Anyone still playing some Playstation 1?

[Etze]

Originally Posted by Mikerochip

Wipeout 2097 will forever be one of my favourite racing games too.
F1 and F1 '97 were great, along with a bit of Destruction Derby 2.

Oh, and Die Hard Arcade. The mix of 3 different games was really cool.

I think you mean "Die Hard Trilogy". But I agree, it was really cool!

[Nobby_UK]

I occasionally pull-out ePSXe and play:

Spyro
Mortal Kombat 2

[DanScott]

Originally Posted by Biscuit

Also gave Ninja: Shadow of Darkness a go. Looks like it was inspired by Last Ninja. Liked it. Gotta get a bit better with the dpad and see how far I can get.

Nice one! I coded that

One of the hardest games ever I think

[tolkien]

Im playing Driver with psx emu in MorphOS.

[Biscuit]

I understand the issue with PSX and it's early attempts at 3D. I think it's the combination of warping and hard lines that get most people. I was watching an interesting video that tries to explain the texture mapping and buffer and why it was done like that but annoyingly I can't find the link.

Anyhow, personally I'm so used to it I actually find all the wobbly walls kind of charming now. Yeah, a bit rose-tinted but I'm more interested in seeing what is playable. I'm stuck using a flatscreen so the graphics will never be optimal, good job I'm very forgiving. It's much more of a bother to me when there is unresponsive character movement. And we still get that with Red Dead 2 (so I hear).

I can believe Sony were pushing 3D. It was a big selling point. I thought Resident Evil 2 looked amazing. Played damn well too. I've not tried the remake but I'm tempted to say I'd prefer the original based on the use of static angles. A game style born of necessity and no longer used but could be very effective.

Thanks for the game mentions, I have some of them lined up already (Rage Racer, Grandia, Spyro). No Metal Gear though, those huge cutscenes have always been a big turn off.

And the two Driver games are some of my absolute favourites. I think the racing games have generally held up very well, but I would say that as a big fan of the genre. Plus I like to use the sticks. Never been the best at the dpad which will cause me trouble on PSX, and sometimes encouraged me to avoid certain games. I was coming from a zipstick after all.

[PortuguesePilot]

I had a burst of PSX nostalgia about a year and a half ago. Played in real hardware. Got almost all the peripherals and a bunch of games. For me, the PSX was a revolution back in 1995. A game changer, the machine that introduced the world to the new paradigm in gaming (that is still in use today, albeit bigger and better).

True, compared to how the games evolved, the PSX looks very dated. Blocky 3D, pixels galore, aliasing, excessive dithering, etc. And it really HAS to be played on a CRT TV or else the graphics can really become unbearable. BUT compare it to any of its contemporary consoles and you'll quickly understand why it became the undisputed champion of the 5th Generation of consoles. All lacked in comparison. The PSX offered, for the time, fast fully-textured 3D polygon graphics, full motion video, full stereo sound with DAC, proper analogue controls, reasonably priced games from an increasingly large and varied library, etc.

I still look at it fondly. When it comes to games, for me the PSX was the "next Amiga" and not the 486DX2 PC I left my trusty Commodore for. I was very much involved in it back in the day and when many of my friends were buying Saturns, I always waited for the Playstation. And it was worth it. In a few years, those pals that got Saturns surrendered to the PSX as well. It was just superior. In all rigour, the PC introduced the new paradigm in gaming, the 3DO and the Saturn sort-of anticipated it but it was the PSX that nailed it and made it mainstream.

A year ago, during my late 90's nostalgia with the PSX, in spite of still having my real Playstation hooked to a CRT TV on my office, I even bought a Playstation Mini - which was badly received and got a lot of heat at the time - and promptly "freed" it from its factory constraints and now used it - from time to time, admittedly - as a full retro-gaming rig where aside from the historic PSX classics, I also play the SNES, the MegaDrive, the NES, the PC-Engine, etc...

My PSX nostalgia burst has since subsided a bit and I don't play it nearly as much as I did last year, but I still go back with pleasure to some of my all time favourites, like Gran Turismo 2, Crash Bandicoot, Tekken 2, Tomb Raider, Motor Toon 2, DoDonPachi, Resident Evil 2, etc. Of course, nostalgia plays a lot. People who didn't went through those games when they were "hot" only see clunky vectors with pixels on them.

But love it or loath it, even in retrospect, the PSX is and will always be of the utmost importance in home gaming History, occupying a place among giants such as the Atari 2600 and the NES. There's just no way around it.

[gimbal]

I think back fondly on the PSX because yes played many games and it tended to be a group event rather than a lonely one. My brother never really got into gaming on a computer but the Playstation was a family favorite, my parents didn't even mind watching us play and often got into it as well telling us things to try to progress.

