Let me share my thoughts too.
I played both versions of the game for quite a long period, so I have my opinion in comparison two versions of the game:
Physics
Of course, old Elma has more beautiful and extensive physics. Watching any rec for iOS version of Elma (or Elma 2, I believe, they both have the same physics) you can hardly say "Sick!" or "Impossible replay!". And there're a lot of enormously hoyled runs in Elma 1. Nuff said.
Design
Again, I think nobody will argue about variety of different textures and elements in Elma 1, like blue barrels or trees that can be in front of bike making it invisible. Maybe, creating a level editor would fix this, but all we have now in new Elma is levels on brown desert with a few amount of trees
Gameplay
I like the idea of opening doors, mobile elements in the level, cards, teleports, white and colored switches that do something with delay or without it. For sure, Balazs was inspired by Doom game: all these elements are present there (and I got used not to trust such coincidences
). And because I'm a very big fun of the whole Doom, I really appreciate Balazs for doing it. On the other hand, we lost gravity apples in new Elma, but as I know, most players hate gravity, so, it's not a very bad thing.
Difficulty
Basically, levels in Elma 2 are easier to finish. I guess, level designers had to do levels more plain because of poorer physics. On the other hand, controllers in Elma 2 is harder I guess: no alovolt, no custom keys (??). I think, Elma shouldn't be hardened at the cost of controls, so, for sure, it is another point to Elma 1.
Interface
iElma doesn't have an opportunity of saving recs! It was a disaster and caused some recs to be lost when iPhone for some reasons decided to reload all opened apps, or you just misclicked, or somebody called you during replay launching (the game crashed after that)
Finally, this function has been added, nice job! Besides that, no multiplayer, no merge replays in Elma 2. Sad smile ;(
Convenience
The only significant advantage of iElma, basically the only reason why I play iElma so much and almost don't play classic Elma recently. First of all, I don't have any Windows machine at all: only iPhone and Macbook, so I don't have an opportunity to play this game. And - no, I can't install virtual machine on my laptop, because of working reasons. Web version of Elma is not the best solution too. Second, I don't have too much free time. And when I'm taking a cab or have a small rest - it's very convenient just to get iPhone from my pocket and make some improvements
And now I physically can't try Elma 2, I hope, some Mac version will eventually be released.
Anyway, as
ribot already mentioned, our recs may help people who decide to play it, set good times.
This is current iOS WR Table, 29 out of 32 current WRs are public and can be accessed from here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... edit#gid=0
Community
I didn't plan to post a long message, but surprisingly it turned out to be quite long
So, despite I play iOS version of Elma, I don't think our community really needs this game. Yes, it's nice by its some elements, and it's worth to spend some time on playing it, but it's far not worth it to give up with old Elma. I could double my post by describing my thoughts about it, but
nick-o-matic already did this, I 200% agree with his post. Let new World Cups to be happen, new amazing WRs to be performed, new bugs to be found by
bene, and new players to come in the scene (maybe through Elma 2 - who knows!!!).
Good luck to everyone!