15 Best Cheap PS1 Games

Tekken started in arcades and was ported to the PlayStation in 1995. Namco first planned it for the System 22 board that ran Ridge Racer, after hearing that Sega was making Virtua Fighter 2. The home version gave you reasons to keep playing. Clear Arcade Mode with different fighters and the sub-bosses unlock, and finishing it with each of the original eight characters unlocks a cutscene. It was also the first fighting game with full-motion videos.

Tekken sells for a typical $15 as a loose disc. Guinness later named it the first PlayStation game to sell over one million units, and it has sold 2.8 million copies. The sequels get more attention now, but this is where the series began, for about the price of a sandwich.

Medal of Honor began with Steven Spielberg. He came up with its concept, production and story, partly after watching his son play GoldenEye 007. It nearly did not happen. During development the Columbine High School massacre brought controversy, and the Congressional Medal of Honor Society criticized it for turning a serious topic into a video game. Producer Peter Hirschmann convinced the society's president, Paul Bucha, that the project was made with serious and honorable intentions, which saved it from cancellation and won Bucha's endorsement.

Medal of Honor sells for a typical $9 as a loose disc. It came out to universal acclaim and is credited with popularizing World War II shooters, so this is where that whole wave started. It has aged better than most first-person shooters on the console.

Suikoden is the first game in the Suikoden series, made by Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo. It came out in Japan in 1995 and reached North America a year later. Your hero ends up leading the fight against the Empire, and the big hook is recruiting. Some characters only join once your party reaches a certain level or finds a special item. Fights are turn-based with random encounters, and most runes can only be used a limited number of times.

Suikoden sells for a typical $20 as a loose disc. GamePro called it "a superlative RPG experience", and Electronic Gaming Monthly named it a runner-up for Role-Playing Game of the Year. RPG fans keep it on their lists. Start here, because Suikoden II goes for a typical $108.

Chrono Cross is set in the same world as Chrono Trigger, but it is not a sequel to it. Director Masato Kato designed it with help from Chrono Trigger staff, including art director Yasuyuki Honne and composer Yasunori Mitsuda. It borrows story arcs and characters from Radical Dreamers, a Chrono Trigger side story that was only released in Japan. Much of the plot turns on the Frozen Flame, and one of your first big jobs is sneaking into Viper Manor to get it.

Chrono Cross sells for a typical $15 as a loose disc. Mitsuda's soundtrack won the Gold Prize at the PlayStation Awards of 2000, and Square Enix reissued it in 2005 due to popular demand. Players keep it on their lists of the console's best RPGs. The ending is ambiguous and leaves the rest up to you.

Spyro the Dragon was Insomniac's second game, made after Disruptor sold poorly but impressed Universal Interactive. Sony released it to reach younger players and to compete with the Nintendo 64. The levels are open, and a panoramic engine by Alex Hastings shifted the level of detail on objects, and reviewers noticed its unusually long draw distance. Stewart Copeland, the former drummer for the Police, wrote the music.

Spyro the Dragon sells for a typical $10 as a loose disc. Sales started slow, picked up over the 1998 holidays and reached nearly five million copies. Some critics found it too easy, which makes it a great first game for a younger player. Players put it on their must-have lists, and two sequels followed in 1999 and 2000.

Production of Cortex Strikes Back began in October 1996. Producer Mark Cerny set out to design a third of the levels and ended up designing 90% of them. Boxes are everywhere. Arrow boxes launch Crash higher than he can jump, and checkpoint boxes save you a long walk back after you lose a life. Josh Mancell from Mutato Muzika wrote the music, and Clancy Brown voiced Doctor Neo Cortex.

Crash Bandicoot 2 sells for a typical $10 as a loose disc. Critics widely rate it above the first game. It became one of the best-selling PlayStation games, and it sold more than 800,000 copies in Japan by April 1998, the highest-selling Western title there at the time. Plenty of players name it on its own as their Crash pick.

Naughty Dog got ten and a half months and a budget of over $2 million to make Warped. The team built new engines for the plane and jet-ski levels, plus one more for the motorcycle stages, and together they cover a third of the game. You pick levels from the Time-Twisting Machine, five buttons to a chamber, and a boss opens up once those five are done. Beat a level fast enough in a time trial and you win a Relic, and Relics unlock secret levels.

Warped sells for a typical $10 as a loose disc. In Japan it became the first non-Japanese PlayStation game to sell over 1 million copies. Players who name one Crash game tend to name all three, and this is the one with the most to do.

