Retro Gaming Australia

One of the slightly more baffling issues with the newly released PlayStation Vita has been the lack of PSOne compatibility. Sony has said that “they’re working on it”, but little has been mentioned since.

However, it appears that the Vita will see PSOne compatibility sooner rather than later. Recent PSOne Classics release Buzz Lightyear of Star Command has been spotted on the Vita PlayStation Store with a system menu icon unique to the Vita.

Attempting to play the game currently results in an error screen. Hopefully the issue will be corrected in the near future.

A couple months ago we ran a story about PS2 Classics like God Hand being re-released for download on the US PlayStation Store. Well after a long wait, they’ve finally come to the SCEE run stores.

We’ve got a much larger initial line up of games too, though the quality greatly varies. Games are priced between $AU4.25 and $AU15.95. Here’s the list of what’s currently available:

• A-Train 6 ($AU15.95)
• Arcade Classics ($AU8.45)
• Bust-A-Bloc ($AU8.45)
• Cel Damage: Overdrive ($AU8.45)
• Chicken Little ($AU15.95)
• Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe ($AU15.95)
• Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey ($AU15.95)
• Donald Duck: Goin’ Quackers ($AU15.95)
• God Hand ($AU15.95)
• Golden Age of Racing ($AU8.45)
• Gungrave Overdose ($AU8.45)
• International Super Karts ($AU6.25)
• Kim Possible: What’s the Switch ($AU15.95)
• Maximo ($AU15.95)
• Maximo vs. the Army of Zin ($AU15.95)
• Meet the Robinsons ($AU15.95)
• Mr Golf ($AU11.45)
• MX World Tour ($AU8.45)
• Neo Contra ($AU15.95)
• Noble Racing ($AU8.45)
• Road Trip Adventure ($AU8.45)
• Seek and Destroy ($AU8.45)
• Skyscraper ($AU4.25)
• SSX On Tour ($AU15.95)
• WWI: Aces of the Sky ($AU8.45)
• WW2: Battle Over the Pacific ($AU8.45)

While it’s certainly a case of quantity over quality, I recommend God Hand, the two Maximo games and Neo Contra.

Sony announced earlier in the week via the official US PlayStation Blog that a limited selection of PlayStation 2 games will be made available for sale on PlayStation Network.

The first titles to appear as part of the new “Only on PSN” campaign are God Hand, GrimGrimoire, Maximo: Ghosts to Glory, Odin Sphere and Ring of Red. As of next month, the PS2 games will appear in their own category.

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has said that the PS2 games will be appearing on the PAL stores in the next month or so, but did not specify which titles will appear.

The range of PSone Classics available on the PAL PlayStation Stores has been nothing short of shameful. It’s mainly due to rights issues caused by major publishers not having a PAL region presence during the 32-bit era, or at least that’s what I’ve been led to believe in the past.

Anyway, it seems like that’s all about to change according to the PlayStation Blog. They announced today that NTSC-U and NTSC-J PSone Classics will be made available for release on the PAL stores. No titles, dates or prices have been announced yet.

Basically what that means now is that if a title is cleared for release on either the JP or the US store, SCEE can put it up unaltered for release on their stores unaltered – so long as they are approved by the ratings boards. They won’t have to be resubmitted for approval by SCEE (but they do have to be tested, so titles won’t be posted day and date with their US or JP releases), unless they actually want to release the PAL version.

More importantly, all of those games will run in 60Hz – no more paying extra for shitty slow and bordered PAL versions. If only Nintendo did the same.

Of course, anything held back by expired licenses is still not going to appear.