EA taps '90s nostalgia for 'new' PSP games

Game creator Electronic Arts has announced the release of "EA Replay," a compilation of its '90s-era titles reprogrammed for use on Sony's PlayStation Portable.

Even with the upcoming launches of Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii consoles, the game industry can't ignore the marketing potential of nostalgia.

Redwood City, Calif.-based EA plans to jump onto the retro bandwagon on Nov. 7 with "EA Replay," a set of 14 of the company's titles that were originally released between 1990 and 1995. The games run the gamut from the martial-arts "Budokan" to the fantasy role-playing "Ultima VII," which has since morphed into the massive multiplayer online game "Ultima Online."

While "EA Replay" will be available only for Sony's PlayStation Portable handheld, the games featured in the compilation were originally released for a variety of platforms. Some, like "Wing Commander," were PC games. Others, such as the "Road Rash" series and "Haunting Starring Polterguy," were made for consoles like Super Nintendo or the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis.

The appeal of old-school video games is nothing new. Arcade games originally launched in the 1980s were a big hit at this year's E3 trade show; and MySpace used a Flash version of "Pac-Man" to appease its fans when the social-networking service an suffered outage this summer.

But with "EA Replay," Electronic Arts is mining the nostalgic value of games introduced well after the "Pong" era--titles from the early to mid-1990s--and marketing them as "classics."

"EA Replay" is set to sell for $19.99.

[techned]

Bring back Privateer !!!

Out of all the Mercenary/space sims I missed, next to Wing Commander 2 is Privateer.

Privateer was great, you were either a smuggler, bounty hunter, escort, or trader while in the midst of the Terran/Kilrathi war. It was awesome - where you could either be hunted by pirates, Kilrathi, or Terran forces, especially against capital ships. The add-on was also the first time I saw a CGI cut-scene in a game.

I wish they could re-release it with updated features and graphics, and then build a franchise on it.

The sequel, Privateer 2, was this horrible British-made thing, with live actors. It sucked in every catagory.

If Ea ever brings out either Wing Commander or/and Privateer - forget the live actors.

[Scopip]

privateer for sure

privateer was definately the height of dos gaming era when the chinese were writing some good stuff. I think that took about 20 floppy disks with pkzip-& function.

[Taylor McLaren]

Privateer remake

Do a search for "privateer remake" on your engine of choice: there's
a pretty decent Sourceforge project that makes the game available
on current versions of Windows, OS X, and Linux.

CNET Sucks

More press releases posted as features.

[unknown unknown]

RE

Apparently it doesn't suck enough for you to quit reading it and posting here.

[Dalkorian]

beginning of the end

Didn't the game companies pull this kind of stuff before, back in
the 80's when the entire game industry nearly collapsed?

When you run out of ideas, start repackaging old ones and pray the
morons buy it all again.

I wonder what will save them from themselves this time.