If you’re not yet thinking about phones and tablets as proper gaming devices, it’s time to catch up – Android and iOS now have more console game ports than some actual consoles (okay only consoles that no one bought, but still).
Phones and tablets keep on getting faster and more capable, and the number of older games that can be re-released in mobile form is growing and growing all the time too.
1. Grand Theft Auto series
- Originally on Xbox and PS2
Rockstar Games has done more than most to prove phones and tablets can hack “proper” games, to use the language of some forum posters, releasing a slew of classic Grand Theft Auto titles for iOS and Android.
From the main GTA bloodline you can play GTA 3, the very first full-3D entry in the series, as well as fan favorite Vice City and the absolutely massive San Andreas. Back in the day people wondered whether the PS2 could really hack San Andreas, and now you can play it on an iPhone 4S. Mad.
That’s not the end, either. You can also snag DS/PSP classic Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars and the PSP’s Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, which also made it to the PS2. Play them all back-to-back and you could spend a year churning through these titles alone.
Casting nostalgia aside for a minute, San Andreas is the richest of the lot, but Chinatown Wars and Liberty City Stories may be easier to hack if you struggle with those on-screen controls.
From iTunes, you can even buy a pack featuring all of Rockstar’s ports, saving you a little cash.
2. Bully
- Originally on Xbox and PS2
ember Bully as a runt in the pack of snarling beasts that make up Rockstar’s back catalog, but there’s a solid argument that it’s better than some of the more famous GTA games.
Bully takes the open-world style of the Grand Theft Auto games but grafts it onto a school rather than a city. You’re an attitude-drenched little ASBO of a character, who rides around the place on a skateboard, causing havoc. But you’re not the bully – it’s your job to take them on.
The real appeal here, though, is in the characters and storylines, which are always irreverent and often hilarious.
3. Max Payne Mobile
- Originally on Xbox and PS2
Yet another Rockstar Games title worth tracking down, Max Payne Mobile is a full port of the action adventure that made “bullet time” a thing back in the early 2000s.
This craze has more-or-less died out, so to explain: after The Matrix was released, slow motion shooting suddenly became the coolest thing anyone had ever seen. Alongside leather trench coats.
Max Payne was the game that made the mechanic really work, letting you slow down time to take out a whole room of baddies without it turning into an auto-aim cheat fest.
On a touchscreen, Max Payne’s third-person action can be challenging to control, but the story and level design have aged much better than most titles from 20 years ago.