never Overestimate The size of Playstation
The Playstation Classic is hitting shelves right now – we go hands on with the mini console
We’ve been fascinated by sony’s first venture into the world of plug-and-play retro consoles ever since its initial announcement, as there’s a huge potential market for the system, but the original hardware presents some unique challenges. We were able to get a little bit of hands-on time with the Playstation Classic just before we went to press, and can present our first impressions here.
As a miniature representation of the Playstation, the Playstation Classic is very accurate. The details of the original are carried across with great care – everything is sized proportionately, and even the rarely-used expansion port is represented. In fact, the textbased buttons suggest the system is fashioned after the earliest models of the system. The controllers are authentic recreations of the Playstation’s original digital controller – apart from their USB connectors, they’re externally indistinguishable both in look and feel. The cables are of a good length, too. The boot screen includes the familiar booming bass of the original machine’s boot screen, and the system menu is fashioned after the original memory card/cd player interface (though it’s the colourful Japanese and later export version, not the original grey export version).
The 20 games included in the collection makes for a pretty eclectic mix. There’s solid representation of the key third-party franchises from the Playstation years, some of the better first-party games and then some surprise inclusions – most of which are welcome, such as Mr Driller and Wild Arms. We’re surprised that some of the games were chosen over their superior sequels (Destruction Derby and Twisted Metal in particular), but almost every game included is at least solid – the only game we’d really single out as a bit of a stinker is Battle Arena Toshinden. There are some high-profile omissions, though. It’s no surprise not to see Gran Turismo, Wipeout or Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, all of which would have been licensing nightmares, and we’d guess that Crash and Spyro didn’t make the cut due to the availability of their remasters. However, the lack of any Tomb Raider representation is a surprise, and we’d expected Parappa The Rapper, too.
The Playstation Classic includes a virtual memory card for each game in the library, meaning that you won’t have to worry about memory-hungry games like Final Fantasy VII crowding out your other saves. Each game can also store one suspend point, which is created by hitting the reset button. The system outputs at 720p over HDMI, and each game is presented in its original 4:3 ratio with what appears to be a simple bilinear filter, providing a soft image. There are no display options, so common Crt-style effects such as scanlines are not available, nor are enhancements such as the texture smoothing offered on PS2. It appears that there’s a mixture of PAL and NTSC versions included, as some of the games showed
Sony Computer Entertainment Europe splash screens upon start-up, and others showed Sony Computer Entertainment America.
Our brief taste of the Playstation Classic has answered some questions, but we’ll hold off a full verdict of the product until we can get an extended look at the machine.