VG247’s Best Games Ever Podcast – Episode 21: The Best Dead Game You’d Buy a Console For If It Came Back
The PlayStation 3 was a strange thing. The console that was late to the party, which the Xbox 360 opened up quite brilliantly, was a big deal. In Sony-owned countries like the UK, everyone seemed to be waiting for it. It didn’t really matter that the launch lineup was a bit naff, that the console itself looked hideous, or that it was ridiculously expensive. The successor to perhaps the greatest console of all time, the PS2, was huge.
But what exactly were people dying to play on their new PS3? I was at the UK launch in March 2006, somewhere in London, probably in a shop that no longer exists and is now a Greggs. There we interviewed now Stadia failer Phil Harrison – who is basically a giant. I had never spoken to such an intimidatingly tall man before. Phil, a big deal like his PlayStation days (lots of ducks etc.) wasn’t my highlight of the evening. Oh no. It was the public. More specifically, the real reasons why some of them bought a new £1billion PS3.
One person, a young man with a pencil-thin mustache, said to me quite enthusiastically, “Sonic.” This surprised me so much that I almost laughed for the first time since the BBC2 comedy show Fist of Fun aired in 1995. But I digress. This person queued for hours to spend £425 (plus the price of the game) to play an absolutely awful Sonic game that everyone knew was awful as it had been released on the Xbox 360 the previous year.
Many people in the queue couldn’t even name a single game they bought, all they could say was about Blu-ray and FIFA – although the first FIFA for PS3 was about six months away from release. No bother.
Ridge Racer 7 was there right from the start. But no, of course nobody mentioned it. Of all the reasons I’ve been told why people bought a PS3 at launch, one thought the crown was the most bizarre, nonsensical accounting I’d ever heard.
“Yes, I found out that I can save the money I wanted to spend on a laptop just by buying a PS3,” one man told me. “I will do all my work on the PS3. I just need to connect a keyboard. I have a printer ready to go,” he added. I nodded politely and walked away.
To my knowledge, no word processor has been released for the PS3 (unless you have Linux installed on it). I hope you installed Linux and used up your little heart, man. I really do.
However. Welcome to VG247’s Best Games Ever Podcast: Episode 21 – The best dead game you’d buy a console for if it came back.
Please let us know what you think of the show – and if this is your first time listening to the show, come back to listen to previous episodes. If you have any topic suggestions, we look forward to them. To be clear, no one has submitted a single proposal here. I’m starting to think nobody reads this. Which is pretty sad.
“What’s VG247’s best gaming podcast of all time?” you ask, reflecting on how awful the PS3 launch lineup was and how the whole thing was saved because it was a Blu-ray machine. Anyway, this podcast, which is why you’re on this page, is essentially a 30 minute panel show where people (me and a few others on VG247) vote on the best game in a given category. That’s it. It’s good. Listen to it.
We’ve got some details on the show’s content below (if you want a refresher before heading to the comments section for a wonderful, considered post, or don’t want to listen but want to know which games we’ve picked), so If you want to avoid spoilers, don’t scroll past this fan-made creation that shows what Chris Bratt would look like if he had a PS3 for his head, but had the soul of his actual head trapped inside. (Support friends of VG247, People Make Games, on Patreon).
The best dead game you’d buy a console for if it came back
This is the subject of the twenty-first episode of VG247’s Best Games Ever Podcast. Here’s a rundown of who picked what.
Tom-Ridge Racer
Is there any other game series that calls out for the launch title more than Ridge Racer? It wasn’t just a launch game for the original PlayStation; it was THE launch game for the original PlayStation. It proved what this console could do and sold an entire generation on the new console in a market that had been dominated by SEGA and Nintendo.
Alex – Time Crisis
I chose Time Crisis, but I have to agree with you: this selection really is all about an entire genre that is the home of light-gun arcade shooters. These things have been around since the days of the NES and Duck Hunt and had something of a heyday during the PS1 and PS2 era, but seemed to be dying out in the PS3 era. For my money it also died out through no fault of my own.
Light arms games have fallen victim to a number of circumstances. First off, they’re not compatible with modern LCD and LED flat screens without a truckload of cumbersome sensors – that’s how Time Crisis 4 shipped on PS3. I’d also bet the genre suffered from the great crash of Guitar Hero — that is, the time when, after years of plastic guitars, drums, fitness boards, skateboards, and even pistol-shaped Wii Remote cases, there were play crappy shooters on pointer- Base, people are just fed up with buying plastic tat. All that stuff went into the Pan and took Light Guns down with it.
But now the time has come for her return. A technical solution has been created for the hardware incompatibility problem and there are many thirty-somethings with great light gun nostalgia. I would buy any machine that manages to get a new Time Crisis, Point Blank, Virtua Cop, or even just remasters of the classic games. I would pay random king.
Connor-Def Jam
Listen, let’s not mess around here. Def Jam was only really good once. However, it did damn well with Def Jam: Fight for NY. It was the whole package, a wild idea perfectly implemented. Sure it’s a bit dated, but it’s fucking old, man. That’s why if they made a new one, with a new cast of modern artists, updated gameplay, and the same slick style, I’d buy a whole new console faster than you could throw Snoop Dogg out a three-story window. I would even buy a Nintendo console.
What makes it worse, worse than the other good suggestions, is that every now and then some guy on the official Def Jam Twitter account will post something like “Hey, where’s the next Def Jam game going to be, Chicago or Philadelphia?” They’ve done this about 10 times now. It’s gone from hype to rubbing our faces. Please make another one.
Come back in a week for another episode of VG247’s Best Games Ever Podcast.
https://www.vg247.com/vg247s-best-games-ever-podcast-ep21 VG247’s Best Games Ever Podcast – Episode 21: The Best Dead Game You’d Buy a Console For If It Came Back
