8 of the best split-screen games I grew up playing and you did too

12 July 2025

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8-of-the-best-split-screen-games-i-grew-up-playing-and-you-did-too — 8 of the best split-screen games I grew up playing and you did too

There was a time when gaming didn’t mean headsets and Discord servers. It meant two people, one screen, and a bucket load of chaos and laughter. Split-screen gaming during the time I grew up — the sixth and seventh generation — wasn’t just a feature to be lauded. It was a part of the whole experience itself.

If you grew up in the ’90s and 2000s like I did, your best gaming memories don’t come from high-end gaming rigs with fancy RGB lighting. Instead, they come from cracked controllers, CRT TVs, and a sibling or best friend accusing you of cheating from across the couch. Here are the best split-screen games I grew up playing, and you did too.

Two people gaming while sitting on a sofa while Split Fiction plays in the background.

Slowly but surely, couch co-op has made a comeback in the medium, with fantastic games that aren’t “niche” anymore.

8 Road Rash: Jailbreak

I’d wager that there isn’t a single soul born in the ’90s who hasn’t played Road Rash — especially the 1996 Windows port of the game that is the most popular and synonymous with the franchise’s title card. Filled with memories of the same, I bought a bootlegged copy of Road Rash: Jailbreak, playing it on Windows through CVGS.

My first impressions were… terrible. I hated the game — the visuals were stuck in that weird era between 3D and 2D, with no polish, the racing looked wildly janky, and everything felt off. That was until I began the split-screen mode and started racing against my brother. This was when I finally realized I was never going back to Road Rash ’96, and I was only going to be playing Jailbreak going forward. Racing through traffic, pole-axe ready, tossing police and civilians aside — that abrasiveness and unapologetic violence made Road Rash: Jailbreak the chaotic couch co-op racer that it was, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

7 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2011)

Wave after wave, and two kids in ‘Resistance’

Modern Warfare 3‘s single-player campaign was a life-changer for me. As Price lit up his cigar with Makarov hanging through the roof of the building and the credits rolled, I was a changed man. Then, the time came to boot up multiplayer, and for this, I needed a friend, thanks to my brother never having been an FPS person.

The MW3 disc is one I remember absolutely scratching up to hell and back, thanks to at least a hundred hours of split-screen games played in the Resistance and Interchange maps, fighting off wave after wave of enemies. The frantic half-minute we got between waves where the job was to collect weapons from fallen enemies to save money? That’s an exhilarating feeling I recall to this day. I may have had to carry my friend significantly in Modern Warfare 3‘s multiplayer, but it was all worth it when he began repaying the favor in Infinite Warfare’s split-screen zombie mode, years later, on my PlayStation 4.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2011)

Released: November 8, 2011
ESRB: M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Drug Reference, Intense Violence, Strong Language
Developer(s): Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer Games
Publisher(s): Activision
Engine: iw
Multiplayer: Online Multiplayer
Franchise: Call of Duty

a collage of keyart from Halo 3, MW2, and Gears of War 2

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6 Blur (2010)

Car combat truly peaked in 2010

If Split/Second was destruction cinema, Blur felt like a high-octane soap opera on wheels. Its power-ups flew front and back, you could drop a shield or boom-box-style explosive at the last second, and all with vintage cars ripping around stylized tracks. After school, loading up the four-player split-screen on the game felt like stepping into a party — everyone was trying to figure out the controls while I raced ahead towards the finish line.

Today, on a revisit, Blur‘s visual flair has aged less gracefully than others, but its weapon-rich insanity remains the same, if not more enjoyable, because of how rare car combat games have become in this day and age. I still miss that loop — drifting through neon cityscapes, picking up power-ups and shooting everyone around, shielding up against lightning strikes, and going full throttle to get more fan points. This was one game I enjoyed significantly less playing alone, and split-screen was truly the best way to enjoy Blur.

5 Need for Speed: Underground 2 (2004)

Riders on the storm…

NFS: Underground 2 was my first meeting with the concept of an open-world. “We can drive anywhere we want, and it doesn’t have to be a race?” Those are pretty much the words that kept coming out of my mouth in amazement when we booted up Underground 2. The glow of neon under the cars, the pulse of custom soundtracks, and the thrill of midnight alleyways — every split-screen race I competed in — against fellow XDA writer Tanveer Singh — was a cinematic experience I kept wanting more of. The game still remains my favorite in the series, behind only 2013’s Rivals and 2005’s Most Wanted.

