PlayStation Classic - what ARE those top 20 PS1 games?

This week the lineup for the PlayStation Classic was announced.  So, what are the 20 games that defined the PS1 era?  Which games did they choose to put on it..?  I'll tell you what: Battle Arena Toshinden, Cool Boarders 2, Destruction Derby, Final Fantasy VII, Grand Theft Auto, Intelligent Qube, Jumping Flash!, Metal Gear Solid, Mr Driller, Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee, Rayman, Resident Evil Director's Cut, Revelations: Persona, Ridge Racer Type 4, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, Syphon Filter, Tekken 3, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, Twisted Metal and Wild Arms.  I have to admit there's a sizeable proportion of games there that I've never even heard of!

I'm intrigued by how a list can miss off most of the games that people remember when you ask them what their favourite PS1 games were.  I still remember the winter when my brother and I walked through the snow to buy our first PlayStation from SES Computers in Southend.  Happy days.

As well as questioning friends, as part of my exhaustive research, I looked under our bed...

Spyro the Dragon seems to be a big favourite, remembered fondly by many, and lo and behold I found it under the bed.  Along with Worms Armageddon.  

Spyro and Worms Armageddon

Other classic platformers you may remember are Crash Bandicoot, Oddworld and Rayman (still appearing in great games on modern consoles).  Crash popped up in Uncharted 4 as a playable game in the game, which was pretty cool.

Final Fantasy VII and VIII are mentioned by a few people, and I did find VIII under the bed...

Final Fantasy VIII

There were plenty of great racing games on the PS1, though most have not aged well (some kinds of games get away with it better than others).  Gran Turismo is an obvious PS1 classic, but my brother and I also played a lot of Colin McRae Rally and TOCA, and Destruction Derby and Ridge Racer.  Racing games really do look a bit rubbish with their low polygon count.  Pixel art games can still look like they were made yesterday, but low poly cars, well...

Colin McRae, Demolition Racer, TOCA

Resident Evil!!  Aargh, great times spent eating herbs and what not.  Under the bed I found Resident Evil and also Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, which was the first Resident Evil game I completed.

Resident Evil 3: Nemesis and Resident Evil

Interestingly, no-one mentioned the iconic PS1 character Lara Croft and her famous series of Tomb Raider games (you may have heard of them).  Oh yes, they're still making them.  I hear the latest one isn't that great...  And under the bed I have Tomb Raiders II and III (oddly not I, which I'm sure we had).  Lara Croft WAS PlayStation, like Sonic was Sega, and yet she's nowhere to be seen on the PSClassic.  Mmm, I still find it confusing that Tomb Raider is no longer a PS exclusive.

Tomb Raider II and III

And finally, who can forget Metal Gear Solid, Parappa the Rapper (recently re-released), criminal classics Grand Theft Auto and Driver, scary Silent Hill, skateboardy Tony Hawk's (still going strong), and if you're into fighting then Street Fighter Alpha 3 and Tekken 3..?

The PlayStation Classic features some of these, then: Destruction Derby, Final Fantasy VII, Grand Theft Auto, Metal Gear Solid, Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee, Rayman, Resident Evil Director's Cut, Ridge Racer Type 4 and Tekken 3.  But the lack of some of the others is fairly disappointing.  I can see where the issues might lie (more on that later), but some might say if you can't do something properly then don't do it at all.

Of the ones I didn't know about, and/or no-one mentioned, the PSClassic features: Battle Arena Toshinden, Cool Boarders 2, Intelligent Qube, Jumping Flash!, Mr Driller, Revelations: Persona, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, Syphon Filter, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, Twisted Metal and Wild Arms.  Quite a few of these were bigger in Japan than here, which may be why they were included.  But Rainbow Six seems a particularly strange choice.

(I should note here that the Japanese console does have eight different games on it, replacing some of the aforementioned games with Arc the Lad I and II, Armored Core, G-Darius, Gradius Gaiden, Parasite Eve, Devil Dice and SaGa Frontier.)

So why aren't so many of the great games we remember included?  This article has some reasons why the tiny console is missing some obvious classics - music licensing, other licensing problems (cars, or NFL), remakes/re-releases and remasters, some games used the newer controller with sticks (which doesn't come with the PSClassic) and the big one - most of the PlayStation's best games were third party.  Not an issue that Nintendo had to deal with...

Waaaah, a PS1 without Tomb Raider...

All in all I'm not sure it's worth the £89.99 it will cost when it comes out on December 3rd.  It seems a shame that they don't release these things with the intention of making more games available later, whether freely or as purchasable extras.  Ah well.  I guess the PS2's under the bed, and unlike newer consoles that was properly backwards compatible.  Only trouble is, I think the controller cables were degrading.  And we have to find the cables to plug it into the flatscreen telly.  Ack...