games / Columns

The Top 8 PS3 Games That Need a Re-Release

February 23, 2021 | Posted by Marc Morrison
Yakuza: Dead Souls

Welcome all to another edition of The 8 Ball! With the re-release of Super Mario 3D World on the Switch and how the Wii U only has about 3 exclusive games left on the system, I thought it might be fun to look at another system that has a fair amount of exclusives on it that no one is doing much with: the PlayStation 3. This is just a list of the games I’d love to see brought to modern consoles, either direct ports or HD remasters. Enjoy:

#8: Yakuza: Dead Souls

With the fairly recent explosion of Yakuza fans over the past few years, primarily due to the excellent quality of Yakuza 0, why not start porting over the weird Yakuza games as well? There are basically two Yakuza spin-off franchises, Yakuza Kenzan (Yakuza set in the 1600’s) and Yakuza: Dead Souls, which is Yakuza in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. Kenzan would take more work, since it was never even localized but Dead Souls did come to America. Problem is: it’s not very good. The controls are bad, specifically when it comes to shooting, and considering this is primarily a shooting game, that’s an issue. Still, I’d like a PS4 (or even PS5) port of it, maybe with some fixed controls. That would be pretty nice.

#7: Afrika

Now, I’ve never actually played this game. I’ve seen pictures and videos and it is basically an open-world Pokemon Snap, only you take pictures of African animals. I haven’t played it because it’s not available digitally and it is fairly expensive online. It averages about $100-$120 for a complete, North American copy, which is a bit pricey. I’ve only ever seen it in used stores twice, one store somehow had two copies but both were incomplete at about $90. I simply want to play the game someday, preferably on a console that isn’t going to overheat and/or burst into flames.

#6: Noby Noby Boy

What a shock, a game from Keita Takahashi, director of Katamari Damacy, is also weird as hell! Noby Noby Boy involves you stretching the length of your character (Boy) reporting your length to the Sun, and the Sun transmits that data to Girl, causing Girl to stretch which unlocks more levels for you to play. “Yeah, it’s strange” comes to mind. Like with Katamari, you pretty much just use the analog sticks to move/stretch, you don’t really use the buttons a whole lot. If Katamari can come back and be reasonably successful, then why not Noby Noby Boy?

#5: 3D Dot Game Heroes

With all the talk about Zelda’s anniversary this year, why not bring back one of the best Zelda clones of all-time? Darksiders did the 3D Zelda games very well but 3D Dot Game Heroes was an homage to the top-down Zelda games of yore. This game had two kind of unique hooks, one was it had a lot of customizable characters for you to play. You could pretty much swap out, or create new, characters to play, which was cool. The second was that your sword could be powered up to either be super-long and have reach, or be short but be very thick and powerful. Also, the pixel look of the game would look amazing on current systems.

#4: Folklore

Folklore is basically “anime-ass Ghostbusters” and that’s alright with me. You swapped between two characters as you battle various evil ghosts to uncover a mystery. The actual nuts and bolts gameplay had you summoning “folk” (good ghosts) to battle against evil ones. Once an evil ghost was weakened, you could capture it yourself, using the motion controls of the PS3 controller, and then use it in future battles. The motions controls were a bit gimmicky but this aspect of Folklore is still remembered to this day. Imagine playing this game using the PS5 controller’s haptic features, it would be nuts.

#3: Trash Panic

Trash Panic is basically Tetris infused with Trash and a slightly odd physics engine. Trash comes along a conveyor belt and you have to fill it inside the can. To do so, you have to try and smash the object down hard, but it sometimes doesn’t break because it’s strong or too heavy. You can also set things on fire, which destroys them in your can but you have to balance out available Oxygen and how hot it is inside. It’s honestly a really hard puzzle game and I’d love the chance to play it some more.

#2: Tokyo Jungle

This is still one of my favorite PS3 games. You take on the role of either an herbivore or carnivore amidst a Tokyo that is full of other animals and slowly poisoning air. Your main goal is to survive, increase your turf, drive off other predators and continue your family tree by finding a mate and having kids. This game may not look too visually interesting now but there is a lot going on with the gameplay that is still a ton of fun for you to do. It’s basically a roguelike in that every run is different and you’ll encounter different things, even if the map is basically the same. I will always try to champion this game when I can.

#1: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Metal Gear Solid 4 is the reason I got a PS3 and I’m still pissed that it is locked only to that platform. At least with the other MGS games you can play them either on a PC or the Xbox Series X with backwards compatibility, among other consoles. MGS 4 isn’t like that and is only on the PS3 or on PC with very limited emulation support. Believe me, I know there’s a lot of bad blood between Konami and Kojima at this point but I don’t want to have to dig out my PS3, sitting in a plastic tub, in order to play this game. Hell, just getting it to run on the PS4/PS5 would be a godsend. Get on it, Konami!

For comments, list which PS3-exclusive games you want on other consoles and why.

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