Maze Hunter 3-D (Master System)
For much of its existence, 3D glasses and media were seen as pure gimmickry, a stigma not helped much by the material that featured them. Oftentimes you’d find a 3D work lunging towards the camera to try and justify the illusion of depth, entertainment sometimes taking a back seat to trying to engage with the unusual feature. The SegaScope 3D Glasses aren’t some grand subversion of that trend, but the game Maze Hunter 3-D does find a more reasonable and complementary way to include the illusion of depth in its action. Viewed from above like looking down at a mouse in a maze, the player watches their hero navigate, the character shrinking as they go to lower floors or coming closer when they leap up into the air. It might not exactly wow the player because it is focused more on giving substance to the world, but that would often be the main appeal of 3D’s use in movies like Avatar during the early 2010s 3D craze.
Maze Hunter 3-D certainly doesn’t have the kind of realized setting Avatar did, this humble Sega Master System action game focusing instead on a mysterious maze in space known only as the Labyrinth. It had been said that only one person had ever escaped the maze alive, the Maze Hunter living to tell the tale so others may know the dangers that lurk within. Unfortunately after an unusual warp through space and time, the game’s unidentified hero finds themselves in the maze as well, hoping they can be the second person to safely escape its walls. This set-up makes it sound like the Labyrinth is filled with ferocious alien beasts you’ll have little hope of overcoming, but Maze Hunter 3-D is actually rather tame and its sometimes energetic music feels a bit at odds with the slow and steady exploration of its small maze levels.
Maze Hunter 3-D happens at a fairly leisurely pace, part of this likely a result of the SegaScope 3D Glasses’s impact on the frame rate of any game played with it. The action can’t be too quick or else the player will grow frustrated with the technology, but it is a little surprising how simple things are considering that backstory found in the manual. The hero of the game cannot initially do much when the game starts or when they return from a lost life, only a fairly high jump available until they find a bar somewhere in the maze. Usually it is fairly close by when you need to arm yourself, but once you have it in hand, you’ll find it fit for beating back most any strange creature you encounter in the maze. It might require you to jump and strike at times, but the bar has a decent reach and you’re not often facing foes who pose too big a threat.
Most of the enemies are unusual shapes who occupy themselves moving around the somewhat tight but not exactly claustrophobic halls of the maze. They are rarely fast and you can often wait and watch for them to come towards you, smacking them with the bar to take care of them with ease. Some will try to follow you or may move a bit erratically, but it’s still not too hard to keep an eye on them and strike. The swing does take a second to come out, this only relevant if you swing too early, but you can often easily handle the monsters in the maze and keep moving forward. However, they do pose some threat since normally you can only survive a single hit, meaning if you get complacent, mistime the swing, or misjudge their movement patterns, you can immediately meet your end. This does at least mean you won’t ignore a foe, there still a little bit of energy in confronting a creature as a little lethal slip-up doesn’t feel outside the realm of possibility. Two enemies do feel a bit better suited to adding some consistent peril though. The Polyp is a barnacle-shaped creature that spits out one of the few projectile attacks in the game, the balls it launches near itself making approaching it a little risky. The Thunder Cloud is the true terror of the Labyrinth though, this game lacking any boss fights so instead you learn to fear the floating white cloud and its lightning bolts. The bolts shoot off in four directions and you need to need to perform the slightly tricky jump attack to take one out, and here at least the other enemies whose strategy is just to move can force you into a pickle as you might be unable to move in time when the Thunder Cloud strikes.
The threat of the Thunder Cloud and some occasionally cramped hallways means that walking around the different floors of the maze isn’t always stress-free, but level size is a strong factor in making progress feel achievable. There are twenty levels to beat, their appearance shifting from a metallic future look to things like a volcanic environment, but only the icy stages really have anything unique to them in that you will be slipping about in a way that can benefit those often pokey monsters. To clear a level you’ll need to find a key that unlocks the exit, the player popping into holes called Warp Tunnels that will move you to a different section of the current stage. These areas are often at different elevations to play into the 3D effect, but mostly the maze element is more about figuring out which Warp Tunnels go where and then checking out the Magic Boxes scattered around the maze in search of the key. Breaking one open will reveal the contents, but even if there’s no key inside, you’ll likely find something beneficial.
