PS1 catalogue on PS3 not yet playable

by James Ransom-Wiley on Oct 20th 2006 12:25PM

Speaking with 1UP, Sony's Phil Harrison detailed plans to make most of the PlayStation (PS1) catalogue available for download on PlayStation 3 -- in addition to PSP. Harrison confirmed that a few titles will be available at launch, including Twisted Metal and Syphon Filter. The catch is you'll have to play them on your PSP, since PS3 currently lacks PS1 emulation software.

Once the patch is distributed though -- Harrison hopes by year's end -- each PS1 download will be playable on both PS3 and PSP, allowing us to enjoy treasured classics and rarities on-the-go and on the big screen. Just be warned, PS1 games will not be enhanced for your 1080p display.

Note: Actual PS1 discs will be playable at launch.

Source

Tags: download, emulate, emulator, Phil Harrison, PhilHarrison, PlayStation, PS1, PS2, PS3, PSP, software, Syphon Filter, SyphonFilter, Twisted Metal, TwistedMetal

Reader Comments (46)

Anyone care to mention what the best PS1 game would be? I'm sure many a few people will adopt the PS3 as their first Sony console, so maybe a top three PS1 games to purchase?

It's just terrible that my post above was so grammatically incorrect...

RD,

1. Resident Evil 2
2. Vagrant Story
3. Xenogears
4. Einhander (fun in its own ways)
5. Final Fantasy Tactics

For top three PS1 games, my forecast is:
- Gran Turismo 2
- Metal Gear Solid
- Final Fantasy VII

As for the "best" PS1 game, I'd say MGS... but it's a subjective question obviously.

Syphon Filter was one sweet of a game!!!

Don't forget Parasite Eve 2!!! mmmm :D

1. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
2. Resident Evil
3. Final Fantasy VII
4. Vagrant Story

I could keep going...

I wonder if they'll be adding 'Entitlement' points to any of the old games? Ha.

Why is it that I am extremely excited to play Nintendo games all the way back to the NES era, but the thought of playing PS1 games doesn't excite me? I'd say the N64 had something of lasting value over the PS1. However, I am just as unenthusiastic about playing Gamecube games as I am about playing PS1 games.

1. N20 - while games like Geometry Wars and Rez have trumped it visually, N20 was the first pure piece of Playstation psychedelica. Launched Crystal Method's career.

2. Silent Hill - I haven't played it in a while; I imagine it controls like crap. But it was miles scarier than Resident Evil and launched one of Konami's most influential series of all time.

3. Rollcage - perhaps the most unfairly abandoned racing series ever. The gimmick here was that the cars had huge wheels that could stick to any surface, allowing your car to barrel roll through tunnels or flip over and keep rolling. Rollcage 2 was much worse than the original and prematurely ended the series.

JET

Don't forget about Parasite Eve 1. Its fun in its own way. PE2 felt more like an action game than an RPG.

Wasn't Square Enix going to make a remake of PE 1 for the PS2? Oh well there always the PS3 :)

I don't really see this as a bad thing. Most of the PS1 popular games aren't made by SCEA but by third party developers. Which means that Sony would have to pay those developers for the rights for their games to be downloaded. Which in turn means loyalties. If i were Sony I wouldn't have a downloadable cataloge unless I can have Metal Gear Solid, Tekken, and Final Fantasy VII available to play one Day One. Legally.

Castlevainia: Symphony of the Night
Breath of Fire 3/4
Silent Hill
Metal Gear Solid
PaRappa The Rapper
The Final Fantasies
Resident Evil 1/2

Sweet sweet PS1 goodness!

The press conference also mentioned the price of the downloadable games: $15 or less

Top 3 native PS1 titles:

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Metal Gear Solid
Oddworld: Abe's Odyssee

Also of note: pick your Squeenix RPG: FF1/2/4/5/6/7/8/9/Tactics, Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, DQ7, Parasite Eve, Valkyrie Profile, the first half of Xenogears, Vagrant Story, etc. Echo whoever mentioned Einhander. Great game.

AND, Lunar: Silver Star Story + Eternal Blue. If you like Grandia, there's also a Grandia port.

Man, PS1 compatibility rocks. Between that and out-of-the-box PS2 compatibility, do NOT underestimate the power of backcompat.

i'm sorry about its royalties. not loyalties.