The split-screen battles in the game are what truly captured the essence of that era. Today, emulating the game on PCSX2 doesn’t come with the charm I thought the game would retain, and the split-screen battles are little more than a mess of taillight streaks and collisions. Still, Underground 2‘s split-screen madness, back when I was a scrawny little kid who pretended to know about cars in front of my friends, is something that inadvertently cemented my love for all things automobile, and even the franchise.

These aren’t the “best” racing games — they’re the ones that changed our lives, for better, wilder, and weirder.

4 Super Mario Kart (1992)

A split-screen racer I discovered 18 years after its release

I played the first Mario Kart ever, on a knock-off SNES when I was ten — roughly twelve years after it died. Still, my moment of discovery of the game is etched in my mind like it happened yesterday — it changed everything. Kart-to-kart battles on the Mushroom circuit, not knowing where to go in Bowser’s Castle, drifting into walls, and collecting coins like there’s no tomorrow — that was just my first day with Super Mario Kart.

I may only have played Mario Kart 8 after that, but the feeling of playing the first Mario Kart game remains unparalleled, and something I hold with pride. I still believe that no kart racer nails simple couch fun quite like that OG version — even now, hearing that music gives me a punch of nostalgia, making me wish I turned back into a ten-year-old without a care in the world.

3 Halo 3 (2007)

The only reason I cried for an Xbox 360

Source: Steam

Halo 3 — the game that made me cry to my parents until they gave in and bought me an Xbox 360. This game, on split-screen, was a generational icon. Two-player co-op campaign sessions that turned my living room into a warzone, and then filled it with cackling laughter because my friend never had the slightest idea about what was going on — he’d just been instructed to shoot at whatever moves.

Even today, I can call up scenes of the arc of a plasma grenade midair, the rush of pulling off a perfect double kill, and the absolutely deadpan shrugs of my friend who had zero investment in the world.

Halo has been Xbox’s flagship franchise for over two decades, here’s how each entry stacks up.

2 Borderlands (2009)

Split-screen looting-and-shooting made me love the genre

Source: Steam

The first Borderlands on split-screen co-op was a revelation to me — me and my brother, looting chests, shouting “yellow rarity”, and rolling our eyes at Claptrap’s quips. Well, to be honest, that last bit was just my brother, since I always found Claptrap incredibly hilarious. The world felt vast, violent, and so damn strange.

Split-screen on the first Borderlands game on our Xbox 360 was all about co-op missions, loot sharing, and laughter when my brother accidentally blew up his loot chests. It hooked me on looter-shooters for a long while, before my craze tapered down to just The Division and Borderlands franchises. Writing this, I’m feeling that old familiar itch, and remembering the thrill of finding a purple-rarity gun just for your buddy.

Borderlands: Game of the Year Enhanced Edition

Released: August 8, 2024
Developer(s): Blind Squirrel Games Inc.
Publisher(s): 2K
Franchise: Borderlands

Discover the co-op shooter-looter that started it all, crammed with content and enhancements! Equip bazillions of guns as one of 4 trigger-happy mercenaries, each with unique RPG skills. Take on the lawless desolate planet Pandora in pursuit of powerful alien technology: The Vault. With new weapons, visual upgrades, all 4 add-on packs and more, play solo or in 4-player split screen co-op!

1 Split/Second (2010)

One of the greatest racers we ever got, period

Inarguably the most unforgettable split-screen racer I remember from the seventh generation. A game I played to death on both my Xbox 360 and PC after I sold the former, Split/Second had me hooked by its destructible environments. I mean, for a twelve-year-old, the ability to unload shipping containers, airplanes, and entire Space Needles on the track ahead to obliterate your opponents was pretty much the epitome of coolness in a game.

This was a game I played exclusively with my brother, and both of us had tracks the other one simply couldn’t beat the other on. Today, replaying Split/Second shows how well the game has aged — the graphics and visual presentation are still stellar, the controls aren’t janky because they never were, and its ability to turn a casual couch split-screen race into a nail-biting, trash-talking argument about cheating and having trick controllers? Unmatched and unchanged.

Split-screen gaming is slowly but surely making a comeback

Split-screen gaming was an integral part of my childhood, and I’m happy it’s returning.

From a last-second overtake in NFS Underground, to scoring a purple gun in Borderlands, or elbowing my friend in the ribs because he beat me in a race — split-screen gaming was an integral part of my childhood, and I can’t be any happier that it’s making a return.

Even now, years later, these split-screen classics continue to hold up, and that’s why I remember them with so much fondness — they were timeless to begin with. At this point, I just want to wrap up writing this so I can go dust off some old SNES-style controllers, and bring a friend over.