I just had to review this game.

I was born in 1984, and while erring a bit on the too-young side to truly appreciate, say, the classic Atari, or The New Kids on the Block, maybe even acid-washed jeans, midriff t-shirts and neon yellow shoelaces, it goes without saying that I’m a product of the 90s. Every kid knows the game Simon Says, and when I little, maybe around 5 or 6, I remember a few of my friends had this cool, electronic Simon game, where you had to tap the red, green, yellow, and blue buttons in the same order that the computer dictated. The Nintendo DS sure ate up a bunch of my time – as did swinging in birch trees, we the feral youth of Pennsylvania – but for young and adult minds alike, there are few things more enterprising, and addicting than a simple game of pattern recognition.

That handheld Simon game was a hit, of course, and it’s still in toy stores around the globe today, so why mess with a good thing? Thankfully, Category 5 Games thought the same thing – it helps that their tagline is “We make the games we want to play.” You sure do, Category 5. There’s another Simon Classic on the iTunes Store – with the same title, even, only no colon punctuation – but this version by Category 5 Games has managed to skyrocket to the top of the most downloaded free apps list. And, for good reason: it, pure and simple, is classic Simon.

The game’s design is no more, and no less, than the classic Simon interface of a circle divided into four quadrants of green, red, blue, yellow, starting from the upper left and moving clockwise. Each colored quadrant rings out a different pitch, for the player to recognize sounds not just by sight memory, but by sound memory. Oh, the ingenuity, classic Simon. When reciting the game’s pattern to you, Simon lights up the sequence to follow, and you must tap the colored quadrants in the same, exact manner. For the gung-ho and cocky, it seems like an easy task, but like any Simon Says player knows, it’s surprisingly easy to trip up. So far, I’ve made it up to 16 perfect rounds before my memory peters out, but I’m working on higher recall.

How will you fare?