Top 10 PS1 Games we want to see on PlayStation Suite

At Sony’s press conference in Tokyo last week, we focused heavily on the NGP - a sexy gadget on the cusp of a new console war with Nintendo 3DS. It was, undoubtedly, the star of the show.

But maybe that other announcement was a little overlooked. For the first time ever, Sony is putting PlayStation games on devices without Sony or PlayStation logos. The Android’s fledgling gaming street cred is about to get a major shot in the arm, and the iPhone might just have a reason to start quaking in its boots.

Could the PlayStation Suite start a revolution in mobile gaming? We’ll have to wait and see: it won’t be until late 2010 that Sony actually starts rolling out its curated PlayStation Store of carefully crafted, licensed, and published downloadable games.

In the meantime, we’ll get a dollop of digital nostalgia in the shape of classic PlayStation 1 games emulated on Androids. As in, legitimately. Here are ten games we’re hoping to see.

White-knuckle future-racing, complete with neon lit tracks, hovering jet cars, and a backing anthem of pumping British electronica. Sony Liverpool’s WipEout was unquestionably cool, and helped catapult the PlayStation into being the hip, adult games machine we know it as today.

But it wasn't just about taking a racing game and slapping a few neon lights here and some chrome trims there. By removing the wheels, Sony reinvented driving for the year 2025, making an elegant racer about carving up corners with perfect timing and precision turning.

The franchise’s two PSP games prove the idea works in portable form, and the PS3 WipEout HD shows how well motion control suits the series - a great fit for accelerometer fitted Androids. WipEout 3 and 2097 would hopefully follow quickly.

An RPG of truly epic proportions, so huge it would gobble up your Android’s storage space, and so long you’d go through at least 20 battery charges just to beat it: let alone delve into the copious side quests, hidden treasures, and strangely alluring mini-games.

VII turned a league of button mashing action addicts into smart gamers with an eye for strategy and the attention span for numbers, EXP, materia, upgrades, and juggling team members.

This endless fantasy adventure - which involves spiky hair, massive swords, corrupt governments, baggy trousers, lots of leather, airships, a one-winged evil bad dude, and the first, big, gaming death - is often the source of argument and feisty forum flame wars, but it would be nice to play it on your mobile, wouldn’t it?

The PlayStation saw the very first outing of gaming's most famous female. Tomb Raider took Lara to snowy mountain caves, Peruvian jungles, T-rex battles, Egyptian pyramids, and even the lost city of Atlantis. Along the way she picked up treasure, took in some history, and gunned down several endangered species.

Lara's almost mechanical movements might have aged poorly in a world of analogue sticks and slick, speedy 3D protagonists, but her grid-like precision and deliberate moveset would be perfect on the rudimentary D-pads and awkward keyboards seen on most Androids. And the lengthy campaign would take more than a few train stops to finish.

Crash Bandicoot

When the PlayStation first launched, Sony knew it needed a mascot. A smart talking, 20th century anthropomorphic animal with attitude, to take on the Sonics and Marios of the world.

Naughty Dog’s Crash Bandicoot will perhaps never be remembered as fondly as the blue hedgehog and plump plumber, but for PS1 devotees he was just as important.

Crash is bouncy, elasticated platforming fun, with sumptuous and totally colourful graphics. You’ve also got two PS1 sequels to leap through, and an addictive Mario Kart-style racing game to boot.

MGS was quirky stealth action from the father of freaky video games: Hideo Kojima. It was cinematic, involving, and started one of the most confusing, complicated, and critically acclaimed video game series ever made.

In the PS1 game, Psycho Mantis would 'read your mind' by spouting off games you’ve played, based on save files from your memory card. And to beat him you’d need to plug your controller into port number 2.

If there was ever an Android port, we’d want Psycho Mantis to sneak a peek at our contacts list, and have to play with the phone upside down to kill him.

Pro Skater 2 keeps the control-set simple, making it perfect for the complicated control-sets of mobile phones - it even appeared on the touchscreen only iPhone. This is before the time of quarter pipe reverts and hip transfers, and is pre-walking, tagging, back-flipping, sticker-slapping, skitching, slow-motion-flipping.

THPS 2 was just grabs, flips, grinds, and manuals.

The level editor would be a great way to wile away boring bus journeys, especially if the game was updated to allow your well-crafted skate-parks to be uploaded online, and shared amongst pals over the mobile’s PlayStation Store. If not, we’ll just settle for grinding up Barcelona as Spider-Man.

Considering Sony’s stringent ban on 2D gaming during the PlayStation 1 and 2, it’s something of a small miracle that Konami’s epic monster-slaying adventure ever saw a western release. Whoever whipped the console manufacturer into giving Symphony of the Night the greenlight deserves a leg of ham and a glass of holy water.

SotN offers up a massive spooky castle for you to explore and fight through, asking you to traipse back across the map when you unlock a new power or move.

In fact, Symphony is the game that put Vania in the descriptive genre 'Metroidvania'. Having that huge castle to explore on your mobile would be great, and we might finally find time to get 200.6 per cent completion.

Tekken 3 was the pinnacle of 3D fighters on PlayStation, and its impressive visuals would look great on pint-size Android screens. Controls might take a tad getting used to on touchscreens, but phones with built-in gaming buttons and keyboards could pull off combos with ease.

The also included some seriously barmy new fighters, like a giant panda, a raptor with boxing gloves, a tiny dinosaur with a penchant for flatulence, a martial-artist bear, and a brawler made entirely out of wood.

PaRappa the Rapper

“Kick! Punch! It’s all in the mind!” Forget the lazy rock anthems and boring musician avatars of Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Here’s PaRappa the Rapper, a rhythm-action game about a dog in a beanie trying to win the affections of a talking sunflower with the power of rap.

“In the rain or in the snow, I got the funky flow!" PaRappa is super cute, and thanks to paper-thin graphics and chunky cartoon visuals it still looks perfect today.

This is a game needed on mobiles, as a quick-hit of concentrated joy to spruce-up a bad situation. Just received some rough news? Whip out your Nexus S and rap along to a karate-kicking onion.

Klonoa: Door to Phantomile

With games like Super Mario 64 championing 3D worlds and twirling camera angles, it was utterly refreshing to play Klonoa. Sure, it might have been made from polygons, and looked a little like Mario and Crash from screenshots, but at its heart it was a side-scrolling 2D platformer, and one of the games that invented the term '2.5D'.

Phantomile had smart level design, and a rather unique gameplay gimmick. The eponymous hero could pick up defeated enemies and toss them towards the ground mid-jump to leap higher than ever.

This tricky mechanic lead to some seriously devious puzzles and stages, but a shallow learning curve and reliable controls meant it was never frustrating, no matter how tough it got.