PlayStation Plus Premium lineup expands with Super Stardust Portable

Sony’s revamped PlayStation Plus service completes its rollout today with launches in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand — and it’s brought a little surprise with it, in the form of a new addition to the Classics catalog for Premium subscribers, in all regions.

This is the key. Super Stardust Portable, Housemarque’s 2008 handheld version of its classic arcade shoot-’em-up for the PSP. But you won’t find this little gem listed with all the other classic games in the PlayStation Plus tab — not yet, anyway. It’s only discoverable by searching for it, as one Reddit user found out.

Otherwise, the lineup hasn’t changed much from the North American launch last week. Eurogamer points to the fact that Sony now has more games available than the original promise on PlayStation Plus Extra or Premium. There are 833 games included currently for players on the top Premium tier — Sony had promised “up to 740.”

But for those territories where streaming isn’t available, the number will be much lower, since the bulk of the Classics catalog comprises more than 300 PS3 games, which can only be streamed.

European players noted, too that the Asian launch had 50 hertz-PAL versions of many classic games. Sony revealed this morning that it plans to make NTSC versions — running at the full, faster, smoother 60 hertz — available for the “majority” of titles. These versions are automatically available to North American players.

You aren’t sure which game you should try on Plus? Take a look at our selection of 17 top games from the PlayStation Plus catalogue.