Correction on my previous note.
sed -i 's/\$HTTP_\(.*\)_VARS/\$_\1/g' {} \;
will screw up multiple instances of $HTTP_*_VARS in the file.
You'll have to use an instance of sed like:
sed -i 's/\$HTTP_SERVER_VARS/\$_SERVER/g'
i.e.
find ./ -name "*.php" -exec sed -i 's/\$HTTP_POST_VARS/\$_POST/g' {} \;
find ./ -name "*.php" -exec sed -i 's/\$HTTP_GET_VARS/\$_GET/g' {} \;
...
for each of the deprecated variables you might have in your files.
It also occurred to me a simple php conversion script would also work:
$search=array(
    "/HTTP_SERVER_VARS/",
    "/HTTP_POST_VARS/",
    "/HTTP_ENV_VARS/",
    "/HTTP_GET_VARS/",
    "/HTTP_COOKIE_VARS/",
    "/HTTP_SESSION_VARS/",
    "/HTTP_POST_FILES/");
$replace=array(
    "_SERVER",
     "_POST",
    "_ENV",
    "_GET",
    "_COOKIES",
    "_SESSION","_FILES");
$content=file_get_contents("somefile.php");
$content=preg_replace($search,$replace,$content);
file_put_contents("somefile.php",$content);
add directory recursion functions, ect.