Sony has pulled two more PS1 titles from the PlayStation Store due to 'technical problems'. This is after last week, when they pulled Medievil due to a game stopping bug. This time around, we lose Crash Bandicoot 2 and Spyro 2 (which was on shaky ground already due to an audio bug). No time frame was given for when the titles will get re-released. According to Sony, they're looking into what caused the bugs but, "This investigation is highly technical and requires some time to work through."
People who have purchased these titles will be contacted by Sony in the next 10 days about what the plan is. People who have already downloaded the titles won't have to pay for them again, but there's no knowledge if customers will be able to just get a rebate if they don't want to wait for a 'fixed' version to come out.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
8-07-2007 @ 11:28PM
Andres said...
It's cool at least Sony is on the ball fixing these things.
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8-08-2007 @ 12:26AM
Phil said...
why cant you just copy the disc ones you already bought years ago to HDD..??? thats why it's there. right?
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8-08-2007 @ 12:48AM
E.J. said...
Phil, your idea makes too much sense and not enough money for Sony. [the spiteful tone is towards Sony, not you]
Please keep your cuh-razzzy ideas to yourself or else Sony's gonna track you down, sew your mouth shut and break your fingers with your PS3. You're just supposed to nod and say "Okay!"
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8-08-2007 @ 12:57AM
ajayen said...
Hot Shots Golf was pulled soon after it was released to. I dont know why. I got it before it was pulled though.
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8-08-2007 @ 12:57AM
Tim said...
^ Haha. Yea I rekon. If we could do that where would they get that extra profit margin from?
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8-08-2007 @ 3:57AM
Ian said...
"It's cool at least Sony is on the ball fixing these things." - Andres
What would be cooler of course is Sony having a QA department on the ball in the first place. For a while, on the Euro PS3 forums, SCEE were denying any major problems with Spyro apart from audio drops and weren't going to pull the release. Of course, anyone who actually played the game for more than about 10 minutes would discover that the game would end at a black screen after starting the next level, and find that the autosave option had kicked in at this point rendering the game useless.
The reason for this as far as I am aware is that Spyro, when originally released, had some anti-counterfeiting measures in place that checked for particular disc sectors on the CD (or some other shenanigans) at that particular point in the game.
What Sony need to do - which could be a problem - is either go into the original Spyro codebase and turn off the check (may not even be possible if the code no longer is available to them) or work out a way of emulating the bad sectors (or whatever disc protection was in place) within the game image being run by the PS1 emulation code. Medieval uses similar anti-piracy code and fails for the same reason, and I would bet there are quite a few PS1 games out there which followed the same principles.
It baffles the mind how Sony released these games without at least giving them a cursory check - the Spyro audio problems happen in the opening movie and the "black screen of death" kicks in after finishing the tutorial level.
There's also an annoying bug concerning the emulated games disabling analog input no matter how many times you select it from the emulation settings which they should have uncovered (these games are meant to support analog modes).
Here's hoping they improve the QA system soon as I was quite looking forward to playing through these old games again, having sold off my originals a long time ago (stupid I know).
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8-08-2007 @ 9:08AM
Popfrogs said...
If what Ian says is true, it's kinda funny that Sony will have to crack its own games to get them to run under emulation.
Basically this all comes down to emulator problems. I'm surprised Sony didn't just buy up the Bleem codebase and port it to the PS3/PSP.
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