Dolphin Up (App Review)

Back in the year 2008 when my life was free of responsibility, I used to stay up late playing a flash based game called Dolphin Olympics 2. Why 2, I’ll never know, I never could find the original Dolphin Olympics and its existence to this day remains one of the great mysteries of my life…

However, I digress… Dolphin Olympics 2 was a great little game with a simple concept: You controlled a dolphin and you had two minutes to get as many points as possible by performing tricks (flips, tail slides, rolls, etc) and combinations of tricks. After many pointless hours wasted, I discovered the best way to do this was to spend the first minute of the game building up as much speed as possible and then going high into the sky to string together combinations of tricks.

One of the coolest things about this game was jumping up into the sky to see how high you could get. The creators of the game had brilliantly put celestial bodies up in the sky and the faster you were going, the higher up you would go and the more planets, galaxies and restaurants you would see (yes, the restaurant at the end of the galaxy from a certain famous Hitchikers Guide is present in this game).

With such a cool feature, naturally the whole idea of ‘points’ becomes secondary to seeing how high you could get and what planets you could see, it was addictively awesome, I had a lot of fun and reinforced a working knowledge of the order of the planets (and plutonians, sorry Pluto) in our Solar System. Ignoring the concept of reality had never been such a blast.

Sadly, Dolphins cannot breathe in outer space.

However, eventually, responsibilites, obligations, and all those fun ‘adult’ things caught up with me and Dolphin Olympics 2 fell by the way side. Just another chapter in my browsing history.

Fast forward six years to the present day and would you believe my surprise when I saw my beloved Dolphin Olympics 2 rebranded as ‘Dolphin Up’ waiting patiently for my download in the iTunes App Store. It was like seeing an old friend at a restaurant. Of course it carried with it a rather hefty price tag ($2.99) but it was a price I was willing to pay for a slice of nostalgia. I downloaded it instantly. As a result, I present to you my official Nate-Radio App Review.

Dolphin Up: The Nate-Radio App Review

Game Play: 

Simple and intuitive. Pressing and holding the right side of the screen makes your Dolphin go clockwise, pressing and holding the left side makes your Dolphin go anti-clockwise. You no longer have to hold a 'forward' button like you did on the computer version so you can focus all your energy on pulling of ph4T tRiCkz. The background changes from day-time to sunset to nighttime depending on the time of day you're playing- which is a nice touch- and you can now select to play as either a dolphin or a killer whale. The dolphin is much cooler. Yeah, I said it Free Willy.

5/5

Sound:

More or less the excited squeaks of a dolphin. I keep it turned off and listen to awesome songs.

4/5 (really depends on what you're listening to)

Re-Play-Ability:

Well, I've completed every goal on the game, passed by the restaurant and currently have a high score in the top 100 overall in the world and I still want to keep playing. Also, I can quote my wife as saying "are you playing that stupid dolphin game again", which pretty much means I play it a lot.

6/5

Overall: 15/15

If you're after a simple and fun iOS game that makes up for its three dollar price tag by being ridiculously replayable than this game is entirely for you. However, it is quite addictive and in that regard makes Flappy Bird look like reading the Terms and Agreements of Microsoft Office. If you are prone to time-wastage and procrastination, this game may not be your friend.

But I love it.