Sega has hardly been shy about porting its catalog of 16-bit arcade and console titles to iPhone and iPad, but it has been stingy about properly reworking them for the format. Square Enix’s clumsy solution for Final Fantasy‘s iPhone interface may not have been perfect, but at least its showed some awareness that the platform is touch-driven; compare that to the iPhone version of Phantasy Star II, which hobbles a menu-driven game with a virtual D-pad. Yuck.
Thankfully, Sega finally got the message just in time for the iOS version of the one game that most stood to benefit from being reworked for multitouch: Dreamcast puzzler ChuChu Rocket. This version of the game wisely drops the original D-pad-based interface in favor of a more direct, touch-driven control scheme. It works brilliantly. Rather than navigate the playing field slowly with a controller to place directional arrows, you now simply touch the panel where you want to lay an arrow and swipe in the direction you want the arrow to point. Simple, straightforward, sensible.
