Perfect PlayStation Games That Nobody Remembers

The PlayStation brand is now almost 30 years old. That’s a long time for a console to play host to video games, and unsurprisingly, there have been a lot of video games on PlayStation consoles over those three decades. There are all-time classics like Final Fantasy 7 or God of War, and underrated hits like the first Helldivers.

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Then there are those games that are damn near perfect, yet they’ve been completely forgotten. These games aren’t a bit underrated or cult classics; they’ve basically been erased from the public’s memory. No remasters, no remakes, no sequels, and rarely even a mention in the conversation of underrated games. You may never have heard of these games, and there’s a pretty good chance you didn’t get around to playing them, but they’re fantastic, and many of them still hold up today.

Shipwreckers!

A Pirate Ship Adventure

Also known as Overboard! in Europe, Shipwreckers! is a top-down action adventure game where you control a pirate ship that’s helmed by Captain Blowfeet and his two crew members. You sail through five different nations — from the Carribean to the Arctic — battling other pirates and seeking treasure.

The mechanics in Shipwreckers! may be simple, but they’re fine-tuned to the point that they become addictive. Ships control very well in both exploration and combat, and the variety of settings keep things interesting throughout. The game’s best is definitely found in local multiplayer, which adds a pleasing chaotic element to this overlooked PS1 classic.

The Mark Of Kri

Polynesian-Inspired Action Adventure

The Mark of Kri still looks fantastic, even though it is turning 24 years old in 2026. That’s largely due to its art team being made up of former 2D animators, including some from Disney. This game is more than just a looker though; it’s an action adventure title with a heavy focus on shockingly violent stealth.

The art is inspired by a variety of Polynesian cultures, while the world is steeped in Maori mythology. The latter received some heavy criticism from New Zealand, where some felt the game took some insensitive liberties with Maori culture. Regardless, it’s a unique mythology to build a game around, and it helps make The Mark of Kri stand out in both its visuals and its narrative, while the unusual control scheme and brutal combat make the moment-to-moment gameplay some of the PS2’s best.

Shadow Of Rome

Gladiator Combat With Political Intrigue

It’s surprising that more people don’t remember Shadow of Rome. Developed by Capcom with western audiences in mind, and likely inspired by the success of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, Shadow of Rome uses a fictional reinterpretation of the assassination of Julius Caesar as its jumping off point. From there, protagonist Agrippa is sent to the arena after his father is accused of the killing. Meanwhile, the other playable character, Octavianus, sneaks his way through Rome, looking for evidence to clear Agrippa’s father’s name.

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Shadow of Rome has everything you could want from a Roman gladiator game. The arena combat is excellent: it’s challenging, extremely bloody, and looks great. Meanwhile, Octavianus’ storyline is more focused on stealth and politics as he scours the Roman elite for answers. It’s a great, engaging story buoyed by excellent visuals. Maybe the strangest thing of all is that Capcom greenlit a sequel to Shadow of Rome before the game even launched, and when it floundered financially, that sequel was (somehow) repurposed into Dead Rising.

Star Wars: Starfighter

Starship Dogfights Both In Space And On Planets

Back in the 90s and early 2000s, Star Wars games were trying all kinds of ideas. It wasn’t just about Jedi and the Force; podracing, scoundreling, and flying a spaceship were all explored in video game form. One such game, riding the high of The Phantom Menace, was Star Wars: Starfighter.

What makes Starfighter stand out is that not only do you do battle in space; you’ll engage in dogfights down on planets, too, flying over fields, through mountain passes, and above vast oceans. It’s a brilliant way to mix up the standard space dogfighting game formula. It helps that you have full control over your ship, which makes navigating the tight confines of planet-level conflict more manageable, and as a result, making you feel like a badass starfighter pilot. To encourage additional attempts, each level has a pair of secret objectives, and completing them can unlock bonus levels. It’s great stuff.

The Warriors

Back When Rockstar Worked On More Than Two Franchises

The Warriors

Systems

Released

October 17, 2005

ESRB

M // Blood, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Use of Drugs and Alcohol

Rockstar was known for more than just GTA and Red Dead in the mid-2000s. They made a surprisingly good table tennis game, Bully, Midnight Club, Manhunt, and seemingly out of nowhere, an adaptation of the 1979 cult classic film The Warriors. This is a game that no one was really asking for, no one was expecting, and fans of the movie likely weren’t very enthused about it. That is, until they played it.

The Warriors may be a retelling of the same story as the film it shares its name with, but the gameplay is brilliantly modern. You can play as one of nine members of the Warriors gang on each mission, from their warchief to their graffiti artist, train their skills at the gang’s hideout, and then brawl it out with any of the other rival gangs from the film, dishing out simeple to complex combos, grapples, counters, and weapon attacks. The story is even expanded from the movie’s, with a series of excellent flashback missions that detail how each member came to join The Warriors in the first place. Between the pedigree of the developer and the quality and depth of the product itself, it’s crazy that The Warriors has been forgotten.

