Astro Bot, launched on PlayStation 5 on Sept. 6, is an excellent platform recreation. It additionally serves because the kickoff for Sony’s celebration of 30 years of PlayStation (the unique console debuted in Japan in December 1994). The sport is saturated with PlayStation Easter eggs and fan service.
Specifically, of the 300 collectible bots within the recreation, no fewer than 173 come dressed up as characters from the final three many years of PlayStation video games. However developer Group Asobi cheekily doesn’t identify them immediately, giving every one a cluelike codename (“Aristocratic Archaeologist” for Lara Croft, “Raider Dude” for Nathan Drake) and an additional hint-filled description. So shopping the gathering is each a guessing recreation and a check of how deep your PlayStation fandom goes.
A number of the bots are immediately recognizable. However some are fairly obscure. Whereas the heroes from third-party publishers are all fairly well-known (Ryu, Ken, Strong Snake), Group Asobi has executed a deep dive on Sony’s historical past as a recreation writer, unearthing some extraordinary delights. Through the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 eras particularly, Sony was a deep-pocketed and fearless writer, unafraid of throwing every kind of weird concepts on the wall to see what would stick, significantly within the Japanese market.
Astro Bot’s bot assortment is a stunning tribute to that point, and to Group Asobi’s former residence, Japan Studio — the legendary, progressive Sony studio that was dissolved in 2021. Listed here are a number of the assortment’s deepest cuts.
(Due to my Polygon colleagues — particularly Nicole Carpenter and Michael McWhertor — for serving to determine a few of these, and to Ryan Gilliam for sharing photos of his full bot assortment!)
It’s unsurprising that most of the deepest cuts in Astro Bot hail from the PS1 period, however right here’s a PlayStation 3 recreation that’s sadly forgotten simply over a decade on: 2013’s Puppeteer. This little man is Kutaro, a boy become a puppet who, in a novel gameplay mechanic, can swap heads, in addition to chop up the surroundings together with his scissors. This Japan Studio recreation was artistic, however failed to seek out a lot of an viewers — which, within the higher-stakes world of the PS3 period, was beginning to be an issue for Sony. Its failure was an indication of the start of the top for the studio.
This creepy, angular purple head known as Polygon Man and, consider it or not, it briefly served as a advertising and marketing mascot for the unique PlayStation in North America. Meant to be an edgy spokesperson geared toward teenagers who is perhaps postpone by the toylike PlayStation identify, Polygon Man was thought of a mistake by nearly everybody, together with the PlayStation head Ken Kutaragi. It was deserted earlier than the PS1 even launched.
Dark Chronicle, the 2003 PS2 role-playing recreation by Stage-5 that was launched as Darkish Cloud 2 in North America, isn’t as obscure as a number of the different references on this checklist, however the best way this bot is called and offered makes its identification significantly exhausting to guess. It’s Darkish Chronicle’s protagonist Maximilian, or Max, and he’s brooding over some toy homes as a result of the sport has a city-building mechanic constructed into it, together with the randomized dungeons it inherits from religious predecessor Darkish Cloud.
Boku no Natsuyasumi (normally translated as My Summer time Trip) is a Japan-only sequence of open-ended, nostalgic life sims about being a child on summer season break in 1975. This bug-catching boy is the protagonist, Boku. Within the first recreation, launched on PlayStation in 2000, and its three sequels, there aren’t any goals as such; except for day by day routines, it’s as much as you to resolve how Boku spends his 31 days of free time within the countryside. Natsu-Mon: twentieth Century Summer time Child, a religious sequel by authentic director Kaz Ayabe, was lately launched on Nintendo Change and Home windows PC.
One of the vital uncommon video games ever launched for PS1 — which is absolutely saying one thing — is Vib-Ribbon. It’s an ultraminimalist, black-and-white tackle the then-popular rhythm recreation style, by which a scratchily animated, line-drawn rabbit referred to as Vibri skips alongside a single line, navigating summary hazards in time with the chirpy electro music. The twist was that you might insert your personal music CDs into the PlayStation and have the sport generate ranges to match the tunes.
