Atari Arcade for iPad Review

By now you may have seen ThinkGeek’s iCade, the cabinet that transforms your iPad into a legitimate arcade. Well, Discovery Bay Games has just produced a new take on the “iPad Arcade”. The Atari Arcade for iPad 1 and iPad 2 is not an entire cabinet, but rather a more practical and affordable arcade board for iPad to pop into. It features a joystick, four arcade buttons, and a clean retro design. Download Atari’s Greatest Hits app and you can enjoy all of the classics like Asteroids, Centipede, and Missile Command.

The Atari Arcade for iPad is passive and doesn’t require it’s own power source; it’s powered by iPad. The only downside to this is that it uses a little extra iPad battery and there’s no way to charge iPad while it’s attached. Just like the classic arcades, there’s a nice sized joy stick and four big buttons with good spring back action. There’s a regular 30-pin connector for iPad to dock into. On both sides is a slide lock to secure iPad into place. While the Atari Arcade would be best played on a flat surface, it’s portable and light enough to play it on your lap, or even your stomach if you’re laying down. There are rubber grips on the bottom so it won’t slide around a surface during intense game play.

The Atari Arcade relies on the Atari Greatest Hits app. Outside of this app, the joystick and buttons don’t do anything. The Greatest Hits apps brings you 100 classic Atari games, with Mission Command for free. All 100 games costs $14.99, or you can buy any of the 25 game packs for $1.00.

The arcade games include: Asteroids, Battlezone, Black Widow, Centipede, Crystal Castles, Gravitar, Liberator, Lunar Lander, Major Havoc, Millipede, Missile Command, Pong, Red Baron, Space Duel, Super Breakout, Tempest, Warlords. Then there is also all sorts of Atari 2600 games like Backgammon, BlackJack, Bowling, Casino, Codebreaker, Golf, Gravitar, Hangman, Home Run, Math Gran Prix, Chess, Pinball, and more.