Sega's newest iOS game Sonic Dash has quickly shot up the sales charts to become one of the App Store's bestselling games. It's fun, but it's also extremely derivative of the mobile gaming juggernaut Temple Run. You might even call it a clone.



*Life After Disc is a series exploring new development in digital gaming platforms, from app stores to browsers to downloadable console games.*Should Sega be ashamed of releasing a product that's so obviously imitative of another company's work, or is this the smartest thing that it's done with the Sonic the Hedgehog brand in years?

Sega's recent attempts to recapture the glory that its mascot enjoyed in the 1990s have been mostly disappointing. In 2008, Wired declared that Sonic the Hedgehog should probably just die. Sega responded later that year by "unleashing" a ridiculous, awful game that allowed Sonic to turn into a werewolf (um, hogwolf). In 2010 we swore to give the series one last chance, then were heartbroken when Sonic the Hedgehog 4 turned out to be shamefully bad. The 2010 Wii game Sonic Colors was surprisingly good, but Sega hasn't released another big Sonic game like it since then.

Last year, Sega released Sonic Jump, a hedgehog-flavored clone of Doodle Jump. There's also a fairly well-reviewed version of Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing for iOS, which, like all other versions of the game, is pretty much just Mario Kart but featuring Sonic and a bunch of other characters you either hate or haven't heard of.

So really, it makes perfect sense that Sega decided to give in and release a Sonic-themed clone of a game that actually features lots and lots of running, the one activity that the world's most famous hedgehog is really known for. Thematically and financially, this is the most obvious, perfect fit for the furry blue fella who just won't quit.

And, honestly, Sonic Dash is a very well-designed endless running game. It has great graphics and smooth controls, and it mixes up the formula just enough to stand out from all the other running games out there. It's more polished than even Temple Run 2.

Still, this feels like an admission of failure from Sega. For the last decade its designers have failed to figure out a way to keep Sonic the Hedgehog games interesting and fun. With these iPhone clones, it's like Sega has finally said, "We give up, we don't know how to design games, so we're just going to take the design that this husband-and-wife indie team created, tweak it a bit and stuff it full of purple animals or whatever."

This used to be the company that competed with Nintendo. "Genesis does what Nintendon't," remember? Decades later, Nintendo is still trying – sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding, but always trying – to make original, amazing games, and Sega is showing up at the party with a clone of a low-budget iPhone game. Of course it makes perfect business sense to do it, but isn't that more than a little bit sad?

At this point, so many other developers have ripped off Temple Run that Sonic Dash isn't even really a clone anymore. Now it's just another entry in the incredibly tedious "genre" of infinite runners. That's what happens when enough publishers make their own slightly different clone of a game: It becomes a genre.

Now that Temple Run has become a genre, I have to admit that no videogame character is as perfectly suited to it as Sonic. Based on its position on the top paid charts and the tone of customer reviews for the game, the mainstream iOS crowd is in love with Sonic Dash. If Sega wises up and turns the game fully freemium after it eventually slides off the charts, this could easily become the highest-grossing Sonic ever made.

Sega has to adapt to survive. I get it. But what's next? Angry Hedgehogs? Sonic Dash DX: Director's Cut? Segabrothers: Swonic & Swhadow EP?

I think I need to go buy a 3DS to get this taste out of my mouth.