The hero is able to wear two kinds of gear at once, the Magic Boxes containing suits or shoes you’ll swap into any time you pick one up. The Light Suit makes you walk faster, the Absorb Suit lets you take three hits before it breaks, and the Jump Shoes provide a boost to your jump distance and height. There also exists the Power Shoes that let you kill a foe by jumping on them, something you likely won’t find much use for and could be a risk if you’re off a touch, but the Spiked Shoes are perhaps the most useful item in the game. They might be even more useful than the Absorb Suit just by virtue of the fact they disable the slippery effect of the ice levels, meaning you can pop the shoes on and play those stages like normal levels instead of dealing with the dash of difficulty that came from having imprecise movement. A balloon can also float into the maze and be smacked out of the air to produce a different set of items. A square with a letter or number will give you a brief boon, the T the least helpful as it will teleport you to the nearest Warp Tunnel which isn’t always where you want to be. S gives you the Super Shot to fire at foes from afar, the 2 for Two-Way Shot having an attack appear behind you as well as in front in its variations of that skill. Both fade in time and mazes will generate enemies as you explore so you can’t exactly wipe them all out, but if you are worried you might get caught in a tough spot, the M provides a Maze Mine that lets you use the attack button to wipe out every enemy on screen.
Picking up power-ups and gear at least gives you a bit more to do in the maze, but if you do lose all your lives, you can use a trick to return to the level you left off on so Maze Hunter 3-D remains oddly easygoing, not too interested in making the player struggle too much. Not having to retread ground very often makes it a finally clean and simple completion though, one where you can enjoy that brief tension when a Thunder Cloud is around or the laidback normal exploration that isn’t testing your skills too hard. One of the most lethal things in the game might be the final moments as you go towards the exit though, the lowest floor involving some jumping and navigation over instant death pits. Your character looks rather tiny and the small floor tiles can be easy to slip off if you’re not precise, a few late game ones even involving leaps over open air that add in a small moment of peril in a game that could have used more moments like it.
THE VERDICT: The added depth the SegaScope adds to Maze Hunter 3-D is a cute touch but one of the few frills in a game that isn’t too concerned with difficulty or danger. Here or there a specific monster or scenario might add a quick concern to overcome, but mostly you can navigate the Labyrinth easily with your simple weapon and wallop whatever creature happens to be patrolling at a less than threatening pace. Walking about the maze searching for pick-ups and the right Warp Tunnel to progress has its moments though, so while it’s fairly easy, it moves forward quickly enough that you won’t grow tired of this simple action game.
And so, I give Maze Hunter 3-D for Sega Master System…
An OKAY rating. Maze Hunter 3-D would definitely be a more lively experience if more of its creatures matched the dangerous reputation of the Labyrinth’s inhabitants, a few more with long range options or unusual movement and attack patterns likely the kind of enhancement needed to start adding some true excitement to the journey through the maze. It is still fairly pleasant and the level size fits the game’s current format quite well, the player not spending too long searching for a key or helpful item and able to make their way to new stages fairly regularly. It definitely feels strange when you hop to a new area of the maze with a different theme without there being some clear dividing challenge, Maze Hunter 3-D perhaps at least needing tough final levels for each portion if it wasn’t going to do boss battles. The adventure doesn’t lack pressure entirely thanks to your fragility and moments like when you leap over a gap to get to the exit, but perhaps making the player more durable and foes faster could have lead to at least the illusion of greater difficulty.
If you were someone buying into the SegaScope 3D Glasses, it might have been nice to have a game that you could clear before your eyes grow tired and the frequent small concerns like making sure you whack a weird goo coated brain coming towards you with the right timing mean it is interactive enough to hold your focus. Maze Hunter 3-D has a long way to go before it could really be a star of the strange Sega peripheral, but at least it isn’t trying to coast on visual gimmickry. The added depth is just a cute visual touch while navigating the maze remains the true focus, and while it is missing the kind of exciting play you can easily find in standard video games not tied to a pair of special glasses, you probably won’t be too bummed out if you view this as a serviceable part of the Master System’s SegaScope catalog rather than a reason to get the quirky piece of ambitious tech in the first place.