Much like wine, cheese, and those lingering feelings of resentful hostility towards your grade 9 maths teacher, some games just get better with age. And even if they haven’t strictly improved, at least you’ll be able to play them on your iPad without your 5.25” floppy disk failing to read properly in the drive because you spilled cream soda on it. Technology!
Another World
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You might remember Eric Chahi’s impossibly hard platformer from the busted Amiga or Mega Drive somewhere in the back of your cupboard, and now it’s available on your very expensive iPad with an added difficulty level that’s even harder than the original game. How can it get any harder? I’m assuming it drops nail bombs on your loved ones every time you mess up or something.
The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition
Maybe this one is cheating a bit because the graphics have been totally redone to a modern HD standard, but you can choose to swap back to the original 1990 VGA graphics so it’s okay. Besides, it’s an opportunity to revisit insult sword fighting and YOU FIGHT LIKE A DAIRY FARMER.
Beneath a Steel Sky
A cyberpunk adventure set in a post-nuclear holocaust dystopia… actually, that’s already a good reason to play this game, isn’t it? Also, your very own pet robot.
Carmageddon
Driving over low-poly pedestrians might have lost some of its tabloid-controversial edge in an era when all-out genocide with fully automatic weapons is a marketing bullet point on just about every game released, but hey, how about that nostalgia?
Gunstar Heroes
Treasure’s cult-classic co-op side-scrolling shoot-‘em-up turns 20 this year, but no other developer has yet managed to outdo Curry and Rice in the “Most Totally Bizarre Boss Fights Ever” category.
DOOM Classic
Any reason is a good reason to get knee-deep in the dead, and if you’re packing a BFG 9000, so much the better. Twenty years on, the game that pushed FPS gaming to the top of the heap (and “mass murder simulators” to the top of the public panic meter) remains an important must-play on every platform. It’s a matter of personal respectability.
SimCity Deluxe
Although this one’s also got a new lick of hi-def paint, SimCity Deluxe is basically the same SimCity 2000 you loved back in the 1990s. Build a bustling urban metropolis then watch as your neglected power station explodes and everything is burned to the ground in a radiation apocalypse. That’s your excuse for raising taxes the next time around.
Dink Smallwood
When a stroppy teen pig farmer’s house burns down, killing his mother, he reluctantly slogs off on some sort of adventure that mostly involves ridding the world of ducks. Because, you know, ducks are dicks. More than fifteen years after it was first released for PC, RTSoft’s cult RPG is now out on tablets with a new save/load system that lets you do that anywhere in the game. The future is today, people.
Pac-Man
…Because it’s Pac-Man.
Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition
Technically a remake, Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition is pretty much the same as 1998 original but with high-resolution graphics, some additional content, and multiplayer support. Plus having a touchscreen interface makes gathering your party before venturing forth and going for the eyes, Boo, going for the eyes that much simpler.
