Forgotten PlayStation Vita Games

vita means life and now that the playstation vita is about to be 10 years old how's that holding up oh they haven't updated the front of the store page since 2018 despite new games coming out still very good the playstation vita was the successor to the popular playstation portable two handheld gaming systems that while i love seem to be sony's only attempts at handheld gaming for the foreseeable future unless you count the xperia play baby yeah where my playboys at the psp hit the ground running and was extremely popular in japan due to the wide success of games like monster hunter portable gran turismo crisis core and the console sold lifetime over 80 million units that's more than the 3ds by the way the vita not so much maybe it was the inclusion of confusing 3g models the 250 base price the proprietary memory cards the lack of western developer support the unnecessary back touch pad the vita and tv counterpart playstation tv only pushed at around 10 million but the veto was awesome considering this was the full six years before the switch the vita was the go-to platform for me to play indies jrpgs weird anomalies this is where classics like persona 4 golden gravity rush and danganronpa thrived also everything i just mentioned has been ported elsewhere but not everything the vita is still to this day filled with exclusives some of which are great some of which are awful and most of which are weird and forgotten and that's what we're gonna be talking about today heck it was even the first handheld with a second analog stick that enabled you to properly play first person shooters on the go yo you telling me killzone mercenary was a handheld game in 2013 although not all of them were created equal wow so it's austin and it's veda time finally this little handheld console is one of my favorites ever and today i'm going to be talking about some of the less notorious titles that came out on the thing the forgotten vita games but first today's video has been sponsored by 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disappoint but who the heck has the time to play all 25 plus games at release especially when two of them are hotshots golf and virtua tennis four i'm set never mind things like touch my katamari the better than it should be port of ultimate marvel vs capcom 3 wipeout 2048 being a legit 9 out of 10 that's held up so well its playstation 4 version feels identical not to mention shinobota 2 a game that's basically tenchu rayman origins on the go dynasty warriors on the go mod nation racers on the go me and the 20 other hardcore vita fans or swimming so how about unit 13 anyone i don't know about y'all but i was obsessed with unit 13. i don't know if it was the novelty of playing a third person shooter with good controls on such a small device or if it was because i was starved for games but this was neat unit 13 came out a few weeks after the vita launch but zipper interactive's little mission-based shooter seems to have gone in one ear and out the other which is weird because it's one of the vita's highest selling games unfortunately that's not saying much so zipper was responsible for the socom franchise which were at the time a wildly popular online playstation 2 semi-realistic tactical shooter that predated halo 2. sure it's a bit dated these days but these were all the rage back then then of course on the playstation 3 came mag oh mag but their swan song would end up being unit 13 a third-person shooter with a more arcadey feel one with a heavier aim assist due to being on a portable and a focus on stealth one with so many points flying across the screen it looks like a trick shot video and nary a plot to be seen also one with ridiculously punishing ai and a small level design but a very cool game to take on the go look i grew up squinting at bionic commando on a gameboy this felt like the future unit 13 despite its extremely bland name was pretty good just really hard and kind of basic at times it doesn't help that the main menu is just basically a bunch of numbers the ai is also kinda aimbody at times so you're definitely going to die but it's a pretty solid functional shooter hidden by a layer of generic well everything really unit 13 is not going to win any awards for originality but like i don't know sometimes you need that 7 out of 10 shooter it's like grits i love grits how about square surely square would have a bunch of bangers on the vita considering how many games they had on the playstation portable well for starters we've got army corps of hell you know metal satan pikmin anyone square enix and the playstation portable were two peas in the pod with a ton of cool games playstation one ports and remakes galore crisis core the dissidias not the third birthday but what about squeenix and the vita you got mobile ports japanese only releases final fantasy 10 more japanese only releases adventures of mana and world of final fantasy it definitely leaned more into the 3ds at this point and i don't blame them but for launch there was army corps of hell in this game vita no longer meant life but death you play as the king of hell a much cooler version of captain olimar who recruits a variety of goblins to attempt and reclaim the underworld or something it's kind of a simple game that has you going level to level doing a more combat oriented version of pikmin filled with tons of blood exploding demons and a kick-ass licensed heavy metal soundtrack despite looking extremely western this was developed by intersphere a group founded by ex-nintendo developer matoy okamoto the dude who directed we play a bit of a change there so you're the mayor of hell my left testicle reigns with more competence unfortunately it looks like it didn't hit any of the critical or sales expectations and intersphere was seemingly subsidized into marvelous aql after this shame because i enjoyed this one despite the oddly mediocre review scores all of which slammed the game for being repetitive which if