Sure, I'll play Rogue Galaxy again for $15. That game is really hard to describe, because it's like an amalgamation of the most generic JRPG tropes while also being exceptional and engaging at the same time? Kind of interested to see how well it holds up for me.

Whenever I have the itch to play anything from the PS2, I just brush the dust off of it, rip it to my PC and run it with PCSX2. Don't have to pay exorbitant prices for old ass games, and you can utilize save states. Sounds like a win-win to me. Unless you love trophies, or somethin'.

@doctordonkey: I actually tried to do that with Rogue Galaxy and Dragon Quest VIII but both ran like total shit despite other more intensive games running way better (FFX/XII for example). That scene seems like kind of a mixed bag.

$15 for 10+ year old games you can get for next to nothing literally anywhere else....great deal.

@teddie: There are definitely games it doesn't perform well with. That being said, I've run both of those games you've mentioned and they were flawless at the time (probably about 2 years ago). I've probably played about 30 games to completion on PCSX2 over the course of 4-5 years, and had very, very minor issues overall. Emulators are such a case by case basis for different systems though, it's hard to say.

PCSX2 is a great emulator. FFXII on that was amazing. For some reason though I'm not much for it anymore. I'm more likely to play my ps2 on a crt than go through any of the process (which isn't even hard) to emulate a game. And really if FFXII gets offfered on this service I'll grab it there too. Convenience is a hell of a drug.

couldnt they just make it so that a disc works as a verification? I'm sorry but I'm not okay with rebuying these titles. I think this is the least interesting way to go about backwards compatibility. Instantly lost all chance of a sale from me.

I prefer Sony when they're doing things like Cross Buy. This could have been something special. I would have loved going back to the games I own.

This is like most of the shitty (but just acceptable enough not to piss everyone off) practices that this generation is going to be famous for.

Oh right, when I was pondering about the possibility of Spyro and MediEvil coming over...I kinda forgot those were PS1 games. Damnit.

@geraltitude: Hey thats fair enough. I agree in the grand scheme of things $15 isn't breaking bank, especially when fast food or what have you is about that price range. Honestly I'm conflicted on the matter myself because from a business standpoint I completely see how anything below $15 is a bad deal, but from a consumer standpoint where I want the best deals possible I think $15 is a tad too high. I'm not using any concise metric here, it's just a gut feeling I get when seeing that price tag next to those titles. I suppose Steam is to blame to some degree because some of those sale prices can get ridiculous. It's a highly subjective thing but like I said, Microsoft is putting them in a bad light by being first to this party of backwards compatability and setting the price point of free on the table. I realize they are offering 360 games and not original Xbox titles, but I don't really think that matters all that much. What matters is that they were first. Just like the only reason Sony is charging for multiplayer on the PS4 is because Microsoft set the precedent for that last generation.

People will pay what they want to pay obviously. I understand all your arguments and agree with a lot of it, but when it comes down to that super subjective bottom line: I think it's too much. Let me put it this way, I already played hundreds of hours of Vice City in the past. In fact I think it's probably the best GTA game to date from a cohesive standpoint and I have no reason to buy it again. For let's say $5 or so.. I'd get it so I can dick around in the world on my PS4. For $15 it's not worth it, because I can throw in $5 more and get a modern game on sale.

@humanity: Yeah I feel you on a lot of that. I think it's a pretty mixed bag all in all if I look at it on a game by game basis. For Mark of Kri, Twisted Metal and Rogue Galaxy I feel ok about the prices. For the GTA games... not so much. Those are so easily available and in playable resolutions on PC, etc. I assume they are price testing with the 10/15 split and I'd be surprised if 10 doesn't become the standard. It's interesting because even in Canada the games are max 15 bucks (they should be 20 with the currency change). So I feel Sony knows they are riding the absolute edge on this. Maybe I'm being too harsh here but I could also see them just trying to strike while the iron is hot, get the first wave of games in at this "premium price" and then scale down from there. I think I posted this already but for me I think $10 would be fair. That leaves a $5 price for PS1 games :D

I think MS deserves a lot of credit for getting backwards compatibility working in pretty much the most ideal way possible. Sure, their market position helped convince them to do that but so what, It's a fantastic solution. I don't want to take anything away from that at all, but I also don't hate the Sony approach. Or more honestly, see the potential. Yes I wish I could put my discs in, but I also more so hope we get the games here that are expensive or rare to have physically anyways. I'm gonna play Mark of Kri so we'll see soon if I can put my money where my mouth is or am just buying into the hype :S

@geraltitude: At least some of that stuff is coming over. No one wants to keep a bunch of consoles lying around, not to mention finding the right cables to connect them to your modern tv and all that.

