This week on The TouchArcade Show, we talk about GDC, our coverage of the event, and what we might do in the future to make it a little better. Also, The Unbearded One tells us what it's like to live without a beard, Eli breaks down his demo with the Oculus Rift and Brad shares his experience with BioShock Infinite so far. Later, we do dig into some iPhone and iPad games. Slayin and The Other Brothers lead off our Games segment, while a couple of other notables, including Ms Splosion Man, bring it to a close.

If you'd like to listen, go ahead and hit one of the links below. You can also subscribe to us on iTunes. That's the easiest way to get our episodes the second they hit. Give it a shot, you'll love it!

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Direct Link: TouchArcadeShow-098.mp3, 48.7MB

We've almost made it to episode 100! That seems like a huge deal! Oh, and here are your show notes:

GAMES

• Plague Inc. [$0.99]
• The Other Brothers [$0.99]
• Slayin [$0.99]
• Ms. Splosion Man [$2.99]
• Tekken Card: Tournament [Free]

FRONT PAGE

• LucasArts Basically Shutting Down
• Telltale Cancels King's Quest Game
• The Oculus Rift Video Eli Mentions [Tested.com]

The Jim and Frank Mysteries, Free - Join two best pals, Jim and Frank, as they set out on a thrilling adventure to uncover the secret of the Blood River Files in the puzzle-based adventure game, The Jim and Frank Mysteries for your iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

So, put on your thinking caps and solve over 70 challenging puzzles -- from analytical to mathematical across four captivating chapters.

The game will be available for free during the first two days of launch after which Chapter 1 will be priced at $0.99 at the App Store!

Learn more at www.99games.in

Hello everyone. My name is Eli, and...I can't say no to the retro aesthetic. Wow! It feels good to get that one off my chest. In all seriousness, though, the resurgence of 8 and 16-bit era visuals on iOS has done a number on my wallet over the past few years, and that's been somewhat of a double-edged sword.

On one hand, I've discovered some fantastic experiences steeped in nostalgia: everything from Velocispider [$2.99 / Free] to Mikey Shorts [$0.99 / Free]. Yet for every gem that's still on my device, there's at least three lame ducks that have suckered me in with the power of childhood fan service.

So when I discovered Pixel Licker Games' Slayin [$0.99] as the result of a friend's tweet - complete with an icon that looked like a cartridge and an in-game controller skin - I knew I was powerless. The only question that remained was: would it be a wonderful walk down memory lane, or end up collecting virtual dust with all the other deleted duds?

Fellow old-school addicts, rest easy: this is one game that'll see so much play on your device that you'll be blowing the dust out of its metaphorical cartridge slot. (Note: blowing on your iPhone or iPad won't make this or any other game play any better.)

Far from trading in on beloved gaming tropes to make up for poor design, Slayin wraps a classic visual style and theme around a truly original concept that plays to the strengths of mobile. Styled as an "endless action RPG," the game puts you in control of one of three characters - the knight, the mage, or the knave - on a quest to rid the land of innumerable baddies, and take down a series of progressively more epic bosses. The catch? It all happens on one screen, with three buttons.

In Slayin, there's no need to travel far and wide: the action comes to you. From the moment you start a round, enemies begin filling the screen, piling in from all sides; it's your job to navigate the chaos with your trusty directional buttons and deftly press the action button to make quick work of the growing hoards.

In the case of the knight and knave, this means jumping out of the way and into enemies to let your outstretched sword do its work; the mage is somewhat more nuanced with a tornado attack that grants momentary invincibility and sends all things evil to their graves in one fell swoop. Speaking of which, the more you do some titular slayin', the more your character levels up, increasing the power and sometimes range of their attacks. Since a hero's job is never done, either, Slayin functions like a roguelike: as far as you may get and as powerful as you may become in one round, death means choosing a new character and questing all over again.