you ask me is perfect for a portable game it seems like a lot of vital launch titles got hit with criticism for exactly that but i mean i'm not expecting witcher 3 on the go guys at least not for another 8 years sure army corps of hell ain't the deepest experience and maybe it shouldn't have been a full-priced 40 game at launch but i liked it there's something about its over-the-top gameplay and ridiculous style that hits the very core of my being the one that wants to listen to high on fire while role playing a kobold speaking of square stop being cowards let final fantasy 14 characters look like this the vedas launch was pretty big for such a small handheld and they came out of the gate swinging granted not as much with the first party games but there were a lot of third party things to talk about and no i'm not talking about invisibles or reality fighters nor should we we're looking at a game that goes all the way back to the basics vectors there's not many video game developers who are around in the golden years who are still working on stuff however that's not the case for tempus 2000 creator jeff minter the man who rebooted atari's 1981 classic tempest getting a lot of work done it's tempest 2000 from atari i just can't stop myself initially a space invaders remake tempus turns into a game about polygonal shapes shooting polygonal shapes and it's all supposed to look like this all i see is lines cool lines though love this game so in 1994 atari brought it back with tempus 2000 on the jaguar where they decided screw it let's just keep it basic and not even attempt to turn this shape into a spaceship it's a simple game you write along the top of lines and shoot stuff so why are we talking about this well jeff minter ended up making a bunch of games a lot of which were sequels and spiritual successors to tempus one that atari wasn't a fan of the weirdly vita exclusive txk was pretty identical to tempest and close enough that atari literally waved out the legal threat flag and blocked its release on pc ps4 and android however it managed to slide out onto the little handheld and well it kind of slaps i mean it's tempest but like a really good version of that game rather than trying to update it to look modern like what happened with defender or that super weird yar's revenge reboot txk kept it simple the result is a super quick and twitchy arcade shooter that is perfect for the vita it's one of those games where the only thing that matters is points and you're gonna do your best to make that go up there's not much to say here besides the fact that eventually minter was able to team up with atari and make tempest 4000 a thing but if you're looking for a quick tempesty fix on the go txk is weird psychedelic and a killer app that's stuck on the vita that's digital only by the way what about physical releases despite having a loud and proud digital storefront the vita had a lot of physical releases and i mean heck the very first limited run game was breach and clear and that also meant that there is a lot of vita collector's editions and anyone who has any of those knows that those things are hardly a consistent size meaning your game shelf is a disaster so in the middle years of the vita pretty much every company was putting out little collectors editions for their little cult sized audience and uh there were a lot a lot of games was really absurd and ridiculous collectible items but there's nothing weirder to me than sorcery saga curse of the curry god because you open this little thing up and you're like oh what could this have a bib and a baby spoon and a curry plate why the back says drug reference this game has drug reference why a bib the answer is a mystery dungeon game that makes sense right so long story short there's a very japanese-only franchise called motto monogatari or sorcery saga that started out on the msx and it was a pretty dark rpg kind of similar to shimagami tension tone despite having cute anime girls that eventually evolved to something that became very cute and spawned puyo puyo one half of the best video game this series kind of died out for around a decade and in 2013 was resurrected by compile heart to become a cutesy roguelike mystery dungeon game with an emphasis on curry you explore and conquer randomly generated dungeons in order to progress the plot get new items and unlock new ways to create curry what else could you want frame rate probably not today sorcery saga is about a girl named pupuru who is suspended from magic school who then becomes involved with protecting a curry shop from going under and uh that that's it really there's not much going on here but for those who enjoy the occasional mystery dungeon it's a decent one you're followed around by a little squishy monster friend called ku who you have to feed dishes and ingredients to to level up and that leveling up is zone based so you're always starting fresh curry god is much easier than your standard run-of-the-mill mystery dungeon game it's closer to pokemon than say sharon the wanderer so if you're learning the genre and want to try something with anime girls here you go speaking of sharon the wanderer is also on the vita and is an awesome mystery dungeon game that is one of the pinnacles of that entire series full name sharon the wanderer the tower of fortune and the dice of fate aka the game with the word the three times in the title that's now been ported elsewhere as has sorcery saga but only one of those games came with a bib will i use it god i hope not now it's painfully obvious that not every playstation vita game was good probably more bad than good ones honestly looking at you little deviants that's a launch title a lot of people know about though and uh we're gonna talk about something way worse drive girls anyone game of the year when i think of bad forgotten vita games i think of two very specific ones the first of which is actually a licensed sony published game sometime around 2013 and 14 sony decided to try to push the