For those games, I think it's a bit too high. But I would pay 20 bucks for THPS 3... JUST SAYING.

I don't see the price as high. I guess no one here has gone to ebay where for me the games are 25+ dollar's.

Looks like they're up now, for anyone that wanted anything. Kinda surprised they're up in my region (NZ/Aus), since they're usually pretty bad about that sort of thing here. Might have to actually search for them to get them to show up, they weren't featured or anything for me.

I love GTAIII and will (and just did) happily pay $15 to play it again and get some trophies along the way.

All I want is Timespliters 2 and SSX Tricky!!! FFS

Xbox did it much much much much much better. Free trumps any cost. This is no different than these games just being in the store. Why should I, the consumer, care that it's emulation? Saying something like that just brings me that much closer to thinking about how I should be able to put the discs in.

Congratulations Sony! You're selling old games! You haven't done that since the PS3! What a revolutionary idea! I wish I could pat you on the back harder for all of your amazing innovation!

Nintendo does the same thing with wii u and its my primary reason i love the console, you can download old games without the hardware.

What a rip off Sony are greedy but so are Microsoft fuck these companies.

But you can also play Wii games with the Wii U. Nintendo has always been pretty good about backwards compatibility. Their handhelds also go one or two generations back.

With the internet, account verification, and disc verification being extremely common we should be really pushing to have our old purchased media start transferring over as much as possible. We're to the point where the only thing holding it back is the companies.

I understand the reasoning of Sony wanting to make money off of this but they still could if there was disc verification of the ps2 games. They could still charge people that didn't have the old games. They just want to be able to overprice everything. No one would pay 15 fucking dollars if they could get it at a used game store for significantly less.

I wish Sony didn't get to profit so much off of xboxs blunder this generation. Having the position of power really doesn't look good on them.

You can but thats one generation back not two like ps2 to ps4. I don't even think Nintendo has gamecube support, likely because wii u is not powerful enough to emulate them maybe with NX i hope. As for PS3 to PS4 i thought everyone knows thats due to hardware limitation of the cell. We wont see PS3 emulation fo a long as time prob PS5 or 6 if consoles are still around.

I think it's great that Sony are bringing back some PS2 games, the prices are a bit high, but whatever, I will only buy a handfull of these things anyway (None of these first games).

What I don't get is this slow kind of start they are doing, it feels like the PS Now which is kind of there but is anyone really using that? There is like this trickle of games and mostly stuff that the mainstream would probably ignore. I would have felt better with a 50 or so games, day one, SSX games, Onimusha Games, Need For Speed, whatever, just give me some stuff!

Man, I really hope they increase that roster soon. But hopefully not by just replicating the ps2 classics line up from the ps3 store: too many "we are dumping our back catalogue" games and not enough actual classics. If they do just replicate then we'll run into the same problem we had on ps3: All the really good games get HD remakes and the cult classics don't sell enough so all we get (at least here in the UK.) are the same six rockstar games (which are great games, but available everywhere) and a bunch of licensed Disney games....

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is: please, please release Soul Reaver 2!

Give me every EA Sports BIG title and I'll be happy.

NBA Street, NFL Street, SSX Tricky.

The SSX series is definitely doable, but I wonder how the Street games would work with licensing issues of all the likenesses of the players.

Also, Tony Hawk 3, 4, THUG and THUG 2.

Arcade sports games still hold up really well in my opinion and PS2 was full of them.

I bought Vice City and San Andreas. I'm having a blast playing through Vice city again. £11.99 is not cheap but I don't really have a problem paying that since I love the addition of trophies and It's awesome to play that game in widescreen 1080p on my big TV.

I'm a little confused as to why they're doing this instead of simply making PS Now a better service with a huge selection of PSX and PS2 games, but the higher rez and trophies is kind of neat.While I think the prices are OK if you don't already own a copy and I think the new features add some value, as someone who already owns all of these games, what I think could be a good incentive and compromise would be to give original disc copy owners a $5 discount.

