Old Man Yells at Clouds - PS2 on PS4: Sony's Greatest Disappointment.

It is hard to describe in words how excited I was back when I heard PS4 was going to start released rezzed up versions of PS2 games. Not only could I play some of those old classic titles, but maybe even some I have missed out and could now play without having to emulate, even support the devs behind the game too.

And when the releases actually came, I was floored to see Dark Cloud 2 released so early. I seem to remember it being in the first set of games that came out, though to be fair it's been a while and I could be wrong on that. Either way, you got your obvious and big drawing release with the GTA games, but to see an absolute classic like Dark Cloud 2 get a release in this day warmed my heart.

And these aren't remakes, they are basically just filtered up to a better resolution (Okay, people who know how this works can describe it better than that and could probably point out why this is a terrible description), so I can't imagine there is a very high cost to the devs to get these running. And the games are between ten and fifteen dollars, so it's an easy price range for anyone to get into.

And with the expansive and loved PS2 Library, my personal favorite gaming library with the SNES being a really close second, and such a variety of loved games of all kinds of genres, only Nintendo could hope to eclipse what Sony had the chance to offer you. In my mind, this had to be a recipe for success.... right?

Despite being out for a good few years now, this storefront has been dead for ages. Just over fifty entries, one of which is the Jack Trilogy collection, and three of the games are each of those individual titles, we are sitting on an absolutely abysmal selection of titles. I mean I'll just link you to their store page to see for yourself.

https://store.playstation.com/en-us/grid/STORE-MSF77008-PS2GAMESONPS4G/1?direction=desc&sort=release_date

After years of being out, there are only a few games that I could even get that excited for, and so few games that were even your hot sellers, most of which came out near the beginning of the PS2 on PS4's life. And I don't know if there was ever an explanation is given as to why.

Could they not get devs to release these classic titles? Were they just selling poorly? Did they just never put any real effort into it? Was it pushed off entirely for that PS Now Streaming thing? There was also almost no coverage of releases as they came out, so was it in part because gaming news outlets thought it unnecessary to cover them? Maybe that little extra work to scale the games up and add trophy support gave it just enough cost to make it not worth it (If so, I really would have wished they cut that entirely. As nice as Dark Cloud 2 looked, there was no need to upgrade it at all to be fantastic.)

I am huge on allowing newer generations to have access to older games, it's why I love emulation so much. But if I'm being honest I love the idea that they can be played in a more official capacity to both support the devs behind them (Assuming they still, get royalties. I certainly hope they did with the releases, and not just the publishers on the games), and to show that there is still a market and love for some of these older styles of games. I would love to have the guys behind Dark Cloud come back and make another one, or at least another game with a similar style.

Even the Nintendo Classic Shop, something else that got painfully shafted when the Switch came out, had some fantastic games and regular releases. It wasn't perfect, but we got a lot of classics and obscure titles, and even without looking at the Sega and Atari Libraries, only the Nintendo Properties, we had a lot of great releases there. PSX classics on the PS3 and Vita were even pretty fantastic for the same reasons, so to sit here and see what become of such a great thing is a bit heartbreaking, because somewhere in my mind I am going 'It didn't have to be this way, you could have been something'.