Japanese and U.S. versions of PlayStation One games will be headed to Europe shortly, according to a post on the official European PlayStation blog.
This means that publishers who own the rights to games that were only available on the U.S. or Japan will be able to apply to have the game rated and released in Europe as well, on PSN.
While the blog doesn’t make mention of any specific titles, popular games like Chrono Trigger and Parasite Eve were never released in Europe on the original PlayStation. This new initiative will allow games such as those to be rated for Europe and brought over via the PlayStation Network. While they don’t mention release dates, Sony say a few such games are already being processed for release.
The blog mentions that U.S. or Japanese games will be published “as is” with English or Japanese language content, depending on which territory they’re from. In the event that a game has, for some reason, been unable to pass quality assessment by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, but is available in America or Japan, Sony will look into publishing those versions instead.
All games will run at 60 Hz. Sony are taking suggestions from blog readers in their comments, and say they’ll speak to publishers about the most popular suggestions. Note that this new program won’t apply to games that aren’t legally cleared for release in Europe due to circumstances such as expired licenses.
