The worst PSP games might be awful to play, but even these broken relics of the past show just how versatile Sony’s handheld platform was. You could pretty much guarantee that movie adaptations and some questionable licensed games would make up the majority of the bad games on older platforms. The PSP has terrible games ranging from anime adaptations to sports games, RPGs, doomed ports, and pretty much everything in between, with some poor ideas and some that really just didn’t need to exist on a handheld – not in the mid-2000s, at least.
Napoleon Dynamite
If you were a teenager in the mid-00s, you probably had friends who would not stop quoting Napoleon Dynamite, or perhaps you were that person yourself. Anyone who enjoyed the comedy found only disappointment in the PSP version of the game adaptation, though.
Like some of the worst PS1 games that slapped a license on a dull, shallow game and expected it to sell, the PSP Napoleon Dynamite failed as a game and as part of the franchise. The gameplay has little entertainment value, but worst of all, it strips nearly all the comedy – the soul of Napoleon Dynamite – away.
Dragon Ball Evolution
It seemed like every generation and console spawned a disappointing Dragon Ball spinoff, and the PSP was no different. Dragon Ball Evolution gave you plenty of characters and the illusion of choice in combat – but you only needed to press a single button to breeze through the story mode and arcade battles. The visuals are depressingly muddy and unpleasant for a PSP game as well.
Tales of Historia: Radiant Mythology
After the exceptional Tales of the Abyss, it would’ve been nice to get a proper Tales game as a follow-up. While two mainline Tales games did launch on the PSP, they never left Japan at the time.
The rest of the world got Radiant Mythology, a Fire Emblem Heroes-style game where heroes from the series join together to… go on very bland quests. The setup has the potential for, if not the kind of deep storytelling the series is known for, at least some fun fanservice. It never quite lives up to that potential, though, and feels like a slog.
Astonishia Story
Astonishia Story feels like a missed opportunity. Developer Sonnori created several games in the series prior to this one, but the PSP iteration was the first to launch internationally. The trouble was that its localization was rough. The script is full of awkward phrasing and no shortage of grammatical errors, and it just makes all of Astonishia Story’s problems stand out more, including the decent-but-uninspired gameplay,
The Hustle: Detroit Streets
The Hustle hides a solid pool game behind messy multiplayer, unstable wireless, and a story mode made even more difficult to appreciate by its wonky visuals and bizarre staging. If you’re playing a quick game by yourself, it can actually be decent fun – is what I’d say if such an option existed One of the worst parts about The Hustle is that there’s no quickplay mode, where you can just sit down and play a game of pool.
Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure
Gurumin is an odd game. It’s meant to be a charming tale of a spunky kid who finds herself in a strange world full of endearing little creatures, almost like a Ni No Kuni-style scenario. Except Mr Drippy didn’t make suggestive remarks to children in Ni No Kuni like some of Gurumin’s little gremlins do.
Even aside from the distasteful interactions, Gurumin’s general structure just needed some extra work. It’s a Zelda-like with dungeons that are too short and puzzles that never really puzzle. There’s a clear winner between this and Zwei, Nihon Falcom’s other spinoff from around the same time, and it isn’t Gurumin.
The Legend of Heroes: Tear of Vermillion
You can’t talk about Falcom and PSP games without bringing up the tragedy that is Tear of Vermillion, a Legend of Heroes game that predated the Trails series. Tear of Vermillion and the other two games in this trilogy are actually quite good.
The version Bandai Namco published is not. They released the trilogy out of order, and the localization was rough and inaccurate to the point where it’s often difficult to know what’s going on or who the subject of conversation is.
Work Time Fun
Invizimals was a game ahead of its time, an early augmented reality experiment that wanted to be like Pokemon, but fell short. The PSP’s own technology – namely the camera – couldn’t support the game’s ambition, but the monster collecting and battling itself needed a fair bit of work as well. It lacked polish and quickly fell into a rut after the shine of the sparkly new tech wore off.
Black Rock Shooter
It’s surprising we ever got Black Rock Shooter to begin with, considering it’s an action-RPG spinoff of an anime series that was popular in Japan. That the publisher believed a willing audience existed around the world didn’t necessarily make the game good, though.
The concept is there. Black Rock Shooter, the heroine, uses her eponymous arm to face down foes and save the world, which sounds nice on paper, but is rather tedious in practice. You get a few skills to shake things up. Most battles are rather uninspiring, though, and the localization feels a bit empty.
Twisted Metal Head On
Twisted Metal Head On takes the exciting idea of firing bombs out of your car and driving dangerously fast and somehow manages to make it boring. Head On unfolds across a series of bland, muddy arenas where you’re tasked with chasing down enemy vehicles and demolishing them. A combination of appalling enemy AI and very dull driving turn this into something painfully similar to the very bad car driving mini-games in the older Grand Theft Auto games.
Work Time Fun
Work Time Fun was meant to be Sony’s answer to Nintendo’s hit WarioWare series, a collection of quirky minigames, and while it did get the “work” and “time” part right, there wasn’t much “fun” involved. WTF has you putting caps on pens and moving cars around crowded streets, but without the same rhythm and understanding of the bizarre that WarioWare has, it ends up feeling like, well, work.
Prince of Persia Revelations
It seems like the days of exceptionally rough handheld ports are (mostly) gone, with even current AAA games running well on the likes of the Switch and Steam Deck. That wasn’t the case during the PSP era, and Prince of Persia Revelations suffered for it. The port launched in a rough, almost unfinished state, rife with bugs and glitches that made it if not unplayable, then certainly not enjoyable.
The muddy brown color palette so common during the period didn’t transfer well to the smaller screen either and made spotting traps and other important objects more difficult than it should’ve been.
Ape Escape Academy
Ape Escape Academy lives up to its name, which is unfortunate. It does away with the series’ brand of platforming action and replaces it with a monkey school where you complete minigames to pass classes. Games such as this one always depend on how fun their minigames are, and Ape Escape Academy’s just aren’t strong enough to make it enjoyable for more than a few minutes at a time.
Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects
Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects had ambition, but some baffling design choices and a serious technical limitation turned it into a frustration. Despite being a multiplayer game, the actual multiplayer component was limited and unappealing, but even more unappealing was the actual combat. Nearly every enemy used ranged attacks to debilitate your hero, and not in a way you could even strategize around. Playing Rise of the Imperfects just feels like being punished.
Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Official Movie of the Game
The King Kong game adaptation on console was pretty good and certainly gets the movie’s atmosphere right. The controls are a bit finicky, though, and figuring out where in the dark, muddy expanse of the world to go is never easy. The PSP port makes those issues even worse, with a control scheme that’s an absolute nightmare to use and a substantially pared-down game compared to its console siblings. The portability was nice, sure, but the cost just wasn’t worth it.
Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF
