Good news, classic arcade game fans: the entire Metal Slug series now supports MFi controllers on iOS!
While Metal Slug 2 and Metal Slug 3 previously supported MFi controller input, the other games in the series did not. Thankfully, SNK Playmore and Dotemu just fixed fixed that.
Classic arcade gameplay and some truly stunning pixel art
Unfortunately, these games aren’t playable with Bluetooth controllers on iOS8, due to the previously documented bug (seriously hoping for a fix from Apple on that). But all gamers on iOS7, and gamers with the Moga Ace Power and Logitech PowerShell on iOS8, will definitely want to give this one a look.
After further testing, many of the games marked as compatible on this list still exhibit problems on weaker devices, and in low memory situations. Take this list as a rough guide, rather than a definitive compatibility guarantee. This is an inherent problem with Bluetooth on iOS 8, and every game is affected.
The good news is, the 8.1.1 firmware update fixes these problems almost entirely for owners of the SteelSeries Stratus controllers. Owners of the MOGA Rebel are still likely to experience disconnects, however.
As previously mentioned, and subsequently covered on TouchArcade, iOS8 doesn’t play nice with wireless MFi controllers. Some games work perfectly, while others exhibit serious flaws that cause the controllers to lag and drop their connections.
The following is an attempt to catalog the games that are confirmed working, and the games that are confirmed not working, as tested with the Moga Rebel on a Retina iPad Mini
I doubt I’ll be able to test every game (I certainly hope Apple fixes the problem before it reaches that point), but I hope to put together at least a selection of some of the most popular games, confirmed either to be compatible or broken. If you’re on iOS 8, and you either have a SteelSeries Stratus or a Moga Rebel, you should bookmark this page. It will be frequently updated.
Lastly, I’d like to remind everyone that these issues do not exist on iOS7, and do not exist with Lightning-connected MFi controllers like the Logitech PowerShell, Moga Ace Power, and Razer Junglecat. This only affects bluetooth controllers in iOS8 – Namely, the SteelSeries Stratus and Moga Rebel controllers.
This is a warning for iOS gamers with the SteelSeries Stratus or MOGA Rebel controllers: DO NOT upgrade to iOS 8. Under iOS 8, there are significant, widespread compatibility issues with all wireless MFi controllers.
When playing an affected game, the MFi controller will start to lag its inputs. Within a short time, the controller will disconnect, then reconnect, but still lag, then disconnect, over and over again. The only way to fix it is to un-pair, turn off, turn on, then re-pair the MFi controller.
This is most prevalent with the MOGA Rebel controller, though still noticeable with the SteelSeries Stratus.
Many thanks to MFi4Gamerz and sideburns4life for being able to help confirm this issue on Twitter.
A list of games that trigger this issue, as well as games that are confirmed safe, will be compiled soon. If anyone out there has experienced similar issues (or haven’t – that would be useful too!) please get in touch. Hopefully, a fix will be available from Apple soon.
How some behind-the-scenes changes to AirPlay turned the Apple TV into a real game console
If you’re as serious about iOS gaming as I am, chances are you’ve been eagerly awaiting the day Apple releases a high-end Apple TV with an App Store full of games and an official game controller. Due to a variety of factors, mostly related to content deals with cable companies, Apple has thus far been unwilling to release such an Apple TV (they like to make a big splash with the product, and that requires both gaming and television content – can’t do one at a time).
Such an Apple TV product is definitely on the horizon, with various well-connected members of the Apple community mentioning that A-list Apple engineers are hard at work on such a device. However, until such a device is formally released, Apple has pushed users towards a stop-gap solution in the form of a technology called AirPlay.
While this stopgap had issues in the past, Apple has made some serious improvements in iOS 8 that turn AirPlay based gaming into a compelling experience. Read on to learn how.
The History of AirPlay
AirPlay is a brand name that encompasses multiple video output technologies, but the important one to discuss here is one called AirPlay Mirroring. In effect, AirPlay Mirroring beams the contents of your iPhone or iPad’s screen on to your TV. When combined with an MFi controller, this allows you to play iOS games the big screen, without needing to ever take your eyes off the TV and touch your device.
