‘The circle is now complete, now I am the master.’ – Darth Vader.
My iPhone has finally become the GameBoy it’s been destined to be.
The past fortnight has been a lot of work achieved and some that’s in progress for the next month, but as soon as I got back, I didn’t want to open up OpenEmu or even use the Dreamcast I bought from Gotham Games.
The only place I wanted was bed. But having to use touch controls required extra effort. Effort I didn’t want to summon.
So I looked in the depths of Amazon, and finally found a controller that didn’t have a starting price of £50, but only £12.
The Moga Controller is one that was released back when the iPhone 5S was, but the reviews and its website stated that it works fine on iOS 9 and the iPhone SE.
Taking a leap of faith, I ordered and waited a few days for it to arrive. Once it did, everything fell into place.
I slotted the SE into the controller as if I was inserting Warioland into my old GameBoy again, and as soon as I launched Sonic 2, everything worked.
No configuration, no start up, no last minute calibration, everything was already set up.
Theres no Bluetooth, it has a lightning port so the battery isn’t wasted by this. But if you do find yourself low on power, the controller has a battery built in, which can give you one full charge. Smart and can help a lot, especially if you’re on a long journey.
There are four shoulder buttons, with two analogue sticks, alongside a lock switch so the iPhone has no risk of falling out.
Sometimes, there’s games with so many controls on the screen, you can barely see what’s going on.
I’ve written before of how the two Tomb Raider games are a shining example of this. I reach the second levels and I give up. But after plugging it into the controller, it’s no longer an issue.
Huge improvement, and the best thing is, the controls are exactly the same as the PlayStation version.
With the amount of games that now support this, such as the Final Fantasy games, Street Fighter and Star Wars, I’m surprised that this hasn’t been show asked more in Apple Stores. Granted, when you see the kids corner or tables with the iPads, they can sit down and play a game if they wish, but what if there was a ‘Sega‘ table?
Or even perhaps, a ‘Retro Corner‘, where each iPhone is connected either by a Bluetooth or lightning controller, and they each have a game that natively works with them.
This has been active since iOS 7 was released, over two years ago now. It would be a great showcase.
For me, it finally gets rid of that barrier that I always had with games on an iPhone. As long as the game supports it, I can play it as if I have my PSP or GameBoy again. Some games do unofficially support it, but then some don’t at all, such as Marvel VS Capcom 2, which is a shame.
But I can now see a future release of Tomb Raider 3, or even a port of Sonic Adventure being more than possible to be played on an iPhone.
Hopefully we see more games from the past coming with support for these controllers.