How is your PSOne/PS1 gaming going?

[Reprise]

Interesting to hear your thoughts on Spyro, Alienjesus. I loved it back in the day and have been itching to rebuy it this year, but have been biding my time, since the price on Ebay seems ridiculous to me these days and I have other games to be playing. Perhaps I won't bother. I didn't even know that it only used the D-Pad for movement.

[alienjesus]

Interesting to hear your thoughts on Spyro, Alienjesus. I loved it back in the day and have been itching to rebuy it this year, but have been biding my time, since the price on Ebay seems ridiculous to me these days and I have other games to be playing. Perhaps I won't bother. I didn't even know that it only used the D-Pad for movement.

You can use the stick, but it still doesn't have 360 movement. It seems like the d-pad is just mapped to the stick tbh. Maybe it has 16 degrees of movement instead of 8?

[Xeogred]

Yeah, Spyro is one I can't really play anymore. I bought that one again a few years ago on the PS3 PSN to replay it, lost interest pretty quickly. I wonder if the sequels improve upon it?

3D Gex has aged even worse though haha. And I imagine Croc is rough now too.

[Tanooki]

I think that could be a complex discussion for me. My PSX and PS2 collections are neck and neck and my biggest next to the SNES. But I've always felt like the PS2 lacks a certain something that I can't really pinpoint. It could be nostalgia for the PSX.

I love how the SNES Classic has gotten more people talking about this sort of thing lately. 8bit is maybe a niche', but everyone universally agrees that 16bit just looks incredible and holds up flawlessly. You can't say that for early 3D. It really is a shame that developers raced to get to 3D back in the 32/64bit era. More sprite based games, pre-rendered background art, and top of the line arcade quality stuff would have been incredible.

Well you saw my comments as I have no love or nostalgia for Sony period from that time frame so no beer googles to cloud my eyes. Truth be told I wasn't happy with Sony until the PS3 rolled around really but I had the systems and used them post 2000. Despite that I preferred the PS1 largely more than the PS2. The PS2 may have had the games but they were inferior to the PC and in various cases even Gamecube to me too when it got one. PS1 though that thing rocked it out and did it with good style often enough. As long as you can tolerate the early jaggy polygon era look of stuff it's still a stand out. Sometimes I think price wise it gets snubbed a bit because it does fall into that ugly realm for most, much like old handheld games do too just getting poo poo'd and blown off.


So how much fun really is King's Field? I think I know someone a mile or two from here who has a complete boxed copy but I doubt it's any deal on pricing though. I couldn't tell from the box/manual if I'd like it or not.

[pierrot]

However after loving the Legends games, I got Tron Bonne on PSN and hope to play that soon.

I've been playing Tron Bonne a little over the past couple days, and by "playing," I really mean doing a mission, then getting kind of bored, and stopping. I'm really struggling to find much enjoyment in it, so far.

[Exhuminator]

So how much fun really is King's Field?

Most gamers will absolutely hate King's Field. It's not a series that is immediately entertaining the second you start playing it. There are intentional rough edges to the design. You have to give King's Field a couple hours for the game design to "click". But once it clicks, if the design resonates with you, King's Field is very entertaining.

I've been playing Tron Bonne a little over the past couple days, and by "playing," I really mean doing a mission, then getting kind of bored, and stopping. I'm really struggling to find much enjoyment in it, so far.

If you're not a big fan of Tron Bonne herself, her game may have less impact. I've always been a Tron Bonne fanboy, so her game was a good time for me.

[Sarge]

My suspicions are that each successive hardware generation has refined the gameplay of most games that started on the PSX to the point where they're just better experiences all around.

I would agree with this on a technical angle, but not always a game design angle.

I also have buttletons of RPGs I hope to someday beat on PS1/PS2. And on many other systems as well...

Yeah, I can see that sometimes. There's some good design in some of the games, but in a lot of cases the technical limitations really hold them back. Not always, though. That actually reminds me that I should try to finish off Silent Bomber one of these days. It plays a lot better than you'd think!