Majin And The Forsaken Kingdom

Before The Last Guardian, There Was…

Set in a fantasy kingdom overtaken by a mysterious darkness, Majin and the Forgotten Kingdom starts Tepeu, a thief tasked with freeing a mythical Majin and helping it regain its powers so that it can cleanse the land and return it to its once-great splendor. Developed by Game Republic, the makers of Folklore (another great but forgotten PlayStation game) and the Genji series, this is an action adventure game with puzzle elements akin to an older The Last Guardian.

Players control Tepeu exclusively, but they can issue orders to the Majin, Teotl, in combat and when solving puzzles. Teotl is incredibly strong, able to lift massive objects and plow through swaths of enemies. The creature helps protect the more vulnerable Tepeu when the going gets tough. Majin and the Forgotten Kingdom is a gorgeous game with a great story at its core; the only blemish on it is some lackluster voice acting.

Binary Domain

The Yakuza Team’s Sci-Fi Shooter

Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio are best known (and arguably only known) for the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series, but back in 2012, the developer took a stab at the third-person cover shooter genre with Binary Domain. It’s a sci-fi shooter where you control Dan Marshall, a member of Rust Crew who is dispatched to Tokyo to unravel the connections behind a pair of warring robotics companies.

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Much like the Yakuza series, Binary Domain has a lot more going on than just third-person shooting. There are turret levels, jetski sequences, boss battles, a mission in a futuristic cannabis farm, and more. However, also similar to Yakuza, these distractions are little more than palette cleansers for the main event: the combat, which in this case is some fantastic shooting gameplay. Blowing away robots simply never gets old, from the way parts fly off of them to the variety of weapons at your disposal. Binary Domain is goofy, action-packed, and well worth your time, and it’s a shame more people don’t remember it.

Tokyo Jungle

A Sci-Fi Survival Game With Playable Animals

There aren’t many games that let you play exclusively as an animal, but there are even fewer games that let you play as almost 50 different animals. That’s the major element that sets Tokyo Jungle apart. It’s a post-apocalyptic survival game set in a world where humankind is mostly extinct. In their absence, animals must once again fend for themselves, and you play as the various faunae that are reclaiming the city of Tokyo.

You begin as a single pomeranian who has run out of food and must set out to find a way to survive. You’ll battle cats and eventually establish a small pack of poms. Then, you move on to the next animal. While the mechanics for each creature aren’t all that complex, you also aren’t playing as any of them for long (unless you want to goof around for a while), so it never starts to drag. Pomeranians are just the beginning. Soon, you’ll be playing as a lion, a crocodile, a lion, a hyena, and more. There really isn’t any other game like Tokyo Jungle, but there doesn’t need to be. This one already perfectly accomplishes what it tries to do.

The Eye Of Judgement

One Of The Best Reasons To Own A PlayStation Eye

The PlayStation Eye was a webcam-like device for the PS3 that would translate the physical movements of players into inputs in a game, to varying degrees of success. There are a surprising number of games that incorporated some of the PS Eye’s features, including PES 09, Def Jam Rapstar, and LittleBigPlanet 2, but the best game to use this peripheral by far — and also the first — was The Eye of Judgement.

You know how it is really cool in the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime when they play a card and a visible hologram of the card appears on the playing field? That’s what The Eye of Judgement tries to emulate. This is a CCG where you need to collect real-world cards, build a deck, and then, while using a game-specific playing mat, pit your deck against those of your friends. There was an online option for playing against strangers, but it was pretty hit or miss. The best experience was playing in-person. Gameplay was simple enough for newcomers to have fun instantly, but deceptively complex enough to encourage veterans to keep coming back. Funny enough, of all the games on this list, The Eye of Judgement has maintained the most consistent in-person playerbase, even if the online servers were shut down ages ago.

ModNation Racers

A Kart Racer With A Deep Track Creation System

ModNation Racers is a kart racing game that, before launch, was not compared to Mario Kart so much as it was compared to LittleBigPlanet. It’s a surprisingly challenging game, especially the career mode, but it makes up for it with silky-smooth controls, unique weapon pickups, and some excellent online or local competitive options that make racing against other players a fantastic experience.

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However, the real draw here is the customization options. You can edit your racers to look like basically anything you can imagine, and customize the visuals on their kart as well. What players spent the most time on, though, was the track creation system. This thing is robust in the best way possible, and with the wacky, over-the-top nature of kart racers, it allows for some truly wild ideas. Best of all, you can upload and share your track creations for others to try out, and you can check out community-created tracks too, which are often the best tracks in the game.

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