PlayStation Plus Has A New Classic PS1 Gem That Everyone Needs To Download | CPT PPP Coverage

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Between The Legend of Dragoon, Wild Arms 2, Ape Escape and Hot Shots Golf, PlayStation Plus Premium has slowly been delivering on its retro revival promise, even if it is at a snail’s pace. Many of the first-party published titles even have integrated trophy support now, a welcome addition that breathes new life into these 32-bit gems. That’s on top of cool extra features like rewind, up-rendering and quick saving, too.

We won’t mention the sorry state that The Legend of Dragoon launched in, though to Sony’s credit, a patch was released soon after that supposedly fixed many of the annoying and sometimes game-breaking issues that were present. Good on whatever team was responsible for the quick mend. I’m still a little salty that such glaring glitches were initially overlooked, I’ll admit.

A few days ago, PlayStation Plus was updated with the latest slew of playable games, including some truly great offerings like Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection, Rage 2 (this one is ridiculous, mindless fun), and Ghostwire Tokyo, a strange game I’ve been meaning to check out. Sony has really been ramping up its subscription services lately, bringing a better value to customers through more substantial selections of software that people might actually want to play.

Still, more than anything else, I’m always eyeing that sweet Classic Catalog for my monthly nostalgia fix. This month, the menu is looking rather intriguing, especially with a particular PS1 throwback from Namco. R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 is the game I’m talking about, and the PlayStation original was released way back in the year of our lord, 1998 (1999 if you were in Europe or North America), and I bought a copy real quick, if not at launch then very close to it.

Interestingly, it came packaged in a double CD case with a sort of remastered 60 FPS version of the groundbreaking console port of Ridge Racer, probably the first remaster I’d yet encountered in my formative gaming years. R4 supported the perennially strange JogCon thumb-wheel controller (it featured steering force feedback), as well as the ill-fated Japan-only PocketStation peripheral.

Other than Final Fantasy VIII, R4 was the only game I owned that not only included mysterious North American PocketStation support, but also directly referenced the awesome vaporware PDA in the manual. It was all a big tease, in the end, because we’d never get the PocketStation in the states, no matter how much we begged. Or however much I begged, rather.

Anyway, R4 is an extremely good racing game that still holds up today, in my humble opinion. However, you will need to be subscribed to the Premium Plus tier to partake in this car collage of greatness. The only downside to this re-release is that, following in the footsteps of its other recent Classics, Namco didn’t add trophy support here. Why? This breaks my trophy-hunting heart. Come on, Namco! Give the people what they want!

That said, the other two Classics released this month—PSP titles Ape Academy 2 and Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror—do in fact have a trophy list. I’ve never played Ape Academy 2, but I have played Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror, and it’s a decent portable Syphon Filter, for sure. At least Bend Studio has been taking the time to add trophies to its beloved third-person action series, including the first three PS1 games. Thanks, Bend!

So even though you can’t hook up a JogCon or a PocketStation to your PS5 or PS4, I’d still highly recommend that you all check out R4. The soundtrack is killer (like, really killer), the controls are spot-on and the graphics glow with a kind of late-90s dusky PS1 aesthetic that you just can’t get anywhere else.

So go on. Go download R4 and race now. You can thank me later.