PlayStation Classic: Seven games deserving of a comeback on Sony's retro console
Final Fantasy VII, Tekken 3 and Ridge Racer Type 4 all slated to return on revived device but what about these neglected greats?
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Your support makes all the difference.The announcement by Sony that it is to launch the PlayStation Classic has gamers itching to get back into some beloved titles from the 1990s.
Five pre-loaded games have been announced already – including heavyweights like Final Fantasy VII, Tekken 3 and Ridge Racer Type 4 – but there are hundreds more in the library.
Although the Japanese electronics firm has promised “more fan favourites” will feature when the console is released in time for Christmas, thousands of retro game lovers will have their own suggestions.
Here are a few titles The Independent would be happy to see make a 21st century comeback.
Crash Team Racing (1999)
The fourth game in Jason Rubin and Andy Gavin’s Crash Bandicoot series, Crash Team Racing had the ingenious idea of breaking its marsupial protagonist out of his linear platform format.
Obviously influenced by Nintendo’s original Super Mario Kart (1992), the game was huge cartoonish fun and succeeded in opening out the Wumpa Islands landscape and expanding the series’ roster of characters.
Dino Crisis (1999)
Created by Shinji Mikami, who gave us Resident Evil in 1996, Dino Crisis likewise cast the player into the gory world of survival horror.
You played as special ops agent Regina, investigating a secret research facility and finding it overrun with prehistoric reptiles.
Mikami’s team based its dinosaur animation on carnivorous animals and the backgrounds offered greater depth of field in 3D than the zombie splatterfest had before it, making for an immersive and often shocking experience thanks to a courageously dark storyline and Alien-inspired aesthetic.
Jurassic Park (1992) and Turok (1997) on the N64 were its most obvious touchstones.
Driver (1999)
Another game that understood its players’ desire to re-enact their favourite blockbusters, Driver paid tribute to the great car chase movies of the 1960s and 1970s, most obviously Walter Hill’s The Driver (1978) starring Ryan O’Neal.
Taking place across ambitious open world maps of New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Miami, this driving game enabled you to take part in frantic getaways as undercover cop Jake Tanner.
Driver surely led the way to the glories of Grand Theft Auto when that game first went 3D.
As if that weren’t enough, Driver’s “Film Director” mode allowed you to re-watch, edit and save your best freeway jumps in slow motion.
MediEvil (1999)
Another game channelling a movie was this deliciously Gothic sword-and-sorcery romp, borrowing heavily from Jack Skellington in Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) for its undead protagonist, Sir Dan Fortescue.
A revenant knight raised from the grave to rid the kingdom of Gallowmere of the evil wizard Zorak, Fortescue was actually a coward in life and reluctant to enter the fray.
MediEvil’s free-roaming platform style nevertheless set you against an army of Halloween ghouls, all of whom it was intensely satisfying to lay low in pursuit of supernatural support.
Rollcage (1999)
One of the most agreeably chaotic racing games out there, Rollcage was simply a case of roaring around winding tracks in low-lying rocket cars at warp speed. What more could you ask for?
The chance of flipping was high, particularly if you allowed yourself to become distracted by the surprisingly dreamy background vistas. But then you could drive upside-down anyway so it hardly mattered.
Publisher Psygnosis was also responsible for WipEout (1995) another classic PlayStation racer, which interpreted the phrase “space race” entirely literally.
Time Crisis (1997)
A truly great first person shooter from Namco, Time Crisis necessitated the purchase of a light gun controller in place of the usual pad, but the added expense was worth it to recreate the thrill of the arcade in your own living room.
Firing the G-Con directly at your own TV screen, you earned yourself additional seconds with every direct hit scored on an enemy henchmen, the race against the clock making for a staggeringly intense experience.
Vigilante 8 (1998)
Like Driver, Vigilante 8 also gloried in a Seventies setting. But that’s where the similarities end, the latter game preferring the feverish carnage of a redneck destruction derby to the former’s ice cool.
Set in an alternate history timeline with the US languishing in lawlessness as the result of an oil crisis, the player drove machine gun-mounted muscle cars, station wagons or even school buses into battle against assorted road warrior opponents.
Vigilante 8‘s lively gameplay was complimented by its commitment to characterisation, its dystopian storyline bringing together cowboy truckers, Vegas gamblers, paranoid hippies, rogue FBI agents and Outback bogans.
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