20 PS1 Games We Want to Play on PlayStation Now
Sony's upcoming PS Now streaming gaming service will feature PS3, PS2 and PS1 games. With that in mind, we thought we'd list some of our favorite PS1 games that we think would be great additions its library.
This article first appeared on USgamer, a partner publication of VG247. Some content, such as this article, has been migrated to VG247 for posterity after USgamer's closure - but it has not been edited or further vetted by the VG247 team.
SaGa Frontier, Jeremy Parish
The disappearance of the SaGa series from American consoles ranks among gaming's biggest heartbreaks of the past five years for me. I know, the SaGa games are weird, and Unlimited Saga p**sed everyone off, but I love the series -- it's so quirky, so defiantly different, so tied to a single creator's personal vision.
It really bugs me that Square Enix never bothered to bring the SaGa Frontier games to PSN in America via PlayStation Classics, but PlayStation Now represents a chance to rectify that wrong. Frontier is a big, big RPG; it contains seven separate and only slightly overlapping stories, each of which ranges from eight to 30 hours of play time... and frankly, the game is so opaque that you kind of need to cycle through it half a dozen times before you'll properly understand how its systems work. But just as 8-bit emulation allowed gamers to discover heretofore unappreciated greats like River City Ransom, I'm hoping the subscription buffet model of PlayStation Now can do the same for oddball titles like SaGa Frontier.
Ridge Racer, Jaz Rignall
I'm nominating this classic Namco arcade port for purely selfish reasons. It was the first game I played on PS1, and it just blew me away. At a time when most were still used to playing 16-bit classics like Aladdin and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie, Ridge Racer looked every inch the generational leap forward it represented.
I've still got my original PS1 long box version of the game - one of the few PS1 games I've kept over the years. But since I don't have a console to play it on, having the chance to drift sideways down memory racetrack would be great!
Street Fighter Alpha 3, Mike Williams
Street Fighter is a series with a long history so I'm sure fighting aficionados all have their personal favorite game in the franchise. For some that may be Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, or Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition, but the spot in my heart will always be occupied by Street Fighter Alpha 3.
Street Fighter Alpha 3 is the pinnacle of the series, unless you count its various ports like Alpha 3 MAX. 33 distinct and well-animated characters (37 in MAX), the ISM system allowing you to choose your playstyle, Alpha Counters, and the kick-ass World Tour mode. World Tour allowed you to take you favored character into fighting challenges to gain experience and abilities to improve them. It was such a fun mode for my friends and I; being able to spring your new custom character on someone is great.
Yes, you can already pick up the PSOne classic of Alpha 3 and the PSP version of Alpha 3 MAX on the PlayStation Store, but the game needs to be available on NOW. Why? So players using the Netflix-style option can have access to this gem.
Rival Schools: United by Fate, Jaz Rignall
I absolutely loved this port of Capcom's obscure arcade fighting game. It features Marvel vs Capom-style gameplay, but has polygonal characters instead of sprites. Players fight with a tag-team of two, who can be swapped in and out during a fight.
What I particularly like about the game is its bizarre cast of school kids and teachers, each of whom has a quite comprehensive character bio, backstory and special moves. Some of the combos of characters you can put together are really fun, and the fighting is exceptionally dynamic and polished. Rival Schools was released quite late in the Playstation's lifecycle, so many people never got to play it. I'd love to see it get a second lease of life on PS Now.
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, Mike Williams
For a bright, shining four years, the game industry had a dark and mature series in the vein of Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda, without having to ruin Zelda. That started in 1999 with the release of Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. Amy Hennig - who would later go on to lead Naughty Dog's Uncharted series - crafted an interesting world in Nosgoth and a great protagonist (hero is a bit much in the first game) in Raziel.
Everything you'd expect from a Zelda-style game is here: exploration, combat, block puzzles in dungeons, plus a plenty awesome plane-shifting mechanic. And while the ending of Soul Reaver wasn't the greatest, you didn't have to wait long for a sequel: Soul Reaver 2 came to PlayStation 2 two years later in 2001.