vita into the kids market which was a big ask considering they'd been hitting mostly the degenerate anime fan beyond third party games like all of the legos there was looney tunes galactic sports phineas and ferb playstation vita pets and of course the first portable console version of minecraft a game so popular in japan that it got its own special edition console what there is clearly a market for kids and vedas a holy grail that has been firmly grasped by nintendo ever since 1989 rest in peace game gear i loved you get a game gear so with this kids initiative it makes sense that someone in the sony think tank ecosystem would be like oh yeah the muppets they just had a movie one that for some reason the audience didn't seem to like but critics did his muppets most wanted the dragon age 2 of movies this would of course bring us the muppets movie adventures one of the few remaining exclusives that actually was published by sony it also sucks imagine the most run-of-the-mill 5 or 6 out of 10 super nintendo platformer you can think of let's say skull jagger revolt of the west akins everyone knows that right well take something like that slap the beloved muppets characters like kermit animal and ganzo into it theme a bunch of levels around popular films like the wizard of oz or the night of the living dead and call it a day or a night i guess now when you boot it up and start playing you're immediately oh stuck i guess this is one of those video games that doesn't work with the vita tv so let me just work a little magic and yes oh this is rough for some reason all of the cutscenes have weirdly high detail faces of the muppets but then things that aren't look awful like kermit looks like he might have been photoshopped or traced in but everything around him is done by a different artist like very clearly yo what's wrong with your feet bro also what are these cutscenes the talented and lovable kermit the court musician frog [Music] this feels so weird each level is a standard run-of-the-mill platformer that forces you to constantly backtrack and replay when you beat it because you unlock a new ability that will help you open some of the hidden objects literally arbitrarily increasing the total play time also for some reason levels are like 25 minutes long i was climbing this stupid tower for half an hour only to be tossed a discount version of ganondorf at the end then i was shown this what's going on here kermit great photoshop guys needless to say i don't think anyone was buying a vita for the muppets movie adventures but someone might have been surprised to see a purchase in 2021 my bad next up is a game from one of the most popular game franchises of all time actually hey bet you forgot about silent hill book of memories that's three words that instill fear into the heart of every silent hill fan especially when you consider that this was the most recent one in 2012 yikes when you think of silent hill you probably think of a slow paced horror game where you deep dive into the inner psyche and explore elements of an individual's trauma you probably don't think of a four-player co-op roguelite nor should anyone 2012 was a year when konami attempted to reinvigorate interest in the series it was on the way down ever since they decided the western studio should give it a chance and the one two three hit combo of a downpour hd collection and book of memories did little to change that probably made it worse weirdly shantae river city girls and wwf betrayal developer way forward were at the helm of this one and i'd like to think they did the best they could with the guidelines they were given you can probably blame konami for wanting something quote not traditional i mean i guess a silent hill dungeon crawler is about as non-traditional as you can get so the game itself it's not awful it's just a really bad silent hill game like remember some of those really messed up scenes and jump scare moments in prior games let's just make them jobbers you can punch to death yo remember when heather had a giant fire sword so you do get to make your own original character who dives into i guess the book of memories delivered by a total discount morgan freeman character life moving so fast these days people end up all kinds of places like like they didn't even try in this book you dive in into really cool places like derek level 1 or derek level 3. it's like each world is a character archetype that you can create and it's all really vague almost nonsensical i'll just chase this little girl around with a weapon that'll be fine apparently there's three ways i could have done this now i did say this was a co-op dungeon crawler and in that aspect it's fun touchdown score touchdown score let the big boys handle this you're constantly having to change your weapons up the combat works well enough there's puzzles they're not hard but they're there the multiplayer itself seems to work a majority of the time i did have a few connection issues probably because wi-fi is terrible and if you drop you gotta restart everything it also has voice chat for some reason and it also has servers that are still running and active nearly 10 years later somehow silent hill book of memories outlasted so many games they probably just forgot it was running it's just in a deep dark corner although it definitely shits the bed if there's too much noise hello and welcome to my 10 hour book of memories gunfire asmr compilation silent hill book of memories is really weird it's strange to think that the legacy of such a highly regarded franchise ended with a middling dungeon crawler and a cancelled game that everybody loved but that's just how it'd be well there's always pachinko i think everyone and their grandmother knows that the last few years the vita was dominated by the japanese market be it visual novels strategy rpgs japanese rpgs or weird things you know it was probably there most of these are multiplied now but there are some that are still stuck on the vita for example oreshika