When it comes to gaming Sonic is one of those classic games that we all loved back in the day. Sonic has evolved through the years on many a console but where is Sonic at on the iPhone?
Well, Sonic is back to basics. The classic Sonic the hedgehog game is available from the iPhone apple store for
The game itself looks as it should but when you start to play you realise that there is certainly an issue with the frame rate in which you play the game. The screen flickers from time to time and the game itself and its music starts to slow down. This shear mistake on Sega’s part has caused a little stir in the official Sega forums with one user “ChuChuRocket” writing the following:

“Now forgive me for cutting to the chase, but the sheer amount of slowdowns in both music and gameplay and the constant frame drops in your port simply don’t make this classic enjoyable anymore.

Needless to say, the iPhone should be able to run this game without any hiccups. Your emulator (developed by a company called Smashing Games) needs some serious optimization.

Secondly, from a creative standpoint, while SEGA probably wanted a straight port, I am rather surprised as to the visual appearance of the new menus, which are uninspired at best. This doesn’t look like an official SEGA release at all”

In response to ChuChu’s forum post Sega did respond. This is what they had to say;

“Your posting has made the rounds internally and we’ve had a discussion with our producer about the iPhone title. At the moment, we’re very excited to have Sonic out on the iPhone and do appreciate getting feedback such as this about the title.

In regards to your posting, we are always looking for ways to optimize our games and will continue to do so, for Sonic or otherwise. Sometimes the game can experience slowdown if a background task is running while being played. For the best experience we recommend that users reduce the frequency email being fetched etc. Also, switching to the arcade view will reduces the load on the processor and make for a more fluid experience.

In terms of playing the game it is very fiddly and for someone with big thumbs like me it is sometimes very hard to get the on screen  character to respond quick enough. I am really surprised that they haven’t utilised the iPhones tilt and technology.

I am really disappointed with the game especially seeing I paid for it, here is hoping that Sega work with Apple to iron out the issues with the game and maybe with a software update rid of the ridiculous bugs.

 35/100