If you are anything at all like me – a bit old, and a lot nerdy – you’ve probably sunk in more than a few hours into playing classic Nintendo and Sega titles from the 16-bit era of gaming. One of these titles is none other than the original Sonic the Hedgehog. Good times. Soon you will be able to relive memories and even pass them down to your children through a port of the original, which is now on its way to Android and iOS.

Of course you could just use an emulator and a ROM to get the same experience, right? At least according to Sega, the game is completely remastered to be a native experience on Android and iOS. This means that it will work better with touch controls and the port will likely have some other tweaks that help it run with ease on your favorite mobile device.

The news of the port has actually been floating around since late last month, though now a video has surfaced as well. Interestingly enough, it doesn’t have any background music and so it more than likely it is early, unpolished footage.

For those interested, Sonic the Hedgehog will arrive later this month for $2.99. Sega says that Sonic 2 will also make its way over to Android and iOS, though no word on when that will be happening. Three dollars might be seem like a lot to spend for a game that came out more than two decades ago, but if Sega actually managed to come up with solid Android controllers that work better than clumsy on-screen buttons would with an emulator, it might be worth it.

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There’s a lesson to be learned in the video game industry these days. Nostalgia is lucrative. Just take what was once a successful formula, jazz it up with some prettier graphics, retain the classic style gameplay, and you’ve got yourself a winner. Street Fighter did it. Mario Kart did it. And so did Sonic.

Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 has been pretty big for Sega, but they skipped out on the Android love for that title. That’s changing for the next chapter, as Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode II is being launched on Android some time this year. They’re saying that the game will be made available to Tegra 3 devices, allowing gamers to take full advantage of the “improved architecture” of the new chip, getting more graphically-intense action for the speedy blue devil.

For now, the only officially announced Android device with NVIDIA Tegra 3 is the Asus Transformer Prime tablet, but I’m sure a huge slate of Tegra 3 devices will be unveiled next week at CES. I imagine a slightly less graphically intense version of S4:EII will be available for the rest of us Android folk too, plus the versions for iOS and home consoles. I’m just waiting for a graphically-intense version of Columns.

Here’s the teaser trailer.

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