A list of the top-selling PS1 games in the US features some very peculiar titles, alongside the more predictable Crash Bandicoot and Gran Turismo.
Sony has already celebrated PlayStation’s 30th anniversary, based on its original launch in Japan on December 30, 1994, but the console took almost a year to arrive in most other countries.
In North America, the original PlayStation launched on September 9, 1995, before it hit Europe later in the month, on September 29.
To mark the 30th anniversary of the console’s launch in the US, analyst Mat Piscatella, from chart-tracker Circana, released sales figures of the best-selling titles on the original PlayStation. While it’s mostly what you’d expect, there are some surprising inclusions in amongst the obvious hits.
In terms of unit sales, the best-selling game is 1999’s Gran Turismo 2. The racing sim series has racked up over 90 million sales worldwide, as of December 2022, making it PlayStation’s highest-selling first party franchise, so its position in this list isn’t surprising.
This is followed by Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, the original Gran Turismo, and Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped. In the fifth position is Jampack Series: PlayStation, which was a compilation of demos released on one disc in the US.
However, the weirdest games on the list is 1997’s Frogger, at number six. This version of Frogger, developed by Sony, was a remake and expansion of Konami’s original arcade game with 3D graphics.
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It’s unclear if its success was tied to a console bundle (although given it’s the PlayStation’s 15th best-selling game based on dollar sales, perhaps not), but according to reports Frogger sold four million units worldwide by May 2000, with the bulk of these being in North America.
It’s unclear why it was so popular in the US – especially given it got poor reviews at the time – but an episode of Seinfeld based around Frogger prompted publisher Hasbro Interactive to greatly increase production in US retailers for when it aired in 1998.
So the sitcom, which was not widely popular outside the US, may have been an unexpected factor in the game’s success.
The other oddity on the list is Namco Museum Vol. 3 at number 15, which featured six classic games including Ms. Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Pole Position 2, Phozon, The Tower Of Druaga, and Galaxian.
Again, it’s unclear if it was part of a bundle but if it wasn’t then it’s very strange that Americans were running out to buy a compilation of what even at the time was a bunch of 15+ year old arcade games. Especially as they managed to outsell every single Tomb Raider game.
If you’re after more PlayStation figures, Circana also released the 20 all-time best-selling games across every PlayStation console in the US. However, this list has few surprises, with GTA 5, Minecraft, and Red Dead Redemption 2 ruling the roost.
To mark the 16th anniversary of the Sega Dreamcast’s launch in the US (on 9/9/99) the market research company also released the best sellers list for that console too. Sonic Adventure came out on top in unit sales, followed by NFL 2K, Crazy Taxi, and NFL 2K1.
In fact, six of the games inside the top 10 are sports titles, with only Soulcalibur and Shenmue breaking the mould at number 7 and 9, respectively.
The European top 20 would look very different, not only because of different tastes in sports but because EA did not release games for the Dreamcast and so FIFA would not have been a factor. Unfortunately though, Circana only deals with US data.
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