PlayStation - aged gracefully or not?

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Resident Evil or Silent Hill look awful. Both could really need a remake, as the gameplay of both is quite cool. Just can't stand the graphics anymore.

Well technically SH1 does have a PS2/PSP/Wii remake, although it is more like a retelling than an actual remake. Note to self: buy that game!

Pure remake of SH1, even if it is with SH2 level graphics, would be awesome though... the game is very good, but it could be so much better (or should I say disturbing) with only a little more graphic detail. The imagination only goes so far, and it is difficult to register something scary in that blur of pixels and polygons unfortunately; the story and especially the sound and the music are the biggest contributors to the atmosphere. And they are awesome.

[skateblind]

You can enhance the graphics for some ps1 games with proper use of emulator plugins.
http://www.racketboy.com/retro/sony/...-settings.html

[rsn8887]

A few 3D games indeed aged extraordinarily well IMO. Tobal No. 1 and Tobal 2 come to mind. Both still look incredible today thanks to stylized interlace gfx and smooth 60 fps. Also N2O by Tony Crowther (music from the Crystal Method) is 3D and aged extremelly well, because it is so polished and psychedelically timeless. R-Type Delta and G-Darius have aged very well. Again the stylized artsy design polygon gfx, psychedelich effects, and smoothness of gfx and gameplay matter here to make them still good by today's standards. Mr. Domino aged well too, again 60 fps and stylized polygons is what counts.

In terms of 2D I want to mention some more amazing gems. Adventures of Lomax is another breathtakingly beautfiful 2D game that aged incredibly well. In fact, its pixel artsy 2D gfx are miles ahead of any modern 2D game IMO (see attached screenshot). Heart of Darkness is also very very beautiful on Playstation (not so much on PC). Raiden DX aged very well. It has all these beautifully animated little particle effects and explosions that destroy things on the ground, smoldering little leaves on the ground etc. The Bubble Bobble style game Yoyo's Puzzle Park is an explosion of beautiful 2D effects and cutesy animations that also aged very very well. Each world is a new surprise with new effects and new enemies, including transparent water where each enemy releases air bubbles, lots of little animations in the backgrounds etc. Megaman 8 aged very well, too, for similar reasons as Yoyo's Puzzle Park. It has hundreds of little animated objects on screen at time, all beautifully drawn and animated.

[Cloudane]

I'm afraid the graphics look awful on the FF series and MGS nowadays, in my opinion, along with pretty much any other PS1 game (except perhaps Gran Turismo). It was that iffy period that marked the transition between sprites and polygons, when the polygon games were in their infancy and thus a tad ugly. But the important thing is they're such good games in every other way (arguably with the exception of FF8) that you don't even notice the graphics most of the time.

However, if FF7 had the storyline and gameplay of FFXIII, without the eye candy that compensates for it, then we'd have had issues...

In general I'd say the HDTV revolution hasn't done PS1 or even PS2 any favours. The graphics didn't look as bad when you were squinting through a 14" CRT!

[Baboon]

Strider 2 , RC de go!, R-type Delta are all personal favs of mine.

For some alternative/quality games check this: http://www.racketboy.com/retro/2007/...n-ps1-psx.html

[Galahad/FLT]

Just so that we can get some things into perspective here, my main gripe with the PS1 was the 3D games, most haven't aged well at all, sorry if I didn't make that clear enough.

Of course there was lots of 2D stuff and pseudo 3D stuff that looked good, but for the most part the 2D versions on the Saturn were far more able.

[Retroplay]

2D titles such as Castlevania, Lomax and Rayman still looks great.
As for 3D games, well, nothing really springs to mind.
I totally agree with Galahad on this one.

[laffer]

I love many of the 2D games on the Playstation and they still look pretty good.

The 3D however looks pretty horrible by now - I wasn't impressed at all with the 3D even when the system was brand new.
But of course there is much fun to be had if one can look past the really ugly 3D graphics.