I suspect the other issue I have is the sheer number of RPGs I did finish on the system. I mean, seriously, I've probably at least played almost all of them, and the list of beaten ones... it's pretty big.

Also, Ape Escape rocked when I played it. If anyone hasn't played that series, they should. I think they're all a blast, both the PSX and PS2 games.

[pierrot]

I've been playing Tron Bonne a little over the past couple days, and by "playing," I really mean doing a mission, then getting kind of bored, and stopping. I'm really struggling to find much enjoyment in it, so far.

If you're not a big fan of Tron Bonne herself, her game may have less impact. I've always been a Tron Bonne fanboy, so her game was a good time for me.

I don't know that I could say I love Tron Bonne, but I don't dislike her at all, at least. I think the Kobun are pretty cute, too. I'm not a big fan of how much of the game centers on raising Kobun, and dealing with the management minutia that it entails. It feels like everything else is a little tacked on to a Kobun sim, and I don't have the Pocket Station to take full advantage of what the game offers. Not that I really want to, as the minigames associated with Kobun raising, that are actually in the game, are kind of annoying. The different types of missions don't feel all that tremendously fun to me, either. The game is growing on me slightly, but part of that might have been just doing the puzzle missions.

I probably should have expected the Kobun being such a focal point of the gameplay, since it's called "Tron ni Kobun," but a lot of the game feels a bit needlessly complicated to me, and a bit repetitive, at that.

[Xeogred]

Tron Bonne just sounds crazy, haha. No idea what to expect so I can't wait to see what I think. I like her character a lot though and the Servebots.

My suspicions are that each successive hardware generation has refined the gameplay of most games that started on the PSX to the point where they're just better experiences all around.

I would agree with this on a technical angle, but not always a game design angle.

I also have buttletons of RPGs I hope to someday beat on PS1/PS2. And on many other systems as well...

Yeah, I can see that sometimes. There's some good design in some of the games, but in a lot of cases the technical limitations really hold them back. Not always, though. That actually reminds me that I should try to finish off Silent Bomber one of these days. It plays a lot better than you'd think!

I suspect the other issue I have is the sheer number of RPGs I did finish on the system. I mean, seriously, I've probably at least played almost all of them, and the list of beaten ones... it's pretty big.

Also, Ape Escape rocked when I played it. If anyone hasn't played that series, they should. I think they're all a blast, both the PSX and PS2 games.

Silent Bomber looks really cool.

Do you think modern RPG's are better than the PSX/PS2 era offerings?

[Exhuminator]

There's some good design in some of the games, but in a lot of cases the technical limitations really hold them back. Not always, though.

Well this falls into genres of course. An FPS on PS1 is going to have a hard time competing with an FPS on PS4, so would driving games, flying games, third person shooters, anything that relies on 3D really. But in regards to SRPGs and JRPGs things are not so clear cut. For example earlier this year I beat Front Mission Alternative, which accomplished technically what it wanted to do just fine. I can not think of any PS2, PS3, or PS4 game that offers the same kind of gameplay it has to even compare against. Another example would be The Misadventures of Tron Bonne. A very unique hybrid of game designs, which doesn't have an analog on any successive PS systems (or anywhere really). When you get into the 2D games, like Torneko, Rhapsody, Saga Frontier II, Arc the Lad, Suikoden II, or Valkyrie Profile, they still look and play beautifully. The only thing a PS4 can do is up the resolution in that regard.

It's only in the realm of fully 3D JRPGs do aesthetics and technical polish really start to matter. But even in that instance, a player would find it hard to find analogs to Koudelka, Grandia, Azure Dreams, Chocobo's Dungeon 2, Threads of Fate, Dragon Valor, The Granstream Saga, Mega Man Legends, Parasite Eve, and especially King's Field... in the PS4's library. By all that I mean; there's a lot of unique game designs of the PS1 era that didn't persist into modern interpretation. Sure the PS3 and PS4 games are more refined technically, but their genre offerings are more confined versus the wild west of the PS1 era. All that modern polish comes at the price of vintage variety.