No one can stop Mr. Domino!

"Just be warned, PS1 games will not be enhanced for your 1080p display."

Ehh, and that's the way it should be. I absolutely hate when people ruin old low-poly classics by trying to run them at 1600x1200 in an emulator.

Games back then weren't made to be looked at inches away from the screen, to appreciate the pores rendered into the facial texture of your character. They were meant to be looked at from a distance, forming a whole picture, like the art director intended. Trying to force 1080p on a game like that is retarded and ruins it completely.

Man, I HATE syphon filter. the series is terrible (in my opinion, of course)

Give me Intelligent Qube for download! That is a terrific game. Or Vib Ribbon. totally underrated

And if Suikoden 1 and 2 were downloadable..man. I would buy a psp if they would release the suikoden 1&2 collection in the US

ohh, and Incredible Crisis! that game was great, even if some of the games in it were ridiculously hard

Well, let's hope their emulation is better than MS's. I I had the pleasure of restarting Halo 2 no less than 5 times last night due to emulation crashing. And that didn't include restarts due to ghosting.

I am getting a little tired of companies promising things before they even have them. Tell me when the emulation is done and works perfectly before you brag about how it's something your system will include. This only goes to create negativity in gamers when something is promised but isn't delivered.

That headline is a bit sensational and misleading. You do mention later in the post that the discs still do work (all of them, and they don't require a certain SKU to do so;)) but the headline makes it sound like the games don't work at all.

Oh well, I guess it grabs more attention this way....

Einhander must be a download title. Sony owns the rights to it since they published it for the PS1 on behalf of Square Enix. EVERYONE MUST PLAY THIS SHOOTER>>>>>>>>>>>AMAZING.

I wonder if Sony is going to compress the Psone games for download? I mean 600MB will take a while to download on even a cable modem connection.

Yes, Incredible Crisis. I had forgotten the name of that one. Great stuff.

JET

I'd like to thank everyone for the good information about PS1 games. There may come a time when I, the Nintendo Fan, could get the PS3 and build a sweet library of PS1 and PS2 games.

Thanks again!

I don't understand how you can play a PS1 game if you launch it from the Blu-Ray drive, but if you download it, it's suddenly unplayable.

Why is emulation again?

-Vagrant Story
-Parappa
-Intelligent Qube
-Dead or Alive 1
-Jumping Flash
-Metal Gear Solid

er, I mean why is emulation needed?

riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiidddddddddddddddddddddddggggggggggggeeeeeee racer

If the PS3 can play the games from the BlueRay, its not a PS1 emulation Problem, its a drive emulation problem. Sony could include a programe like Alcholl and the problem solved :)

Final Fantasy VII is the one and only reason u should own a PS1.

"21. I don't understand how you can play a PS1 game if you launch it from the Blu-Ray drive, but if you download it, it's suddenly unplayable.

Why is emulation again?

Posted at 1:40PM on Oct 20th 2006 by n2 0 stars

22. er, I mean why is emulation needed?

Posted at 1:42PM on Oct 20th 2006 by n2 0 stars"

I second this WTF question. Booting from physical media is no different that booting from virtual media (except when copy protection is introduced). It should be easy for them to allow PS3 to use the built in hardware with no emulation on downloadable PS3 software.

Sounds like their going about doing this Back-Asswards. And why not be able to scale it up, if you wanted to?

What a minute! I thought all PS1 and PS2 titles were completely back compatible on day 1??? This was one of the battlecries of Sony fanboys.. guess not.. Sounds like it's doing something similar to the 360 with using an "emulator". Hrm.. But I guess it's okay since it's Sony doing it.

If it doesn't upconvert to 1080p (or whatever your chosen resolution is) then what does it do? Output 480i and force your tv to upconvert? What is the point of the that, doing internal to PS3 digitally would be much better than having an external TV processing do it.

Razer,

They are backwards compatible. That's why I said the article title was misleading. The DISCS on the system are backwards compatible, as the article, my previous post and just about every other post to this story has said.

It's the emulation of games that will not work.

Nobody meantioned Suikoden 1 and 2 soul reaver or legacy of kain: blood omen.