Beyond just its retro sensibilities, Slayin has something else in common with Mikey Shorts: absolutely top-notch virtual controls. It might seem hard to mess up two directions and one action, but we've all seen and experienced the horror stories. Here, each button serves as a great stylistic addition to the game's aesthetic, but isn't so fickle or demanding as to result in any missed presses. Moreover, the hit box on each proves wide and forgiving while also mindful of the buttons next to it, allowing you to quickly get into a groove and completely ignore what your hands are doing in favor of tracking and surviving the madness.

Speaking of which, Pixel Licker Games does a stellar job at filtering RPG trappings through the frenetic lens of arcade gameplay. The core principle that drives Slayin is the fact that - wholly unlike an RPG - there's virtually nothing you'll have to "learn". Instead of focusing on combat flow, and enemy type, or any sort of macro-level strategy, all the nuance comes from mastering the game's twitchy challenge.

As a byproduct, the game's genre influence is used to tickle your nostalgia bone and create a gorgeous micro-world you want to spend time in. And by shifting the focus to judging space, perfecting timing, and balancing patience, the game becomes a kinaesthetic joy: something you'll find yourself itching to play as soon as you've put it down.

That isn't to say there isn't plenty of RPG goodness packed into Slayin. In fact, what makes it so special is the way it distills each feature of the genre down into something bite-sized, while still maintaining that perfect feeling. Each unique character, for example, has a play style and set of upgrades all their own. Personally, I prefer the Knave's money and point-hungry focus on "luck", with dual blades that you can upgrade to force your enemies to drop better loot more frequently.

Speaking of which, huge points to Pixel Licker for integrating these upgrades right into the flow of play with a shop-keeper that pops up sporadically to let you use your coins in exchange for better gear. With that said, each pixelated hero is worth playing, and the game makes repetition super enticing by borrowing from Jetpack Joyride [Free] to give you a varied set of meta-goals that add purpose to each round.

Part of me hates even having the discussion about in-app payments, because so many reviews are colored by the fact that they even exist at all, without considering whether they're done well. With Slayin, though, I'm happy to report that the great balance is the only thing worth noting about them. The premium "Fame Points" are earned through play or bought as IAP, and mostly go for unlocking more superfluous things like additional controller overlays and fancy decorations for the tombstone that displays your high score.

Perhaps you could argue that the game's bigger rewards - a crazy-hard "Advanced Mode" that starts you at level 50 and an epic "boss rush" mode - take too many Fame Points to unlock, and pressure you to dole out. And that would be a fair argument...if you didn't enjoy fun. This game is completely tailor-made for "grinding," with its fast-paced play and short round length keeping things satisfying, and every new character and round costs just enough that I always found myself just within reach of affording the next unlock as things started to get a little repetitious. And if you find yourself impatient? You could do worse than toss this team some money.

Also worth noting is that the actual in-game items like armor and better weapons can only be bought with the coins earned during play, so there's no pay-to-win stuff going on here. Always a good thing for a high-score game.

Slayin may not have done much to quell my hopeless addiction to retro visuals, but it may have done me one better: it's raised the bar for all games like it.

Skirting the normal weekly release cycle just a smidge, Warner Bros. and NetherRealm Studios released Injustice: Gods Among Us [Free] earlier this week, a mobile version of the upcoming console and PC fighting game of the same name that features characters from the DC Universe.

You probably remember Batman: Arkham City Lockdown [$5.99], a well-received mobile version of the full-fledged console title that released in late 2011. Injustice on iOS is along those same lines. It's not a full fighting game, but more of an Infinity Blade-esque swipe and gesture fest. And like Arkham City Lockdown, the whole thing works surprisingly well.

The combat itself is much less complex and nuanced as something like Infinity Blade, and in fact it's really kind of a button masher, or at least the touchscreen equivalent of one. But that doesn't make it any less fun. Battles are 3-on-3 tag team matches where you can swap your 3 characters in and out at will. The tapping and swiping is pretty simplified, but there's a nice rhythm to it and as you get into later battles the AI ramps up in difficulty at a nice pace. There are also some very cool looking combos and super moves for each character to pull off.

