Ten split-screen games worth playing today
Ten picks from the catalogue, and why each one still plays today
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GoldenEye 007 1997
In this first person shooter based on the 1995 film, James Bond works through levels of objectives to stop a criminal syndicate and its satellite weapon. It showed that consoles could carry the genre, added stealth to it, and pioneered deathmatch on a console.
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Perfect Dark 2000
In this first person shooter with stealth, Joanna Dark infiltrates the dataDyne skyscraper, and later missions take her on to Chicago, Area 51 and Air Force One.
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Halo: Combat Evolved 2001
Master Chief, a cybernetically enhanced supersoldier, and the AI Cortana try to uncover the secrets of Halo, a ring shaped world, while fighting the Covenant in the 26th century. It modernized the first person shooter.
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Crash Team Racing 1999
Naughty Dog's kart racer puts fifteen characters on narrow tracks where the pack stays bunched, and timing a drift right chains up to three boosts in one slide. Adventure mode links the tracks through a hub world with bosses.
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Gears of War 2 2008
Sergeant Marcus Fenix leads Delta Squad into the depths of the planet Sera to stop the Locust, who are trying to sink every city on it. It introduced Horde, a mode in which five players hold out against wave after wave.
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TimeSplitters 2 2002
Free Radical Design, a studio founded by former Rare staff who had worked on GoldenEye 007, made this shooter of ten levels set in different time periods. It is built for a crowd, with four players on split screen and up to ten bots.
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Mario Kart 64 1996
Eight characters from the Mario games race karts on tracks drawn from their worlds, and four players can share one console on a split screen, racing each other or popping balloons in Battle.
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Burnout 3: Takedown 2004
A racer built around slamming rivals until they crash, where driving dangerously is what fills your boost. Even your own wreck can be steered in slow motion into one last takedown.
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Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1999
Neversoft's skateboarding game puts ten real pro skaters into two minute runs with goals to clear, from a score to beat to a hidden VHS tape. It is credited with bringing skateboarding to a mainstream audience around the world.
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Twisted Metal: Black 2001
A mysterious figure named Calypso runs a tournament that sets the patients of an asylum against each other, each in an armed vehicle with a special weapon of their own.
