PS Plus Will Make Two Twisted Metal Titles Playable in Europe for the First Time

For many American gamers raised in the ’90s, PlayStation is Twisted Metal. Conversely, the series never made the same impact in Europe.

Several factors contributed to this, including marketing and regional preferences. However, accessibility was a concern too: Twisted Metal 3 and Twisted Metal 4 were never released beyond the USA.

This will alter later this week with PS Plus Premium, as the two vehicular combat titles will finally debut on the continent.

In reality, these are somewhat controversial entries, as they were produced by 989 Studios, the now-defunct Sony subsidiary located in Foster City.

The in-house development team was prolific during the ’90s, crafting numerous flagship sports titles for the PS1, including NFL GameDay and Jet Moto.

SingleTrac, which developed the initial two Twisted Metal games, was acquired by GT Interactive, resulting in many of its employees leaving for Incognito Entertainment – including key figures like David Jaffe and Scott Campbell.

Although they were initially revealed to be involved with the creation of Twisted Metal 3, they ultimately focused on the series’ reboot Twisted Metal Black for the PS2, leading to minimal involvement with the latter two PS1 titles.

This ultimately led to a decline in critical reception for those releases, with Sony facing allegations of exploiting the franchise.

This might explain why they were never made available in Europe, even though PlayStation’s corporate structure was considerably complex back then, with SCEA functioning largely independently from SCEE.

Regardless, it will be gratifying to finally see these games officially accessible in Europe.

Personally, we’re intrigued about how Sony intends to handle the soundtracks here, as the original launches featured music from artists like Rob Zombie and Cypress Hill. We find it hard to believe those tracks will be relicensed, so we speculate they might simply be omitted.