Perhaps the coolest part about Injustice is that everything is based around a massive assortment of collectible cards. You have a huge selection of character cards, covering many of the heavy hitters in the DC Universe as well as some alternate versions of them. There's also a ton of support cards featuring characters and items appropriate for the collection of characters in the game. Finally, there are upgrade cards which let you augment your characters and their abilities.

So you have a slick little fighting system, a fairly robust collectible card system, a cool way to upgrade your characters and customize your strategies, and a visually impressive version of the DC characters and Universe using the Unreal Engine. And all this comes as a free download. Well, of course, it's not FREE free, you know what I mean? There are plenty of opportunities to spend some cash if you want.

You occasionally earn random cards from successfully completing battles, but you can pretty much buy any of the cards either individually or in booster packs using gold coins earned through fighting. The gold currency can be purchased with real money in packs ranging from $2 to $100, and currently there's also a $4.99 "Starter Pack" that features a Harley Quinn Insurgency card and two more random Silver level character cards. It sounds like this kind of featured bundle deal will rotate out every so often to feature different bundled content.

There also looks to be a sort of energy system where your cards will need to recharge your team after a lot of battling, either by using in-game currency to recharge instantly or waiting for them to recharge for free over time. However, it doesn't take long to collect a good enough number of character cards that you'll be able to swap out your team with charged characters while others are recharging, thus keeping you from hitting a hard stopping point. Also, at least in my limited time with the game, it does seem like all the collectible stuff can be earned just through dedicated play, even if it might take a crazy amount of grinding and hoping for the random bonuses to be cards you need.

At any rate, Injustice: Gods Among Us on mobile is worth checking out for free, and I'm really surprised by how much I'm enjoying it so far. It's also got me interested in checking out the console version when it hits, and by signing up for a Warner Bros. ID you can unlock additional content in the console game using the mobile game, which is pretty neat. Players in our forums are also digging the game quite a bit, and trading various team combinations and strategies, so be sure to check out that discussion for more.

Remember when the word "port" conjured up terrifying visions of developers taking your favorite arcade game and cramming them into cartridges that spat out blurry graphics and fuzzy sound? Twisted Pixel does, and they know it wouldn't be proper to make gamers revisit those dark days, so they put forth a solid effort teaching their Xbox Live platformer, Ms. Splosion Man [$2.99], how to speak mobile. Solid, indeed, except for a bothersome implementation of an IAP pay wall.

(Unfortunately the 'sploding star also speaks teenager, and that just won't do. Immediately open the options menu and disable VOX, her constant "Oh mah GAWD!" jibber-jabber. Done that? You're welcome. Okay, then. Let's continue. )

Unlike ports of 3D games that require more virtual buttons than you have fingers, Ms. Splosion Man keeps things nice and simple. You've got a slider to move around and an invisible "splode" button anywhere your right thumb pleases. You can enable a virtual stick, but as you only need to prance left and right, the slider feels better and more responsive. Exploding pops you into the air. Press it twice and you'll do the Ms. Splosion Man equivalent of a double jump.

The controls are as tight as they are simple, providing the responsiveness platformers demand. Twisted Pixel also took some clever shortcuts to boil the controls down even further, such as not requiring you to hold the direction you want to jump when wall-jumping. Just throw yourself against the wall, 'splode, and Ms. Splosion Man will do the rest.

Most levels present a nice mix of platforming and puzzle solving. You'll hop over pits and enemies, whom you can take out by exploding next to them, and eventually arrive at a Rube Goldberg-like set-up that requires quick thinking and quicker reflexes to pass. On one occasion I came up to a wheel that moved a floating wall back and forth near my position. Positioning the wall to my left and bounding off of it flipped a switch that popped a canister up from the floor that immediately began to descend, like the bell in a strongman contest.

The trick was to detonate Ms. Splosion Man just as she and the canister crossed paths in midair, propelling me over a laser beam and straight off to the next stretch of level. It took a few tries to figure out, but nailing the trick was satisfying. There are also challenges such as finishing a level while spending as little time on the ground as possible. It's a tricky feat, but pulling it off will leave you feeling accomplished.

A little trial and error is expected in platformers, but a combination of few-and-far-between checkpoints and some technical gaffes caused some frustration. Many sections auto-scroll, forcing you to spot certain objects such as switches and take action without pausing to think. That's fine too, for the most part. Switching your brain to autopilot and letting your fingers do the thinking is exhilarating and a big part of what makes platformers fun.

Except many times your smarty-pants do exactly what you needed them to do, but the game didn't register your 'splosion even though you clearly overlapped the trigger, or the screen zoomed out so far you couldn't separate one jumble of pixels and polys from another, or distractions such as a scientist thudding against your screen or Ms. Splosion Man's fiery combustions blocked your view and made you bungle a jump.

I can overlook those stumbles; they occur infrequently and pale when faced with such beautiful graphics--on par with the Xbox 360 version of the game--and clever level design. The real strike against Ms. Splosion Man is a nasty IAP barrier. Beginning with level 1-4, you have to pay coins you earn in-game to unlock levels. You can unlock levels individually, or unlock each world over two payments, but pay you must. And of course, should you come up a few coins short, you can always fork over real money for coin packs.

Ms. Splosion Man is not a pay-to-play game. That term gets thrown around too casually. But the line between grinding levels to earn coins or taking the easy way out and buying IAP feels like obvious attempt to herd players to the App Store. Earning coins that I can cash in for optional power-ups, I don't mind. That's pretty much a given where mobile platformers are concerned.

But even more a given is the expectation that beating one level in a platformer will open up the next one. Purchasing the rest of the game won't cost you much more than the game's base price on its native platform, but finding out that the $3 price tag opens up what amounts to a demo unexpectedly soured the experience for me. Still, if platforming is your bag, don't let grinding or opening your wallet keep you from missing out on Ms. Splosion Man's gorgeous, fast-paced, and rewarding adventure.

Apparently it's the 16 year anniversary of the Tamagotchi, the tiny egg-shaped virtual pet keychain toys that either engrossed or annoyed practically everybody in the late '90s and early 2000s, and to celebrate NamcoBandai has released an official virtual iOS version of the virtual pet, which is almost too much virtual for me to handle. There is an Xzibit joke in here somewhere I'm sure.

As you can see, Tamagotchi L.i.f.e. [Free] is an actual digital recreation of the toy, virtual plastic egg and all. It has the same simple LCD display graphical style as the original toys, and you interact with your pet using three virtual buttons on the egg in a similar way to the toys too. It's quite the nostalgia scratcher, for sure.

However, there's also a more modernized view of your pet which you can switch to on the fly. It's more zoomed in, features some basic color for you pet, and also includes a pretty cool rock-paper-scissors mini-game you can play against your little guy or gal. Check out the contrast between the two styles in the screens below. It's pretty cool.

Tamagotchi L.i.f.e. also includes a bunch of neat fan service, like additional egg styles and LCD backgrounds to unlock and use to give your pet a personal touch, and the original batch of different pets to raise. Seeing as we all pretty much carry our smartphones around with us at all times, having a little Tamagotchi living in there seems to make perfect sense and is within the spirit of the original keychain toys.

The virtual recreation goes beyond that, though, as just like the original toys used to incessantly alert you when your virtual pet needed some kind of attention, much to the annoyance of teachers and parents everywhere, Tamagotchi L.i.f.e. delivers this same functionality in the form of push notifications. Except it feels like it's ten times worse.