Theoretically, AirPlay Mirroring offers a great solution to people wanting an Apple TV game console. Unfortunately, the reality has been far less pretty. The actual mechanics of beaming a 1-megapixel image from one device to another over Wifi, 60 times per second (iOS and most TVs run at 60fps), without compressing the image until it’s illegible, and without a perceptible delay, has been too tall an order for Apple in the past.
In iOS 7 and below, AirPlay Mirroring runs at a maximum of 30fps, resulting in a somewhat jerky picture. Even being able to do that required significant video compression, resulting in a big-screen picture that often looked like a low-resolution YouTube upload. Unfortunately, this compression also requires a significant amount of processing on the device itself, which results in a noticeable delay between what happens on the iPhone’s screen, and the amount of time it takes to compress, beam, and display the video on the Apple TV – some games are rendered almost unplayable on the TV, since this lag simply doesn’t provide enough time for you to react to the picture you’re seeing. While some games manage to play great in spite of these limitations, for the vast majority, AirPlay has simply not been good enough. But that’s about to change, in a big way.
Enter iOS 8 – AirPlay Reborn
There’s no two ways about this: the difference between iOS 7 AirPlay and iOS 8 Airplay is night and day. In iOS 8, Apple has somehow managed to dramatically improve every single aspect of AirPlay Mirroring. It is a stark, immediately obvious contrast.
First of all, iOS 8 broadcasts AirPlay at a consistent 60 frames per second in compatible apps (more on that later). This means that Apple is shooting a 1-megapixel picture from your device to your Apple TV 60 times per second – twice as much as under iOS 7.
But that’s not all. Apple didn’t just double the framerate, they also dramatically enhanced the quality of the video output. In iOS 7, AirPlay output a relatively hightly compressed video that showed obvious compression artifacts in basically every scenario. It was playable, but certainly noticable. In iOS 8, the compression used is much more intelligent – video quality is dramatically better when less motion is occurring on screen and against simpler backgrounds, and against more complex scenes, the compression occurs less perceptibly. In retro-style games with limited on-screen activity, compression is basically imperceptible. In more complex 3D games, compression exists, but manages to look FAR better than under iOS 7. GTA: San Andreas, for example, looked better being broadcast from my iPhone than it ever did on my PS2.
Complex video compression with a high degree of quality generally comes with a big cost: latency. Without getting into too much detail about the nature of video compression, having a compressor that can see “into the future” can give you dramatically better results. Basically, what that boils down to is, the video being broadcast is always a few frames behind, in order to give the compressor the ability to analyze those frames and create a more fluid picture. The issue for gaming is, if you get too many frames behind, the player starts to notice a delay between their actions and what happens on the screen. This is called input lag. A certain amount of input lag is a part of every TV, but AirPlay video piled a good deal more on top of the amount the TV already had, to the point that many games were unplayable.
In iOS 7, this input lag was very noticeable. Holding your iPhone up to the TV, it was easy to see that the iPhone was displaying a picture almost half a second ahead of the TV. In iOS 8, despite major improvements to video quality, the lag has been reduced. Not eliminated entirely, mind you – such a thing would be impossible – but reduced to the point that a great many games are now playable that weren’t before. This is perhaps the biggest improvement iOS 8 brings. There is a lot further to go before every game is playable comfortably, but the work Apple has done in iOS 8 is commendable.
Unfortunately, iOS 8 brings one pretty major AirPlay flaw that iOS 7 didn’t have, and that serves to make certain games unplayable.
A Stutter Away from Perfection
As great as iOS 8’s AirPlay fundamentals are, one somewhat nasty issue made it into the GM. In certain games, the AirPlay picture exhibits a noticeable stutter every second or so. This basically freezes the picture on screen for 5 frames or so, then throws all those frames up at once. Games with this flaw are generally unplayable, and even after closing the game, the lag remains for a minute or two, before generally correcting itself, only to return if you launch another affected game.
Strangely enough, there is little rhyme or reason as to which games exhibit this flaw. Extremely graphically intense games like Dead Trigger 2 and GTA San Andreas have no flaw at all, whereas the relatively simple Sonic series stutters to the point of unplayability.