Unhinged minigame compilations have been a factor on the unique PlayStation; anybody keep in mind Bishi Bashi Particular? One of the vital out-there ones was Incredible Crisis, which follows 4 members of a working-class Japanese household simply making an attempt to get residence for grandma’s birthday within the face of every kind of terrifying and incongruous occasions — financial institution robberies, statues crashing into places of work, teddy bear kaiju, the works — with out busting their stress meters. This man is the dad, Taneo.
This ax-wielding sheep is Lammy, the heroine of Um Jammer Lammy, a rocking spinoff of the better-known rap rhythm recreation PaRappa the Rapper (additionally featured in Astro Bot). Though it doesn’t fairly have PaRappa’s lyrical attraction, Um Jammer Lammy goes extremely exhausting musically, conceptually, and in its frantic gameplay.
This elfin adventurer is Alundra, star of an eponymous 1998 recreation for the PS1. Developed by Matrix Software program and revealed in Japan by Sony itself, it was an try to present the PlayStation a Legend of Zelda-style fantasy journey, with the fascinating gimmick that Alundra may enter the desires of the native townsfolk. However its old-school 2D gameplay was comprehensively overshadowed by Zelda’s transfer into 3D with Ocarina of Time that very same 12 months, and it’s now largely forgotten.
This blockhead is a reference to Intelligent Qube, a 1997 Sony-published PS1 puzzle recreation by which a tiny man runs round on platforms making an attempt to not get crushed by monolithic steel cubes. There’s one thing eerie and oppressive in regards to the frail little man scampering about inside this hostile, monochromatic void, on the mercy of the fundamental polygonal slabs, that might solely have been invented through the wild early days of 3D gaming.
This dude is Arc, hero of the tactical RPG Arc the Lad, a Japan-only launch on PS1 in 1995. The sport was widespread sufficient to spawn a number of sequels properly into the PS2 period, in addition to manga and anime. However the first three video games weren’t revealed within the West, which roughly doomed it to obscurity on these shores.
Earlier than Sony permitted him to outline racing video games for a era together with his ultrarealist motorsport magnum opus Gran Turismo, Kazunori Yamauchi was requested to earn his stripes by knocking out a Mario Kart clone at Japan Studio. That recreation was 1994’s Motor Toon Grand Prix (a Japan-only launch, though a sequel did come out within the U.S.). Clearly, Yamauchi completely overengineered it, constructing advanced dealing with physics with absolutely simulated suspensions for the cartoon karts.
You’d be forgiven for being stumped by this unusual glowing canine character, though it hails from a really current launch. It’s the participant character of Humanity, a puzzle-platformer/artwork piece from 2023 by which your celestial hound guides monumental throngs of individuals by treacherous, summary ranges (that are considerably harking back to Clever Qube, really).
This cute lil’ Pomeranian is, in truth, the quilt star of a very savage PS3-era indie recreation developed by Crispy’s! and incubated by Japan Studio: Tokyo Jungle. The 2012 recreation is in regards to the survival of the fittest in a ruined Tokyo with no human inhabitants — simply animals consuming one another, fucking, and evolving. The Pomeranian is one in every of two starter animal decisions (the opposite is a deer; surviving as an herbivore is even more durable).
Sometimes, you come throughout a recreation that requires no extra rationalization than its title, and one instance is the 2002 PS2 launch Mister Mosquito, by which you… play as a mosquito. You reside in a home with a household of life-sized people and must suck their blood to outlive. That’s it. That’s the sport.
That is Robbit, the robotic rabbit protagonist of the extraordinarily early PlayStation launch Jumping Flash!, a 1995 launch recreation for the console in Europe and North America. Leaping Flash! was a daring, head-spinning try and do platforming in 3D utilizing a first-person perspective. Tremendous Mario 64 would consign this strategy to historical past a 12 months later, however the recreation was nonetheless an actual trailblazer.