Curated playlist

PlayStation (console) games

Metal Gear Solid (video game)1998 video game
Capcom vs. SNK: Millennium Fight 2000Leon S. Kennedy and Mega Man were meant to be playable in Capcom vs. SNK. Both were cut to keep a fighting-game roster.
Street Fighter CollectionDespite skeptical reviews, Street Fighter Collection won Fighting Game of the Year from Electronic Gaming Monthly.
Street Fighter Alpha 2Street Fighter Alpha 2 was Japan's top arcade game of 1996. It arrived less than a year after the first Alpha.
Mitsumete KnightMitsumete Knight, a 1998 PlayStation game, leaves a church bomb threat unexplained. Audio dramas later explained it.
X-Men vs. Street FighterX-Men vs. Street Fighter gave each player two fighters instead of one. Capcom's 1996 arcade game used a tag system.
Street Fighter Alpha 3Thirty-nine fighters. That is how large the playable cast of Street Fighter Alpha 3 grew on its biggest portable edition. The game itself began in 1998 as a Capcom arcade title. It was the third and final installment of the Street Fighter…
Street Fighter EX2Street Fighter EX2 let players chain basic and special moves into Excel Combos.
Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super HeroesMarvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes let Mega Man fight Marvel heroes. It was a first for the series.
Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street FighterMarvel kept a comedian's fighter out of Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter abroad for over two decades.
X-Men: Children of the Atom (video game)Capcom's X-Men arcade game hides Akuma because its Marvel contract required a Street Fighter character.
Final Fantasy VJapan asked Square not to release Final Fantasy V on a school day.
Street Fighter: The Movie (console video game)Raul Julia died before the Street Fighter movie game was finished. His stunt double played Bison.
Fighter MakerFighter Maker let players build their own fighters, not just pick one.
Super Gem Fighter Mini MixIn Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix, Ken searches for a woman to have tea with.
Gensō SuikogaidenGensō Suikogaiden was a pair of Japan-only visual novels, never officially translated. Fans translated them in 2013.
Street Fighter AlphaStreet Fighter Alpha was built for two different arcade boards at once. Capcom had leftover stocks of both.
Final Fantasy VIIFinal Fantasy VII skipped the Nintendo 64 after one big enemy slowed it down.
Final Fantasy IXFinal Fantasy IX deliberately turned backward to medieval castles and minstrels.
Star Wars: Dark ForcesStar Wars: Dark Forces owes its existence to fan-made modifications of Doom. Some of those mods had levels set on the Death Star, and that sparked the idea of a Star Wars shooter built from the ground up. LucasArts, which developed and…
Tokimeki Memorial (video game)Konami, known for the punishing shooter Gradius, made a high school dating game.
Doom (1993 video game)Doom crashed a university network the night it was released in 1993. Ten thousand people tried to download it at once.
Silent Hill (video game)When Silent Hill's composer played his music, the team thought it was a software bug.
Suikoden (video game)Suikoden, a 1995 Konami role-playing game, asked players to recruit 108 warriors to overthrow an empire.
Resident Evil (1996 video game)Resident Evil, the 1996 survival horror game from Capcom for the PlayStation, was never expected to become a hit. Its producer, Tokuro Fujiwara, said it was aimed at a core audience, and he thought it would sell only around 200,000 copies.…
Resident Evil 2Resident Evil 2 is a 1998 survival horror game made and published by Capcom for the PlayStation. Across every platform it reached, it sold more than 6 million copies. That success came from a second attempt. The sequel players bought was…
Snatcher (video game)Snatcher's story was cut from five acts to two by memory limits. Hideo Kojima's 1988 game ends on a cliffhanger.
Final Fantasy IIFinal Fantasy II replaced experience points with stats that grow by use. Its designer felt it went too far.
MystMyst, a 1993 adventure game from the studio Cyan, opens with a book. The player, an unnamed person, finds a volume titled Myst and reads its detailed description of an island. Resting a hand on the last page carries the player into that…
Tekken 3Tekken 3, a fighting game from Namco, sold more than one million copies in Japan on the day it reached the PlayStation. Few games begin their life at home with a number like that. Behind it lies a story that starts in the arcade, runs…
Final Fantasy (video game)Final Fantasy got its name because its creator planned to quit if it failed. Square was also facing bankruptcy in 1987.
Final Fantasy IVFinal Fantasy IV began with a Formula One race. Hiroyuki Ito saw cars pass at different speeds and got an idea.
Final Fantasy VIFinal Fantasy VI lets its hero fail to save the world. The story's second half is called the World of Ruin.
Final Fantasy VIIIFinal Fantasy VIII sold 2.21 million copies in one day in Japan.
Vagrant StoryVagrant Story, a 2000 PlayStation game, had no shops at all. Players built their own gear in workshops instead.
Suikoden IIIn Suikoden II, best friends Riou and Jowy are fated to fight until one dies. A hidden third ending spares them.
Chrono TriggerChrono Trigger is a 1995 role-playing game that Square developed and published for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It began with a research trip. In October 1992, three veteran creators traveled to the United States to study…
Space InvadersSpace Invaders sped up as aliens vanished by accident, and its designer kept the quirk.
Final Fantasy TacticsFinal Fantasy Tactics tells of a war that its own church secretly engineered.
Castlevania: Symphony of the NightCastlevania: Symphony of the Night is a 1997 action role-playing game made by Konami for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn. Its most talked-about moment is a trick of architecture. Deep into the adventure, the entire castle turns upside…
Dragon Quest VIIDragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past sold 3.57 million copies in Japan within 17 days of going on sale in 2000. Enix published it for the original PlayStation, as one more entry in a role-playing series that Yuji Horii has…