Five completely unforgivable omissions from the PlayStation Classic game line-up

We demand dragons and marsupials, dammit

After the console was first announced a month or so ago, there’s been lots of speculation about what games would make up the twenty titles that come on the PlayStation Classic - a stand-alone plug-and-play replica of the original 1990s machine. Today, we finally found out. And it is a good selection. There are some all-time classics we’re excited to revisit, like Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy VII. Some really fun multiplayer titles, like Tekken 3 and Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo. And some rarer games that will be introduced to a lot of people for the first time, like Jumping Flash! and Intelligent Qube. All in all, it looks like it’ll be a decent purchase. But there are a few very notable omission, which people are not happy about. Look, we should all just be excited that we are going to get to play Revelations: Persona with relative ease. But most people are not the sort of weirdos who get excited about JPRGs from the 1990s. Most people just want to play the games they loved when they were eleven years old. But anyway – here are our pick of the five most obvious “Why the hell aren’t these on here” titles missing from the line-up.

Crash Bandicoot and/or Spyro The Dragon

Super Mario 64 was the defining 3D platformer of the late 1990s, and nothing on the PlayStation truly matched it. But both Crash and Spyro had a damn good try. Crash went for a much more linear level design than Mario 64, whereas Spyro aped its free-roaming gameplay. But regardless of the approach, both of them were the closest Sony had to a Mario or Sonic-style mascot platformer. Why the hell are they missing? The Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy remastered collection came out last year, and the Spyro Reignited Trilogy is coming out in time for Christmas - so including them on the PlayStation Classic would seem a little redundant.

WipeOut  

WipEout, and its sequel WipEout 2047, was a big part of how the PlayStation changed the perception of gaming from being something for babies and nerds, into something the cool kids did. Its trippy high-speed racing and big beat soundtrack (featuring the likes of The Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy and Underworld) made it the perfect video game time capsule of 1990s club culture. Why the hell is it missing? Those licenced songs aren’t going to come cheap, we’d guess.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater

The Tony Hawk games were amazing, regardless if you were one of those kids who used to skate all Saturday in the town centre wearing a Deftones hoodie, or if you were one of the kids that used to beat those kids up. It should be on here, really. Why the hell is it missing? Like WipEout, it featured a lot of licenced music, and they’d also probably have to re-licence the likenesses of Hawk, Bob Burnquist, Chad Muska et al.

Tomb Raider

A girl!?!?! In a video game!???? Yes, Lara Croft was genuinely quite revolutionary at the time. Sure, there had been female protagonists in games before, but she was the first one to become a proper pop culture phenomenon. The game wasn’t too shabby, either. Why the hell is it missing? Hard to say – plenty of other iconic third party franchises, like Resident Evil and Metal Gear Solid, are on the PlatStation Classic, so you’d think Lara would have been included as well.