Sonic Triple Trouble
Unfinished Game #9
Type of Game
Apparently one of the easiest Sonic games ever, except for me. But it's pretty cool otherwise, right?
Release date on our machines
November 1994—one month after Sonic & Knuckles in real life. And, um… a hundred years earlier in the saga’s timeline?
Developer
Aspect Co., Ltd. Its stated goal was apparently to produce high-quality digital content for the latest platforms on the market. Oh, really? Just like everyone else, right?
Publisher
SEGA Enterprises Ltd., with a few more years of Sonic games to release ahead of them. Don't be jerks, guys… oh well, too late.
Available on: So, um… a brief appearance on the 3DS and then nothing? Yeah, what a sad fate.
If my memory serves me correctly, I didn’t have any other Game Gear games after this one. Except that my memory fails me when it comes to how I said goodbye to my handheld console. Did I stop playing Sonic Triple Trouble because the console had given up the ghost? Or, on the contrary, did the Game Gear decide to end its own life later on, after realizing that I’d shamefully abandoned it—among other things, for a state-of-the-art computer? This little gray area from my childhood frustrates me a bit. Right now, I’m tempted to argue for the first option, which would suit my purposes well for this piece. I loved playing Sonic on my favorite little battery-guzzler, so why didn’t I ever finish Triple Trouble? Because I was terrible at it? Yes, maybe, but not in my nostalgic ideal—which has been more or less sugarcoated by my subconscious. So let’s just say I was never able to really get my teeth into that game the way I wanted to because of a hardware glitch. I’m diving back into it (into my nostalgic ideal—you’re not falling asleep already, are you?) to convince myself that I should have had my Game Gear repaired instead of tossing it in the trash like an idiot.
Post-traumagamegearic stress
She certainly deserved to live a few more years. Even to still be alive today. Well, I don’t need to convince myself at all—I’m preaching to a converted audience, which is none other than myself. Wow, I write even worse than I speak in public. Did the Game Gear’s disappearance really have that much of an impact on me? Okay, enough digressing. I already whine often enough about the bad choices I made back then.
A compliant cast for an easy performance?
Released at the very end of 1994, this version of Sonic was also the last one I played before giving up on the franchise. Double the pain with this Triple Trouble. I was wrong, I know. Or maybe not. Sonic & Knuckles, sure. It’s a shame I never gave it a try. Tails Adventure, Sonic Blast—yeah, yeah, I admit it. All those 3D games on the Saturn, Dreamcast, and other non-retro systems since they came out after 2000—yuck! I’m not touching them. So, Triple Trouble, developed by Aspect, which had already cut its teeth on the 8-bit games Sonic Chaos and Sonic 2 on the Master System. Good. Not bad at all. The weather’s nice right now, isn’t it? We’re back with the same characters from Sonic 3, plus a newcomer: Fang the Sniper. Later renamed “the Hunter,” for… some obscure reason by some uninspired idiot, but let’s move on. Nack the Weasel—yes, that’s his name too, and nobody gets it, sorry. So Nack Fang the Sniper Weasel (and not the Weasel Sniper, for heaven’s sake) wants to get his hands on the Chaos Emeralds to sell them. To whom? Through what channels? At which market stall? And what methods does he have at his disposal to launder the dirty money he’ll make from them? The story doesn’t tell us.
I don't think any Sonic game bothers with such considerations. And it was because of a terrible lack of effort put into the lore that the Dreamcast sank SEGA's console division. I swear it's true. In any case, Fang won’t find anyone solvent among the creatures populating this game’s world. Robotnik, maybe? He always has enough cash to build his bases and machines, so why not. Other new features include power-ups exclusive to Sonic or Tails, whom you can choose to play as before each stage. The poor little fox doesn’t even appear on the box art. This is the complete opposite of Sonic 2 on the Master System, where he clearly shows his face, even though he remains unplayable the whole time! It’s better if it works out like Triple Trouble, in the end. The items I was talking about before getting sidetracked change the gameplay and let you navigate the levels via different routes. If by “route” we mean flying over three hills with jet-powered sneakers, that is.
Sonic can also perform a peel-out—uh, sort of like a spin-dash without curling up into a ball—which isn’t practical at all since you lose your rings the moment you encounter the first enemy. As a result, I never used it. Tails can fly a few meters, like when he eats a carrot in Super Mario Land 2. It’s nothing groundbreaking—like a three legged duck which is reinventing the wheel—but it’s there, which makes the experience way cooler than if it weren’t. I really liked the game’s art style. Well, mostly the stages, because what else is there? I’m getting tired and making fun of myself in the same sentence now. Especially Sunset Park, which, despite its name, looks more like a derelict industrial zone than a modest amusement park. I really like industrial vibes. There’s a reason my all-time favorite level is still Oil Ocean from Sonic 2 on the MD. And there’s a reason it took me twenty-two years to leave Le Havre, when anyone else would’ve left in fifteen, with just a high school diploma in hand.
I really like mangroves and submerged ruins, too; so I had plenty to enjoy in the following worlds. That said, I think I know why I got stuck in Tidal Plant. For the same reason I was already totally freaked out by Labyrinth Zone in the first game on the Mega Drive. The thought of being responsible for Sonic drowning freaked me out to no end… even with the new feature of big bubbles you could travel through without worrying about running out of air. On the other hand, he could impale himself on spikes or get crushed by huge boulders—that didn’t bother me at all. You do a little cart-riding here and some surfing there, just to mix up the gameplay while Grandpa takes a nap, and that’s about it—I think we’ve seen it all. Oh wait! There are still the secret stages, which appear once per zone when you blow up a TV with an emerald image inside it. Sometimes you fly a plane in pseudo-3D, and sometimes you’re stuck with a classic stage.
