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.

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.

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Read also:

Sonic Dash review (Eurogamer.net)

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