Beyond Mobile Mastery: IPads Surpass Phones with Stellar Retro Gaming Performance

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• The 4:3 Screen Aspect Ratio!
• Excellent Speakers
• Great for Controller Play Set Up Anywhere
• Two-Player Gaming With Two Controllers
• Better Battery Life
• Better Performance

Key Takeaways

• The 4:3 aspect ratio of iPads benefits retro games, providing full-screen experience with no black bars.
• iPad speakers are superior for enjoying chip tunes and soundtracks of retro games compared to iPhones.
• iPads offer a comfortable setup, longer battery life, and improved performance for emulated games.

Apple is making history by allowing video game emulation apps on the iOS, iPadOS, and Apple TV stores, and that’s got iPhone users rightly excited. However, I think that of all their devices, it’s Apple’s iPads that actually offer the strongest reasons to play emulated games. Here’s why.

The 4:3 Screen Aspect Ratio!

With the sole exception of the second-generation iPad Pro 11-inch model, all iPads have a 4:3 aspect ratio. That just so happens to be the same aspect ratio as the vast majority of home television during the bulk of gaming history. So any games meant for consoles like the SEGA Master System, NES, SNES, PlayStation 1, PlayStation 2, and really anything before the “HD” console era were made for this screen shape.

This means you can get a lovely full-screen game with no black bars on your iPad, compared to playing on your iPhone or Apple TV where you’ll have relatively enormous amounts of unused screen real estate. Most iPad models have truly superlative displays, and if you’re lucky enough to own a Mini-LED or the latest tandem OLED iPad models, the game will look like it’s painted onto the glass.

Excellent Speakers

I’ve waxed lyrical in the past about how impossibly good the speakers on the iPads are , and once again this is a great reason to play emulated games on your iPad instead of your iPhone. If you really want to enjoy those thumping chip tunes or the amazing early soundtracks of CD-based games from the PlayStation 1 or Sega Saturn Era, anyone would choose the beefy speakers on an iPad over a phone any day.

Great for Controller Play Set Up Anywhere

While there are good controller solutions for iPhones, such as the Backbone controller, you’ll likely be tempted to try playing with touch controls at some point. Unless you’re playing a turn-based game like Final Fantasy Tactics then I think we can all agree touch controls are terrible. They’re even worse for emulated games that were not designed with touch control in mind.

Since iPads are relatively large, touch controls for emulated games honestly aren’t comfortable enough to be viable in my opinion, so this makes them the best candidate for dedicated controllers. Thankfully, Apple devices support just about every Bluetooth controller you can think of, such as the PS5 controller . Personally I use a DualShock 4 controller because I like it more, and you can even connect Nintendo Joy-Cons as of iOS 16.

The vast majority of iPad users will have a case or cover with an integrated stand, making the iPad the perfect portable device to just set up anywhere theres a flat surface and play. While you might want to use an iPhone if you’re stuck in a line at the DMV or anywhere you wouldn’t have your tablet with you, if you’re in a hotel room, at work, at school, or just in bed, an iPad offers a much better experience.

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Speaking of controller play, with its large screen, an iPad is much better suited for co-op or other same-screen local multiplayer than a phone. Single-screen co-op games have largely gone out of fashion these days, but console classics from the retro era have oodles of them and an iPad is a great place to experience those games with a friend.

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Better Battery Life

While your iPhone probably has a decent amount of battery life during typical use, any sort of gaming will see that figure sink like a rock. Your iPad, on the other hand, tends to give better overall gaming endurance thanks to its large battery and different design goals. Perhaps more importantly, your iPad is not a mission-critical communications device. Running down your phone battery can be a real problem if you need to phone someone or otherwise communicate when away from Wi-Fi. Your iPad, on the other hand, can be drained completely, and the only real consequence is that you won’t get to play games on it until you recharge it again.

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Better Performance

While emulated retro games may seem like they shouldn’t take too much processing power to run well, the very nature of emulation means that even simple games have a relatively heavy CPU load attached to them. On an iPhone you have a high-performance system–for a phone!

The chips inside modern iPads are more comparable to desktop PCs or full-on laptops, and there’s physically much more thermal headroom due to the size and shape of an iPad. So your emulated games are likely to run flawlessly, or at least far better than an iPhone could manage!

The emulators are coming fast and as I write this, you can already get emulators like the ad-supported Gamma PS1 Emulator or the multi-system RetroArch app. Personally, I’ve been using the beta of Provenance which may be on the app store by the time you read this. Either way, if you have legal access to retro games, your iPad might just be the most flexible and fun platform for them.