But I just don't want to play most of the games anymore today because clunky and if I play it today, it reverts to the lonely play which lacks half the original magic. Maybe I can convince my brother to play some games again one rainy Saturday...

But rare gems like Abe's Odyssey and Castlevania never become outdated. And heck, throw some GTA 1/2 in there too, nothing beats the PS versions of those games.

[Gerry]

I still enjoy playing the Densha de Go series of games alongside some excavator simulators on the PS1.

[manossg]

Now I am a latecomer to the PS1, only approaching it through emulation, and I have to say I had mixed expectations. But, overall, I was underwhelmed. Not due to the graphics, which I still like and find them pioneering, but for the very clunky controls in the 3d games, eg Silent Hill, Resident Evil. I guess it was because of the awkwardness of the transition from 2d to 3d. I liked the racing games, though, and I have yet to try Final Fantasy and Castlevania.

[Retro-Nerd]

It's still worth to revisit the PSX library.



2D Sidescroller and Iso/Top down View

Castlevania, Alundra, many good Arcade shmups ports, Oddworld, Strider 1+2, Rayman, Suikoden, Policenauts (with English patch), Vandal Hearts, Final Fantasy Tactics, Star Ocean 2, Parasite Eve 1+2, Chrono Cross



3D

Spyro 3, Legacy of Kain, Ridge Racer Type 4, Ace Combat, Colin MacRae Rally 2.0


and more i just forgot, for now.

[Jope]

Yep, got a PSX with PSIO hooked up, but I must say it doesn't get an awful lot of time. :-)

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

So Sony went for 3D not because it was the obvious future, but only because of the need to one up Saturn? Interesting way of looking at it

You're not getting what i'm saying. 3D was always the future, but Sony pushed it harder and persuaded publishers that were going to do 2D versions of older games to not, and convert them to 3D.

The reason was simple. They didn't care if the game was better or worse as 3D, just that in comparison to the Saturn it would look better.

If those publishers had gone the 2D route with some of the conversions from other formats, then the Saturn version had the capacity to be better than the PS1 version, and Sony absolutely wanted to avoid a situation where the Saturn got to be positively viewed by anyone.

Sony had final say on what did or didn't get published.

Originally Posted by dreadnought

It does not matter how powerful Saturn was in 2D. People wanted Doom, Tekken and Ridge Racer. I generalise of course but this is what made the gaming world spin back then. Sure, there were some silly mistakes along the way, but overall I think it has worked out all right. We do have a 2D revival these days, and it's a great thing, but it's not like TES 6 will be made using pixel art. Even FF7 remake wasn't.

But you're not getting the fact that Sony didn't see it that way, or at the very least were not prepared to take a chance that 2D might have influence.

Hence you get shockers like Lemmings 3D because there was a push for it by Sony themselves.

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Yes, and this is what I call out as totally unfair, for the reasons already stated. It's kinda okay when kids do it, or people with no interest in retro stuff, I can understand their lack of perspective, but seeing it in the retro gaming world causes me a heavy smh motion.

I don't see why its such a big deal. I loved Tomb Raider at the time, but I didn't like some of the ridiculous leaps of faith you had to do where because of the resolution, if you needed to jump from one side of a chasm to another, it clearly looked like you were standing on thin air to make the jump.

When stuff like that gets fixed due to resolution increases, I personally don't go all warm and fuzzy thinking back to how it was on the PS1.

Originally Posted by dreadnought

But this, in a way, is precisely what I'm talking about. SNES was on the end of the long 2D line which has started in the late Seventies. You can go on and say that gfx from this era was also crap (as many people do: the common everything-before-NES-sucked trope), be it in the arcades or on the micros, because it was also zillion times more simpler, and it'd be exactly as unfair as comparing modern 3D gfx to its pioneer.

But its not unfair. I mentioned Jumping Flash to someone else in this thread, and it was clear that the designers of that game realised quite quickly that going completely full screen would have problems, so they shrunk the viewport down a bit, and really concentrated on the visuals where they simply don't suffer like many other of its contemporaries.

I could pickup Jumping Flash today and play it without problems, because the game is entirely fair, the resolution doesn't affect gameplay.

A playable game is a playable game, but if the resolution causes issues, then its asinine to ignore them.

Originally Posted by dreadnought

So is Silent Hill. And somebody above was complaing about the fog, totally missing the point of it being a crucial element of the atmosphere as well as a clever trick to bypass the hardware limitations.

Didn't mind Silent Hill, and appreciated that they had to do something to avoid pop up which ended up being a key atmosphere element for the game and made it better.

Originally Posted by dreadnought

This is the same angle as with SNES, you're comparing the pinnacle of one style, on an advanced plarform, to a pioneer of another, on the weakest initial link. Does not compute. Lionheart et al didn't appear out of the blue but were successors of a very long line, which has started many years before with Space War and Pong.

