Ten games I most want to play on the iPad (Part 1)

I’ve been playing games on the iPhone since the day the App Store opened. I’ve enjoyed plenty and I’ve hated plenty.

I’ve played some for review and I’ve played some for pleasure.

And yet there are hundreds of great games out there I haven’t played because either A) I didn’t know about them, or B) they didn’t seem to make sense on the iPhone. The accelerometer and touch screen are nifty features but are rarely conducive to gaming.

And don’t even get me started on that tiny screen.

The iPad, therefore, will be a more logical choice of many games because the controls won’t be as cramped. I won’t need to worry as much about my thumb hiding the action or my fingers missing the proper “buttons.”

Yet, it’s still kind of tricky because many iPhone games were designed specifically for the small screen. The iPhone is easy to tilt and turn, for example. I won’t know if this is the case with the iPad until April 3rd (2010).

And so, there are quite a few games I’m eager to try out on the iPad. I’m going to list off ten of them over two articles.

The five here are games I’ve already played on my iPhone. Later this week I’ll round up five I haven’t yet played, either because they haven’t been released or I just didn’t think the iPhone would do them justice.

I have no guarantee that iPad optimized versions of any of these games will be released but I think that most are a safe bet, starting with…

1. MotoChaser (Freeverse)

This is one of the very first apps I ever purchased for the iPhone, if not the first, and it’s still on my phone. Despite a ridiculous number of racing games that have come since, I still prefer MotoChaser‘s unique style of gameplay and whimsical premise.

MotoChaser was the first game to really sell me on the legitimacy of the iPhone as a gaming device, so I’m going to rely on it to do the same with the iPad. It’ll instantly let me know if the iPad’s processor can handle decent graphics at an acceptable frame rate. More importantly, it’ll provide a clear indication of whether tilt-based controls will work on a device that large.

2. Jungle Style Pinball (Gameprom)

I love pinball. I love pinball sims. Jungle Style Pinball is my current favorite on the iPhone, so it gets this slot. On the iPhone, you tap the left and right of the screen to activate the flippers. I imagine it’ll be exactly the same on the iPad and that’s to the game’s benefit.

The iPad should be quite comfortable to hold and use while playing pinball, provided I’m able to brace it with the base of my thumbs while tapping the screen. I’d have to be able to tap higher up on the screen to do that, which raises an interesting development choice; do they allow the pinball table to take up the whole screen and pan the camera up and down as with the iPhone version, or should they force the full length of the table onto the screen at once? This will leave empty black areas to the left and right of the table, and that’s the way they should go. The black areas will allow me to leave my thumbs in place without every covering the gameplay area, and it’ll eliminate the camera lag problem with the iPhone version in which the ball often rolls completely out of view before the camera can catch up.

3. Space Invaders (Taito)

Note that I’m including the original Space Invaders, not Space Invaders Infinity Gene. This is because I really would love for the iPad to become my portable virtual arcade. Load it up with Space Invaders, Frogger, and any other ’70s/ or 80s arcade game that doesn’t require an analog stick for decent controls, and I’m suddenly back to wearing the collar up on my denim jacket and hanging out in buildings that still reek of cigarette smoke.

Showing off the nostalgia of Space Invaders on the iPhone is one thing (and Taito totally nailed the nostalgia aspect in their iPhone version), but being able to do so on a device large enough for multiple people to see at once would be fantastic. You will all have your own games that are crowd pleasers despite being single player games. With my crowd, it’s throwback arcade games, and Space Invaders is the best example I’ve seen on the iPhone.

4. Dracula: The Path of the Dragon – Part 1 (Chillingo)

Steve introduced the iPad to us while sitting down in a comfy chair, using it as if a book. Chillingo’s Dracula: The Path of the Dragon plays as if a book. It’s a “point and click” (“touch and drag?”) adventure game of the type we used to get all the time back in the ’90s, and of which we’ll hopefully seen more in the ’10s.

Adventure games are perfectly suited to playing while lounging on the sofa or in bed, as they don’t demand any twitch skills. When you’re holding a gamepad playing a solid action game, it makes sense to be sitting on the edge of your seat or jumping around with the action. With a graphic adventure that sort of lazily asks you to solve some puzzles, tap here and there, and watch a bunch of cut scenes, you may as well be sitting comfortably. Steve has demanded it be thus, so thus it shall be.

5. Hybrid: Eternal Whisper (Gamevil)

This is my last open question (at least for now). Hybrid is an epic action/adventure/RPG that always felt like it was too big for the iPhone. It requires a lot of reading, which isn’t always fun to do on the iPhone. It has fantastic graphics with battle effects that would happily burst right out of the device if allowed. Some of the battles take quite some time to complete, so it’s the type of game you’d want to play at home as opposed to in Starbucks waiting for your lowfat turkey bacon breakfast sandwich to be delivered. But, there’s a problem.

On the iPhone, the action buttons are too small to hit accurately, making the fights more difficult than need be. This could be improved on the iPad, but will we even be able to reach them? That bezel, while necessary for holding the device, means your thumbs won’t be able to reach very far into the screen itself, especially for games requiring horizontal orientation. I’ll therefore hope to use Hybrid as my first look at how developers will be repurposing their iPhone games, and to determine whether developers who had set their sites too high on the iPhone will find happier, more comfortable dwellings on the iPad.

• Don’t Miss: Ten games I most want to play on the iPad (Part 2)

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