SEGA unleashed some of its classic games for free on iOS this week, bringing a plethora of games from the Genesis era to the iPhone and iPad as part of its SEGA Forever series.
That’s just one of the picks we’ve highlighted for this week’s “Awesome Apps” roundup. We’ve also got a great Slack alternative, a nifty WhatsApp upgrade, and a puzzle game that’s sure to appeal to anyone who loves Tetris. Check out our choices below.
SEGA Forever
While Nintendo is bringing all new games to iOS starring its most memorable characters, its one-time rival SEGA is instead dipping into its back catalog. The newly-launched SEGA Forever collection for iOS offers a growing catalog of classic console titles from every era in the company’s history.
Right now, the collection consists of five titles, including Sonic the Hedgehog, Altered Beast, Phantasy Star II, Kid Chameleon and the superb Comix Zone. Each is free to play, and includes a few modern touches such as the ability to save your progress, as well as to compete against other players on a worldwide leaderboard.
New titles will be added every month — and all of them for free, too, although a $1.99 per title in-app purchase lets you get rid of ads.
Available for: iPhone, iPad
Cost: Free (with optional $1.99 in-app purchase)
Get it from: App Store (links above)
WhatsApp Messenger
Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac
As the world’s most popular messaging app, there’s very little chance you’ve not heard of WhatsApp before. I’m including it here, however, because it got a pretty significant update this week — giving users the ability use WhatsApp to share any file type.
WhatsApp has offered file sharing for a long time, but previously only certain formats were supported — specifically .csv, .doc, .docx, .pdf, .ppt, .pptx, .rtf, .txt, .xls, .xlsx, and similar. You could also use it to share most photo and video formats.
Thanks to the new update, it will let you share any file format up to 128MB in size, and 64MB from your desktop. That’s not enough to make it the perfect file sharing app, but this is still one more step feature that’s going to find favor among WhatsApp users.
Available for: iPhone, iPad
Cost: Free
Get it from: App Store
Neon Poly
If you like Tetris, chances are that you’ll enjoy Neon Poly, a new iOS puzzle game built around creating and clearing lines of squares, hexagons, or triangles by rotating, and dragging and dropping pieces onto the board.
Variation comes from the nine different board configurations, which includes different shaped and size boards, as well as the option of playing in both portrait and landscape mode. There are also a range of power-ups to learn, all of which help extend the game’s replayability. A good combination of easy-to-play and difficult-to=master.
Available for: iPhone, iPad
Cost: Free (with optional in-app purchase)
Get it from: App Store
Twist
Made by the same company responsible for the Tadoist task management app, Twist is a team messaging system for Mac and iOS with the ambitious aim of taking on Slack. To do this, it’s merging chat and email with the goal of making collaboration less chaotic.
It’s a lot like a bulletin board-style web forum, but with a cleaner interfac, and the ability to more easily attach files and only alert the folks you want concerning particular topics.
Whether it can make headway in an ultra-competitive space remains to be seen, but this definitely has the makings of a useful work tool.
Available for: Mac, iPhone, iPad
Cost: Free
Get it from: Twistapp