Suikoden 2 is the best purchase I ever made. Not only is it the best game in the series, it has also more than doubled in value. Lowest price on Amazon currently is $130. That just the cd. Mine is mint with book and original case. I think I could sell it for about $200 bucks if I wanted to, which I never will. Brand new in the palastic goes for about $380-$580. That's really insane.

Chris, your comment makes no sense.
Whether the game is running from Disc, or from a download, Emulation is absolutely, 100% required (and SHOULD be no different). There is absolutely no functional difference between a game downloaded from the PS service, or one loaded from a disc except where it's being loaded from (and the HD would be faster than the Optical Drive anyway).

I'd like to see Valkyrie Profile, simply because I hear it's good and insane difficult/expensive to find.

I would assume its a DRM problem, Sony didnt want PS3's to be cracked on the first version, so they gimped it, if a crack does happen on version 2 at least you cant buy the system and crack it immediately, you would need to find a way to get version 2 first.

either that or the games downloaded will be compressed (which makes sense) and they never implemented code yet to uncompress it.

my guys is its a DRM thing though, who knows how long it will take for someone crack the system and make backups of all the downloaded games, and pass them around to people without an updated firmware. much like X-Box you couldnt play online with copied games, you wouldnt be able to do anything online with your PS3 if its version1.

- JUMPING FLASH 2
- ROBOPIT
- RAGE RACER
- BUSHIDO BLADE 2
- JET MOTO
- DIE HARD TRILOGY
- WIPEOUT (with the old school Prodigy music in it)
- DEMOLITION DERBY 2
- PUZZLE FIGHTER

I won't buy a PS3 until I can download these.

Einhander FTW. :P

I still have all my old PS1 games, they all worked in my PS2..

Glad Ive kept them all these years..

it's funny, because i hate Syphon Filter also, but Dark Mirror on the PSP is friggin sweet. it's arguably one of the best titles on the handheld. oh the irony. i didn't want to buy it, but i had the urge to shoot something, and Splinter Cell on the PSP sucked monkey balls, so i had to go with Syphon Filter.

i bought the first Syphon Filter on the PS1 when it was released, as it was getting good ratings, but it didn't do anything for me. Dark Mirror controls like RE4 and has some genuinely good gameplay moments. The story is ho hum (ie, it's not Metal Gear calibur), but overall, it's really good. i was suprised.

as for the topic at hand, once i can download Symphony of the Night onto my PSP (as well as Vagrant Story, and Chrono Cross), i'll be a happy, happy man, and i may end up updating my firmware, or buying a second PSP so i can play those old games, as well as older PSP games (Silent Hill: Origins and MGS: Portable Ops look great).

PLEASE VISIT MY PS3 MTSPACE WEB http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=110939583

I still play:

bushido blade - there has never been as solid of a one hit kills fighter. Incredibly deep. The seccond sucked.

nitrous oxide (n2o) - i can completely tune out and play this game for hours.

metal gear solid - it's still fun to break necks.

Tobal 2. Yes the first one came out here and didnt fare so well. But tobal 2 was such a suprerior fighting game. Anybody who played it would agree, and anybody who didnt... well, its hard to explain why its so good.

just buy an import... or wait till you can download it on the PS Store.

Top three games for playstation I'd have to say.
1.Einhander ( whoa how about Einhander 2 for the ps3)
THAT WOULD BE A DREAM COME TRUE. BEST SHOOTER OF ALL TIME!!!!!!!!!IF you loved Star Fox(snes&N64) you will love this game!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2.Alundra 1 RPG if you don't know, As good as Zelda(snes) if you loved that game you. there you go.
2..All of the Final Fantasy. everyone knows that.

3.There are to many good games for the playstation

list continued

castlevania s.o.t.n.
silent hill
resident evil 1&2 part 3 was okay
intelligent cube- this game is still cool to this day
it has stood the test of time just
like tetris. but different.
tomb raider 1&2 GOOD. PART 3&4 HA OKAY NOT GREAT.

The best advise to someone that didn't have a playstation 1. You can still buy games at used game stores and IF you search google you can still find new games still today. Sony pulled the plug on the system in 2005. IF that says anything about how good the system was, all about the games. And sony delivered.

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PS1 catalogue on PS3 not yet playable

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