10 PlayStation games that deserve a Crash N. Sane Trilogy-style remaster

There are a number of great PlayStation One games that deserve a nice graphical overhaul and just a bit of tweaking with a whole new audience being able to discover them on current consoles.

Whatever your personal feelings about the Crash Bandicoot series, that Crash N. Sane Trilogy has sold incredibly well. It’s most likely a mix of nostalgia about the PlayStation One games and people wanting to see what the hype was all about. Whether or not those games have aged well is another discussion entirely though.

The first PlayStation, aka The PlayStation, was revolutionary when it came out over 20 years ago in 1995. It wasn’t just revolutionary; it was disruptive. Sega was a scrappy challenger but never really got one over on Nintendo. PlayStation One came along and not only proved there was room for a third in the console race but pretty much dominated right out the gate.

While many of us have fond memories of a lot of PlayStation One games, the fact of the matter is many of them have not aged well just either due to mechanics of the time, limitations or other factors. But some still warrant a second look, and with a good graphical face lift and maybe a few gameplay tweaks these classics could be brought back into the modern era. Here’s ten that I think deserve that shot, be it one game or a series:

#10. Wild 9

Earthworm Jim remains one of my favorite 16-bit series, so I was super excited to see what kind of stuff developer Shiny Entertainment could pull off in the era of the PlayStation One. Their first game for the platform, MDK, was a pretty great shooter for the time indeed and featured the trademark twisted humor the company was known for. But I found a lot more enjoyment in their 2.5D platforming follow-up, Wild 9. Wild 9 had a great fantastical sci-fi atmosphere to it and a really cool hook of a gimmick which was the “Rig” a sort of electro whip thing that could hook onto not only enemies but objects, creating a lot of cool ways to fight and solve various puzzles.

A remaster of Wild 9 would hopefully not only give it a graphical facelift, because let’s face it, there are very few PlayStation One games whose looks have aged gracefully over time, but also a little rebalancing to the difficulty and check point system which was one of the common complaints leveled at Wild 9 at the time of its release. Just giving more checkpoints and at least the option for an easier difficulty would be quite easy to implement. Wild 9 remains an underrated gem of the PlayStation one era and deserves another shot at a new audience.