How is your PSOne/PS1 gaming going?

[Exhuminator]

I must be in the miniority, but I think there's quite a few PS1 games that are fully 3D, and yet play very well. Stuff like Ape Escape, Ghost in the Shell, Spyro, Omega Boost, Jumping Flash, C-12 The Final Resistance, Vagrant Story, Gran Turismo, Ridge Racer, Dino Crisis, Meal Gear Solid, Soul Reaver, Mega Man Legends, and many others come to mind. Sure there were some clunky stinkers on the system, but there's a good amount of successful ventures.

[Sarge]

Metal Gear Solid in particular aged well because in many ways, it's just an NES game with polygonal graphics.

[isiolia]

Developers jumped to 3D too early. 5th gen would have been better off if everything was in 2D. Look at how brilliant games like Magic Knight Rayearth turned out. Then you have something like Final Fantasy VII which looks and plays worse than the original NES Final Fantasy.

I think that's more than just 3D - there was that, but there was also the shift to CD-ROM by default, grainy FMV, and early CGI influenced art styles.

Transitioning to 3D meant new ideas or adjustments to existing mechanics. There would have been similar growing pains if the transition was delayed. In theory, we might have seen some really nicely produced, expanded versions of games that were already being made in 16-bit (more realistically, we would have had a ton more digitized FMV/CGI games a la Batman Forever or Street Fighter the Movie). The shift towards 3D, instead, resulted in much rougher products...but ones that were actually doing a lot more new things, laying a groundwork for later iterations.

Metal Gear Solid in particular aged well because in many ways, it's just an NES game with polygonal graphics.

Well, MSX. It would not be unfair to consider MGS to be an extension of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. Other than the 2D->3D transition it changes things up a lot less than you'd think. It has a number of similar sequences to it to boot.

[Sarge]

Yeah, I thought about mentioning the MSX, since that's where Metal Gear 2 resides. There's a ton there that found its way into the PSX entry. Which also ended up in the GBC version, which I highly recommend.

[Xeogred]

You have no idea how much I miss the Metal Gear 2 radar in MGS3+.

[chuckster]

I must be in the miniority, but I think there's quite a few PS1 games that are fully 3D, and yet play very well. Stuff like Ape Escape, Ghost in the Shell, Spyro, Omega Boost, Jumping Flash, C-12 The Final Resistance, Vagrant Story, Gran Turismo, Ridge Racer, Dino Crisis, Meal Gear Solid, Soul Reaver, Mega Man Legends, and many others come to mind. Sure there were some clunky stinkers on the system, but there's a good amount of successful ventures.

Preach. I've only played the bolded ones, but every one of those is a classic. Funny thing is, people have a certain bias going into early 3D games that they are clunky and control poorly. If someone goes in with that in mind, something like Jumping Flash, GitS, or even Ape Escape will be 'another wonky early 3D control scheme!'.

It's easy to point out the flaws of early 3D controls--Silent Hill, RE1, and Tomb Raider seem to (unfairly) bear the brunt of the derision--but it honestly didn't take long for developers to dial in some smooth controls that are just as good in 2017 as they were in 1997. After that point, it wasn't the fault of the system or any sort of premature industry jump if a game had poor control, it was a dev who either didn't have the experience or money to implement a certain control scheme, or they were going for a specific feel.

You have no idea how much I miss the Metal Gear 2 radar in MGS3+.

I missed it at first but after the first 30 minutes (of actual gameplay) I didn't mind it was gone. You can tell the game was designed with no radar in mind.

[Xeogred]

Silent Hill 1, RE1, Tomb Raider...

You all haven't seen bad controls until you've tried Fear Effect. You will need to know full Yoshimitsu-Tekken combo strings to be able to pull of ducking, rolling, and manually aiming at two different enemies on the screen at once. Good luck, because you will need to know how to be good in the opening minutes of Fear Effect 2. Also there's no health recovery items in these games.

Unpopular opinion but I've always liked MGS1/MGS2 way more than MGS3. Solid Snake is the man! Big Boss is a baby.

[pierrot]

I put together an order for a few games yesterday, and most of them were PS1 games. I should have Kagero, Jumping Flash, Jumping Flash 2, and King's Field II arriving in the near future. (Gungriffon for the Saturn was the only non-PS1 game in the order.)

I've still been slowly plugging away at at Tron Bonne. It's been better than my earliest impressions, but I'm still not enthralled with it.

[nullPointer]

You all haven't seen bad controls until you've tried Fear Effect.

OMG, YES! This is the exact game that comes to my mind when I think of 'early 3D games with wonky controls'. You don't hear it mentioned all that much, but I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. I beat the first game years ago with the intention of moving on to Retro-Helix, but by the time I had slogged my way through that first game I'd had more than enough Fear Effect. Bit of a shame really, as these games were playing with some interesting ideas at the time (cool cyberpunk setting, early example of cell shaded graphics, LGBT protagonist, the titular 'Fear Effect', etc.), but yikes that gameplay just killed it for me. I've never gone back for that second helping of Fear Effect, nor do I have much intention of doing so. And this from the guy who's an unrepentant apologist for early 3D control schemes!

[Xeogred]

Yeah, everything outside of the controls with Fear Effect seems pretty amazing. I got far into the first game a few years ago but got stuck. They are way more cryptic than RE and SH. Just had no clue what I was doing and using items, shooting guns, etc, was a puzzle in itself. I'm not even joking about Fear Effect 2 there, I literally got stuck on the first or second enemy encounter in the game. You die in like 3 shots and have 2 seconds to perform the Tekken combos to shoot up robots all over the screen, it was insane.

The games are gorgeous though and have really cool vibes. Cool anime cel shading with the characters too that was different for its time. I ended up just watching full playthroughs of both games on youtube weirdly enough. I have no regrets just watching them haha, there was some super wacky parts and puzzles I would have been stuck on frequently for sure.

This whole area in particular, WTF: