Celebrating the 30th anniversary is fun for all PlayStation fans, especially with Sony sending us down a nostalgia trip with the original boot up sound on the PS1. Along with multiple videos celebrating their history and countless games that came about because of PlayStation. While certain franchises like Crash Bandicoot and Spyro started on PlayStation, they are no longer IP owned by Sony, but there are a few other franchises that we wanted to highlight and possibly persuade Sony into reviving.
Jak and Daxter
The Jak and Daxter series is a platformer that follows the adventures of Jak, a young boy, and his Ottsel sidekick, Daxter. Jak X: Combat Racing, was released in 2005, that’s (counts on fingers) nearly 10 years ago. The game was developed by Naughty Dog which has since then gone on adventures in Uncharted and The Last of Us, but has been rather quiet over the past few years. But nothing can really beat the classic platforming magic that Jak and Daxter brought with them, and games have since then gone away from this style.
Sly Cooper
The Sly Cooper series is a stealth platformer that follows the adventures of Sly Cooper, a raccoon thief. The last game in the series, Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, was released in 2013. The stealth mechanics of the game is honestly a craft that has been lost in most modern games. Stealth from the early 2000’s is much different than stealth today, and it seems that people are not a fan of the mechanic in new games like Star Wars: Outlaws. However perhaps the team at Sucker Punch could once again innovate in the genre.
Twisted Metal
The Twisted Metal series is a vehicular combat game that follows the adventures of various drivers as they compete in a deadly demolition derby. The last game in the series, Twisted Metal: Black, was released in 2001, but a remastered version of the original game was released in 2012 that didn’t find much success. I was personally hoping something was being done with the franchise again when the new TV series premiered and actually did fairly decent in viewership. Arcade shoot em up vehicle games is an entirely lost art in modern games, and this game needs to be handed to a studio that can truly innovate in all areas. The Twisted Metal of PS1 days might now be so welcoming.
PaRappa The Rapper
The PaRappa The Rapper series is a music based combo game, like Guitar Hero but much harder. You complete levels by matching your buttons to the music. The last game in the series was released in 2001, but a re-release and slight remaster hit PS4 in 2015. This is game that is seriously hard to play, but somehow it’s still very fun because of the outrageous story and comedic tunes you will play. If the game does get revived at some point I personally think it needs a total overhaul to everything it offers, while also finding a way to make it a little easier for a more casual audience. This is a game that is still grasping hold of being hard to play.
Resistance
The Resistance series is a first-person shooter that follows the adventures of various human soldiers as they fight against a Chimera invasion. The last game in the series, Resistance 3, was released in 2011. This is a game that kind of lost its soul thanks to the push for games to be “more like Call of Duty.”
The first two Resistance titles featured epic online battles with huge lobbies, and the single player campaigns were just as big, but still linear enough to tell a story. By Resistance 3 it seemed like a lot of this was torn out, online became “more personable” and the story obviously lost it’s main character, Nathan Hale. Since then, Insomniac has never returned to the franchise, but it’s a dang shame. The only way to keep playing the games is via PS Plus streaming, and until recently even that wasn’t an option. It’s time for an update.
Sony has a lot of franchises that they could look into their vault and find, and pretty much all of these franchises meet their standards of being bigger than games. I could easily see Resistance becoming a movie, or PaRappa becoming a TV show. Games like Jak and Daxter and Sly Cooper could easily be lower budget bridge games between big blockbusters too. But the biggest factor here is showing how diverse the lineup of PlayStation used to be, everything from thieving racoons to alien invasions.
