Sonic CD is Apple’s Free App of the Week
This week’s free app is the classic SEGA game Sonic CD. Normally it’s $3, but you can get it free from iTunes until Thursday, November 3rd. Let’s review the app and see if it’s worth a download.
This week’s free app is the classic SEGA game Sonic CD. Normally it’s $3, but you can get it free from iTunes until Thursday, November 3rd.
What Is It?
Either you love or hate classic 8-bit style games. If you’re a Gen X’er, you remember Sonic the Hedgehog. I was more of a Nintendo man myself, so I never had a SEGA Genesis. Unlike Mario, Sonic rolls and jumps through the course picking up rings along the way and unlocking points.
SEGA designed Sonic for a traditional game controller, and this app makes a poor approximation of one on screen. You’ll be frustrated with this game if you’re used to a game controller. I couldn’t quite get the hang of it. The designers should have used the accelerometer to control gameplay.
Although this is “free” until Thursday, the app has a ton of annoying and intrusive ads on various menus and full video ads between levels.
Sonic CD is full of Ads – So much for Free…
You can remove all the ads for $1.99, however. Personally, free should mean free, so the ads stopped me from playing the game for longer than five minutes.
Privacy Issue?
A couple of other issues I didn’t like is how the game asked me for my age the first time I launched, and it and the game won’t start without an internet connection. I assume both of these issues are tied to the ads system. Not what I would expect from an Apple Free App of the Week.
No internet connection? No fun for you!
Who Is It Good For?
You’ll love this game once you remove the ads if you’re looking for a bit of nostalgia with the graphics, music, and game sounds. I think the free app comes out too expensive for the rest of us. I’d love to share this app with younger kids to teach them proper gaming history, but they’ll grow tired of the ads too.
Should You Download It?
The app loads fast on my iPhone 5s and takes up about 200MB. I’ll probably keep it on my phone just to show the next generation how limited gaming was in my day.
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