At the end, Fang shows up and we snatch one of the gems he stole earlier. Serves you right! You shouldn’t have renamed yourself “the hunter”! You’re in Wokist territory here, and Sonic saves animals, so keep a low profile! Otherwise, the enemies weren’t so lucky when it came to the art direction. I think most of them are pretty poorly designed, and that goes for the bosses, too. In fact, I hate bosses that are just objects or machines. Or else Robotnik’s head has to stick out so you can bounce off it. Or the machine has to have Robotnik’s face on it, just like in Sonic Spinball, exactly. The cannon locomotive—meh; whereas I absolutely loved the train stage with its insane scrolling. All it would’ve taken was having Robotnik in the cab so we could blow his head off, and I would’ve been satisfied. Same goes for the helicopters in Alex Kidd in Shinobi World, or YET ANOTHER train in Revenge of Shinobi. Why? What does that add, compared to human bosses? Or monstrous ones—as long as they seem somewhat alive, anyway.
Was it due to a tight budget, or a bad decision by a manager? Let’s just say it was both. The whole world seems to have found the game easy, judging by the comments and reviews I’ve read in various more or less reputable corners of the internet. That’s great for my self-esteem, considering I couldn’t even finish it; thanks, guys. I had to stop at the water zone, so I did get to see a good chunk of it anyway; I’m trying to console myself as best I can. Come to think of it, a revelation just hit me: I’ve NEVER finished a SINGLE Sonic game in my life, out of the five I’ve owned. Even the very first one on the Mega Drive—I got stuck on the final boss about fifteen times without ever managing to get him to jump in the air. Way to go, guy who’s made up this above-average “retro nostalgia” thing for himself. Can’t even finish a Sonic game. There you go—I almost feel like blushing with shame right now! Then I remember that I’m not ten years old anymore, and the shame just vanishes.
Except that in my head, I’ve never actually been older than ten mentally, so yeah, I’m blushing again and turning pale at the same time—a really weird feeling. And anyway, in this specific case, I said it was my Game Gear’s fault, so it’s all good, right? Unlike a lot of people who were starting to get tired of the “2D on speed” formula that had remained virtually unchanged since 1991, I still really liked it. Since I’d only played Sonic 1 and 2 on the Mega Drive, Sonic 1 on the Master System, and Sonic Spinball too—though that only counts halfway. So I didn’t find Triple Trouble lacking in either challenge or originality. Plus, it was my first time seeing Knuckles. By the way, what’s his purpose here? Aside from showering us with lava by pressing a button after every boss fight? Hadn’t we already debunked the Knuckles myth in Sonic 3, where Robotnik was just pitting him against us based on a bunch of tall tales? Well, apparently not—Triple Trouble came out nine months later. Even Sonic & Knuckles came out before that. He should’ve been nice to us, that guy. But no, he’s at it again, messing with us. Not exactly the sharpest echidna in the forest, that one.
Sonic Triple Groove
Name: Yayoi Fujimori. Projects: Triple Trouble and Legend of Illusion—is that all? It would seem so. I hope for her sake that she’s found a way to make a living from music elsewhere. Because that’s not much to build a lifetime income on. Still, I really liked what she composed for Triple Trouble. It fits right in with the other Sonic soundtracks that were already out at the time. It’s groovy, it’s lively, and it perfectly accompanies our frantic runs—even though we get stopped every three seconds by a wall, a hole, or a grumpy mechanical creature. All the tracks are equally good, I think. Very cool, without exactly revolutionizing chiptune. Then again, it can’t be easy to revolutionize anything on the Game Gear. Hahaha! Uh, hey, what am I even doing, putting it down like this? Have I forgotten where I came from or something? Okay, which one should I pick? The cheerful one from Great Turquoise? The epic one from Sunset Park? The Donkey Kong-esque one from Meta Junglira? The enigmatic one from Tidal Plant? I’m having a hard time deciding, but I think I still prefer the theme that plays as the train climbs, with its almost ethereal intro, followed by a explosive start. It’s like—well, like you’re suddenly dropped onto the roof of a moving train without any transition, and you start running as fast as you can across it. Exactly what’s happening on screen.
The Tails justifies the means
I don't know if I can regret missing the end of a game by just one zone, all just to be rewarded with a cutscene of Sonic and Tails flying around in their totally cheesy red plane. Dude, you know you think five hundred times faster than your cheap biplane? Why are you lugging it around everywhere? Yeah, nah, not too many regrets—my compulsive nostalgia hasn’t driven me that crazy. I’m mostly ashamed that I’ve never even seen the ending of a single game in the series. And to think I used to brag about it in the schoolyard, with my so-called infallible expertise on the subject. It’s not exactly something to be proud of. Well, what else is there, besides whining for the tenth time because I should’ve treated my Game Gear like a precious treasure, rather than as something too fragile and too quickly obsolete.
I’m still really glad I got to play Triple Trouble—a game that marked the end of the golden age of handheld consoles as I knew it. And almost the end of consoles in general. I really wonder what I would have done if my stepdad had never bought his 75 MHz Pentium in 1995. Would I have gotten a Saturn? Begged for a PlayStation before 1998? A Nintendo 64… haha, no, I’m just kidding—let’s not get carried away. How many games would I have bought for my Mega Drive after Pitfall and its Mayan adventure? So many alternative scenarios to imagine, so much of the present to spend dwelling on the past. My favorite occupation! Especially if it makes me miss important events—marital, family, or social—who cares! Anyway, I’m not going to move heaven and earth to replay Triple Trouble (though “heaven and earth” basically just means launching an emulator, but still). Let’s keep that tucked away in a special corner of my mind, without dredging it up too much, above all.
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