The iPhone’s key innovation was being a blank canvas. Apple’s slab of glass could become anything. Without a physical keyboard hogging space and locking in a set orientation, apps relied on virtual controls. Any interface was possible, limited only by the imagination (and competence) of the developer. This was just as true for games.
The tiny snag: virtual controls turned out to be terrible for traditional games. And back then, there were no physical controllers to fill the void. So the best early iPhone titles leaned into the problem. Touch-first curio Eliss turned mobile play into an intricate game of finger Twister. But inevitably, people clamoured for old favourites, and games mimicking the past came unstuck.
Virtual keyboards could fix typing mistakes from fumbling thumbs but virtual D-pads just watched you fail, fast becoming an exercise in frustration. It’s amusing – and oddly fitting – that the first ray of hope began life as an April Fools’ Day prank. ThinkGeek revealed iCade, a bartop arcade cab with physical controls and a slot for an iPad. People loved it so much that a year later, the joke became real. Unfortunately, the joke ended up being on anyone who bought the system, because hardly any games bothered to support it.
Level up
A couple of years later, Apple finally relented and laid foundations for physical controllers on iOS. Apple’s initial stab at a spec unsurprisingly involved the company trying to stamp its mark on controllers, annoying everyone by insisting on non-standard buttons and splitting support across two recommended layouts. Eventually, those ideas were Hadoukened into oblivion, leaving us with relative bliss. Today, you can pair console controllers with your device or use phone-specific controllers.
As an old person keen on retro gaming, I’ll use controllers for modern games but am more excited by their potential for bringing retro fare to mobile. And ever since Delta seemingly forced Apple’s hand on emulation, the App Store has been awash with nostalgic options. Alongside those, thousands of superb old-school Pico-8 titles await everyone’s attention in Safari.
Android folks might smugly note that they’re well ahead at this point, because emulation’s been mainstream on that platform for years. But retro-oriented controllers have not and Android touchscreens are just as slippy as iPhone ones. Fortunately at CES 2026, controller makers remembered retro gamers exist, with new products that come perilously close to being what I’d consider perfect retro controllers.
Flip out
The 8BitDo FlipPad feels tailor-made for on-the-go retro play. It’s about as small as a physical controller can plausibly get. Pocketable. No battery. And in use, it pleasingly looks like you’re holding the offspring of a smartphone and a Game Boy.
But it’s not perfect. You get all the buttons you need – and several you absolutely don’t. Nobody sane would be playing trigger-heavy games on this thing, no matter how creatively relevant buttons lurk above the D-pad. And while the rubberised underside should protect your screen during play, I do worry about the stress the FlipPad will place on the USB-C port when you’re panic-dropping Tetris pieces or accelerating towards your inevitable demise in Celeste.
Curiously, FlipPad isn’t alone. GameSir is set to release the similar – and endearingly named – Pocket Taco. Due in March, the $34.99/£27.99 controller ditches USB-C for Bluetooth, although that will annoy latency obsessives. I did appreciate that it has fewer buttons, though, which I took as a sign GameSir understands focus is a feature.
So close it hurts
At least that’s true for its pocketable pad, because GameSir’s other announcement may as well have been called “everything and the kitchen sink”. Following its more conventional GameSir G8 Galileo, the company has collaborated with Hyperkin on the X5 Alteron – a modular controller with hot-swappable components.
Designed for the long haul and long gaming sessions, the Alteron stretches to fit different phones and even tablets. But the clever new bit is how you can rearrange layouts to taste. D-pad up top! D-pad down below, if you’re some kind of monster! GameCube and N64 layouts (assuming Nintendo lawyers don’t catapult every Alteron into the sun)! A six-button fight pad! A trackpad for FPS titles! It’s gloriously over the top and yet still not quite enough.
I wish the device went narrower as well as wider – or used MagSafe – so it could hold a phone in portrait. And I’d love to see it steal a trick from the Atari GameStation Go by adding a spinner and trackball module. Because if you’re going to do retro properly, you should be able to play Kaboom, Tempest and Marble Madness as nature intended. For those games, buttons and D-pads are only marginally better than the slippy glass screens that doomed traditional games in the iPhone’s early days.
Maybe at CES 2027.
- Now read: I always wanted a full-size arcade machine, but this is even better
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