Alien Zombie Death

Pew pew pew, just like the good old days.

The 1001 list is a mostly chronological trip through video gaming. While it appears here and there to lump together similar games, more often than not it's a case of highlighting notable titles as and when they get released, allowing us to follow along with the developments and look back at where we've come from.

That basically means that we're not going to end on a carefully selected bang - not unless you're the type of person who loves the PlayStation Portable and the teeny tiny downloadable titles you could find for it, titles like Alien Zombie Death.

The controls are simple. The graphics are appropriate for the file size. The gameplay evokes titles from a long time ago. But I've come so far in this 1001 list that it'd be silly to end it like that. Let's fire it up and see what it's made of. Maybe we'll end with a bang after all.

Dissidia Final Fantasy

"Destiny is at hand. We might as well enjoy it."

The 1001 write up for Dissidia Final Fantasy does a far better job at introducing it than I ever could.

To paraphrase it, Final Fantasy combat involved characters standing in place, attacking nothing in particular, and watching numbers spring out of their opponent's heads, but Final Fantasy cutscenes or spin-off movies showed incredibly animated, over the top action where characters did the absolute opposite of sitting still.

Dissidia Final Fantasy is an attempt to merge those two things together. To let Final Fantasy characters fight it out in a way the RPG series hasn't seen before, all in a dense package on the PlayStation Portable.

It's one of the few physical PSP games I've got left, and coming to it 12 years late is better than never coming to it at all.

Ultimate Ghosts 'n Goblins

When will you learn, Arthur? Wear more clothes and you'll stand a better chance...

The most difficult game ever released comes back after two decades for another shot? Can it hang in the modern climate of HD graphics and portable gaming experiences? Does Ultimate Ghosts 'n Goblins have what it takes to survive 2006, and do I have what it takes to survive Ultimate Ghosts 'n Goblins?

Well, we all know the answer the last bit...

Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops

"Quit your whining. The bullets went straight through. Now get up!"

The PlayStation Portable was a neat bit of kit. I got one early on its life, and while I probably never made the most of it, I have some damn good memories of various titles. The Metal Gear series, for example.

2005 saw the release of Metal Gear AC!D and its sequel, a turn-based collectable card game tactical RPG that I think is all kinds of fun and worth playing without a moment's hesitation. There was also a digitally animated adaptation of the Metal Gear Solid graphic novel by Kris Oprisko and Ashley Wood, which I am absolutely gutted that I no longer have (so far as I can see), though I do cherish the actual graphic novel itself.

That brings me neatly onto Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, the fourth Metal Gear on the PSP. Just think about that next time you wonder what happened to the PSP. It was loved, that's what happened. Metal Gear had been proven to work as a card game and a visual novel. The PSP was clearly a capable little machine. Could we squeeze a full Metal Gear Solid game onto it?

The answer is 'not quite', but while we didn't get a mini Metal Gear, we weren't left with a half-arsed product, either. Are you ready for some Metal Gear on the move?

Ridge Racer

Seriously Sideways

Way back in the mid to late 1990s, when I first got a PlayStation, I owned Ridge Racer, the port of the arcade racer designed to show that the consoles could do just as much as the cabinets could. If you squinted and ignored this or that. It was a great little game, holding plenty of attention until Gran Turismo made itself known, and then never being heard of again.

Ridge Racer Type 4 capped off the console generation with a game arguably better than Gran Turismo, assuming you wanted arcade-style racing. Long before that point, however, the Ridge Racer series was effectively dead to me.

When the PlayStation Portable came to town in 2005 for us Europeans, Ridge Racer was there once more to show off the power of the handheld in a compilation game of sorts, Ridge Racer, or Ridge Racers in its original Japanese.

Yeah, the naming isn't brilliant for this series. Still, I can get behind a game that gathers together the best bits of a series, mainly because I a) only remember a single track from Ridge Racer and b) didn't pick it up for the PSP until a few years ago, second hand. My launch title of choice was Archer Maclean's Mercury if you wanted to know.

Right, let's get these wheels sliding.