the important part: This is a Sonic game, on admittedly constrained and unwieldy

hardware, that manages to be exactly what a Sonic game should be. Just fast enough,

just complex enough, and able to riff on the very mechanics that typified the series.

No 3D, no fighters, no racing, none of that. This is just original Sonic the Hedgehog (or

Tails if you so choose) platforming, with all the innovations up through Sonic 3 (and

this title’s direct predecessor, Sonic Chaos) intact. There are rocket shoes. There are

spring power-ups, where you’re effectively just riding a huge bouncy platform. There’s

huge levels, rivalling what the Genesis had to offer, despite this being a Game Gear title.

Hit a Chaos Emerald box, and if you’ve got 50 rings, a warp appears to take you to another

huge platforming section, where you can wrest one of said gems away from series newcomer

NackFang the Sniperweasel. (Once Sega settles on a name, so will I.) But best of all: There’s

one button. One lonely button, because that’s all you need for a Sonic game. This is exactly

the gameplay that made people like the series in the first place, and what would survive

only in the fantastic Sonic Advance series for the GBA. Case in point: The end of Sunset

Park zone 2. You hit the sign, as you’ve done a bajillion times before... but then

you just keep running. No score-tallying screen, no explanation; the game just starts scrolling

and you’ve gotta keep up, and dodge pits, and knock down weird spike-ball-carrying bat

things. Then you catch up to the engine, realize you’re at the front of the train, and that

you’ve already transitioned into Act 3: the boss fight. That’s a well-designed transition.

I’m completely willing to stomach some slightly less-than-responsive controls for a game with

that kind of confidence.

If you don’t feel like buying a Game Gear and eleven thousand batteries, you’ve got

two options for playing Triple Trouble today: Either on Sonic Gems Collection on the GameCube,

or on the 3DS Virtual Console. I’d lean toward the latter, as the GameCube version

might happen to have a problem with this boss right here. I remembered him as taking about

a dozen hits to enter raining-fiery-death-mode, but today I spent the better part of five

minutes just mangling him and getting nowhere whatsoever. Still. If you must blow up Game

Gear games onto your big ol’ plasma telemabob, Sonic Triple Trouble is among your best choices.