One of gaming’s greatest 2D side-scrolling platformers, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, just got an update that lets players take the game on in cooperative play. Read about it, and a couple of other addictive new offerings, in today’s Fresh Games.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 update (iPhone) $5.99
One big new feature comes in this update that’ll excite retro gamers — now you can play two-player Sonic by connecting two iPhones by Bluetooth, recreating the classic SEGA Genesis experience.
Sonic includes something like 19 levels across 11 different zones, which you can now tackle cooperatively with a friend, and the app faithfully recreates the old-school game on the iPhone. If you like 2D platformers, you’ll probably already know that Sonic 2 is among the greatest.
Push Panic (iPhone) $0.99
Push Panic is a little like a fast-paced version of Bejeweled. I hesitate to use that game as an analogy, but describing just how Push Panic works is a little difficult. Blocks fall into a big pile from the top of the screen, and you have to rapidly tap blocks of the same color to select them, then hit a “clear” button to take them off the screen before the whole thing gets piled too high. It takes strategy to balance scoring by getting lots of blocks at once with the high-stress possibilities of the pile getting too high and causing you to lose.
The app includes four game modes, including a classic, level-based mode; a timed mode; and an endless high-score mode. Push Panic also supports OpenFeint so you can check your scores against other players.
BloodRunner (iPhone) $0.99
There’s 50 levels of fast-action platforming mayhem to be had in BloodRunner, in which you control a tiny vampire who has only 10 seconds to make it back to his coffin for the day. There are a mess of vampire-killing traps to dodge along the way. Expect to die a lot.
To add to the bite-sized, addictive nature of BloodRunner, the app supports OpenFeint. There are about 30 achievements to be had, plus leaderboards to track your score against others all over the world.
