With its arrival began the rise of open-world games and heavily narrative-driven adventures, with solid storytelling and finally – quality voice acting.
Games began moving away from the kiddie, colorful and harmless artform that they were in their infancy, growing into legitimate, interactive movies with impressive open worlds to explore.
Nowadays buying a used, working PS2 and hooking it up to a modern TV can be a hassle… But thankfully, reliving some of those memories from the golden era of video games is much easier to do these days, than going through all that.
Spearheaded by Rockstar Games, the developers behind Grand Theft Auto, the iPad App Store got flooded with legitimately impressive PS2 game ports over the last decade. Just download those, right?
I don’t know about you, but even if I don’t play my childhood games, I like having them with me. Frankly, I’ve outgrown playing games in general, but this doesn’t change the fact that firing up Final Fantasy 8 takes me back to when I was about 10 years old.
And I mean it truly – the music, the visuals, put together invoke the kind of spectacle in my head I’ve forgotten is even possible; vivid memories I’ve completely shelved to the back of my mind get to resurface again, over two decades later. I get to see the kind of seemingly random snippets of the early 2000s even time’s forgotten, let alone me, with my finite human mind, filled with current things and worries. It’s surreal.
The same way listening to old music can take you back to when you were a child, a feeling sometimes so overwhelming it can drench some people in tears, video games you grew up with can too, even better perhaps. High-production games, which began being a thing exactly right around the PS2 era contain so much more than just one song to tickle your nostalgia senses.
I guess this is a long-winded way to say – even if you don’t play games anymore, fire up some PS2 games (or whichever ones you grew up with) regardless, just for a while, and see what happens in your head. Odds are, it’ll be good.
So, what better way to relive those old PS2 games that required a loud, disk-spinning console and a giant, heavy TV of questionable picture quality… than on a thin, light, quiet, futuristic device like the iPad Pro? Or… whichever model you have.
You’ll just need a few things to get started – namely a supported gamepad, and of course, money to buy those games with, some of which are pretty expensive in the App Store. Because certain game publishers know how much nostalgia means to many of us, and how much we’re willing to pay in order to feel some things. And they’re not ashamed to exploit it! But then again… it works, right? Can’t really hold it against you, Square Enix. Well, maybe a little.
iPad + gamepad = the best portable gaming console!
Surely that’s obvious, but you’ll need an iPad. And not just an iPad, but a fairly modern one, updated to the latest iPadOS version, so we can be sure that it will support wireless gamepads without any hiccups.
Now, the gamepad options you have are – an Xbox wireless controller, or a PlayStation wireless controller. No shockers there. Obviously it’s sacreligious to play PlayStation games with an Xbox controller, but that’s what I’ll do, since I have one already. If you have a wireless PlayStation controller, go with that instead!
To be thoroughly informative, these are the exact controllers Apple says you can use with your iPad…
Xbox controllers you can use with your iPad:
- Xbox Wireless Controller with Bluetooth (Model 1708)
- Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2
- Xbox Adaptive Controller
- Xbox Wireless Controller Series S and Series X
PlayStation controllers you can use with your iPad:
- PlayStation DualShock 4 Wireless Controller
- PlayStation 5 DualSense Wireless Controller
Once you have those, and they’re paired to your iPad, it’s time for us to download some PS2 games and get this nostalgia party goin’!
The app store has these amazing PlayStation 2 games
Some of my favorite childhood games are thankfully available to play on the iPad, such as Max Payne, Final Fantasy 8 and Grand Theft Auto: III. You can buy and download those PS2 game ports on your iPhone or iPad, and start playing them right now! In fact, here’s a list…PlayStation 2 games available on iPad:
- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
- Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
- Grand Theft Auto III
- Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories
- Max Payne
- Bully: Anniversary Edition
- Final Fantasy VIII Remastered
As you can see – it’s not a huge list, but it contains some of the biggest, greatest PS2 games ever made (and some of the greatest games ever made, period), which more than makes up for it. San Andreas alone is an 18-year-old-game that people still play to this day like crazy! That’s how huge and fun it is.
Of course, if you prefer a strong narrative as opposed to open-world mayhem, I’d recommend Max Payne or Final Fantasy VIII instead. Both of these have brought me many months of entertainment, culminating in the kind of fond memories I carry to this day, and I bet they can do the same for you too. Even if you’ve never played any of these games – well, now’s the time! Don’t sleep on the classics!
Want even more games? You have Apple Arcade and countless other App Store games
A quick word about Apple Arcade – it’s a subscription service, basically like a Netflix for video games. You pay five bucks a month and you get access to over 200 games, many of which have controller support. NBA 2K22 Arcade Edition is perhaps the most console-like game available over there.
But, you also have countless, countless other games on the iPad’s App Store to discover, download and play! Perhaps even other PS2 games that we’ve missed (let us know in the comments), plus some great PC game ports like, say, Limbo, Inside, PubG Mobile, Minecraft and Call of Duty – they’re all available!
In fact, here’s another list of console games, and it’s another console that I grew up with – the SEGA Genesis. These are the games SEGA’s brought from it onto the iPad…
SEGA Genesis games available on iPad:
- Sonic the Hedgehog
- Sonic the Hedgehog 2
- Streets of Rage
- Streets of Rage 2
- Gunstar Heroes
- Altered Beast
- The Revenge of Shinobi
- Golden Axe
- Comix Zone
- Phantasy Star
- VectorMan
- Decap Attack
- Beyond Oasis
- Ristar
Of course, there’s plenty more we could get into, depending on what console you’re most fond of. Fans of the PS1, for example, will be happy to know that another game I’m willing to call “one of the greatest” is available on iPad – Castlevania: Symphony of The Night. If you’ve never played this vast Metroid-like PS1 classic that changed the series forever, I highly recommend it.
Important! Not all iPad games have gamepad support. Always read the descriptions to make sure that they do first, before pulling the trigger on a purchase.
Want the classic couch gaming experience? Hook that iPad up to your TV
Now, there’s always the wireless option of connecting your iPad to your smart TV with AirPlay, but in my experience the latency is a huge issue. Your quick reactions need to be translated just as quickly to the on-screen action, but AirPlay isn’t exactly lag-free, best left for looking at photo albums or watching the occasional movie.
What you’ll need in order to connect your iPad to your TV for absolutely latency-free gaming is, of course, dongles. If you’re serious about this, you’ll have to buy either a USB Type-C to HDMI adapter, or, if your iPad is one of the older models with a Lightning connector – a Lightning to HDMI adapter instead.
That’s not all, you’ll also need an HDMI cable to go from that adapter to your TV, and obviously your TV has to have an HDMI port, which most do. In fact, there’s a chance your TV came with an HDMI cable, so maybe you won’t need to buy that one, at least.
But in any case, once everything’s hooked up, you can jump in bed with only your controller and do some classic (or not-so-classic) gaming on the big TV screen. Without an actual gaming console, just your iPad.
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