Edited by the number one mod in your heart and mind, the Sparkiest of Buzzsaw, I'm turning this into the official spot to talk about PS4 re-releases of PS2 games. Let's keep it all in here and bask in the glory that is trophy support for PS2 games. Feel free to discuss prior releases or any future ones you might want to see.

July 5th, 2016 - Metal Slug, Warriors

The PS2 Metal Slug Anthology and Rockstar's excellent-looking beat-em-up The Warriors, based on the movie of the same name, are hitting PSN this week. The Metal Slug Anthology includes Metal Slug 1-6 and X. The Warriors is a terrific "running the gauntlet" film that should be watched by anyone that likes fun, and the game was well-received back in the day.

May 31st, 2016: Primal, Kinetica

I'm listing Kinetica here because I missed it upon its release date a week or two ago. Kinetica is an F-Zero esque racer, most notable for its engine, which was used to create more famous games like Twisted Metal Black and God of War.

Primal is an action-adventure game wherein the two playable characters travel to four different realms in order to learn more about the lead character's special powers, which allow her to shift into several different forms. It's received pretty good reviews from some of Giant Bomb's users, so maybe it's worth a look?

May 17th, 2016: Wild ARMs 3

Well, as a long time fan of the Wild ARMs series, this one's particularly exciting to me. Wild ARMs is a series of turn-based JRPGs usually revolving around a Wild West-styled worlds, if the Wild West had enormous robots, flying ships, and lots of magic. Wild ARMs 3 was a pretty great game, with a distinct cel-shaded art style that, up to that point, we really hadn't seen in a lot of games. Nowadays, it's about as common as zombies as villains, but back then? It was pretty cool. You can switch between characters to use special abilities for dungeon crawling and puzzle solving, and there's a massive world to explore with lots of hidden secrets. It's well worth a look for anyone looking for a mildly challenging JRPG. Here's hoping 4 & 5 make it to PSN sometime too.

Previous Releases

Grand Theft Auto 3/Vice City/San Andreas (also sold as a trilogy)
Twisted Metal Black
Rogue Galaxy
Puzzle Quest (PS2 version)
Star Wars Bounty Hunter
Star Wars Jedi Starfighter
Star Wars Racer Revenge
Fantavision
Parappa the Rapper 2
The Mark of Kri
War of the Monsters
Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits
Dark Cloud 1 & 2
Rise of the Kasai
Max Payne
Okage
Bully
Manhunt
KOF 2000

I looked up what the reception was to this game back in the day and found out that Brad Shoemaker gave Twilight of the Spirits an 8 in his review at GameSpot. Maybe it is still an 8 thirteen years later.

I remember renting it way back when and thinking it was alright. Not sure I care to play it again though.

I'm hoping to see Dark Cloud 2 soon. I will buy that with no hesitation.

Not for me personally as I have my PS2 copy and don't have a PS4. But I'm glad for people who haven't played it!

I actually played this game fairly recently (last couple years or so) and thought it was surprisingly good. I feel it's one of the more overlooked gems of the PS2 era.

The combat was alright, the music was surprisingly great

And the story surprisingly attempted to tackle racism and identity as its central theme, something I never expected to see in a JRPG.

that final boss tho, I was so poorly equipped to fight it and the game has a brutal point of no return that made it basically impossible to change my loadout without hours of replaying. Still one of my proudest gaming accomplishments that I took it out after slowly chipping it down on it for over 60 minutes.

Otoh The sequel to this game might have been the worst game Sony ever published.

As a fan of the niche and obscure, I'd love to see Dark Cloud 2 show up so I could see what all the fuss is about.

Someone educate me on this series, somehow I completely missed it despite it seeming like it should have been right in my breadbasket. Is Arc the Lad like Shining Force?

Kinda sorta. They're both in the same "Strategy RPG" genre, but they're pretty different mechanically.

@htr10: Arc the Lad 2 is tremendous. Everything else in the franchise varies from alright to kind of good.

Still waiting for Wild Arms 3, which was leaked a few weeks back via ESRB rating.

This feels like a really odd choice to add to the service, especially since there was already a JRPG among the first crop of titles. You'd think they would want to go more mainstream first to get as much interest as possible, then release the niche stuff later.

I'm editing this discussion to turn it into the official spot for PS4 rereleases. Makes more sense than talking about big releases individually, I think. Enjoy!

Oh, and motherfuckin' Dark Cloud 2, y'all.

Dark Cloud 2 on PS4? SIGN ME THE FUCK UP

...actually I might not go for that yet, at the moment playing my actual PS2 copy on my CRT is more convenient :P

My most devastating moment in video games to this day was the moment I saved over my save game in Dark Cloud 2's chapter 8 (bonus chapter, right after you beat the main story).

Well, now I'm going to have to put my money where my mouth is.

@belegorm: I still have my copy around here, but the thought of putting out another console on my overly crowded play area is kind of unappealing. Plus, trophies!

I was thinking about buying Rogue Galaxy or Arc the Lad, but now I might end up grabbing Dark Cloud 2 first.

Yes! That was kinda sooner than I expected, actually. I know what I'm going to be playing next week.

I hope it holds up. I only played Dark Cloud 2 once when it came out.

@zeik: I've played it multiple times since then and think it holds up pretty well, but I've always kind of been a bad judge of that with stuff I really like.

DC2 is so exciting as its basically the one game I wanted out of all of this. I've gotta beat Xenoblade soon so I can actually play it!

Dark Cloud 2 is fantastic.

Its kind of sad that this made me realize I'm more excited to play old PS2 games than half of the new releases that have come out the last few months...

Love Dark Cloud 2

I have this feeling Dark Cloud 2 isn't going to hold up terribly well for people. There is an interesting 25-35 hour game in there trapped in a 100+ hour package.

