It was 1993 and I was stuck in the mall with 4 hours to kill and I had already window-seen Babbages 6 times. So I was happy to find the free-to-use Sega Genesis screen with Sonic the Hedgehog in the electronics section of Montgomery Wards. I had always been a fan of the Super Mario series, and with its snappy 16-bit graphics and high-speed gameplay, Sonic was a great experience.

16 years later I was pleasantly surprised to see that Sonic is back and you can take him anywhere you go on your BlackBerry thanks to EA mobile.

Now, there are some BlackBerry games that started out as console games that can leave the user in the lurch, mainly due to control issues. However, while there’s a slight lag in gameplay on BlackBerry, Sonic’s simple running and jumping transfers well to the phone and it’s not long before you find yourself going from level 1 to level 4.

The gameplay is identical to that of the Genesis. You run at high speed, defy gravity, smash robots and collect rings to free the kingdom from the government of the evil scientist. It seems that some of the levels have been abridged, but that doesn’t affect the fun factor of the game at all.

On a BlackBerry Tour I used the S and F keys to run from left to right and easily jumped while running with the E key. And if I needed to do something else, I easily paused or suspended the game to read an email or access the web.

Needless to say, it’s great to see Sonic again and the ease of play and portability only adds to the experience.