Every day dozens of new games are released for mobile phones and tablets — but every now and again you don’t want a new game. What you want is to relive a truly great classic game that you first played on a Playstation or computer.

Recently two of those classic games found their way to iOS and Android.

The first is Sonic CD, a Sonic the Hedgehog title from the 90s. Originally developed for the Sega CD, the game has since been ported to the Plyastation 2, GameCube, and PC. Now it’s available for $1.99 in the Android Market and iTunes App Store.

Next up we’ve got Grand Theft Auto III – a title that changed the way many people think about video games on a number of levels. GTA III was released for the PS2 in 2001 as a game that let you solve missions by driving, fighting, and problem solving in Liberty City, a fictional place that’s detailed enough to be a character in the story.

The game also pushed the boundaries of violent and sexual conduct in a mainstream video game.

Now GTA III  is available for $4.99 from the App Store and Android Market.

Chrono Trigger has arrived for the iPhone and iPod Touch, bringing one of the most popular epic role playing games to iOS.

The game was originally released for the Super Nintendo in 1995. The iOS version features optimized graphics for the Retina display and touch controls. For example, in a battle, you can employ a the “slide and tap” control cut through enemies and select your targets.

Other exclusives include over 50 personnel combo attacks and two areas from the Nintendo DS version of the game: The Dimensional Vortex and the Lost Sanctum.

Created by Square Enix, the makers of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, the game naturally centers around its storyline. Chrono, the main character, must go back in time “through the dimensions” to find his friend Marle after an accident occurs with a new invention. As a result, Chrono travels through both the past and the future, an even encounters the end of time.

Chrono Trigger is available in the App Store for $9.99. If that seems a bit pricey for an iOS game, consider the words of a recent commenter on iTunes: “Not only did it revolutionized the RPG genre, it raised the bar so high it hasn’t been beaten since!”

via Reddit

OnLive is a service that lets you play video games by streaming them over the internet. We’re not talking about dinky Flash-based games here though. We’re talking about console-quality games that you’d normally need a Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 to play.

The company offers a box that you can connect to your TV to turn it into a game console, as well as a wireless remote control. This week the company launched new apps for iOS and Android that also turn your phone or tablet into a portable console-quality gaming system.

OnLive has been showing off the service since this summer, but now the company’s mobile apps are finally available for download from the App Store or the Android Market.

I took the service for a spin on my NOOK Tablet, and there’s a lot to like. The selection of games may not be all-inclusive, but it’s pretty good. And the games felt snappy and responsive even though I was basically using the tablet to control a game running on a remote server.
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Microsoft has released a new app that lets you access your Xbox Live account on an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. The free app is called My Xbox Live, and it offers many of the features that you can find in the company’s Windows Phone 7 app.

You can view your achievements, send messages to your friends, read news about apps and games, and change your Xbox Live avatar.

Windows Phone 7 users can also control media playback on an Xbox from a phone. That feature is sadly missing from the iOS app. But pretty much everything else is there — including Windows Phone 7 Metro-style buttons at the bottom of the iPhone version of the app.

via TechCrunch

Update: It looks like Apple doesn’t actually support subscription-based game content yet. The company has pulled Big Fish’s new app from the App Store. 

You can subscribe to magazines, newspapers, music or video services in the App Store on an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. And now you can also subscribe to some gaming content.

Bloomberg reports that the first company to extend Apple’s subscription services to the gaming world is Big Fish Games. Instead of paying a one-time price to download and play a game, customers can spend $6.99 per month to access dozens of games.

In other words, you don’t actually own any of the games you’re paying for, but with games normally running anywhere form 99 cents to $15, you could easily come out ahead with the Big Fish Games service if you play more than a few games per month. On the other hand, you if you stop paying, all of the games you’ve been playing go away, since you were essentially renting them rather than buying them.

Big Fish Games reportedly wants to bring its service to Android devices next.

via The Verge

Rockstar Games has announced plans to launch Grand Theft Auto III for Android and iOS. It’s been 10 years since the crazy popular video game hit the scene, but it still offers more depth than an awful lot of games available for mobile platforms today. It should be interesting to see how Rockster revamps the classic to work on mobile devices with touchscreen displays.

The list of officially supported devices isn’t all that large. It looks like you’ll need some serious processing power to handle the game. The iOS app will only support the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S.

The Android list is a little longer, with the Motorola Atrix 4G, Droid X2, HTC Evo 2, LG Optimus 2X, and Samsung Galaxy S2 phones and the Acer Iconia Tab, Asus Eeee Pad, Motorola XOOM, and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablets.

Rockstar says the new games will be available this fall. There’s no word on how much they’ll cost.

via CNET

Glider, a classic game that long-time Mac users will recognize, is now available for iOS. You can download it from the App Store for 99 cents.

The game and its various forms (Glider Classic, Glider Pro, Glider Arcade…) originally launched in 1988, but stopped development just three years later. The simplicity of the game is what made it so addictive: navigate a paper airplane and avoid the obstacles at all costs.

The levels are called ‘houses,’ which provide the typical items found in a household to help you succeed.

The developer says the game may soon be available in the Mac App Store as well. The classic Glider Pro is available as a free download, but it requires a Mac with a PowerPC processor and won’t run on OS X Lion.

via iDownload Blog

Perhaps the most disenfranchised Sonic the Hedgehog game, Sonic CD, will be the first to hit the Android and Windows Phone operating systems.

Sonic CD, the ‘CD’ standing for the add-on device (Mega-CD) of the Mega Drive console that originally hosted the game, is a curious first choice from Sega. It was considered one of the best Sonic games ever made by critics at the time (1991), but it’s not the most well-known. The traditional storyline in which Sonic saves his love interest, Amy Rose, from the evil Dr. Eggman is present, so all the Sonic action you’re familiar with will be in this game.

Now that it’s going mobile and will reach Android, Windows Phone and iOS (which already has several Sonic titles), platform-specific features will be included. This means special iOS features, Xbox Live Achievements, and more will be integrated into Sonic CD.

The game is also expected to drop on the PlayStation Network, Xbox 360, and Windows PC. It’s expected to launch soon, but an exact date hasn’t been released.

via Slashgear