23 PSone games to mark PlayStation's 23rd anniversary

Happy birthday to one of the greatest consoles of all time.

19. Parasite Eve

Speaking of old games people often ask to see revived, Squaresoft's Parasite Eve gave us elements of horror and role-playing in New York City as police officer Aya Brea tries to stop the Eve, a woman who plans to destroy the human race. The sequel was also rather good, although The 3rd Birthday, released for PSP in 2010, wasn't quite what we wanted.

20. Bushido Blade

While most fighting games focused on hand-to-hand combat, with the odd fireball (or twenty) thrown in for good measure, Bushido Blade was about armed combat, and that novelty - with depth to support it - helped it stand apart in a sea of Street Fighter clones.

21. Bishi Bashi Special

Back in the days before the Wii, mini-game compilations were exciting and novel, and Konami's Bishi Bashi Special was one of the most absurd and delightful. From top-down race horses to a pair of characters bound together trying to reach puddings on either side of the screen, Bishi Bashi certainly was special.

22. Silent Hill

While Capcom's Resident Evil series focused on tangible threats like zombies and mutations that could be seen, touched and blown to pieces, Konami took a different route with Silent Hill, delivering more a psychological style of horror that gave it a distinctive and eerie feeling that helped it carve out its own place in the PlayStation pantheon.

23. Ridge Racer

Last but not least, Namco's Ridge Racer is a series we dearly miss: an absurd arcade racer in which you slide sideways round corners at ridiculous speeds. The ridiculous thrill of drifting - such a novelty at the time - meant that this game with only one track was still in and out of our disc trays at the very end of the PlayStation's life. Bring it back, someone, for us.

Editor-at-Large

Tom is probably best known for the 15 years - FIFTEEN YEARS! - he spent at Eurogamer, one of Europe's biggest independent gaming sites. Now he roams the earth, but will always have a home here at AllGamers. You can try and raise him from his deep, abyssal slumber through tom.bramwell@allgamers.com or he's also on Twitter.

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