I don't recall exactly how often the toys would bother you with alerts, but the iOS version sends a push notification about every 2-3 minutes, regardless of if your pet actually urgently needs something or not. It's mostly just your pet "calling you!" to say hello, or something. Either way, with each subsequent push notification my desire to let my pet just starve to death slowly increases. Yeah, that was pretty messed up, and I feel bad for saying it. Here's two different examples of Tamagotchi L.i.f.e. taking over the lockscreen in a matter of minutes.

Is my Tamagotchi trying to get my attention? I'm finding it difficult to tell. In all seriousness, though, I'm not sure if the charms of Tamagotchi L.i.f.e. are enough to overcome my intense hatred of push notification spam. Of course you can toggle them off, but if you forget about your pet for long enough and harm befalls them that's not exactly an ideal scenario either. Ideally I'd like to be able to toggle push notifications just for urgent things, and leave the rest of the responsibility of hanging out with and caring for my pet to myself.

Anyway, annoying notifications aside, the Tamagotchi L.i.f.e. app is actually quite well done, and is a cool gift for fans of the original toys. It's also free and ad-supported, so you can try it out risk-free, and if you want you can drop a buck to permanently disable the ads. Also, in a game that seems rife for IAP abuse ("Please pay 1 Tamagotchi Bux(tm) to feed your pet!"), it's refreshing that the ad-disabling IAP is the only thing you can buy.

Hopefully NamcoBandai can tweak the push notifications, but as it is if you're hankering for some virtual pet nostalgia checking out Tamagotchi L.i.f.e. for free is recommended.

If you dug Cut the Rope, you'll probably dig Mittens [$0.99 / $2.99 (HD)]. It's the latest game from Disney, and it's undeniably inspired by ZeptoLabs fantastic -- and ultra-successful -- physics-based puzzle game. In Mittens, you control a cat across a variety of levels in a quest to reach milk, mice, or, oddly, balloons. You'll swing on ropes, you'll cut ropes, and you'll even fire the little guy from a cannon through fiery hoops.

Simplistic one-touch gestures make this a breeze to play, and while it's totally a good and competent game, it's hard to shake the impression that Disney only wanted to make a "safe" title and not necessarily a brilliant one. It's charting, though, unsurprisingly.

Jared and I gave it a look just a few minutes ago and thought it'd be rad if we shared our initial impressions with you:

Mittens is available now on iPhone. There's an HD version for the iPad, too, if you're into that. Note: we accidentally call it a "universal" game in the video and say it's price is free; whoops!

Masters of the pixelated career simulation Kairosoft are back at it again on iOS with their just-released Sushi Spinnery [$3.99] which dropped on the App Store early this morning.

As you might be able to guess if you're familiar with Kairosoft's ways, Sushi Spinnery is all about running a sushi restaurant. In fact, a main feature of your restaurant is a motorized "sushi boat" which spins around and offers customers a selection of your delectable menu items from the convenience of the rotating conveyor belt. It's the future of eating!

It appears that Sushi Spinnery is your standard Kairosoft fare, which is always great from a gameplay standpoint but brings a few recurring disappointments like lack of iPhone 5 widescreen support, no Game Center, and kind of half-hearted iPad support, though the title is Universal.

Still though, Kairosoft games are some of the most engaging simulations around, and if you're a fan of their brand of games then you'll likely enjoy this latest release, which has been out on Android for nearly a year. Stop by our forums for even more Sushi Spinnery impressions from our community.

Arguably the best part of the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 of yesteryear was the Chaos Emerald bonus stages. You remember those, don't you? The camera jumped behind Sonic's shoulder and he hustled forward all on his own while you wove him from side to side to collect rings and dodge obstacles.

Those stages unwittingly created the template for the droves of endless runners available on the App Store today, so the logical next step for the spiky blue hedgehog was an endless runner built around ye olde bonus stages, don't you think? Enter Sonic Dash [Free], a fun runner plagued by the same problems that plague most endless runners.

