Usually I like to poke fun at overexcited fans and how easily they will get worked up over a complete nonissue. Shawn Layden’s Crash Bandicoot t-shirt during the PlayStation Experience keynote, however, was a little provocative and tactless. Unless Sony still has a surprise announcement for a Crash Bandicoot sequel or remake up its sleeve, I can see why everyone is annoyed by that little stunt. Personally, I couldn’t care less. I loved Crash Bandicoot on the PlayStation, but it was never one of my favorite games. Jumping, flipping, chomping, spinning… I get it, but I have no idea why everyone has been obsessing over Crash Bandicoot lately.
Naughty Dog hears you, and it knows you want to see a Crash remake or sequel. Remakes and sequels are all the rage these days, and I have no doubt that it’s only a matter of time before we see a Crash Bandicoot game in some way, shape, or form on the PS4; it’s a guaranteed seller. The sucky part is the waiting. On the bright side, at least your voice is being heard, and Naughty Dog has gone on record talking about how cool it would be to revive Crash Bandicoot. What truly sucks is having a deep love for classic PlayStation games that you know will never get a remake or a sequel. There are games that went under the radar even in their heyday. Brilliant games; games that, with a little touching up, would totally take modern gamers by surprise and make the hearts of fans everywhere implode with nostalgia.
There are three PlayStation games in particular, the praises of which are rarely sung, that I would give parts of my body to see sequels for, or to see brought back to life in any way. Sadly, I have a better chance of succeeding Tom Brady as the Patriots QB than I do of playing any of the following games on PS4:
SaGa Frontier:
I rented this game from Blockbuster and begged my parents (I was 11) to buy it for me before I even returned it. I really did feel like I was getting seven games for the price of one. The art was incredible, it had an amazing soundtrack, and the interconnected world and the way in which different storylines tied together made for a game that was so ahead of its time. Plus, this was one of the first games that gave you something cool to look at during certain loading screens: traveling between certain locations would treat you to an awesome, computer-generated loop of your airship speeding to your destination to some beautiful traveling music. If Square Enix released each character’s story as a standalone game for 5 or 6 bucks I would buy them all.
Azure Dreams:
Does anyone else remember Azure Dreams? Part Pokemon , part roguelike dungeon-crawler, part city builder, part dating-sim… Seriously, with all of these different gameplay elements you might expect some kind of thinly-spread mess of a game, but Azure Dreams was anything but. No matter how you spent your time you felt like you were making meaningful progress. Advancing up the monster tower was not easy; this game was hardcore, and you needed some seriously well-trained familiars to make it very far at all. Thankfully collecting monster eggs and training your familiars was addictive and rewarding. The game would have you believe that reaching the top of the tower is the ultimate goal, but the real objective is to win the heart of Patty Pan. Unless you decide to play this game on an emulator, though, you’ll never get that chance, as it was published by Konami.
Monster Rancher:
Monster Rancher was awesome because it made your entire CD collection much more useful. The game concept itself doesn’t sound wholly original – you find, tame, train, and battle monsters – but the method for discovering new monsters was incredible: the game would pause as you opened your up your PlayStation and inserted a CD. The game would read some data from that CD and generate a monster for you to train. There were common monsters and rare monsters; weak ones and strong ones. I remember racing home after school and calling my best friend to experiment with different CDs. Coincidentally (or was it by design?), it was always the CDs you were ashamed to have in your collection that yielded the most powerful monsters. I remember specifically the premier Hanson CD and the NSYNC Christmas CD containing really awesome monsters. As no one buys CDs anymore, I’m not sure how the game would work nowadays. QR codes? NFC figurines? Ah, just forget it.
We all have those games that, while they may have meant the world to us, will never get the tender love and care that they deserve from publishers. What are the PlayStation games that you remember loving that no one ever talks about?