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As we edge ever closer to a whole new era of gaming with the much-anticipated launch of the PlayStation 5, maybe it’s time to take a look back at where it all began. More to the point, let’s check out five of the earliest games that were developed for the PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2 consoles and which, for reasons we will see, somehow failed to catch on.
MediEvil (1996)
It’s probably fair to say that a game with such a cheesy pun in the title is going to be a little, well, different. Part of the problem with MediEvil emanated from the main protagonist, Sir Daniel Fortesque. Despite his noble-sounding name, Sir Daniel was actually a skeleton who had risen from the dead to take on the evil Zarok in the year 1386. This fact, combined with reportedly sloppy controls and disjointed gameplay, meant that it never really took off – although it was successfully adapted as a PSP game in 2005 and received a full remake in 2019 for the PS4.
No One Can Stop Mr. Domino! (1998)
Another crazy name, another crazy game. The player controls a fast-moving, anthropomorphic domino who runs round in many different scenarios laying out other dominos as he goes. Various impediments try to stop him as he runs but if he successfully evades them then the scores of all the tiles he’s laid down are added to the player’s total. In one particularly surreal scene, he’s rushing around a house trying to push family members out of the way to complete his mission.
Caesars Palace (2000)
The real Caesars Palace is a legendary and very glamorous location. Unfortunately, its conversion into a video game failed to capture even a fraction of its ambience, and the game was released to a mixed reception. Today’s casino games have evolved into an online industry that is leaps and bounds ahead of this two-decade-old outdated title; though it did feature most of the games that you’ll find in a mobile casino today. However, where the very best of modern online casino games are slick, fun to play, with many even featuring “live casino” action, this PS1 game just wasn’t fun. The 2000 version was clunky, slow, and confusing to play. This earned it an average 4/10 rating among reviewers as the game was just plain boring.
Incredible Crisis (2000)
If this sounds like someone has fed a Japanese title into Google Translate and come up with another classic clunker, that’s not so far from the truth. The game was developed in Japan and features four family members tasked with getting birthday presents for grandma. Each member faces their own challenges that range from the mundane to the truly bizarre. All you need to know is that it was the 184th best-selling game in Japan in 2000.
Dog’s Life (2003)
Not many players want to be a dog, especially when their task is to protect a good-looking foxhound called Daisy from being turned into cat-food by a Cruella De Vil-style character called Miss Peaches. To say it received a lukewarm reception would be a fair assessment, but it is in the Guinness Book of Records as the game in which a single actor, Kerry Shale, voiced the highest number of different characters – an impressive 32.
Of course, all these games did have their fans at the time, and some still do. But we can be pretty sure that none will be resurrected for the PS5 and no-one’s going to complain too much about that.