As well as being an excellent platformer,Astro Botacts as a reminder of all the greatPlayStationgames we’ve played over the years. There are the obvious mainstream ones that get their own levels, likeGod of WarandUncharted, while few playing the game would fail to recogniseRatchet,Lara Croft, orJin Sakai. However, across the 173 cameos in the game (including the four imported fromAstro’s Playroom), there were a lot I didn’t recognise. And now I want to meet them.
Of course, my first reaction was to remember the games I have played, but a long, long time ago. The factApe Escapeand LocoRoco get their own levels helps, but seeing characters from Vib-Ribbon, UmJammer Lammy, Buzz, and Wild Arms also transported me back to the days of playing those games - games I haven’t thought about in years, and mostly remember as just being ‘pretty decent’. But as the dust settles, I’m eager to find out why characters I’d never heard of before were good enough to make the cut.
Astro Bot Is A PlayStation Celebration, But Invites Were Lost In The Mail
Some will tell you, cynically, that this is the point. Astro Bot is just one big commercial, and the fact you must build aPS5as you go is the literal rendition of this metaphorical monument to capitalism. That was what I feared before I played the game, and if it weren’t for the fact there was obviously so much love, creativity, and sense of identity baked into the design of every level, that criticism might stick more.Days Gonedirector John Garvin seems to think the opposite, that rather thanadvertising the games featured, the games featuredare being used to advertise Astro Bot.
But we have seen a notable uptick in older games featured in Astro Botbeing downloaded from PS Plus, so whether planned or not, Astro Bot has successfully advertised PlayStation’s library. They even just added Mister Mosquito, hot on the tails of his cameo here. The only problem is I’m not interested in those games. I want something fresh. And a lot of those games seem pretty hard to come by. Alundra, Arc the Lad, and Boku no Natsuyasumi are calling out for me, but none are available to download. For Arc the Lad, the sixth game in the series is available on the PS Store, but that’s it.
Space Channel 5, a game I only briefly played in childhood, has a VR version, but annoyingly this is only on PSVR, not PS VR2. Astro Bot: Rescue Mission shares the same doomed fate.
Usually I’m wary of remakes as a rule. I think we’ve seen a lot of studios rehashing old masterpieces at the cost of development cycles of new projects (Naughty Dog’s only contribution to the PS5 era will likely be three remasters and a roguelike add-on), or cashing in on nostalgia without any serious plans to take the series further (Dead Space). While they do help new players discover games, and The Last of Us was almost certainly given a new coat of paint to coincide with its HBO series, mostly they are designed to sell a new version of a game fans already love - and own - back to them for profit.
But that’s not what I’m asking for here. With respect (and apologies to one very passionate fan at TheGamer), there probably aren’t enough Alundra fans crying out for a new game or remaster to make it financially viable. And the games industry is an industry, so that means it ain’t gonna happen. But after Astro Bot, I and so many other fans who had never heard of Alundra would be interested in checking it out. Enough to make the investment worth it? No idea, but that would finally be a remaster that truly was aimed at getting new players on board rather than just cashing in.
PS Plus has been improving with this, porting forgotten spin-offs like Secret Agent Clank and nicher RPGs like Jeanne d’Arc.
Maybe I’m just feeling that way because it seems like so few of the characters in Astro Bot have much of a future. By my count, there are 97 distinct series represented in Astro Bot, and going through them, I believe there are 56 that will never get another game again. There’s guesswork involved, and I can’t lamentNaughty Dog’sobsession with perfectingTLOUin one breath then insist studios never move on in the second, but this is a list of what we can fairly say are PlayStation’s most iconic games, and (leaving margin for error) around half will never see the light of day again. Astro Bot is a wonderful, whimsical game that sparks joy, but that’s a mighty depressing thought.
