SEGA are having internal discussions regarding the Sonic iPort
Sonic The Hedgehog for the iPhone is far from perfect. Our review is forthcoming but by now most people are aware of several issues that currently plague the game, most notably is the frequent slow down encountered in the music and gameplay.
A reader over at iPhone Otaku under the name ChuChuRocket wasn't about to put up with this and has taken their complaints direct to SEGA by creating a thread in the official SEGA forum. ChuChuRocket posted...
"Now forgive me for cutting to the chase, but the sheer amount of slow downs 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"
And wouldn't you know it, an admin at the forum came back with a response approximately 2 hours later...
"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."
On the whole, gamers don't take kindly to be forced to fiddle with their gaming devices email settings and having to use a reduced view mode just to make a product run properly. Still at least they responded and it's great to see that the feedback has been sent to the Producer (or "a producer" at any rate).
We sincerely hope SEGA see fit to upgrade the performance and presentation of this and all future iPorts, there is a great library waiting to be tapped into but if they all get released in a similar state it will genuinely be a crying shame.
Source: iPhone Otaku
Page 1 of 1