I’m still in the early phases of trying to nail down exactly what is causing this stutter issue, and I plan on experimenting with different network configurations and devices to try to determine whether those factors have any impact on it. I’ll update this post when I learn more about this issue, or if Apple manages to fix it with a subsequent update.
The Future
The good news about AirPlay is, it is a technology that can grow and improve along with the components of the iPhone / iPad and the Apple TV. Network technology in these devices today is limited to 802.11n – a fast standard, but one that does provide a bottleneck in maximum bitrate and range. The new iPhone 6 series is being upgraded to the much faster 802.11ac standard, and presumably updates aren’t too far behind for the iPad and the Apple TV.
In addition to wireless upgrades, improvements to the GPUs inside the iPhone and iPad can make a huge difference in broadcast quality. Current GPUs are restricted from working too hard on AirPlay, because if they draw too much power for broadcast, the performance of the game itself starts to suffer. Newer GPUs will include more cores which can be dedicated exclusively towards video processing, and take some of the load off the cores powering the games themselves.
The biggest potential for improvement is in the video encode itself. AirPlay today uses a video compression technology called H264 – a high quality, adaptable, industry-standard codec that can be found in everything from Blu-Rays to web video to teleconferencing. As well as h264 has served us up until today, the industry has been hard at work designing an upgraded codec called h265, which is capable of around 50% greater efficiency – meaning it can cram 50% more quality into the same amount of bandwidth as h264.
Enabling h265 over AirPlay will likely require a new Apple TV with an h265-capable GPU. The good news is, such a chip is easy to find – the A8 chip in Apple’s newly-announced iPhone 6 line is fully capable of encoding and decoding h265 video. When the A8 chip makes its way into the Apple TV, I fully expect an upgraded h265-encoded version of AirPlay will come along for the ride.
But thats all for the future. The fact of the matter is, even today, the vast majority of iOS games are playable on the Apple TV with iOS 8. Apple has done a massive amount of work on this front. The experience of using an iPhone in an MFi controller today, streaming to the Apple TV, is finally a good enough experience that I can recommend it wholeheartedly (at least once the stuttering bug is ironed out).
If you have an iPhone / iPad and an MFi controller, and you want to take your gaming to the TV, Apple finally has you covered with AirPlay and the Apple TV.
A lot of people – myself included – have been waiting for a gaming capable Apple TV for a long time. Current rumors are inconsistent about when such a product might be released, with guesses ranging from next week to over a year from now.
The good news is, gamers don’t have to wait that long to play iOS gamers on their TV. Through a technology called Airplay, modern iPhones and iPads can beam anything displayed on their screens to any current Apple TV. This, when combined with an MFi controller, allows true touchscreen-free play of iOS games on the big screen.
Such a solution isn’t perfect, however. In its current form, Airplay limits the framerate of screen mirroring to 30fps, and introduces about a half second of lag. This, combined with the fact that reaching down to touch your iPhone’s screen while looking at your TV is incredibly awkward, restricts the number of games that really work well with Airplay.
The best games to play via Airplay must have complete touchscreen-free controller support. That means menus, gameplay, pausing – everything must work completely using only the buttons and d-pad of the controller, as if the touchscreen doesn’t exist. The framerate limit and half-second lag further removes games that require fast reflexes or precise timing. The good news is, even with these restrictions, the list of games that work great on the Apple TV is substantial.
I’ll be covering this as a series of articles, to be posted over the course of the next few weeks. If anyone out there has any suggestions for games they personally recommend for the Apple TV, don’t be afraid to let everyone know in the comments section below.
Oceanhorn is a true classic iOS game, no two ways about it. While it bares some undeniable similarities to Nintendo’s Zelda series, Oceanhorn manages to carve out an identity of it’s own. Featuring an epic storyline, excellent action-rpg gameplay, top-notch presentation, beautiful graphics and sound, and full MFi controller support, I cannot recommend this game highly enough to anyone who’s a fan of the genre; this is an absolutely essential iOS RPG.
