Comparison

SlatesArcade vs ArcadeOS

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

SlatesArcade

Features
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Forty-two games for Apple Watch. Cards, board games, puzzles, arcade action and a few things that just look good on your wrist — all of them built for a small screen and a spare minute. Nothing here needs the internet. No accounts, no ads, no purchases, and nothing leaves your watch. Open a game and play. THE GAMES Cards — Aces Up, Crazy Eights, Cribbage, Go Fish, Pyramid Board — Backgammon, Checkers, Dominoes, Dots & Boxes, Four in a Row, Reversi, Salvo, Yacht Puzzle — 2048, Blackout, Bulls & Cows, Crates, Mines, Peg Solitaire, Sliding, Sudoku Action — Blocks, Bricks, Chomp, Glide, Hopper, Pinball, Runner, Snake Aim — 9-Ball, Bowling, Darts, Dogfight, Drift, Flick, Golf, Tilt Maze Eye Candy — Automata, Fractal, Langton's Ant, Life, Pendulum BUILT FOR THE WATCH, NOT SHRUNK TO FIT Tap and drag do most of it. Eleven games take the Digital Crown, where it is the better control — aiming a cue, putting spin on a bowling ball, changing the speed of a simulation — and two are steered by leaning your wrist. EVERY GAME EXPLAINS ITSELF How to Play sits in every game's menu: what winning means, and which control the game is actually listening for. No game leaves you guessing. IT REMEMBERS WHERE YOU WERE A dropped wrist or a notification does not cost you a game. The long ones keep their position — the sudoku grid, the cribbage hand, the crate you were pushing — and hand it back when you return. IT KEEPS SCORE Best scores where a score makes sense, fewest moves where that is the better measure, and a win-loss record against Otto, the opponent in ten of the games.

About

ArcadeOS

Experience a full arcade with 65 original retro-style games on your iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch. Enjoy diverse genres from racing to RPGs, all playable offline with instant resume and authentic chip audio. New games are added seasonally.

Highlights
  • 65 original retro-style games
  • Playable on iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch
  • Offline play with no internet required
  • Instant resume for all games
  • Authentic chip audio
  • New games added seasonally
  • No accounts, ads, or tracking
Features
Read full description

Welcome to ArcadeOS — a whole arcade in your pocket, and now on your wrist. 68 hand-picked original games, each one its own cartridge: full 3D open worlds, kart racers, ninja action, gothic pinball, paper-craft RPGs, sky shooters, momentum platformers, run-and-gun, belt brawlers, puzzle boxes and rhythm. Every game is an original creation in the spirit of the golden age of consoles — drawn in code, scored with real chip audio, and built to be picked up in seconds. HALLOW EDITION Worlds, not cartridges. LOOSE KEYS: HALLOW HOLLOW is a full 3D open city under an orange moon: take any car, hearse, helicopter, plane or boat, outrun a three-star heat system, fly a fast jet off a military airfield, land an airliner at the international airport, and work a phone full of jobs — in a city full of witches, skeletons, horsemen and the odd creature from an 1818 novel. At its heart is HOLLOWMERE, a haunted theme park with a graveyard coaster you can actually ride, a drop tower, and a lagoon parade with fireworks on the hour. MODS ship with it: god mode, every weapon, flight, moon gravity. IRONBARK is a heavyweight momentum platformer: an armored-bark brawler and a glider partner tag-teaming through an industrial jungle of barrel-cannon chains, mine-cart runs and hidden bonus rooms, drawn in fine-pixel art. GLIMMERGLASS KEEP rounds it out — a free-roam 3D collect-a-thon built over 25 nights of iteration. All three have original soundtracks synthesized live inside the app. CHERRY EDITION 23 games rated five stars by our testers before they shipped — look for the cherry on the cartridge. Highlights: Reefjack's lantern-tide run-and-gun, Thornhollow's gorge platforming, Quiet Falls' suburban-oddball RPG, Emberline's three-winter family saga, Cascabel's commedia brawler, Ironvane's vertical shooter, and Crestline GP's speedboat regatta. APPLE WATCH ArcadeOS ships with an Apple Watch app. Six games are built for the wrist and the Digital Crown: Redline Ridge (crown hops lanes, hold to burn), Sunstrip (crown steers, tap to shift), Ironvane (crown flies, hold to charge, tap to call your wingman), Truck Simulator (roll the crown and the truck drives itself — steer, hold to brake, deliver the cargo), Haywire (a horse loose in a farmyard full of physics: buck, jump, cause chaos) and Cairnglass (a crown-controlled falling-sigil puzzler). Runs on its own — no iPhone needed nearby. FEATURES 68 games — every one with its own hand-crafted cartridge art Home screen: your games as icons, with folders you make yourself Gold-star collection: beat a game, earn its golden seal. Collect them all Authentic chip sound in every game, and full synthesized soundtracks in the 3D worlds Instant resume — every game remembers exactly where you left off No accounts. No ads. No tracking. No internet required. Just games New games ship in seasonal editions — Cherry, and now Hallow ArcadeOS games are living software: they grow new levels, mechanics, and polish over time. Your shelf gets better while you sleep. Powered by RetroApps.

Screenshots

SlatesArcade1 screens
ArcadeOS4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: SlatesArcade at every 4 days against ArcadeOS's every 3 weeks. SlatesArcade also leads on iOS requirement (18.0 vs 26.5). On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

SlatesArcade ships an update every 4 days, ArcadeOS every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 18, 2026 and October 19, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 7 level
SlatesArcade versus ArcadeOS: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterSlatesArcadeArcadeOS
PriceFreeFree
Rating—3.0 (2 ratings) — better
Number of ratings—2 — better
Update frequencyEvery 4 days — betterEvery 3 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
Monetization—Free
DevicesiPhone, Apple WatchiPhone, iPad, Apple Watch — better
Requires iOS18.0 — better26.5
Further details — not scored
Size6 MB24 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperJAMES LEE SLATERetroApps LLC

In-app purchases

None

SlatesArcade

No in-app purchases

None

ArcadeOS

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is SlatesArcade free?
SlatesArcade is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is ArcadeOS free?
ArcadeOS is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do SlatesArcade or ArcadeOS have ads?
Neither SlatesArcade nor ArcadeOS shows ads.
Which is updated more often, SlatesArcade or ArcadeOS?
SlatesArcade ships an update every 4 days, and ArcadeOS every 3 weeks. Most recently, SlatesArcade was updated on October 18, 2026 and ArcadeOS on October 19, 2026.

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