Dear SEGA, please stop. Please stop porting your wonderful classic Genesis games to the iPhone on the back of an emulator is patently not up to the seemingly simple job. And more so, stop porting over games that drew that majority of their fun from multiplayer and then completely rip it out of the iPhone version. This is not fun. This is not fair. Presenting these games through a shabby emulator is not fair to the developers that worked so hard to create these timeless classic. And it is definitely not fair to charge unsuspecting iPhone gamers $4.99 to buy back a distorted piece of their childhood.

If you were one of the Super NES brigade, Streets of Rage is a beat-'em-up in the style of Double Dragon. You march through stage after stage, slamming enemies with hard-hitting punches and kicks. That's it. Sound boring? Well, it wasn't because the controls were great, the pacing of the gameplay was spot-on, and the music was damn near perfect.

That's a lot of enemies for one guy to beat. If only he had a friend...

Sadly, the music is the only thing that successfully survives the porting process to iPhone. Streets of Rage is wrapped in SEGA's under-performing emulator that cannot maintain a stable frame rate. There is no reason for this game to chug on speedy hardware like the iPhone. The controls are also troublesome. SEGA employs a virtual pad that just does not have the required sensitivity for Streets of Rage. At least the virtual buttons work.

But the worst offense of all to the great legacy of Streets of Rage is the complete lack of multiplayer. While Streets of Rage could be played alone on the Genesis, where this game truly excelled was when you and a buddy sat down to pound the hell out of demin-clad thugs and whip-carrying S&M queens. You'd argue over who got which weapon when an enemy dropped it. That was an awesome way to spend an afternoon. And it's completely gone from the iPhone version. No WiFi multiplayer -- no nothing. What is the point of even bringing over Streets of Rage is you are going to strip out the multiplayer? There are plenty of single-player games in the Genesis library like Ecco the Dolphin to port to the iPhone instead. Levi Buchanan