Oceanhorn may be an action-RPG, but it’s combat is paced slowly enough that the lag associated with Airplay doesn’t really interfere much. The graphics are vibrant and colorful, which comes across excellently even with light compression. More importantly, the game just feels wonderful on the big screen. This is simply one of the best iOS games available, and playing it on the Apple TV is a great experience.
The Edge games may have been released on the App Store 6 years ago, but they don’t feel like they’ve aged a day – these are true, undeniable iPhone classics. And they always have been. The relatively straightforward gameplay of tilting a cube along a minimalistic plane, attempting to navigate obstacles and flip switches on the way to the goal, still feels as fresh now as it did in 2008.
The Edge series has had a bit of a murky history due to some trademark disputes (some jackass claimed ownership over the word Edge and tried to sue anyone who used it in a product name), but those have long-since been resolved, and the Edge games are back and better than ever. They played great on the original iPhone, they got the retina update for iPhone 4, they got Universal support for the iPad, they got widescreen support for the iPhone 5, they got iCloud support, Airplay support – anything Apple implemented, you could count on these games supporting it as first-class citizens. Now they’ve received MFi controller support, further keeping them at the absolute forefront of the Apple ecosystem.
Thanks to the developer’s responsiveness to changes in the iOS ecosystem, Edge and Edge Extended play great on every iOS device ever made, including the Apple TV, and are strong recommendation.
These two releases in the Final Fantasy series are truly great games in their own right, and they’re also notable for being the best iOS ports of the series. They also take tens of hours to complete each, and feature a level of polish that more than justifies their cost.
The graphics engine is fully 3D, rather than relying on blurry up-scaling of old sprites, like many others in the series; MFi controllers are supported both in-game and in menus, allowing for completely touchscreen-free control; the gameplay itself is turn-based, and doesn’t suffer at all from the limits of Airplay. These games come incredibly close to feeling like “true” Apple TV games, and are a strong recommendation for anyone looking to take their gaming to the big screen.
Calling Terraria a side-scrolling version of Minecraft, while not entirely inaccurate, does it a disservice. To be fair, Terraria lets you craft picks, shovels and such to craft blocks from various biomes in the environment around you, and use those to build houses, assemble crafting stations, and build weapons to fight off enemies – all standard Minecraft fare, of course. But unlike Minecraft, Terraria is structured much more in the style of a traditional game. The world has boss enemies, and much of your crafting is in preparation to face these bosses. There are special events – meteor showers, goblin raids, that sort of thing – that keep Terraria from ever feeling like the sandbox Minecraft prides itself on being.
Terraria works excellently on the Apple TV – by far the best of any game with any relation to Minecraft. It is very easy to lose yourself in the experience of playing this game on the big screen, and if you’re like me, you’ll dump A LOT of time into this one.
The Mikey series has always provided a fun, polished way to speedrun through some well designed platforming levels. The whole series is great, and plays quite well with every available MFi controller.
Mikey Shorts, the first game in the series, isn’t recommended for the Apple TV due to a lack of menu control. Mikey Boots, the newest game in the series, is excluded because it gets laughably difficult near the end even at the full 60fps framerate and no lag – playing with lag and reduced framerate would simply be masochistic. Mikey Hooks strikes a great balance of not being TOO difficult, and also playing great on the Apple TV.
Yes, I know it’s strange to see a graphically-intensive FPS on a list of games that play well with lag and reduced frame rates, but hear me out on this one. Bioshock is simply an outstanding game – often considered one of the best FPS games of all time. And something to consider is that this iOS version is already stuck with reduced graphics. The special effects have been dropped, the resolution has been reduced – not good things on their own, but when combined with the video processing required to output the game to the Apple TV, these reductions have the effect of allowing the game to still look great after video compression is applied.
It isn’t just the visuals, though. As a shooter, Bioshock tends to rely more on strategy than on precisely timed twitch reflexes. In fact, for a good deal of the game, you won’t be shooting anything at all, just experiencing a great story. In short, AirPlaying Bioshock to the Apple TV might not be the BEST way to experience it, but it certainly works, and it’s still a lot of fun.
Aztec Antics might not be as well known as some of the other games on this list, but the fact of the matter is, it is tailor-made for big screen play in a way that very few other iOS games even come close to. In addition to supporting all available MFi controllers, full menu control, and looking great even with AirPlay compression, Aztec Antics sports one huge feature that precious few iOS games have: full multiplayer support.
