You Can Now Purchase PlayStation 1 Classics on PS5

Revisiting certain classic PlayStation titles on modern hardware will no longer require the most expensive subscription tier of Sony’s online service.

As spotted by a user on the ResetEra forums, four original Playstation titles, Tekken 2, Ridge Racer 2, Ridge Racer Type 4 and Mr. Driller, are now available on the PlayStation Store for purchase. The games, along with the many other titles in Sony’s “classics catalog,” were only previously accessible on PS5 through PlayStation Plus Premium.

Each title is $9.99 to own digitally, compared to the $17 a month, or $120 annual, cost of PlayStation Plus Premium.

As successful as the Playstation 5 has been, access to older titles has been spotty at best. Aside from a wide selection of Playstation 4 games, Sony’s latest console hasn’t been kind to players who want to revisit Sony’s legacy titles without breaking the bank. 

Sony tried to rectify the issue when it introduced brand new tiers to PlayStation Plus last year. Positioned as a competitor to Xbox Game Pass, the competitively priced Premium tier finally gave PlayStation gamers a way of playing some of these older games.

However, locking these titles behind a subscription paywall is a far cry from Xbox’s more traditional approach to backwards compatibility, where old games are available both on Game Pass and to outright buy digitally alongside newer ones. The Xbox Series X can even read discs as far back as the original Xbox.

Once an industry leader for backwards compatibility, Sony has long left the feature behind. Early on during the PlayStation 3’s life cycle, Sony nixed the console’s ability to play PlayStation 1 and 2 games in order to cut costs.

Since then, the company has stopped short of reintroducing the feature, instead choosing to provide alternatives, to mixed results. PS4 gamers could stream select classic titles through PlayStation Now, while PS5 introduced the classic catalog. Both methods have stranded some more contemporary classics like the PS3 version of Red Dead Redemption on older hardware.