Because if Nintendo can do it, Sony should do it too.
Let’s be real. Many PS1 games are not going to hold up. FF7 was a killer app at the time but who wants to go back and look at those awkward low poly stick figures again?
I have fond memories of Einhander and Parappa the Rapper. I think if I played them now I’d be really annoyed with how shitty they are. (The N64 has the same problem, imo, let Goldeneye live in your memory, don’t go play it again)
Forbes agrees,
Castlevania SotN holds up. They need to include that at least.
Why do we need this again?
The PSTV (a rebrand of a PS Vita) which was selling for 25 USD a while back will happily play PSX games using its inbuilt emulator.
This is especially weird as PS1 discs have had backward compatibility with the later Playstations, and more than a few PS1 games have been remastered for the PS3 and PS4. I know I’ve bought Final Fantasy Tactics and Super Puzzle Fighter in various incarnations, even though I never owned a PS1.
I guess it might be nice to play Bushido Blade again. Or some of those 4-player games like Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style… but there’s no guarantees that this new box will have 4 player capability or the potential to play games outside of the announced list or the fabled PS1 CD player capability for audiophiles.
It’s not weird at all. Most people don’t keep their old games or if they do they pack them away somewhere not to be seen for years. The system shipped in 1995. It’s over 20 years old along with many of those discs.
I buy retro games all the time. Condition is all over the map, especially in the United States where people are hogs. Finding pristine condition PSX games gets harder by the day because there just aren’t that many left for sale and many collectors will hold onto theirs.
If you put a solid selection of games together, then they have something they can sell here. For many people, this is the perfect way to play the classic games they love, and other than Wild Arms and maybe Jumping Flash in the video, those are PlayStation Classics. If they have Konami on board with Castlevania and a handful of others, this will go very well.
Well it’s not for me, because I’ve still it my PS2 Slim so I can pop in Lunar or Jumping Flash or In the Hunt when the mood strikes. But it is good to see that Sony isn’t abandoning their old games. Still hoping the PS5 includes backward compatibility for stuff like this.
I think Sony is going to be disappointed at how this sells in comparison to the Nintendo systems. $60 for the NES Classic was fine and $80 for the SNES was pushing it; $100 is well beyond the novelty purchase price for a lot of people – even though I understand the costs are probably higher with more processing power and storage needed vs the Nintendo offerings. Sony’s also been much more liberal with their digital games. How many of these are going to be new digital releases that weren’t already available as PS1 Classics on PS3/Vita, or ported to PC? Finally, I just don’t think the nostalgia factor is there for the Playstation library as much as the NES/SNES.
I actually never owned a PS1, so there were a lot of games for it I never played. While I had a PS2 that could run the games, even by then, a lot of the coolest stuff was already getting hard to find (since I didn’t buy the PS2 till the last year or two of its main lifespan) for reasonable prices, so this theoretically could hit right for me, esp. being a bit younger than most of Qt3 ;-)
But it’ll depend heavily on games. I suspect they’re not gonna dredge up the weird import RPGs I wanted to badly :)
I think with careful selection they could find plenty of games that hold up well enough, but it is true that the PS1-era 3D was generally so bad you can’t even really upscale it with an emulator and get good results. Later platforms like Gamecube and PS2 you can run filters on the textures/effects and it’ll look OK albeit obviously dated, but the majority of PS1 games look like poly soup no matter what you do.
The other caveat is that the games that hold up best tend to be the long RPGs and lingering 2D games. Symphony of the Night, the later Mega Man X games, Xenogears, Final Fantasy 7-9 + Tactics, Suikoden, Vagrant Story, Chrono Cross, Star Ocean.
The 3D games that may, but I’m not certain of, are Metal Gear (I prefer the GC remake), Tomb Raider, Gran Torismo, Twisted Metal, any Crash game, Wipeout, Tekken, Silent Hill*
The 3D game I feel would hold up best? Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2.
*I’d hate it, but I know its a beloved series. This, in particular, might be a tough sell because the draw distance fog effect really ages poorly.
Genuine question, how well does Crash really hold up? Most early 3D platformers have aged poorly, really only Mario 64 holds up well from that era I feel.
I remember playing some of those early Crash games, but haven’t done so in probably 15 years.