Er, I conceded that the example the guy at Codemasters gave was why we treat the PS1 harsher than say the Amiga or the SNES.

Originally Posted by dreadnought

And, again, looking with said "disdain" is something I can not fathom, because I much prefer to look with respect, and a sort of awe, at what these folks were doing with such a silly hardware. And I can appreciate the artistry behind it all the same today, otherwise I could as well turn my nose at 2D, which is what many youngsters do (pixel art is big these days but it wasn't always like that).

Largely irrelevant to me. As I said, the resolution and blockiness of the graphics in a lot of the 3D stuff on PS1 was very off putting to me.

But note I didn't say all. There were the clever attempts to get around it and realise that they were hitting the PS1 vector limitations very early on in its commercial lifespan, and some games avoided the problems i'm talking about.

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Anyway, this is one of these modern myths I'm not going to argue about because it's just too prevalent and fixed in peoples minds, despite being totally unreasonable. I just hope that in the future people will appreciate the early days of 3D much more than my contemporaries.

Sorry, but demonstrably when it affects gameplay it can't be "unreasonable".

I think the Gameboy looks like shit, but it still has playable games on it inspite of its crap graphics.

I think that too many games in 3D on PS1 were too adventurous for the machine and they haven't aged well.

We're at an impasse

[-Acid-]

The "PSX" is a Playstation 2 with DVD writing capabilities only released in Japan. I doubt any of you own or have ever owned a "PSX" as it was never the official name for the original Playstation. Sorry... OCD kicking in.

[Retro-Nerd]

"PSX" was the well known short form right from the beginning for the Playstation 1, because it was the development code name. And it was the original intended name for the US market, before they changed that. There should be early ads in US print magazines to prove that.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by -Acid-

The "PSX" is a Playstation 2 with DVD writing capabilities only released in Japan. I doubt any of you own or have ever owned a "PSX" as it was never the official name for the original Playstation. Sorry... OCD kicking in.

I always knew it as PSX before release, it was never PS or PS1, in fact it wasn't ever known as the PS1 until that tiny PSOne thing was released.

As Retro Nerd said, if you look at the early mag stuff for it, it was PSX

[Hewitson]

Yep, the Playstation was very widely known as the PSX long before it was even released.

I think the term PS1 actually originated when the PS2 came out. People like to add a 1 onto the names of things. Eg "Terminator 1", "Final Fantasy 1", etc.

[lilalurl]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

I think the term PS1 actually originated when the PS2 came out. People like to add a 1 onto the names of things. Eg "Terminator 1", "Final Fantasy 1", etc.

Xbox 1 . Before people accuse me of getting the thread off-topic I'll go back to playing some Ultra 64 games...

[Konrad]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Yes, and this is what I call out as totally unfair, for the reasons already stated. It's kinda okay when kids do it, or people with no interest in retro stuff, I can understand their lack of perspective, but seeing it in the retro gaming world causes me a heavy smh motion.

Nothing unfair about it. Why do I have to wear rose-tinted glasses today, just because I grew up with it ?

I loved playing Amiga when I was young. Which is why I'm registered here, of course.
Some games I still like to play. Others didn't age well and I don't see me playing those again, although I enjoyed them as a child.
I don't force myself to say "But back then the games were great" and that's it. With all the fond memories and nostalgia I don't have a problem to say "Back then I loved those titles, but not today anymore."

Why is one not allowed to say that in regards to the PSX ?
As a nostalgic who likes retro games I can still say "Yeah, that didn't age too well...". That has nothing to do with perspective.

Of course there are good titles on the PSX. But in my opinion:
- Many of them are 2D
- For the 3D titles there are "generic" titles as f.ex. GranTurismo where I rather play the newest iteration with improved controls, realism and graphics than the original on PSX
- Then there are 3D titles where I have a stronger love for the prequels. For example Strider 2 and R-Type Delta. Although those are really good PSX games I rather play the original arcade games (Strider, R-Type1+2)
- There are good story driven 3D titles where I can't stand the limitations from back then anymore: Very short viewing distance in SilentHill1 (which has helped hiding graphical limitations of the PSX) and perspective switching in ResidentEvil

At this point there are next to no 3D titles on the PSX I would like to play anymore. And I tried alot of games.

[Etze]

I got Retropie on my RP4 and now I really love to play PSX-games. Many N64-games didn't play too well on the RP4 because of stuttering. But I have lots of fun with PSX.

After seeing the trailer for the new Tony Hawks Pro Skater 1+2 yesterday, I just turned on THPS1 and was back in the year 1999 - for two and a half hours. Can't remember when I played more than an hour on my PS4...

[str0m]

Play my PS1 couple of times a week mostly for light gun games. I play my Saturn a lot more despite it being worse for 3D, it just has such a great varied library of games