Red Sun at night, Space Pirate's Delight

The other week, Heather and I met up with some friends in Market Harborough for dinner, one of whom, like me, is quite a gamer. Both of us own a PS Vita, which I was quite pleased to discover, as none of my other friends currently own one. After comparing games, and which ones we’re looking forward to, the topic of PSOne games on the Vita came up.

I’ve heard rumblings of this on various forums, and recently a PSOne game was accidentally posted on the Vita’s store (though it was abruptly taken down). Of course, both of us thought that ready access to PSOne games, as well as more PSP games would be a great idea, which neatly got us onto the topic of my favourite game on the PSOne. There are a number of games which I loved, but none stick out for me more than the Colony Wars series, and particularly, Colony Wars Red Sun.

The Colony Wars games, for those not in the know, was a series of space simulator games by Psygnosis (who have since become SCE Studio Liverpool). The first two games centred on the war between the League of Free Worlds and the Colonial Navy of the Human Empire. They followed non-linear stories with a series of missions. Whilst Red Sun had you as more of a mercenary, picking and choosing your missions as you followed a more linear story. You were paid for completed missions, the money used to buy new ships and weapons. It was an unusual game on a home console, even at the peak of space shooters in the late 90s/early 2000s, where games of this ilk were normally seen on PC (e.g. the X-Wing series, Freespace, Freelancer, X Beyond the Frontier, etc.).

I still remember the first time I saw Colony Wars after getting my Playstation, seeing a copy on the shelves of my local WHSmiths and dismissing it at first, only to later pick up that same copy and never look back. The game was a breath of fresh air, and was one I often went back to. Then came the sequel, Colony Wars Vengeance, which I enjoyed, though not quite as much. Finally, In 2000, I got Red Sun. To this day, it still remains my favourite of the series, and has one of my favourite ships (the SnapDragon).

The SnapDragon. Still my favourite.

It’s hard to pin down what it is that I love about the game. Yes, the story is incredibly hokey, the cut scenes terrible, wooden and with awful voice acting, and Red Sun introduced GP lasers which ruined the whole anti-shield/anti-hull laser setup of the previous games. But it’s still my favourite. I love the ship design, the fact that your craft has momentum and can’t stop on a penny (one of the things which always annoyed me about the X-wing series was that the slower you went, the slower your fighter would turn, which never made sense in a game set in space …), and that you could quite happily play it either in a cockpit view or 3^rd person.

Twelve years since I bought Colony Wars Red sun, and it still sits in my case, in pride of place with a few other PSOne games that go with me wherever I move to. Ready to be played whenever I get the need for a space shooter. Twelve years since it came out, and it still feels as fresh and brilliant as it did then.

If it comes to the PSOne digital store, and then to the Vita, will I get it?

Do pirate ships explode in a fiery death when I blast them with my GP lasers?

The answer is yes, oh yes they do.