Playstation - Jesus, what a load of crap!

[TheCorfiot]

I couldn't understand why they took away PS2 compatibility from the PS3.
Both platforms are now in competition whereas people would be quite happy to upgrade to a PS3 to play their back catalogue.

The PS2 is fantastic considering it's age & is still faring well, still got lots of life left in it methinks.

TC

[PowerPie5000]

I very much like both the PS1 and PS2 and still play them now and then.... but i completely lost interest in Sony when the PS3 came out and got an Xbox 360 instead... which in my opinion is not that great either

As for the Saturn i think it is a great machine! It was not given enough time to properly "mature" like the ps1.... Most games on the saturn only utilized 1 of it's 2 CPU's and i think 3rd party devs found it tricky to work with.... But as for it's 2D capabilities it reigns supreme and surpasses even the Neo Geo which is famed for it's 2D capabilities

Don't forget that the original Quake got a Saturn release and ID said it was not possible on the PS1....although they did manage to squeeze Quake 2 onto the PS1 which was an acheivement (even though it was dumbed down quite a bit).

To be honest the 3D graphics from all the 32-bit consoles have aged quite badly.... PS1 is not the only culprit

[Retro1234]

I remember when PSX and Saturn came out - In comet eletrical store they had Wipeout on both machines and Wipeout looked so much better on PSX! - PSX also had better control pads that I still like
I actully bought Resident Evil 2 PSX in a charity shop not long ago played it on connectix PSX emulator with a PSX pads and it was great.

My PS2 I was seriously disapointed and think probably the Dreamcast was the better machine but now Sony owned the market.

[PowerPie5000]

Yeah i also think wipeout looked and played better on the PS1 and wipeout 2097 was ok on the saturn compared to first one.... They were just poor quality ports

I think the final generation of games really showed everyone what the saturn was capable of and looked better than most ps1 games.... take Panzer Dragoon Saga for example, it looks better than anything i have seen on the PS1 but thats my opinion Also Shenmue was originally scheduled for a Saturn release but appeared on the Dreamcast instead.... but check out the unfinished shenmue game running on Saturn hardware... it looks great

I really think the Saturn deserved more attention from both game studios and customers... Sega should have improved on their marketing strategies too... I can't really recall any Sega Saturn adverts The PS1 had loads of them

[Galahad/FLT]

Sega got complacent, thinking that software companies would bow down to them after the success of the Megadrive. Nasty licensing costs by Sega didn't help, and Sony couldn't do enough to make developing for PS1 a breeze, Sega were difficult to work with.

[s2325]

From Sega machines I like only Master System, GameGear, SG-1000.
MegaDrive/Genesis - poor sound fx in most games and average music
DreamCast - for me PC ports were really unnecessary
I can not say a word about Saturn, too rare in my country.

[prowler]

Originally Posted by DoogUK

Ps2 could actualy play Ps1 games by hardware, unlike the the Ps3 which had to play the Ps2 games by emulation, only then it was one certain model which did that if i recall.

It's my main reason for not buying the Ps3, no backward compatibility whereas the ps2 was excellent in playing Ps1 games.

That's my reason for not being interested in PS3.

Didn't they promise this would be fixed after the initial launch with a firmware update?

If they did, it has never appeared.

Sega promised eventual backward compatibility with the Saturn when the Dreamcast was launched, IIRC. That never appeared either.

[Ian]

No they didn't, anyway it's going to happen at some point they have/had an entire team working on it based in Wales.

Anyway, my PS3 plays every PS2 game I have left, all one of them not that it matters seeing as I never play it.

New is better than old.

At the end of the day if people were interested in BC they should've already bought their PS3s when they came out.

[prowler]

Originally Posted by Ian

...if people were interested in BC they should've already bought their PS3s when they came out.

...and paid a lot more for them into the bargain!

[PowerPie5000]

Did you know that the PS2 backwards compatibility in PAL PS3 systems is actually done by emulation? This is only with the PAL 60gb model and the emulation is actually quite bad.

I think it is only the early NTSC PS3 models that had hardware PS2 BC.... NOT the PAL version unfortunately and that is what completely put me off getting a PS3 amongst other things....

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by PowerPie5000

Did you know that the PS2 backwards compatibility in PAL PS3 systems is actually done by emulation? This is only with the PAL 60gb model and the emulation is actually quite bad.

I think it is only the early NTSC PS3 models that had hardware PS2 BC.... NOT the PAL version unfortunately and that is what completely put me off getting a PS3 amongst other things....

No, early PS3 80Gig had PS2 compatibility, they've abandoned it now.

I'll be brutally honest, I love my PS2, but I haven't touched it once in nearly a year of PS3 ownership.

[lolafg]

I still have my ps2 with her DMS4 EZI SE and hard drive and i won't buy a ps3!!

[PowerPie5000]

They've also abandoned the 60gb model in the UK too a while ago.... and replaced it with a 40gb model with less ports and absiolutely no BC!! My fiancee got the 60gb model when they first came out and is the only UK PAL model to work with some PS2 games (Emulated too ).

I think it was only the US and Japan that had an 80gb model with hardware BC when the ps3 was first launched... we got the 60gb one

[Ian]

Originally Posted by PowerPie5000

Did you know that the PS2 backwards compatibility in PAL PS3 systems is actually done by emulation? This is only with the PAL 60gb model and the emulation is actually quite bad.

