Sega’s Classic Catalog Is Coming to iPhone and Android, So Go Get Your ‘Sonic’ On

Sega Forever turns your smartphone into a retro console.

After the success of the NES Classic, Sega is hopping on the retro bandwagon in the hope that there are enough gamers out there who want to turn their phones into a Sonic the Hedgehog machine. 

Sega Forever is now in the App Store and Google Play Store, and it’s bringing with it five classic Sega games with the promise of more to come on a weekly basis.

Those five games included in the rollout are: Sonic the Hedgehog, Kid Chameleon, Comix Zone, Phantasy Star II and, of course, Altered Beast. The games included will be free to play at the outset thanks to ad-support, but each game can also be fully unlocked without ads for $1.99 each.

The games are true-to-the-original updates of the 16-bit classics that made Sega an industry leader in the infancy of video game history. Controls are handled by using your phone’s multitouch screen to mimic virtual buttons. It works quite well in our experience with Sega Forever, largely because the old games were simple enough to only require a single button press at a time. Games with more complex control-styles may not fare so well, however, and purists may want to opt for one of the many physical bluetooth controllers that are now available for most mobile devices. 

Still, if you’re looking to revisit your childhood days of speeding through levels and picking up rings as a mighty blue hedgehog, consider your prayers answered.