Sonic Dash is all about swerving around enemies, rocks, pits, and other hazards to collect rings. Swipe the screen left and right to switch lanes, swipe up to jump, and swipe down to perform Sonic's trademark roll, which you can use to clobber the enemies puttering around the environments. You can change direction in midair, drop straight down into a roll to treat enemies in your path like bowling pins, and weave around pillars and rocks on a dime.

Read the rest of this entry >>

We already knew that Iron Man 3 is on the horizon later this month, but there's some additional Gameloft news that'll likely get fans of the Dungeon Hunter series super stoked: Dungeon Hunter 4 is due out this month.

What we've heard so far is that the series is taking a significant departure from Dungeon Hunter 3 [Free] with a focus far more on the single player aspect of the game. The game, however, remains a freemium title. TUAW describes that aspect of the game:

Unfortunately, despite abandoning the "arena" ideas that caused so many problems with the third game in the series, the freemium elements are still there in force. You will probably enjoy this one -- if you can avoid and ignore the bright in-app purchase buttons and currency markers that seem to litter the screen.

iMore has hands on video:

There's some action brewing in our forums over the game, but if you want to be alerted when Dungeon Hunter 4 is released or when we get more details on it, be sure to add it to your watch list in the TouchArcade App [Free].

Considering the large amount of physics-based puzzlers that get continually released on the App Store, it takes a special kind of title to differentiate itself from the pack. Little Bit Games' The Seed [$0.99] does so in a variety of ways. Its emphasis on minimalist (but beautiful) presentation combined with approachable gameplay is a great mix and is executed well. In addition, its subtle narrative and reflective visuals lead to a game that's only sullied by its shortness.

As you might imagine, The Seed tasks players with guiding a magical seed through a variety of barren locales on a quest to regrow the land. This is accomplished by guiding the seed through a variety of stages with the goal of each to land the seed on a flat of fertile ground which allows it to grow a plant and move on. Sounds relatively simple, but the simple act of guiding and moving the seed (which is done via water droplets) is an adventure in itself.

Read the rest of this entry >>

Sporting an overall sore of 78 on Metacritic, Sega's House of the Dead: Overkill is on its way to mobile in the not too distant future. Like similar House of the Dead titles, gameplay revolves around mowing down loads of bloodthirsty zombies. This time around, Overkill explains the origin story, revealing the "horrific truth" behind the origins of the House of the Dead.

Reviews of the original Wii title mention an overall lack of diversity, which I suppose is somewhat expected in these kind of games, but Overkill is packed with all the ridiculous over the top B-movie zombie stuff that House of the Dead fans will love. Sega isn't giving a release date any more specific than "April," nor a price, although they have mentioned that it will definitely not be free.

Also, as usual, we've got a thread in our forums if you want to discuss the game with other fans of the series.

[via Games Radar]

Have you ever found yourself playing Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes [$4.99] and wishing it was less of a puzzle game and more of a card game? (Hey, that might be the case for someone?!) You're in luck, as Ubisoft just released the iPad-only card game Might & Magic: Duel of Champions [Free (HD)].

We're going to dive deeper into the game very soon, but at first blush it seems like a fast-paced fantasy-based card game that centralizes around using cards to summon an army, cast spells, and pull off other tricks to defeat your opponents. Of course being free to play there's an extensive in-game store to buy all sorts of things to tweak out your deck, and an online tournament and guild system to participate in once you've got a handle on the game.

Right now, early reactions on our forums are a bit mixed between the game offering a strong first impression, while also being "riddled with IAP." There's been a bit of weirdness with where the game has been available as well, with no real rhyme or reason as to why it's available in some regions and not in others. Regardless, if you're a Might & Magic fan and own an iPad, there's not much reason to not give this game a shot.

I feel like over the years I've been very consistent on my platform of "Puzzle Pirates needs to be on the App Store." I feel like I've been playing the game on and off since it's early (and incredibly basic, comparatively) release in 2003. In a nutshell, imagine a pirate-themed MMO, except unlike World of Warcraft and similar MMO's where you play the game by leaning back in your chair and munching on Cheetos with one hand while you press "2" as fast as you can with your other, Puzzle Pirates requires significant brain power to do well. See, every action in the game is accomplished by solving a puzzle, and the way this all goes together is so stupidly clever that I honestly can't believe there haven't been more Puzzle Pirates clones released.

