Top 15 best arcade games for iPhone and iPad (iOS) | Articles

Update: July 13, 2024 – reworded and new links were added

If you’ve been looking for the best arcade games for iPhone or iPad then look no further. We’ve compiled this list of the best quick-run, score-chasing games for your reading pleasure.

Back before everyone had a gaming device in their home or on their body, arcades full of simple games were very popular. Arcades are still around, but so is a plethora of games that you can actually just play at home, often without dumping loads of coins into them.

Deffinition of ‘arcade games’

As time has passed the definition of ‘arcade’ as a genre has changed a little bit, not least due to the games themselves moving out of the clunky, standing machines of yesteryear. However, a lot of the mechanics and ideas behind the games are the same: the games should have short, limited-life runs which you can sometimes extend beyond normal means.

You should, realistically, be chasing a high score, or at least looking to hit some major milestones ahead of you, and -well- they don’t need to be extremely realistic. Nowadays, however, lots of games get listed as arcade-based which might fit in other genres, and sometimes that’s simply down to aesthetics.

In this list of best arcade games for iPhone, we have everything from cabinet classics like PacMan through to runners like Subway Surfers, but we also head off to less conventional, more-roguelike efforts as well. Have a read, and let us know what you think of our choices.

So, click on the big button below to read on and find out our favourite arcade games for iPhone and iPad, and if you think we’ve missed something then leave us a comment, because we do occasionally revisit our various lists to make sure that we’ve kept them completely up to date and true to the genre.

Original post by Jupiter Hadley, updated by Pocket Gamer Staff.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE LIST »