Net Yaroze and the Forgotten PlayStation Classics

Read a similar article at Vice, another on the same topic over at Eurogamer and one at Gamasutra.

The Net Yaroze development kit.

There is a certain generation of 'gamer' that will remember Official PlayStation Magazine with a great fondness. In the early days of the internet there was nowhere to get games related news outside of a few small forums and message boards, so print media was still the only reliable place for game recommendations. And what was better than reading a review? Having the chance to play a demo of the game itself. As each new month brought a new issue of Official PlayStaion Magazine, it brought with it a new demo disc.

As well as demos for upcoming games, as well as trailers for upcoming releases, the demo discs that came with Official PlayStation Magazine would occasionally feature something called Net Yaroze.

The Net Yaroze was a development kit for the PlayStation. Yaroze translates as "Let's do it together!" The software and debugging unit was aimed at hobbyists rather than professional studios and, as such, can be considered one of the first bastions of independent gaming on consoles. Just like the independent games that came after it, the Net Yaroze games were inventive, original and extremely fun.

Blitter Boy: Operation Monster Mall - The best Net Yaroze title.

There were many great Net Yaroze titles but, for our money, Blitter Boy: Operation Monster Mall was the best. Blitter Boy is arcade gaming at its finest; it takes a simple premise, on a small map, and makes it harder and faster as the levels progress. Pac-Man, Donkey-Kong, and Tetris follow this formula and Blitter Boy is no different. The goal is to save the six babies crawling around the 'Monster Mall' and take them to the transporter in the middle, avoiding the ghosts as you go. The babies follow you in a line, the more babies in the line, when you go to the transporter, the more points. If a ghost touches you, you die. If a ghost touches a baby, it breaks the lines and sits there crying until you pick it up again. You can shoot the ghosts and upgrade your weapon. Simple. Fun. Challenging. A real gem.

Timeslip - You can play it here.

Timeslip will make your head hurt. Like Blitter Boy, the limitations of the Net Yaroze turned out to be a huge plus in terms of game design. Where Blitter Boy went down the arcade route, Timeslip went for the puzzle-platformer.

The game features a time travelling snail who is caught in a loop in time.  Every 30 seconds he is thrown back in time to encounter earlier versions of himself.  While the earlier versions can help by opening doors they must also be avoided as colliding with one will cause a paradox.

The developer of Timeslip, like many of the other Net Yaroze developers, has an independent game studio Smudged Cat Games; they (mostly) use Xbox live and Steam to distribute.

Total Soccer Yaroze

Another developer, Charles Chapman, is still working on games today in the mobile field. He was the man responsible for Total Soccer Yaroze, a simple, yet under-rated, sports game. The ball went in the direction you were facing when you kicked it, rose depending on how long you held the button, and curled depending on holding a direction after the kick. It worked like a charm and resulted in some wonder goals. You can play the company's latest mobile release here.


It is great to see the spirit of Net Yaroze live on with many developers of independent, and mobile games, cutting their teeth on the development kit in their youth. The DIY gaming community provides some of the most ingenious and innovative titles on the market by using perceived weaknesses as strengths; long may it continue!