Running (mostly) horizontally all the time must get tiring, because our old pal Sonic now has two video games featuring himself jumping vertically and not doing much running at all. The latest is Sonic Jump Fever (Free), which Sega originally announced about a month ago but has been soft-launched since April. It’s a sequel of sorts to 2012’s Sonic Jump ($2.99), which I actually found surprisingly fun. Sure it was just a Doodle Jump-type game, but Sega did a great job at transitioning the traditional Sonic game into this genre. It has interesting levels, classic power-ups, and exciting boss fights. For being totally not like a traditional Sonic game, it still felt very much like a Sonic game.

Sonic Jump Fever is a lot of the same ideas, but with super fast “Fever" segments, a much larger focus on competition with friends, and a very free to play structure. Yep, energy timers and in-game currency and social network stuff, it’s all here. But hey, the original Sonic Jump is three bucks so if you’re looking to go the free route those types of things are the price you pay. If you sort Sega’s catalog of games in the App Store by “Bestsellers", Sonic Jump Fever appears to already be doing better than the original, which sort of shows you the power of free to play in a market like iOS.

So if you don’t mind the typical assortment of free to play stuff, definitely check out Sonic Jump Fever. Or if you do mind that stuff, download it anyway to see if you like the basic gist of things, and then you can just go pick up the original, which is really good. It still has in-game currency and is a tad grindy, but I enjoy it quite a bit. I’ll also be spending some decent time with this new Sonic Jump Fever to see how it fares, and if you want to sound off with your own feelings check out the thread in our forums.