Thats right – connect your iPhone over AirPlay to the Apple TV, and connect up to 4 MFi controllers over Lightning or Bluetooth, and you and a group of friends can all play at the same time, trying to jump each other, collect coins, and try to obtain the highest score before the timer expires. If you’ve ever played Super Mario War, or even Super Smash Bros, you know exactly what you’re in for here.
I’ve personally played the heck out of the multiplayer here with some friends, and even helped the developer tweak and optimize for MFi controller support, and I have to say, it works great. Strongly recommended for anyone who wants to play on the big screen.
Everyone reading this has probably heard of Tomb Raider at one time or another. Heck, most people have probably played it in some form – the series has been relaunched countless times, with sequels, remakes, and everything in between. This iOS port is of the original, classic Tomb Raider 1 from the ‘90s. But far from feeling old, this port feels fresh and modern, thanks to a top-flight porting job with all the extras you’d expect out of a modern iOS game. With MFi controller support, iCloud, widescreen, improved textures, and smooth 60fps framerates, there has probably never been a better version of Tomb Raider 1 than this one.
The nature of the platforming gameplay in Tomb Raider actually lends itself well to Airplay. There has always been a level of slack given to when you need to press the jump button or the grab button – the game is forgiving about timing, and generally plays better when you enter your jump / grab / roll commands a little bit before they’re actually needed. In fact, I found that I didn’t have to change my play style much at all to compensate for the associated lag with playing on the Apple TV; the game just worked.
Frankly, Tomb Raider 1 over AirPlay probably plays about as well as the original PlayStation / Sega Saturn version did on the old tube TVs most of us played it on.
If you’ve never played the Worms games before, you’re in for a treat. You control a squad of worms with a selection of over-the-top weapons, and take turns controlling one of your worms and using it to the most damage to your opponent’s worms as possible before they take their turn. Developer Team17 has spend over a decade polishing this somewhat simple game design, and Worms 3 is the newest and best iOS game in the series.
Worms 3 plays a little different on the Apple TV than the rest of the games in this list. You don’t actually look at the Apple TV while you’re playing – it’s used as a spectator camera, just showing what your worms are doing from an outsider perspective, while you yourself look at a different picture on the iPhone’s screen. This allows you to select weapons and plan strategies without your friends actually seeing your inventory. Then after you take your turn, you hand the iPhone to the next player and watch the action on the TV.
This sort of thing actually works great for a multiplayer environment, but I wouldn’t recommend it for single player, as there’s no reason to bother AirPlaying it at all. But as long as you’re playing with some friends, Worms 3 on the Apple TV is a blast.
Across Age 2 is an action-RPG with a classical retro presentation and a time-travel mechanic that is guaranteed to appeal to fans of games like Chrono Cross. It also happens to be a really good RPG in it’s own right, with a great storyline (which doesn’t require knowledge of the first game), clever puzzles, and excellent MFi controller support.
While Across Age 2’s gameplay is action-heavy, it never really feels like timing or reaction is critical. The puzzles interspersed between the action rely on strategy more than on action. The graphical style of the game lends itself well to Airplay, with bright, colorful environments and anime style characters. If you’re looking for a deep, polished action-RPG with a retro presentation that plays great on the Apple TV, you can’t go wrong with this one.
Well that just about does it for the first installment of the Best Apple TV Games series. Don’t forget to leave questions or recommendations in the comments section below, and stay tuned for further articles in the series – there are a lot more games to cover!
Zombieville USA 2, an old-school side scrolling brawler / shooter with a modern coat of paint, was recently updated for MFi controller support.
This game follows in the tradition of Double Dragon, Metal Slug, games like that; you travel from the left side of a level to the right, fending off swarms of enemies using both melee weapons and guns, and collecting objects and powerups. It’s an old formula that would’t feel out of place in a classic arcade, but developer Mika Mobile manages to turn it into a polished and fun experience.
Blasting zombies in the USA!
