- 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 Six
- Twisted Metal
- Wild Arms
And some people are already up in arms calling the list absolute garbage. Garbage? Really? It includes Final Fantasy VII and Metal Gear. Garbage? Syphon Filter and Oddworld are garbage? Twisted Metal and Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo are garbage? RE:DC and IQ garbage? Yeah, this list is complete garbage. Ok....
Well, sure, maybe it's disappointing. I'd have loved to see Silent Hill and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Obviously, Castlevania wouldn't have been included since they just rereleased it on PS4. I'd have wanted Twisted Metal 2 over Twisted Metal and I would have loved another Final Fantasy on there. Lots of people are complaining about the lack of Crash and Spyro and those omissions are rather large but I'm sure the fact that Crash and Spyro trilogies just being released has something to do with it.
But with that said, the lack of certain great games in no way diminishes the greatness of other included games. Sure, Twisted Metal 2 would have been nice, but the first Twisted Metal is still a classic. Grand Theft Auto I'm sure has aged terribly, but when you talk about a game that has spawned one of the most popular franchises on earth, you can't get more classic than the first GTA. Same with RE. I'd love to have RE2 over that, but the first RE is still very much a classic.
We even have one of the best puzzlers I ever played on here: Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo. I never played the PS version. I only had the GBA version, so it will be nice to experience the original with better graphics. And still on puzzlers, we have Intelligent Qube! I've always wanted to play this one, but never got around to it, and now I can!
We have a couple of great RPGs on here. Obviously, there's Final Fantasy VII, and when you consider the historic impact this game had on not only the genre and for the platform, but for the industry as well, you can't name a bigger classic title than Final Fantasy VII. Wild Arms is also a really solid RPG, and one of the best RPGs that was published by Sony.
You want another game that defines classic? Metal Gear Solid. If Final Fantasy VII was the definition of classic in the RPG genre, Metal Gear Solid would be the definition of classic for action games. In fact, one could even say it gave birth to a new sub genre: stealth action. It was clearly inspiration for another franchise we known as Splinter Cell not to mention Syphon Filter, which is also on this list. In my personal opinion, I felt Syphon Filter was a better game and it was one of those games I unfortunately got rid of, so I'm looking forward to having it again.
Battle Arena Toshinden is one of those games that I'm not that confident in defending, though. As a launch title, it was a lot of fun but I'm sure it won't be that great to go back to. That would be one of the games I'd gladly replace for something else but in keeping with Sony's "classic" theme, it would be as it was a launch title. At least we have Tekken 3, though, which in my opinion is the best of the first three.
The lack of Gran Turismo is a big one, though. Gran Turismo is one of Sony's biggest franchises and to not at least see the first title on there is a bit puzzling. But I learned that part of it has to do with vehicle and music licensing and that's part and parcel to why some games weren't able to make the list. I'm sure whomever was compiling this list tried their best, but there was too much red tape involved in procuring all the licensing involved and that's what we need to keep focused on when we don't find certain favorites in our classic consoles. We do have a racer, though, with Ridge Racer Type 4. I never played it, but I heard that it's one of the best in the series. We also have another driving game in the way of Destruction Derby and me personally, I'm glad to see it on there. It was one of the first PS games that I had and it was actually a lot of fun. I even remember taking my PS over to my friend's house and we hooked up two TVs to have our own screens. So much fun!
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, Cool Boarders 2, Mr. Driller and Revelations: Persona are the only games that I've had no experience with (haven't played RRT4, but I'm very familiar with the series). I doubt I'll try Rainbow Six because that kind of shooter doesn't interest me. With that said, the first game of a popular series is always a classic, so it fits. Cool Boarders 2 sounds fun, so I might try that. I never played Mr. Driller but hey, it's another puzzles, so that's always welcome. I've also never played a Persona game, so Revelations might be my first.
Just out of curiosity, I want to see what the Metacritic scores are and then average them just to see an overall quality rating. Now, I know some people say not to put stock in Metacritic, but it is a good resource to get a general idea of a game's reception. So here goes:
- Battle Arena Toshinden - 69
- Cool Boarders 2 - 65 (not listed on Metacritic, so I'm using GS's score of 6.5)
- Destruction Derby - 68 (again, no Metacritic so I'm using GS's score of 6.8)
- Final Fantasy VII - 92
- Grand Theft Auto - 80 (GS score)
- Intelligent Qube - 66 (GS score)
- Jumping Flash - 75 (IGN score)
- Metal Gear Solid - 94
- Mr Driller - 61 (GS score)
- Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee - 85
- Rayman - 74 (GS score)
- Resident Evil Director’s Cut - 91
- Revelations: Persona - 78
- Ridge Racer Type 4 - 88
- Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo - 83
- Syphon Filter - 90
- Tekken 3 - 96
- Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six - 80 (GS score)
- Twisted Metal - 70 (IGN score)
- Wild Arms - 86 (GS score)
So we're looking at 80 rounded up. As you can see, this was hard to do because some of the games were so old, they didn't have Metacrtic scores. I wasn't going to look up scores from multiple sources just to get an average for one game because I don't have the time, which is why I went with GS or IGN's scores. What would be interesting to see is being able to do this for the NES and SNES Classic games as well to see how the collections stack up, but if I couldn't find some PS games on Metacritic, I'm sure there would be several more NES and SNES games I wouldn't be able to find.
So an 80 average isn't bad at all. It's certainly not epic like a true classic collection should be. I'm also sure that we all have our own personal substitutions that would make the average score higher. I'd definitely have swapped out Battle Arena Toshinden with Soul Calibur and I'd have replaced Cool Boarders 2 with Tony Hawk. Definitely Twisted Metal 2 over the first. Silent Hill for Mr Driller and RE2 over RE1. Tomb Raider for Jumping Flash and FFVIII for Rainbow Six. But, I'm defeating the purpose of this blog by making a list of substitutions. The point of this blog is to focus on what the PlayStation Classic has, not what it's missing.
For me personally, there's plenty of good games here to justify the 100 dollars. Because the NES and SNES Classics were 60 and 80 respectively, it makes 100 seem to be too much, but people forget is these aren't 8-bit and 16-bit games. They're 32-bit games. They took more money to make and are also more substantial and longer in length. 100 dollars seem just right for me, although I really did wish Sony included Dual Shock support. I understand they wanted to keep with the "Classic" theme, so they wanted to release the PlayStation Classic in its launch day iteration, but that may have been the move that shot themselves in the foot as many games that I'm hearing people complain are missing are ones that need Dual Shock support like Ape Escape. Well, good luck trying to emulate those without having a controller you can use to play them...
Anyway, I'm happy with what's here. Sure, I'd be happier if some of the games were replaced with better ones but I'm certainly not going to sneeze at Metal Gear Solid, Syphon Filter, FFVII, Resident Evil, Wild Arms, RRT4, Twisted Metal, Tekken 3, Super Puzzles Fighter II Turbo, Intelligent Qube, Oddworld, Destruction Derby, Grand Theft Auto...well, you get the point.