Worst golf mini game ever.

I would play Dark Cloud 2 again in a heartbeat. In fact, forget waiting four whole days for it, I'll just brush the dust off my PS2 and start it now!

So I don't need to play the first Dark Cloud, right?

@redyoshi: Nope! They're completely unrelated besides mechanics. DC2 isn't even called "Dark Cloud 2" in Japan (it's Dark Chronicle).

I wish I could put my PS2 copy of Dark Cloud 2 in my PS4!

I'm with this line of thinking as well, the less clutter the better, I still have Dark Cloud 1 and 2 but would gladly sell/trade them and re-buy them on the PS4 just to make things a little bit more compact around here. As far as I'm concerned I would re-buy all of my old PS2 titles on the PS4 if it meant I could clear space. Helps that none of them would be a giant download anyways.

@epidehl: Thanks. I'm looking forward to finally playing it after hearing it come up so often over the years.

Trophy support! Looks like I'm finally going to have to do that 100% Dark Cloud 2 playthrough...

@zolroyce: For me I've got this dedicated area for old stuff by an old TV, and plugging in the PS4 requires unplugging my 2nd monitor from the PC so I may be in the minority but it's way more convenient to play on the original console.

I never played Dark Cloud 2, but I remember my girlfriend at the time being waaaaaay into it. Every once in a while I would peek over her shoulder and it always seemed a little boring to me. It seems beloved though so maybe I should check it out for myself.

Dark Cloud 2 is now up on the store.

If anyone is undecided on whether they should get it, maybe our very own Brad Shoemaker can convince you:

http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/dark-cloud-2-review/1900-2911113/

@zeik: I'm still undecided. Can we trust this Brad Shoemaker guys review? Seems sketchy.

I know Brad liked Dark Cloud 2 back in the day, but I have to be the voice of reason if not moderate dissent. I think a lot of the mechanics were interesting, the mini-games were pretty fun, the art direction was cool, but man talk about a grind. I remember spending a ton of time (tens of hours) replaying the first set of dungeons over and over leveling up Max's and Monica's weapons along with Steve the RidePod only to find that I was doing pretty measly damage to creatures in the second set of dungeons. This repeated for each dungeon as memory serves. Maybe my younger self's hot esports strats just weren't up to the task, but I think I really ended up liking the idea of Dark Cloud 2 more than Dark Cloud 2. I did end up beating it with the help of a branching weapon upgrade guide (without which it's possible to upgrade a weapon down an inferior branch from which there is no return and waste hours and hours) but even as a poor college student with nothing but time I remember thinking that it could have been about half as long as it was.

All that being said, I think I'd play a new one if they fixed the upgrade mechanics and let me fool around with the georama system and Spheda again!

As reported by Destructoid, Rise of the Kasai is slated to hit PSN on Tuesday. I know absolutely nothing about these games, so please feel free to fill me in on some of the pertinent Kasai details and I'll add them above.

@sparky_buzzsaw: Bully and Manhunt have been added today.

@jesus_phish: No kidding? Huh. Those snuck in under the radar. i'll add them when I'm back on my laptop and can edit the formatting properly. Good looking out.

Just a small update on this for us Eurozone people.

Starting with the GTA trilogy Sony are patching the games to work at 60hz/30fps which will remove the juttering frame rate that was occuring with them.

Hopefully this continues and rolls out across any title that needs it, if they don't already support it.

And also - Max Payne is now available.

Bully, Max Payne, and Manhunt are $6/ea with the current Flash Sale (ends on 4/25).

I'm going to have to see if Bully not being the Scholarship edition is a big deal, since that's the version I played and loved on the 360. Never played Manhunt, but I love all of Rockstar's other stuff, so I'll probably pick that up.

Man, I have an Okage on the brain recently (I worked at Toys R Us back in the day and have a standee from when it was originally released sitting on my nerd cabinet lol), seems like I may finally have to take the plunge XD

King of Fighters 2000 is being added on Tuesday. I've only played the series casually, but I don't recall anything particularly bad about this entry. They're usually fun little diversions.

Updated to include the May 17th release of Wild ARMs 3. In lieu of a new Wild ARMs, this is pretty okay news. I will play the hell out of Wild ARMs anything for trophies.

That's so crazy. A friend was talking about playing this again earlier this week and how they would rather it was just on PS4. I'd love for them to get around to either .Hack or Xenosaga eventually.

Maybe I'll check it out, I'm always down for PS2 JRPGs. Do the Wild Arms games actually have anything to do with each other or is it a Final Fantasy situation?

@epidehl: It's a Final Fantasy situation. There are some common themes and specifics throughout, though it's largely just shared names for things rather than sharing a story.

@sparky_buzzsaw: Sweet, I'll definitely pick it up then. Just finished Rogue Galaxy so this is perfect.

That's funny coincidence I just saw the surprise Wild Gunsnews on Gaf this week and almost freaked out because I read first it as a Wild Arms revival .

Looks like KoF 2k hasn't come out here in the UK/EU. Is there any point to these re releases if they're going to vary by region?

I have Arc the Lad, Dark Cloud 2 and Rogue Galaxy on my mental wishlist. Don't know what the chances of a Dragon Quest VIII release are but have my fingers crossed.

Added Kinetica (which was released a week or two ago and I didn't see it) and Primal. Never played either, but Primal looks like it got some okay reviews.

Oh man, Primal. I bought that together with PS2 earlier this year. The gameplay is a bit janky, but it looks great for a game from that era. I like the world design too. I hope this means that we'll get Ghosthunter eventually.

While not technically a rerelease but more of a full bodied update, I thought it was worth noting that Odin Sphere hits PS4 this week.