While I was surprised to see the inclusion of Final Fantasy VII... I was then equally confused by the lack of Tomb Raider, not least because the franchises are both now stuffed into the baggy, wet, burrow of Square Enix.
Just as with the Super NES and NES mini, this dwindled throwback is struggling to please everyone. For my money, these tiny retro systems should be seen as the equivalent of those museums-in-a-book (you know: with replica relics, and "flaps" to lift up and that).
I mean let's face it, if you really want to play an old PS1 game, there are plenty of dubious and not-so-dubious ways of doing so. Instead, there's just something nice about having all of a system's most iconic games within one shrivelled recreation. But what's the point if you're not going to include the classics on your Classic?
While managing to feature at least some heavy-hitters, the PlayStation Classic does seem to miss out on a ton of the PlayStation's most iconic, system-defining, titles. I mean, it doesn't even have that famous t-rex demo. You know the one: where you could manipulate a 3D Marc Bolan, and make him fall off a stage. That's a cool reference there for your mums and dads, kids.
Here's the full list of what will be included on the European version:
Battle Arena Toshinden
Cool Boarders 2
Destruction Derby
Final Fantasy VII
Grand Theft Auto
Intelligent Qube
Jumping Flash
Metal Gear Solid
Mr Driller
Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee
Rayman
Resident Evil Director’s Cut
Revelations: Persona
Ridge Racer Type 4
Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo
Syphon Filter
Tekken 3
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow 6
Twisted Metal
Wild Arms
Below, I offer my suggestions for which of these games should've been replaced with something else...
Namco's Klonoa: Door to Phantomile was a bit of an aberration on the PlayStation; a cute and colourful Sega or Nintendo-ish platformer. That made it stand out within the PlayStation's otherwise more sombre-hued catalogue. Also: it was good. It was sweet. Let's have some more of that, yeah?
Equally, Sony's own Ape Escape, which came relatively late in the console's life, felt like an abrupt gear-shift - so much so that the skid marks have yet to fade. Nonetheless, it remains, potentially, the best 3D platformer on the machine.
What did the "G" stand for?
"Grumpy".
If you stand a hope of achieving completeness, Tomb Raider has to be on there... even if it does play like a beast, boasting the control system equivalent of a Twitter grammar pedant. If any one game is synonymous with the PlayStation era... it's this.
But you already knew that.
BOOOOOOBS!!!!
Wipeout was a barefaced - and, admittedly, successful - attempt at making gaming all cool and edgy and that, and needs to be on there. Whether I like it or not.
Dance music is cool, yeah? Well, yeah, until you try to re-licence it 20-odd years later...
REMEMBER: there is nothing more important than "being" cool.
You remember at school there was that kid who would do drawings of, like, demons and 3D swastikas and stuff, and everyone would crowd round and go "That's so cool! Draw me one!" and you'd sit there and be muttering like "He's not so good - I can draw better than that, and at least my drawings would be original I'm just not such an attention-seeking show-off like he is" and you'd never let it go and decades later you'd use him by way of a comparison to a video game you didn't like?
Well... that.
So, y'know, here it is. Alright?
Question: is the skateboarding inherently edgy, or would, I dunno, something like feeding a cat automatically become edgy if the person feeding the cat wore big baggy trousers, and had a stupid chin-beard, and played pop-punk sounds while he put the food in the bowl?
Bishi Bashi is probably the better game, but Vib-Ribbon is a better example of the PS1's more out-there moments, though the fact that it's best remembered for generating levels using the player's own music CDs, it probably wouldn't work on the PlayStation Classic. I shouldn't have suggested it.
PLEASE FORGIVE ME.