[Dastardly]

I agree that a lot of the 3D PSX stuff hasn't aged well. I absolutely love Silent Hill, but it looks hideous now. Some that look bad, I can still play. The in game characters in FF7 look bad, but I can ignore it and still enjoy the game.

Some 3D stuff, like Wipeout 3 still looks really good, although it is rare.

[Zetr0]

I absolutely LOVE WipEout -

I know that the 3D graphics are quite lame by today's standards - but for me they still have this charm about them - for all its faults my good friend Yorkie and I started Friday - Curry night gaming with Need-For-Speed 1 and 2 --- yeah there ugly... but as GAMES go they still have that "something" that is missing from a lot of todays games.

I would say a game is more than just its graphics - although they do play an important part in helping to identify with the game.

So I think that it would be fairer to say that has the PSx "Game Library" Library Aged gracefully.... and I am for one saying it has... while the grphaics in some games are down right unforgivable (to be fair they probably were that bad in the first place) theres a lot of good games that shine through.... just dont play'em on a larger than 32" screen

Y'know, I actualy physically have quite a bit PSx game collection - didn't knew I had it -- untill I found out I had it lol... errr just now... gotta be close to about 100 PSx Games... figure that.

[Mad-Matt]

Its the psx lack of any kind of hardware filtering that makes the games look bad now I think. Especially the later games that used really low quality textures in order to fit in more textures.

N64 used filtering but it just made all its games look really blurry so its games look crap too.. Cant win

[fitzsteve]

I think the problem is more the TV's we use today large flat screen TV's do not do the PS1 or any of the older consoles much justice but they were fine back in the day on the small CRT's we used to use.

[john4p]

I agree with Leffmann that 2D games have aged well while 3D games haven't.

Symphony of the Night and Alundra are timeless classics while Metal Gear Solid looks awful.


Btw., Resident Evil has been remade. The Gamecube version still looks gorgeous today:



But thanks to its prerendered background gfx Resident Evil 1-3 on PSX don't look terrible in my opinion.

[cosmicfrog]

wow thats cammy that is

[TCD]

For a 1994 console the 3D wasn't bad, but today it looks quite poor. That doesn't mean the games aren't worth a play anymore. For me 'age gracefully' is mainly about how well the presentation of a game has suffered and in that regard the PS has some flaws when it comes to using 3D. The N64 doesn't suffer that much in the 3D department, but it's 2 years younger which doesn't make the comparision really fair

[Amiga1992]

I never liked the PSX and I think it looks horrible today. Except for a couple of games I really like and are exclusive to that platform, I have absolutely no appeal to this machine.

[Adropac2]

Playstation was knockout in it's day.It genuinely felt like a step up.We can all mock now but it blew a lot of us away.N64 and Super Mario 64 was also staggering i remember at the time

The graphics in 3d are rough as anything now but these worlds are still convincing unless you fixate on the comparitive visual failings which is a bit pointless.If people need games to feature the best graphics to enjoy what are still great games then there really isn't any point playing PSX.I'm still captivated by Atari 2600 games and their design spaces- Raiders of the lost Ark is 100% convincing an experience to me

The 3d from first Playstation still has charm like in fact all machines of old will regards to their visuals, and while i love the games, yes it looks like shit today technically speaking.However as game worlds themselves i find the visuals here as compelling as ever they were

[alexh]

Is there a PSX emulator supporting higher resolution rendering? I seem to remember Bleem did but does any of the ones today support it?

ePSXe?

[blade002]

I never got into the PS1 at all despite everyone around me owing one at the time, i think i just found "Computer" games more interesting "Console". BUT i did have a CBS Colecovision and Atari 2600 in the 80's but just couldn't get into Consoles in the 90's I think was also largely down to disliking Joypads.

[Retro-Nerd]

Originally Posted by alexh

Is there a PSX emulator supporting higher resolution rendering? I seem to remember Bleem did but does any of the ones today support it?

ePSXe?

Yes, ePSXe supports higher resolution rendering with Pete's D3D/OGL plugins, but you need a fast PC for Ultra High settings.

Some screenshots