I think it is only the early NTSC PS3 models that had hardware PS2 BC.... NOT the PAL version unfortunately and that is what completely put me off getting a PS3 amongst other things....

No, the EE (CPU) is emulated (quite well actually) and the GS (Graphics chip) is there in the machine.

Anyway like Galahad I kept the one game I thought I would play, GT4, and I have played it once or twice in 2 years.

[PowerPie5000]

I just stick to playing PS2 games on my PS2... some of my PS2 games will run fine on our 60gb PS3 but loads of them have imperfections such as a "jittery" screen or major slow down and some even have random graphics glitches etc.... But maybe it's just our PS3 as it has been in for repair twice since my fiancee bought it and she really looks after it too!....Sony never even say what was wrong with it....

After a bit of searching it seems the PS3 does have "limited" BC with "some" PS2 games.... I was starting to think the BC problems were isolated to just our PS3: http://uk.playstation.com/help-suppo...PLAYSTATION-3/

Here is also a list of PS2 games that work on the PS3.... and shows how well they work: http://www.ps3comp.com/ Since Sony abandoned BC for the PS3 i don't think their is an official current list of games??

[rsn8887]

Originally Posted by PowerPie5000

One of the ps1's i purchased a while ago from Evilbay came with a blue odd shaped cartridge that fits into the back of the ps1's parallel expansion port. It allows the ps1 to play imports and backups without actually opening up your ps1 and modding the hardware. It also acts as a cheat cartridge and is made by the same company (EMS) who created the "all in one" action replay for the Saturn. I never even knew these existed back then as i never saw one On the label it says "PS1 HACKER" a nice plug-mod

I want to post this, since I forgot about this issue, and your post suddenly makes me remember it:

AFAIK ANY mod that uses the spring/swap method will have huge problems with the Audio in games with lots of CD Audio tracks, especially many short tracks, like MK3 etc., but also with some other games that have large encoded audio data and jump directly to certain binary data positions on the cd.

I almost never got perfect music with any of those swap based methods, and I tried one of those cartridges once to check, but then returned it because it had the same problem.

The more CD Audio tracks your game has, the harder it is to get all of them to play correctly. I think it depends a lot on which boot cd you use, and on the timing of the swap. It sucks if you are a perfectionist and play lots of games with CD Audio. Castlevania Symphony of the Night doesn't have cd audio, but was really hard to boot correctly, too. It would play fine but then you enter a later level and there would be no music. Most games have bgm test menus which shows dramatically how you lose many music tracks with the swap method. Also, sometimes the music in a game will play, but tracks will start in the middle or stop too early and it will jump to the next track etc...

Mod chips works perfect though

[rsn8887]

Originally Posted by DoogUK

Ps2 could actualy play Ps1 games by hardware,

Funny though, even though it is in hardware, Colony Wars looks really crappy on my Ps2, but looks fine on PS1. The transparency is all messed up on my slim PS2 - there's half transparent squares around objects where there shouldn't be. So I think the PS1 compatibility on PS2 is not 100% sadly.

[Leffmann]

Castlevania X Symphony of the Night is probably one of the best games I've played. Good looking layered 2D with some subtle 3D here and there, and unbelievably good music. Haven't played it in over 10 years but I'd think that one has aged very well.

[StarEye]

They do look absolutely brilliant on the PSP, for obvious reasons. But the screen is also a thousand times clearer than a normal CRT with composite cables. It looks incredibly clean. I think a lot of PS1 games looks excellent on my telly though, running in running upscaled to 1080p on the PS3 might have something to do with that.

I can mention a lot of Amiga 500 games that have aged incredibly well, like Full Contact, Alien Breed, Superfrog, Monkey Island 1 and 2, Indy and the Fate of Atlantis, Cruise for a Corpse, Sensible Soccer etc etc. The thing about a lot of Amiga games are that they look so incredibly clean and makes excellent use of colours and art design. That's kinda what makes a game look good today.

Aging well doesn't mean it's not possible to see that it's from a different time. Aging well means it's still aestetically pleasing to look at, and that makes it a lot easier to enjoy games from that time today. Early 3D were often overly complex with more polygons than required. Trying to push a million details into a low-res polygon model will in most cases make the model look dirty and plain ugly. When the whole game was filled with this kind of 3D models, it's easy to see why it's not so impressive to look at today. The best 3D games were actually those who blended 2D and 3D, by using gorgeous pre-rendered backgrounds (FFVII-IX) and well designed characters that weren't tough on the eyes. These characters are very detailed, but it's use of colours and art direction is what makes them work. Then we have Metal Gear Solid. If you look at the models close-up, it's not very impressive. But the game is usually played somewhat zoomed out, thus making it a lot better on the eyes - and I'm pretty sure that's what the characters were designed for. It creates an illusion that you see things that aren't really there, your mind just fills in the blanks.

Ok, enough about that. The bottom line is, there are good examples of early 3D and there are bad examples of early 3D. Heck, there are good and bad examples of graphics from every era.

[PowerPie5000]

rsn8887 wrote:
I think it depends a lot on which boot cd you use, and on the timing of the swap

With the plug mod i have, timing is not important! the cartridge loads up to a boot menu and it automatically stops the original disc so it can then be swapped in your own time... then all you have to do is select start from the menu and thats it!... I have not come across audio issues yet but i will keep trying