I'm sure we're bound to see some of these as PS+ games eventually.

So Ive been playing Rogue Galaxy. Playing PS2 games on PS4 is pretty fucking awesome. They look amazing. I really hope they do alot of them this way. I'm not even bothered by the price that much anymore. Great resolution + Framerate + trophies + on a console I still have hooked up and actually use alot = worth it. I just hope they put out some games I have more of a fondness for. Ive never actually played rogue galaxy before now.

This makes it super apparent how much time devs are wasting pursuing next gen graphics when PS2 graphics are still viable as fuck. Why aren't devs just making super good looking ps2 games with super high resolutions and phenomenal frame rates?

Granted Rogue Galaxy might have a more timeless art style but still it looks fucking good.

rogue galaxy is $22.95 here so... fuck that?

I get it for Rogue Galaxy or something, considering that game is pretty rare, but GTA is incredibly cheap elsewhere.

Emulation is great though, Vice City looks like the PC version.

(Also, Klonoa 2 please)

I don't see the price as being too bad. Hell, I'd throw down $20 for Godhand, Killer7, the DDS games or Nocturne all being flawlessly emulated at 1080p no problem. I take issue with the whole rebuying thing though. If I already own Godhand on PS3 via PSN, asking me to buy it again for the PS4 is a bit much.

I mean it's kinda shitty, but at the same time I will certainly pay that price for some nice, ported versions of the older SSX games. I'd probably pay more too.

For those wondering, you can unlock Mecha Sweet Tooth in War of The Monsters still. Just beat Story Mode in Twisted Metal Black with Sweet Tooth and save your game. He's Agamos' fourth costume.

Unfortunately, there's a gross aspect to this whole thing now. When you get in the game proper after choosing him, you get a trophy.

There's a trophy for doing something that you can only do if you bought two different games.

IM IN IT FOR THE TROPHIES

Although I would like it if I had already bought the PS3 versions of the PS2 classics that the licenses would just move over to PS4.

Edit: Also I bought GTA Vice City and you'd be surprised with the difference that 1080p makes, it's really noticeable.

I seem to be one of few that has no problem with higher rez'd downloadable ps2 games priced at $15. Plenty of missed ps2 releases I'd be excited to spend the money on.

If the games that are available now were 10$ I would have bought them all but since they are 15$ I have only bought one. I just feel at 15$ that checkout gets so high so fast. I don't know if I'm alone in this but me spending 60$ plus at their store is way better than just 15$. I sincerely feel that if they lowered that price point just 5$ it would be so much better for them in the long run.

@ericjasonwade: I've felt this way about classic game downloads for a while. If they were just slightly cheaper than they are then I would buy many more of them and spend a lot more money in total but as it is I only buy the ones I really want and am less likely to give other titles a shot.

I might buy war of the monsters since I got rid of my copy some time ago. Would be cool if they release the first two yakuza games, maybe have some kind of deal that has all the games playable on PS4 when yakuza 0 comes out.

While this is cool, although pricey, it's just a bummer there's no way to play any of the discs I own for PS2.

I still have my PS3 for that if needed, but its just one more console and an extra step I'd rather not take to be honest.

I wish we could get Silent Hill 2, 3, and 4. Then that HD remake could be forgotten.

But damn, I doubt it with Konami right now.

I agree with this, although I have caved and bought all the games I actually want to play - that's 4 out of the 8. As much as you can poke holes in the value of trophies, their addition here gives me a new reason to replay the GTA series, and I never played Rogue Galaxy so this seems to be the best way to do it.

That's because the first song in that car is "Billie Jean" :P

Actual backwards compatibility would have been preferable!

Dark Cloud 2 fuck please I need this

I bought Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and it runs and looks like dogshit. I am playing in Ireland and apparently the versions being emulated are shitty old PAL releases. I hope they fix that shit.

Its a shame the numbers allowed for this. I'd have loved PS2 re-releases to be negligible enough for them just to run a PS2 emulator as an app. Paid or otherwise.

Yes, I would like to know what actually goes into putting one of these games on PS4. Does the emulator need to be tuned for each game or is it stable enough to get most games running in 1080p60 with relative ease? How much work does it take for the trophies?

If they sold the emulator as an app so you can play disc based games I would easily pay the cost of a retail game for that app. And if such an app were possible I could see it easily existing along side digital releases of ps2 games.