Tenchu 2: Birth of the Stealth Assassins, Mike Williams
There have been a lot of great stealth games over the year, but Tenchu 2 is one of my highlights. Not only did it have Rikimaru and Ayame providing two flavors of stealth action, it had great level design, and the awesome mission-creation mode.
Since From Software is hip-deep in Dark Souls-style game we won't see another Tenchu anytime soon, so heading back to the past seems to be the best bet.
Silhouette Mirage, Jeremy Parish
The PlayStation version of Silhouette Mirage was pretty well mired in controversy back in the day thanks to its U.S. publisher Working Designs' compulsion to tinker with it. They made some pretty radical changes to the game's mechanics, and many fans who had cut their teeth on the import-only Saturn version found the U.S. revisions worked to the game's detriment, slowing its pace and making it unnecessarily grindy.
And yeah, maybe that's true. But Silhouette Mirage is still a pretty cool platform-shooter, with a dual-color combat mechanic reminiscent of the one in Treasure's own Ikaruga: Protagonist Shayla wields a different element depending on which direction she's facing, adding an interesting element of strategy to the time-tested concept of the 2D platformer.
You know, really, the coolest thing Sony could do with Silhouette Mirage for PlayStation Now would be to allow us to stream both the U.S. and Japanese versions of the game, letting players decide for themselves which version is better.
Jumping Flash, Jaz Rignall
This very early PlayStation release really showed off the console's graphics capability. It's basically a first-person platform game, but the jumps you have to make so you can reach your goal are huge, vertigo-inducing leaps of doom. I can't think of any other game where you can jump higher and futher than you can in Jumping Flash.
Although its graphics look a little dated, Jumping Flash's original, timeless gameplay is still thoroughly enjoyable. Which is why I think it'd make an ideal back catalog game for PS Now.
Intelligent Qube, Brendan Sinclair
The old Official PlayStation Magazine demo discs were full of gold. But as much fun as I had playing the first level of Klonoa again and again or perfecting my barrel rolls through bridge supports in Ace Combat (or getting a taste of the aforementioned Colony Wars and Einhander), Intelligent Qube was probably my favorite find from those discs. It's a brilliant puzzle game that drops you on a long, narrow grid with a wall of cubes tumbling toward you in different patterns.
Players run around lighting up squares on the grid, and then push a button to eliminate any cubes currently on those squares, sinking them into the ground. Some of the cubes are lit up, and when they're sunk, they will highlight adjacent squares on the grid for players to trigger when the time is right. The mechanics are easy enough to grasp, but moving your player character around the playfield while trying to keep in mind which plates are lit up where and how best to use the glowing cubes requires just enough focus to keep you engaged.
At its best, Intelligent Qube puts you in the beautiful moment where everything feels just slightly out of your control, where you think you can hold out just barely long enough but you don't know for sure. I don't think I've enjoyed any puzzle game quite as much, before or since.
Wipeout 3: Special Edition, Jaz Rignall
Although Wipeout 3 was released in the states, this Special Edition was Euro-only. What makes it special? Extra tracks, a host of refinements to the physics and handling engine, and - most interesting of all - four-player racing (using two linked PlayStations and two TVs).
I doubt whether that tech would work over PS Now (though it'd be great if it did), but either way, I'd love the chance to enjoy the definitive version of one of the best racers of its generation.
Bonus: The scrapped PlayStation game that we'd just love to play
Ico, Jeremy Parish
Yeah, I know, Ico was a PlayStation 2 game. But it began life on the original PlayStation, and by all indications made it a fair ways along before it was scrapped and revamped for PS2. I have no illusions about the binned 32-bit version of Ico being at all complete or even playable for any significant amount of time, but what does that matter?
I'd love for Sony to put the low-impact nature of PlayStation Now to work to allow us to catch glimpses of these snatches of video game ephemera, providing beta or even pre-alpha versions of lost games like Ico or Thrill Kill for players to mess around in. Give us warnings and disclaimers about how rough and unstable they are if you like, but let us experience whatever exists of these prototypical creations. Not that most gamers would care, but for the curious and history-minded among us, that sort of behind-the-veil access would make PlayStation Now the single greatest publisher-initiated service ever.
Last, but by no means least, the USG video team has put together this short list of their favorites - that includes one of the most memorable moments in gaming ever.
