Retro Gaming Australia

Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, the second part of Persona 2, is coming to the PlayStation Network as a PSOne Classic this week in North America.

Eternal Punishment is set a few months after Persona 2: Innocent Sin, with both games acting as chapters of the one storyline which is a sequel to Revelations: Persona – the first game in the Shin Megami Tensei: Persona series. The original PlayStation version of Eternal Punishment was released in North America in 2000, however Innocent Sin remained exclusive to Japan until its PSP remake released worldwide in 2011. Unfortunately, the PSP remake of Eternal Punishment has not been localised – so here we are, with the PlayStation original being re-released via PSN instead.

Persona 2: Eternal Punishment will be available on the US PSN any day now, however there is no word on whether other regions will too see the PSOne Classic. Such a release would signify Eternal Punishment‘s first release in PAL territories.

Source: Siliconera

At their press conference at GamesCom this morning, Sony announced that the long awaited PSOne compatibility for the PlayStation Vita will start rolling out from August 28.

Unfortunately, not all games will work out of the gate – it sounds like Sony will be rolling compatibility out slowly, with Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy VII mentioned as being among the first wave of titles.

Probably not the most delicate way of handling it, but I guess we should be happy that Sony is giving the ailing handheld some attention.

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.

Shu Yoshida, President of SCE Worldwide Studios, has today announced that the much-loved RPG The Legend of Dragoon will be available May 1 as a PSone Classic on the US PlayStation Store.

The Legend of Dragoon was developed and published by Sony Computer Entertainment, and released in 2000 for North America and 2001 for Europe.

This turn-based RPG sees players take the role of Dart, the spiky-haired protagonist, as he embarks on a heroic journey to save his childhood friend and protect the world. The title has nine playable characters and eight Dragoon Spirits which transform characters into a more powerful form – a Dragoon.

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.