2025 is the year of the PSP revival, and it’s starting with a bang

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Table of Contents The Ys impact More than a new coat of paint

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Nintendo dominated the handheld gaming landscape with its Gameboy and DS hardware lines. Sony entered the fray with the formidable PlayStation Portable in 2004. The handheld received robust first-party and third-party support during its lifespan, and its power meant it could handle games that Nintendo couldn’t.

Amid that development craze, Sony’s handhelds received a handful of games that were surprisingly crucial spinoffs to larger franchises. Imagine playing Final Fantasy VII Remake, seeing the black-haired Zack Fair, and not knowing who he is because you never played the original PlayStation Portable game where he was the protagonist, Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core. With the PSP long dead, leaving so many games stuck on unsupported hardware, important pieces of franchise history have been lost to time.

Thankfully, that’s changing. In recent years, many Japanese developers have been porting their old PSP games to modern platforms. That included a remaster of Crisis Core that bridged the gap between Remake and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. This year, the PSP revival will continue with multiple ports, but a big one for RPG fans kicks off 2025. Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana brings a PSP remake of a classic action-RPG back to modern consoles. It’s not just a win for fans of Falcom’s niche series; it’s a way to keep another chapter of a long-running story from getting lost.

• Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion works best as a portable game

The Ys impact

Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana follows a young man named Adol Cristin who journeys across the world in search of new adventures. Apart from the first two games in the series, which are direct continuations of each other, the other Ys games are self-contained and scattered out of chronological order. For example, The Oath in Felghana is the third game in the Ys series, but the sixth