And so it’s finally happened after a grace period of about five years - the PS3 and PS Vita stores will be closing in July 2027.
It follows, then, that we must look through our games lists, have a think, and recommend PS3 and PS Vita games and DLC that are a must download before this time.
PlayStation Classics programme
An embarrassment of riches released on PSP and PS3, and also compatible with Vita but with iffy emulation.
On PSP, you get 240p output to a flat panel TV or CRT, plus almost perfect emulation as all CPU code is run natively on the MIPS CPU. Only the GPU is emulated.
I’m happy to list the favourites from what I’ve bought over the past.
DLC
Drakenguard 3 DLC Japanese language pack
Ridge Racer 7 3D pass
Everybody’s Golf DLC and PS Move support?
DLC is probably a category that’ll get overlooked by a lot of sites. The problem here is some publishers split out free content and updates into digital DLC entitlement rather than as part of patch data which won’t be affected by the store closures. This was particularly common on PS Vita due to memory card storage limitations.
I updated something either on my PS3 or PSP and now it doesn’t let me copy PS1 games to PSP. I had to use a nodrm engine to get what I already had on my memory stick to work. But yeah they are good enough on a PSP / go out to a TV, very good really, that I still use that as a default and don’t have any PS1 ODEs.
Yeah, when Sony introduced 2FA it broke the transfer from PS3 to PSP. I seem to remember being very upset about that change here when it happened, as there was no forewarning and I’d bought a bunch of PS1 classics to transfer over later.
You can still access the PS Store direct from a PSP, but you’ll need a wireless router without network security enabled, in the modern day, or a software workaround to create another hotspot.
It skips frames and there’s more input lag. The frame skipping is the part I can’t deal with, personally. Even on a menu screen in a game like Bomberman Fantasy Race, you’ll see the scrolling background stutter on Vita where it’s fine on PSP.
If only Tose would add a high quality CRT filter to the remaster! Instead, it’s only raw pixels, with or without original backgrounds.
The new backgrounds appear to have been AI upscaled (not gen-AI) versions of the originals (think Chrono Cross) which have been downsampled at 2x the original scale. But it introduces inaccuracies…just look at the leaves here having this uncanny overly rounded appearance where the originals were more pointed.
I need to play Tales of Eternia again. I was looking forward to it when it was announced for PSP. I imported the Japanese version and was “I’ll use a guide or something and figure it out.”
Narrator: He didn’t.
I later imported the European version, but never got around to playing much of it. I think I actually got further in the JPN version, smh. I enjoyed the battle system.
PS1 version is very good, I played through it a few years ago and had a great time. Ended up buying the euro PSP version just to have it cause uh the PS1 version sure is insanely priced.
