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Surprise, it’s Sonic – The Hedgehog for the N-Gage. The various Sonic titles can be found on several handheld platforms, and first of all note that this version is NOT identical to the one recently released on the GBA. Instead it features the “old” Sonic gang, besides Sonic the red Knuckles, Tailes the fox, and Amy the hedgehog girl.
While the game is a typical Sonic game I was really disappointed that the port to the N-Gage was quite poorly done regarding graphical terms. Most of you will know by now that the N-Gage features a different aspect of ratio – higher but narrower – compared to most other handhelds. What the porting team did instead of adopting the game to this dimensions, was scaling down the game to the screens width and the black borders that were caused above and below the game screen this way were replaced with banners. At the same time this makes the part of the game you see very small, and while most games look great on the N-Gage SonicN was the second title – besides Puzzle Bobble - where I really felt this is TOO small.
You will find no new level themes nor new enemies in this game, but Sonic is still addictive as always and you can still spend hours with it, if this is your kind of game. The TimeRace option is still around too of course, but why this feature that really asks for shadow races using the online features wasn’t put to this use, is beyond my understanding. Summing it up SonicN is one of the weaker titles of the series but as long as there are not that many games available for N-Gage, it is maybe still worth a look.
Online & Multiplayer features
None – nothing here – no one at home. Once you are done with the single player part of the game there is nothing more to do. Why most Sega games available make no use of the multiplayer and online possibilities is beyond my understanding.
