Castlevania Chronicles, the peculiar Playstation remake of a peculiar X68000 remake of the original Castlevania, was released as a downloadable title on Playstation Network today. It ain’t the best Castlevania out there, but it’s still a swell action title. The disc release was never widely distributed either, so this will be the very first time most interested players will even get the chance to try it out. Of course, the same could be said of a lot of Playstation games. The halcyon days of 2003 when you could walk into any Blockbuster or Gamestop in the country and pick up five classic PS1 games, often times still shrinkwrapped, for ten or twenty bucks are long over, and the collector’s market is making many great games prohibitively expensive. Want to play Silent Hill? Hope you’ve got an extra sixty-five dollars lying around. How about Suikoden II, considered to be the series’ definitive installment? That’ll be $150. And what about cult classics like CyberConnect2’s Silent Bomber? Yeah, seventy smackers.
You shouldn’t have to pay top dollar for these games, though, considering they could very easily be released on the Playstation Network. Over the course of the past two years, SCEA, along with a handful of other US publishers, have put up a measly twenty-six Playstation games on PSN, while Sony Japan have released close to a hundred. This isn’t the first time I’ve brought up this inexplicable disparity here at 61 Frames Per Second, but seriously, Sony. What the hell is going on here?! If the current market has proven anything, it’s that you can put almost anything up for download on a console and someone will buy it. There is no other explanation for Boogerman’s presence on Nintendo’s Virtual Console. The expense of having a game re-rated by the ESRB can’t be that high if Boogerman is getting re-released.
Sony, if you want to convince people to buy a Playstation 3 or PSP, then nostalgia-bomb them. Tell them they can relive all their fondest memories of 1997 for a mere five dollars on the Playstation Network and I promise you, people will literally throw money at you. And no, I don’t mean you should put up more Jet Moto games.
Related links:
Sony Gives Thanks Via Charming PSN Deals
Far Out, Man
I’ll Tell You When I’ve Had Enough!
Sony Might Just Hate You
Boogerman: Too Immature for Children