The 20 games included with the PlayStation Classic have been announced

The teeny-tiny PlayStation Classic, the miniaturised version of the epoch-defining console, is nearly here, and a list of the games included with it has finally been released. The £89.99 console, released on December 3rd, comes with 20 games built into it and, while there are some faintly questionable choices in there, there are also some bona fide classics, proper all-time greats.

1. Battle Arena Toshinden (1995):The first fighting game to include sidesteps, bringing the genre into three dimensions. 
2. Cool Boarders 2 (1998):At the time, the most advanced snowboarding title ever released, featuring a whopping 18 Burton snowboards.
3. Destruction Derby (1995): The second game ever made capable of supporting 20 vehicles on screen at once, Destruction Derby mapped damage to vehicles in real-time, a dazzling leap forward in racing games.
4. Final Fantasy VII (1997):The first 3D Final Fantasy game, a thing of beauty still hailed as one of the greatest games ever made, an HD remake of FFVII is currently in development for the PlayStation 4. 
5. Grand Theft Auto (1997): A far cry technically from the giant worlds of later GTA games, this chaotic top-down runaround had flashes of the elements that would make it the biggest franchise in gaming: jet-black humour, cathartic violence and a “go for it” attitude to crime.

6. Intelligent Qube (1997): A complicated puzzle game developed by an art professor, IQ is more of a cult title than the blockbuster successes other titles on this list count as.
7. Jumping Flash! (1995): Although reasonably obscure, Jumping Flash! spawned two sequels and holds an important place in gaming history as the first platform game in true 3D - don’t ask us, as the Guinness Book of Records.
8. Metal Gear Solid (1998):Another one of the greatest games ever made, MGS sold an amazing six million copies and helped make the stealth genre a thing.
9. Mr Driller (1999): Originally developed as a Dig Dug sequel, the main character of Mr Driller, Susumu Hori, is the son of Dig Dug hero Taizo Hori.
10. Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee (1997): The winner of umpteen awards, Abe’s Oddysee began the Oddworld series, the next installment of which is expected next year.

11. Rayman (1995):A side-scrolling platformer influenced by Russian, Chinese and Celtic fairy tales, Rayman is the best-selling PlayStation title of all time in the UK. 
12. Resident Evil: Director’s Cut (1997): An updated version of the original Resident Evil released just 18 months after it, this helped define the survival horror genre (as well as inspiring the most uneven movie franchise ever).
13. Revelations: Persona (1997):Big in Japan but not enormously well-known over here, this RPG was compared upon release to Final Fantasy VII. 
14. Ridge Racer Type 4 (1999): The last Ridge Racer game released on the original PlayStation, this arcade-style racer was, for a lot of people, an introduction to the now-ubiquitous idea of drifting.
15. Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo (1996): A sliding-puzzle game, this is in no way a sequel to anything, and the title is just a spoof of Super Street Fighter II Turbo.

16. Syphon Filter (1999):A mixture of stealth, action and puzzle-solving, Syphon Filter’s AI was particularly praised, with enemy characters behaving differently every time you replayed a level.
17. Tekken 3 (1998): One of the best-loved fighting games of all time, Tekken 3 was a smash hit, introducing loads of now-iconic characters and causing button-smashing across the globe. One of the highest-rated and biggest-selling games in the history of the PlayStation, it’s also the second-highest selling fighting game ever, beaten only by Super Smash Bros Brawl. 
18. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six (1998):A tactical shooter with one-bullet kills where going in guns blazing results in almost instant death, Rainbow Six was praised for its (relative) realism and started a massive franchise. Ubisoft eventually bought Tom Clancy’s name from him - the author died in 2013 but Ubisoft can still put his name on games. 
19. Twisted Metal (1995):The idea for Twisted Metal was hatched when the developers were stuck in traffic and began fantastising about destroying all the cars around them using weapons. 
20. Wild ARMs (1996): A Western-themed RPG, while this kickstarted a long-running franchise, it was something of a cult hit, selling fairly well in Japan but pretty modestly elsewhere. 

Pretty good lineup, right? Thje console comes with two (wired, pre-DualShock) controllers, an HDMI cable and a memory card, and if Santa doesn’t bring you one it means you aren’t loved.

(Image: Sony)