Syphon Filter was meant to start a new "super-spy" genre, mixing stealth action with puzzle solving. Creative director John Garvin says it began as just a name from a producer at 989 Studios. Developer Eidetic was new to making games, and the project was nearly cancelled several times. You play Gabe in third person, free to move anywhere and turn the camera any way you like.

Syphon Filter sells for a typical $9 as a loose disc. Critics praised its gameplay and its plot, and two sequels followed in 2000 and 2001. Players still recommend it, and for the price of a coffee you can find out why.

Ape Escape was the first game to require the DualShock controller, and its controls are built around both analog sticks. Getting the game to work with that controller was the biggest challenge in more than two years of development. The story is simple. An ape named Specter puts on an experimental helmet, gets smarter and nastier, and Spike has to face him down.

Ape Escape sells for a typical $18 as a loose disc. Critics loved the dual analog controls and the music, and it is widely considered one of the best games on the PlayStation. Players still list it among the console's best, and some call it their favourite. Check that you have a DualShock before you buy it.

Twisted Metal 2 is the second game in the series, released in 1996. Bring a friend. The two player duel mode is back from the first game, and a co-op mode lets two players fight through the tournament as a team. Sony brought it back two years later in its Greatest Hits line, published under 989 Studios.

Twisted Metal 2 sells for a typical $20 as a loose disc. It has also been rereleased on the PlayStation Network and, in 2023, on PS4 and PS5. For a lot of players it is the Twisted Metal they reach for first.

Final Fantasy Tactics came out in Japan in June 1997 and in North America in January 1998. It was the first game set in the world later known as Ivalice. Matsuno directed and wrote it, Hironobu Sakaguchi produced it, and many of the staff came from the Ogre Battle games, including artist Akihiko Yoshida and composer Hitoshi Sakimoto. The story follows Ramza through a war that the Glabados Church has been quietly steering. You recruit generic soldiers and build them up with the Job system.

Final Fantasy Tactics sells for a typical $15 as a loose disc. It sold over 2.4 million copies worldwide by August 2011 and has become a cult classic. A remaster, The Ivalice Chronicles, came out on September 30, 2025. Players keep it on their lists right next to the numbered Final Fantasy games.

Gran Turismo is the first game in the series, directed by Kazunori Yamauchi and produced by Shuhei Yoshida. The name is Italian for "grand touring", and the series has since spawned over 10 spin-offs and sequels. Its sequel kept the physics and graphics very close to this one, so the original still plays a lot like the follow-up.

Gran Turismo sells for a typical $7 as a loose disc, the cheapest game on this list. One player remembered what made it special: "I could take cars I see on the road and make them as fast as they could possibly go." Seven dollars still gets you that feeling.

Development of Final Fantasy VIII began in 1997, during the English localization of Final Fantasy VII. It was the first Final Fantasy to use realistically proportioned characters throughout and to feature a vocal theme song. Spellcasting no longer uses magic points, either. Squall leads the fight against a sorceress and falls for Rinoa Heartilly along the way. Battles lean on summoned monsters called Guardian Forces, and enemies level up with your party, which was rare at the time.

Final Fantasy VIII sells for a typical $15 as a loose disc. It grossed $151 million in its first day in Japan and sold more than 9.6 million copies by August 2019. It still has loyal defenders, and you can join them for less than a movie ticket.

Gran Turismo 2 was the first game developed by Polyphony Digital. You choose between Arcade Mode and Simulation Mode, and the cars handle much like they did in the first game, except the brakes are far less likely to lock up. It came out in a hurry, and you can see it in the game's count of events: it expects 223 for 100% completion, but only 219 exist. NextGen put it bluntly: "The rushed production of this game botched what could have been a near perfect sequel."

Gran Turismo 2 sells for a typical $8 as a loose disc. It shipped 9.37 million units anyway and became a Sony Greatest Hits game, which is why it costs so little now. Players name it the racing game to own on the console.

Final Fantasy IX was developed alongside Final Fantasy VIII, and its makers saw it as a look back at the series. After three games of futuristic settings it returns to the medieval style of the older ones, with a world inspired by Norse and Northern European mythology. Active Time Events show you what is happening elsewhere while you explore. Nobuo Uematsu wrote around 160 pieces in a year, and 140 made it into the game. It was the last main Final Fantasy he scored alone.

Final Fantasy IX sells for a typical $10 as a loose disc. It sold 8.9 million copies by March 2025, which helps explain the price. Players recommend it more than any other game on this list, and several rate it the best Final Fantasy on the console.