Wednesday 8 February 2012

Andriod Sonic CD

Just picked up a copy of Sonic CD for Android. This is an essential purchase for any retro game collector. Given the recent hype surrounding the classic incarnations of Sonic it is no surprise that this fogotten gem has made it on to nearly all the casual gaming platforms going. I was lucky enough to have a copy of this back in the day, but I had no problem picking this up for a few quid.

Nearly every version I have for this game uses the North American sound track. This is a massive shame as the original Japanese soundtrack is gorgeous. Thankfully, the recently released version comes with the Japanese soundtrack as standard.

The touch screen controls are good, if a little hit and miss, so you may want to play this with the keyboard, should your device support one. I am lucky to have a keyboard on both my Android devices, the controls are a standard WASD for direction, with L for action (you only get one button for every action, you dont need any more.).

This version also has a few other refinments, firstly, you can alter the depiction of the spin dash attack. You can choose to use the original spin animation or the version used from Sonic 2 onwards. You also get to choose Tails as a playable character, but unfortunately you are not able to get a Super Tails with all the chaos emeralds.

For the best part of four quid, this is an unbelievably good bargain. A slice of Sonic heritage that is so often missing from Sega collections. I reccomend that you get this game if you have the chance.

More Tablet loveliness

This week I picked up the UK folio case for my new Lenovo Tablet along with the stylus. The folio case pretty much transforms the ThinkPad tablet into a fully fledged Android latptop. The built in keyboard and optical mouse respond very well indeed.

On its own, the stylus allows you to have precise pen input, the built in handwriting recognition performs a lot better when used with the N-Trig device than your finger alone. Note taking is improved and you can rest your palm on the screen - something that using your finger wouldnt let you do.

The folio case is in an attractive black leather with all the signature colours you would expect from a Lenovo device. The only thing missing is the inclusion of the keyboard light, something that appears on a lot of Lenovo devices.

Access to all the connectors is provided, however the memory card slot door and full sized USB port are covered. This case uses the USB port for attaching the keyboard and optical mouse, so you wont be able to attache your HDD whilst this is in use. Unfortunately, the case doesnt allow for easy use or acces of it either, which is a shame.

The case also obscures the memory card slot door, if only partially. Which means you wont be hot swapping memory cards whilst in use. This is a bit of a pain, but nothing major. Access to the docking connector, power connector, headphone/mic connector and pen storage is catered for.

The mouse works well, another Lenovo signature addition, instead of a trackpad - which would have extended the keyboard further and thus ruin the design, you have an optical mouse in place of the traditional Lenovo nipple/nub (dont know the official name for this). It works as well as you would expect it, the only negative comment I have about it is that the pointer icon itself seems to be a little on the small size.

In my personal opinion, if you have a Lenovo ThinkPad tablet, then getting both the folio case and the stylus is a must. Whilst the screen keyboard on this tablet is easy to use, it does take up a lot of screen real estate, the folio keyboard reclaims this resulting in an end product that is highly adaptable to pretty much all situations you may need a laptop replacement.