Remember iCade? That’s the arcade cabinet in miniature form where the actual device was your iPad. Or iPhone, if you picked up any of the knock-offs. Somehow I doubt those gave you the same sense of oldschool gaming, much like those small tin can sized bluetooth speakers have nothing in common with proper speakers, or any hifi equipment for that matter.

The iCade is dead and buried, at least until it gets relaunched with proper controller support. This was the Big New Thing in the iOS 7 announcement way back, and it got skipped over. It’s not hard to figure out why: There were no controllers to show off, and there were no games to showcase. The latter would’ve been easy to remedy. Just invite a game developer to the Apple stage, they’d trip over themselves to implement gamepad support just to get the recognition (and subsequent sales). The former was no doubt harder, because unless Apple themselves would’ve wanted to get into the gamepad accessory race, they’ve had to let Logitech & Co. in on their plans. They choose not to, and thus we had to wait until early this year until the first proper iOS controllers dropped.

Months later and here we are, with an upcoming slew of controllers slated for Q3 and Q4, but it’s summer now and we want to be gaming, right? Let’s check out what the upcoming Made for iOS controllers’ll have to beat.

MOGA Ace Power beat the rest and entered the market first. Being first can be a shortcut to success, especially if you intend to iterate your product. Let’s hope that’s their plan, because the Ace Power is a piece of wobbly plastic barely passable as a prototype. Parts of it is good, the analog stick for one, but overall this is an awful device. Not even the fact that it doubles as a battery, giving you more playing time (or emergency juice after having played too much), can even begin to save this controller. If this was a $30 device I’d grumble but probably not thought much more of it, but it’s $80, much like a gamepad for the next generation game consoles, and so very far from anything resembling these in terms of quality.

I do get trying to be the first on the shelves, but thinking that this piece of plastic can fool hardcore gamers is beyond me.

Let’s stop right there and make an assumption. If you’re going to spend $70 or more on a gamepad for your mobile phone or tablet, you’re probably taking gaming pretty seriously. These accessories aren’t made to make your Candy Crush Saga or Angry Birds experience more immense, they’re for the games most mobile gamers don’t have the patience for. The expensive console ports, the weird and intuitive indie games, and the nostalgic re-releases of oldschool platformers and shoot ‘em ups. Let’s just assume that the prospective consumer of a gamepad accessory for an iOS device is something of a hardcore gamer.

So MOGA Ace Power fails miserably, but can Logitech fare any better?

Logitech has a long (compared to the platform’s time of existence) history of making iOS accessories of decent to great quality. I’m typing this on a Logitech Tablet Keyboard, and they’ve actually made quite a few decent keyboard covers, sleeves, folios, and whatever else you might want to lug along with your portable device. It’s not exactly Apple quality stuff, but it’s often good enough, sometimes great.

With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that the first gamepad outing from Logitech, the Powershell G, is actually pretty decent.

How old are you? Nevermind, let’s just assume you’re old like me. Remember the Sega GameGear? The black portable device with the crappy color screen, with a battery life of about four minuters? Sliding your iPhone 5 or 5s into the Powershell makes me remember that device fondly, which is a pretty decent place to be compared to the Ace Power mentioned above. The Sega GameGear might’ve been a major failure compared to Nintendo’s Game Boy, but I still liked it, and it’s not the faults of the GameGear that spring to mind when I sit down and play _Mikey Hooks_ on my iPhone 5s, pinned into the Powershell. The whole thing actually feels pretty good, with decent buttons and a build quality that at least tries to mimic that of the third party gamepad outings for the established game systems from Microsoft and Sony. There’s an opening for the camera so that you can snap away with your ridiculously long iPhone, and if you want to use your headphones then there’s an adapter making them easy to attach. You even get a rubber plate-thingy should you want to mount an iPod touch in there, and yes, the iPhone 5c works as well.

The Logitech Powershell G is nice, and it’s got the extra battery power too. I’d gladly recommended this thing to iPhone gamers had it cost $40 or $50, but now it’s $70 and I’m a bit cautious of telling my friends to go pick it up. On the one hand, the Powershell does its job and it does it well. On the other, I feel that the Powershell might be a bit limited since it lacks an analog joystick and just have two shoulder buttons. Yeah, I’m a hard sell. Could the SteelSeries Stratus do any better?

I was actually thrilled to see SteelSeries enter the MFi controller fray, since their tiny little bluetooth controller had me perplexed and wanting. The Stratus is basically the same thing, but made for iOS devices. It’s the only controller available that doesn’t snap onto your device, relying on the Lightning port. Thus you pair it like any other bluetooth device, and it works accordingly.

The first thing that’ll strike you when playing with the Stratus is that it’s a really small controller. This has its upside because it means that it won’t be a bother to take it with you, making it the ideal companion to an iPad owning gamer. You could bring several actually, because if your game supports multiplayer then you can connect up to four Stratus controllers to your iOS device. Granted, I’ve no idea when I’d do this, but it’s a feature worth mentioning nonetheless.

Now, I’ve got big hands, but I must say that the Stratus size isn’t its major problem. I kind of like it being small, much like I preferred some of the smaller MadCatz controllers for the original Xbox back in the day. The Stratus feels a bit plastic, although not nearly as cheap as the Ace Power. Both the XYAB buttonset and the control pad suffer from this, which is a bad thing for a controller that’ll no doubt mostly be used for oldschool gaming. The four shoulder buttons are a bit awkward due to the controllers petite form factor, but they feel a lot better, and the two analog sticks are decent.

All that aside, comparing the Stratus to the Ace Power is just a waste of time, but the Powershell G stands up fairly well, until you want your analog sticks of course. In the end, the Stratus is the best option of the three, but it is pricey too. You’ll have to chalk up $80, which is a bit on the expensive side.