tainted bloodlines orishika is really weird it's the sequel to a playstation 1 rpg that was really into the whole body horror thing one that i can't find much information about online but it seems like this veda sequel was kind of more the same this here is oreshika tainted bloodlines a game where you're going to die within two years and it's up to you to keep your family tree moving it's not quite fantasy star 3 but instead it lets you create a character a family clan and try to expand with other clans in the area that area being japan you'll run out to dungeons to get points and money to upgrade your town people watch things get stronger you'll create babies to then prepare for future combat against a demon who's cursed your fam truly a terrible existence or she could let you know this right off the bat too considering the first few seconds of the intro cut scene it's just a montage of a bunch of gingers dying jeez guys tainted bloodlines is a rather simple jrpg that does have some moments of depth this story isn't anything special to write about but it does have that satisfying feeling of progression you're getting stronger you can go deeper into labyrinths create stronger kids kind of like disgaea or a mobile rpg but with a higher budget it helps that the character creation is pretty fast this here's austin he's gonna die shortly but here he is ready to perish this game didn't even have a physical big box released in the states so unless you were keen on the digital store this hidden gem just passed through the door despite being a first party game poor veda you tried so hard so i got one more game i want to talk about today and it's a really good one now a lot of people will tend to make top video game lists but for some reason this one never seems to make the cut i don't know why but so many people tend to look over muramasa rebirth i love vanillaware there aren't many game developers who are incapable of making a bad video game but they're one of them be it the fun beat em up dragon's crown the artist writer george kamitani drawing a bunch of sexy oiled up dwarves or the 11 out of 10 video game 13 sentinels aegis rim they're always bound to put out something that stands the test of time especially those dwarves kamitani's beautiful hand-drawn art really shines no matter what console or style he goes for and every one of their games is able to do the same but of everything they've released in the last 15 years it seems like muramasa the demon blade has gone in one ear and out the other which is a shame because it's one of their best so the demon blade was originally a wii game that got an enhanced port with brand new content on the vita and it doesn't get any better than this my dudes muramasa is gorgeous every screen looks like a moving piece of art sometimes a hybrid of traditional japanese and impressionist bosses have so much detail in different frames of animation that it's surprising we don't see them more i'm so glad i could play this on the playstation tv so i can see all the details up close the game itself is a 2d metroidvania style action rpg with an emphasis on direction based combos likely a holdover from the wii version you've got a ton of different swords you can use each with a different special attack there's a hunger system for recovering hp and if you craft food it looks absolutely delicious i don't know what it is with this developer and food it looks so good i've seen a lot of people tend to complain about the art of george kamatani being objectifying of the human body but if you ask me this is definitely the ideal man you get to play as either momohime or kisuke on their journey through japan where you'll encounter beasts and yokai from japanese folklore and mythology the story itself may not be as memorable as something like 13 sentinels but i mean what is nothing muramasa is a super fun game and i think it got heavily overshadowed by the releases of odin sphere leaf version and dragon's crown also on the vita this trilogy of vanillaware titles are all fantastic games but there's just something about muramasa maybe it's the striking eastern influenced look maybe the pace of combat was something more my speed maybe i just really liked the way the kitsune looked for reasons but muramasa the demon blade is an awesome game for the playstation vita that i think is slowly becoming more and more forgotten don't let it happen if you have a vita or we even please give it a shot or else it's a shame that there's probably never going to be an actual follow-up to the vita because this thing kicks some serious butt now there are a ton of games that are both really good and forgotten that we could talk about but i'm gonna end it here today because if i don't i'm gonna just start rambling off about virtual tennis four and uh i won't stop ever joining me next time when we talk about the entirety of oni chambara thank you so much for watching special patreon shout out to blackfoot ferret darren newton gm pinks nick irving zach porter p funk ryan talbert kevin zanowski kieran arder d.a stevens brandon howe chris shelton david molnar irational don in j roosh jacoby fitzpatrick christopher olivia dx buster eli shane stealthenecker and legend gary thank you so much for your generous support that was a fun little video i put together but next up i have a couple of more in-depth projects i'm going to be working on including like i said the ohm bar retrospective and i think it's about time i fulfill some promises expect some fun stuff go get vaccinated if you haven't hurry up i want to go outside i love you bye

Channel: Austin Eruption

Views: 170,691

Keywords: Austin Eruption, Boku No Eruption, comedy, funny, review, vita, psvita, playstation vita, playstation, portable, forgotten, hidden, gem, best, worst, vita games, jrpg, video games, portable games, vanillaware, 13 sentinels, nintendo switch, final fantasy, psp

Id: cvGo8ivT1AI

Length: 24min 25sec (1465 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 07 2021