So in my last post I talked about the SNES mini classic and at the end I said my following post would be about the idea of a Playstation One mini and why I think Sony should and could do this.I know that basically the Playstation One was a smaller sleeker version of the original playstation hardware and therefore some might say it should just be called the Playstation Mini, but with the fact there has been a Playstation 2, 3 and 4 I think you need a word like One or Original to make it clear we are talking about the original hardware and the games from that machine.
So why do I think a mini playstation console would be a good idea? Well why was the NES mini so desired well its because of nostalgia and I happen to think that there is a heck of a lot of nostalgia around the original playstation. I know some people will say that with the games being on Disc and so much larger this is not feasable but I dont think thats the case at all and I think its a tottally workable idea. If you think about the playstation TV console which was a small box which was basically a playstation vita redesigned as a simple home console then in a way there you pretty much had a Playstation Mini Classic. Let me explain the Vita was capable of playing PS1 games that you could purchase and download through the sony store, the Playstation TV being basically a Vita was capable of this to, all you did was buy the games, download them, hook the Playstation TV up to a TV and use a PS3 pad. If this existed then why wasnt everyone doing it you might ask? Well I would say that it was mostly due to the fact a lot of people didnt realise it was possible and this was because it wasnt marketed in the right way.
Imagine a PS TV now instead of it being black imagine it recieving a redesign, imagine it in classic playstation grey, imagine it looking like a shrunken original playstation complete with original logos and everytghing but with A hdmi port and all the modern trimmings. Now think about what it would be like if instead of giving it all kinds of settings options and download channels and such you replaced all of this with a user friendly game selection screen and a choice of around 15 classic playstation one games and you marketed the heck out of it just before christmas appealing heavily to those of us who lived through the original playstation years.
Game size is actually a lot smaller issue than you would think you see for example the original Rayman was around 500MB on disc but the version on the Playstation store is compressed and comes down to about 95MB. If you think about trying to offer up about 15 games and save room for them all plus a little room for the menu's and such you could proberbly swing it with around 2gigs of memory or heck with 4 you could go to town and push the boat out and either offer larger games or go for a number closer to 20.
So when starting to think about the games I would put on a Playstation mini classic I thought what kind of thing do you want, I wanted to try not to pick any massive sized multi disc game if I could help it and I also wanted to try and make it somehow represent the entire catalog in some way or another. I thought I would start by looking at the begining and when the playstation originally released It came out the gate with a few awesome games including Tekken, Battle Arena Toshinden, Warhawk, Air Combat, , Ridge Racer and Rayman and quiet honestly I would kind of be inclined to include all of these in a way but then when you think about it some of them do have sequels which have just that snippet of extra polish so maybe I would go for Tekken 2, Battle Arena Toshinden 2, Ridge Racer Revolution, WarHawk, Air Combat and Rayman (yes I am aware Air Combat had sequels but the first is better in my oppinion). So if we are going for 15 thats 6 down and 9 to go. The next 2 games I would say are very much based on my memory of them and they would be Krazy Ivan which for those that havent played it is a mech game and Loaded. I also can not even consider a Playstation one classic without throwing on CastleVania Symphony of the night as in my humble oppinion its one of the greatest games of all time. I would also feel the need to drop Parapa the Rapper on there because I think the game offers something diffrent. I would also add the first Gran Turismo and the first Twisted Metal due to them being the start of great franchises. Ok so this leaves me with 3 spots to fill, so I think I need to stop and think about what I am lacking here.
For the last 3 spaces I would go for Vandal Hearts a great Fire Emblem style tactical game, and then I would throw in Suikoden which is an extremly good RPG and finally Wild Arms another RPG which is a little bit diffrent for having a sort of western theme. You might like my selection of games or you might not but I am sure it has got you thinking about what you would put on a machine like this if you were in charge and thats ultimatly what is so fascinating about this we proberbly all have our own list of the ideal catalog for a mini machine be it either what we feel are the best games or the games that best represent the machine or simply what would sell best and make the highest profits.
So there are a lot of reasons I would like to see this being done, one of them is because I think that a system like this could be a lot of fun for people and introduce them to both the games of there youth but also stuff they missed out on but also because I would like for Sony to show Nintendo how it is done. I am not saying Sony or there games are better than Nintendo but I do firmly believe that if Sony saw people desperate to pay them for something they had made, if they saw it was going to draw a big profit they would push the boat out to ensure that there was good availability, that new units kept hitting the market not long after the last batch had sold out, and that they would make sure they kept on making money out of the situation rather than allowing scalpers to be the ones to benefit the most. The thing is basically I believe very strongly in the need for good competition and I think that in order for Nintendo to do there best they need to feel under threat, and not just them I think this is true of any company, while Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft all fight for our cash and attention and put out the best products they can to do this then it is us the consumers who are ultimatly winning.
