Final Fantasy 8

Original release date:  September 9th, 1999

Release date on PSN: December 17th, 2009

Price: $9.99

Square Enix producer Yoshinori Kitase said recently in interview that he would love to get Parasite Eve 1 and 2 released before the up coming entry in the series, The 3rd Birthday is released.

This makes perfect sense really, the original games were released ages ago and only now is a sequel being developed for a wholy new audience. It’s worth giving the die hard fans a chance to refresh their memories and letting those that missed it the first time (namely me) a chance to experience it for the first time. I’ve heard it’s a mix between Final Fantasy and Resident Evil, a sort of Horror RPG with shooting mechanics. No matter what, the 3rd Birthday looks spectacular and I’d love to delve into the series.

Crash Team Racing

Original Release Date: September 30th, 1999

Release Date on PSN: AUg 10th, 2010

Price: 5.99

Story

This is a Kart Racer, but oddly enough there’s a little bit of a story mode in here, it’s nothing to write home about, but it’s better than just going through tournaments over and over. You can pick from a number of racers to complete this adventure, but your ultimate goal is to save the world from an Alien threat by… beating them at Kart Racing… Ok so it doesn’t make any sense, but it was actually quite enjoyable. There is an overworld to drive between tracks, and even bosses to compete against after you win trophies in enough races. Most of the time the regular tracks are the most fun though.

For the past few weeks the quality of PSone classics being released on the network were poor to say the least, and sometimes not even existent, this week according to Grace Chen from the Playstation store that will change with the inclusion of Crash Team Racing on the Playstation Network as a PSone Classic.

On the Playstation blog’s post about the store’s update she was asked when the beloved game would be released she answered a simple “Look for it next week”. This is a rare moment to get word from a Sony representative when a psone classic game will be released, hopefully more announcements will follow (and hopefully louder ones!)

Medal of Honor

Original release date: November 11th, 1999

Release date on PSN: June 2nd, 2009

Price : 5.99

Story

Medal of Honor is a truly legendary game, and the story that goes along with it is legendary as well. This one started the craze of WW2 shooters and I can tell why, it’s engaging and there are always a place to go and nazis to shoot along the way. The real propaganda videos spliced between missions are great to watch as well, you get a little bit of history with your gaming expercience and it’s a refreshing change to most shooters.

Today is July 2nd. Yesterday Sony debuted the video store of the Playstation network this coincided with Canada Day.

My being a good and honest Canadian means that I have a little bit of a foggy head after yesterday’s festivities, but that doesn’t mean that I was lost on the Video store being released. You can now rent and buy digital copies of movies to your PS3 and PSP and even if you can’t find anything  you like, be sure to check it out anyways, because if you’re a Canadian resident you’ll get a free copy of a pretty bad movie (Charlie’s Angels) for free.

Really, it’s been a big day for the Playstation Network, with the launch of the new PS3 and PSP firmwares, and the launch of Playstation Plus. So there aren’t very many new things available on the network this week, (sadly no new PSone Classics), but there are a few deals. Trine for instance has dropped price down to $9.99, down 5 dollars, LocoRoco Midnight Carnival has halved it’s price to 7.49 from 14.99.

It seems like NeoGeo games and PCengine games will be coming to the Playstation network. The new PSP firmware allows us to put our games into folders and they added these two new categories. NeoGeo and PCengine games have been out on the Japanese PSN for a while, and it seems like they’ll be making their way to North America.  More games are never a bad thing, I’m hoping these games will be a little cheaper than the PSone Classics seeing as they’re older, but we’ll see. It seems like Sony has really put a lot of great stuff in out laps today, I’m excited where the Network will go next.

Last night at 12am eastern standard time, Sony released it’s new firmware version 3.40. Lots of new features have been added.

Photo Gallery is now Network enabled- You can now share your photos or photo albums with you friends over PSN

Video Editor – A new video editor was released for free. I haven’t started to play around with it yet, but you can see a video of it from the post on Kotaku. It looks pretty spiffy if you ask me. You can also upload your videos straight to Youtube which is a great feature that I’ll try to make use of for future reviews.

At E3 Sony announced Playstation Plus, a new subscription service for the Playstation Network based on giving free content out throughout the year. Today it launched.

For 49.99 you get a year subscription, (and three extra months free) and you’re given exclusive access to betas, deals on games, and sometimes even free games, that stay yours for the duration of your subscription. Today the service launches with 2 free games, Wipeout HD, and Rally Cross (PSone Classic). You also get lots of deals on games like Midway games half off, and a few other games with their DLC available for free.