Forgive my excitement, but Sonic CD just hit the iPhone –and it’s only $1.99.

Sonic CD: a rare game emerges again.

(Credit:
screenshot by Scott Stein)

Sega has done some questionable things–to say the least–with the Sonic franchise, but Sonic CD isn’t one of them. Sonic CD, despite the misleading title, isn’t a soundtrack or a music game. It’s one of the biggest, and best, side-scrolling old-school Sonic games ever made, but it was only available for the short-lived Sega CD, a CD-ROM add-on for the Sega Genesis (it also saw brief life in a 2005 Sonic compilation game for the GameCube and PS2). I actually owned a Sega CD, and Sonic CD was its best game by far–though technically that wasn’t saying much.

The levels may look similar, but they're completely different from other Sonic games.

(Credit:
screenshot/Scott Stein)

Besides the requisite high-speed neon-colored racetrack levels, Sonic CD has another neat trick up its sleeve: trigger certain waypoints and, with sufficient speed, Sonic will travel back and forth in time to alternate sets of past and future versions of levels. A “bad” and “good” future await depending on whether you’ve accomplished certain tasks.

Sonic CD’s translation to iOS is perfect: the touch controls are, as always, not a… [Read more]