For instance, something you'll do a lot in Puzzle Pirates is go out plundering which basically amounts to joining up with other players (or NPCs) in a huge pirate ship where everyone fills a specific role. It seems like I (somewhat appropriately) always end up pumping the bilge, which means I play a water-themed match-3 where the rate that I'm matching at directly correlates to how much water I'm pumping out of the ship. Similarly, there's a almost Tetris-like game for repairing the hull, another for navigating the ship, another for setting the sails, and so on.

There's a robust player vs. player community as well, both in ship battles as well as individual games such as sword fighting, fist fights, and various pub games- All of which, again, are executed by playing puzzles. In fact, even if all you did was stick fighting (Oh, yeah, that's a thing too, it's sword fighting without any items equipped.) with other players, you'd still have an awesome time with the game. I've even told people before that I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when you consider that for whatever insane reason Puzzle Pirates is still a niche MMO that not many people have heard of. Maybe an iOS release will help.

Puzzle Pirates is finally coming to the iPad this year. The actual release date is still a nebulous Coming Soon(tm) with Three Rings reluctant to get any more specific than that. They were showing the game off at GDC, so, fingers crossed that means we'll see it sooner than later. If you want to get a jump on the competition, you can play the game right now. It runs on both the Mac and PC, you just need to have all the requisite Java junk installed.

If you're still playing Real Racing 3 [Free], keep an eye peeled for an upcoming update to the game that The Firemonkeys just posted a short teaser video for. Aside from adding both the Chevrolet Cobalt SS and the Camaro ZL1, there's going to be over 100 new events to play through, a brand new "Hunter" mode, and something no iOS game should be without: Cloud save functionality.

It shouldn't be much of a surprise, but, both cars are looking pretty great:

Also, in other Real Racing news, cars go on sale in game on the reg', and it seems like the best place to stay up to date on what's currently available on the cheap is by haunting the Real Racing Facebook page. Liking it might help you be a little more savvy with spending your RR3 funny money.

Last week at GDC, Sega announced that the original Sonic the Hedgehog [$2.99] port on iOS would be getting a special remastered version, featuring Retina Display graphics, widescreen support, and additional cool features. The best part? It was later confirmed on the Sonic Retro forums that Christian Whitehead, the master behind the brilliant Sonic CD [$2.99] conversion on iOS, would be tag-teaming the project with fellow "hobbyist programmer" and Sonic fan Stealth. So basically like a dream team of Sonic porting mastery.

The remastered Sonic the Hedgehog will use the same Retro Engine that Whitehead developed when he originally ported Sonic CD to iPhone as a fan project back in 2009, a project that two years later Sega officially partnered with Whitehead to bring to iOS and other platforms. (Good job, Sega.) With the Retro Engine, we'll be getting a Sonic 1 with all the bells and whistles of Sonic CD on iOS, including 60fps, tight virtual controls, a Time Attack mode, and more.

As a big Sonic fan and an even bigger fan of the quality of Christian Whitehead's Sonic CD remaster, the prospect of the original game getting that same treatment is really exciting. Even crazier is that Sega is releasing this remastered version as a free update to the existing iOS game. I've probably bought the first Sonic a dozen times over the years, so an update sounds like a nice gift to the fans. Not just that, but Whitehead states that Sega has commissioned them to do a similar remastered version of Sonic 2. Sega: keep doing things like this, please.

The remastered Sonic the Hedgehog is set for release this spring as an update to the currently available version of the game. Oh and not to sound greedy, but while you're at it Sega, let's get some widescreen love for Sonic CD and a Retro Engine version of Sonic 3 & Knuckles, mmmkay?

[Sonic Retro]