Despite being several years old, this is still a great game, and one that a lot of people have been eagerly awaiting an update for. I always like seeing developers spend some time updating and polishing up older games, and in this particular instance, the inclusion of MFi controller support really serves to improve the experience of playing Zombieville USA 2.
If you haven’t picked this game up yet, now is a great opportunity. It’s a polished, fun game, and now that it supports controllers, it plays better than ever.
Wayward Souls, a top-down hack and slash action-RPG, has finally received it’s long-awaited MFi controller support update!
Fans of old-school action RPGs from the SNES days will absolutely want to give this a look. Not only does Wayward Souls bring a ridiculous amount of polish to the formula, it also incorporates more modern features such as unlockables, upgrades, and perks.
A game like this is just begging for real buttons
If you’ve already played the heck out of this game in the past, the latest update brings with it further improvements to the Endless Dungeon mode, which scales the difficulty up with a high-score format.
Developers Rocketcat Games have an interesting pricing model with Wayward Souls: with every major update, the price increments $1. The game launched at $4.99, and with the last update, the price rose to $5.99. Now that this second update has it, the price will rise to $6.99 on Monday. This policy has the dual effect of both rewarding early adopters and providing incentive for further development. But anyways, long story short, if you think you’ll enjoy Wayward Souls – and I think a lot of people will – you should buy it by Monday or it’ll cost an extra dollar.
Back To Bed, a surreal puzzle game with an isometric perspective, was just released with full MFi controller support!
Puzzle games aren’t hard to find on iOS, but Back To Bed brings a high level of polish to the table that absolutely makes it worth checking out. Gameplay seems inspired by games like Lemmings and Star Wars Pit Droids; your goal is to guide a constantly-walking sleepwalker through a dreamscape using obstacles to prevent him from falling off the edge of the level.
Dali meets Escher in an Isometric puzzler
There is a decent amount of similarity in presentation between this game and the recent classic Monument Valley, and comparisons between the two are going to be unavoidable. But there is more to the story than a simple case of “new game copies things from older classic”. In fact, Back To Bed is apparently an expanded version of a game the developers originally demonstrated in 2011, a full 2 years before Monument Valley’s release. The developers of Back to Bed then took to Kickstarted to successfully fund the expansion of Back to Bed into a full game – a process that was completed in March of 2013. One month later, Monument Valley was released to critical acclaim.
Anyways, that is not to say fans of Monument Valley won’t enjoy this game – they probably will. As will fans of puzzle games in the same vein as Lemmings. If the idea of a combination of those games sounds interesting to you – and it should, because it’s awesome – give Back to Bed a download.
Ridge Racer Slipstream, the latest game in the classic Ridge Racer series, has just been updated for MFi controller support!
Ridge Racer has been a mainstay of arcades and PlayStations for 20 years now. It strikes a great balance between fun and realism, with just the right touch of arcade gameplay to keep things interesting, without managing to turn into a combat racer.
Ridge Racer!
This iPhone edition of Ridge Racer features a mix of classic courses from other games in the series, and introduces a new “Slipstreaming” mechanic, where you can gain a significant speed boost by maintaining a position directly behind another vehicle. This adds an extra level of strategy to the more traditional mechanic, and provides a new way to catch up with an opponent in addition to your nitro.
Both Standard and Extended layout MFi controllers are supported, though only in-game. With a price tag of “Free”, it’s hard not to recommend this game to any racing game fan with an MFi controller.
Bioshock, the one of the most critically acclaimed first-person shooters of all time, has finally seen itâs long awaited iOS release!
This port is a faithful conversion of the original PC classic, albeit one with significant downgrades to the resolution and fidelity of the graphics, and a significantly higher price tag than can be found elsewhere.
Even at lower resolutions, the world of Bioshock is beautiful
Controller support seems solid enough so far, though it is obviously a bit of an afterthought. Only extended layout controllers are supported, you canât navigate menus without touching the screen, and the virtual buttons donât entirely disappear. Still, itâs a massive improvement compared with using the touchscreen.
Even with the downgrades in graphics, itâs hard not to recommend this game to fans of the genre. Iâll have a full review coming eventually, but let me just say this for now: many people consider Bioshock to be one of the best games of all time, and now you can play it on your phone.
