The Wii was stolen by the girlfriend.

The XBox stopped working after I moved it, the Spiderchip must have lost some of its retarded solderless contacts and I am too lazy to open it and fix it.

My PC can barely run UT2003, and nobody would play with me anyway.

So, after some casual R-Type Delta, I decided to go back to PlayStation love, went to my parents and took back all the dusted PSX games.

Some jewels are there: Tekken 3, Soul Blade, Gran Turismo 2, R-Types, G-Darius, Street Fighter Alpha 3 (with all the secret characters unlocked by my old savegame!), Einhander, Harmful Park, Thrill Kill, and then my favourites: Resident Evil 1, 2, 3, Silent Hill, Syphon Filter, Metal Gear Solid (got from you CA brothers years ago), Parasite Eve 1&2...

Playing the PSX now feels a bit like playing the emulated NES 10 years ago :) Or maybe it's the 40" LCD TV... I'd enjoy some SuperEagle filtering for those jaggies, but this is the real deal, with earthquake-like rumble on the controller (the XBox and Wii rumbles are a joke, compared to this).

My ISP is working hard to get me the stuff that was recorded on shitty Princo discs that are now unreadable. My bad, and I'll never go Princo again to save some cents. Finding PSX stuff is not as easy as I thought, since most of it comes embedded in EBOOT.PBP files to be fed to the PSP and I still haven't researched a way to extract the ISO from them. However, the most popular stuff can still be found, sometimes in a zip together with ePSXe (why not pSX???), and even some less known games find their way in some trackers. If this lasts, I'll plunder the fair we get in december where originals are sold at 3 euro, but meanwhile...

This was just to tell all of you that I'm having great fun!

And that's pretty all.

The PSX had it all back in the day. There was hardly a game that didn't show up on that system. Games weren't driven by sequel-itis back then, it was the first fully 3D generation and people were trying out tons of new ideas. Gameplay wasn't perfected but there was a ton of variety. It was cool to see people come up with tricks to make those shitty 3D graphics look better than they should have. But back then it was interesting enough to actually see a texture on a polygon.

Haha even Battle Arena Toshinden seemed like the greatest thing back at the PSX launch (especially compared to Virtua Fighter on Saturn).

> The Wii was stolen by the girlfriend.
>
> The XBox stopped working after I moved it, the Spiderchip must have lost some of
> its retarded solderless contacts and I am too lazy to open it and fix it.
>
> My PC can barely run UT2003, and nobody would play with me anyway.
>
> So, after some casual R-Type Delta, I decided to go back to PlayStation love,
> went to my parents and took back all the dusted PSX games.
>
> Some jewels are there: Tekken 3, Soul Blade, Gran Turismo 2, R-Types, G-Darius,
> Street Fighter Alpha 3 (with all the secret characters unlocked by my old
> savegame!), Einhander, Harmful Park, Thrill Kill, and then my favourites:
> Resident Evil 1, 2, 3, Silent Hill, Syphon Filter, Metal Gear Solid (got from
> you CA brothers years ago), Parasite Eve 1&2...
>
> Playing the PSX now feels a bit like playing the emulated NES 10 years ago :) Or
> maybe it's the 40" LCD TV... I'd enjoy some SuperEagle filtering for those
> jaggies, but this is the real deal, with earthquake-like rumble on the
> controller (the XBox and Wii rumbles are a joke, compared to this).
>
> My ISP is working hard to get me the stuff that was recorded on shitty Princo
> discs that are now unreadable. My bad, and I'll never go Princo again to save
> some cents. Finding PSX stuff is not as easy as I thought, since most of it
> comes embedded in EBOOT.PBP files to be fed to the PSP and I still haven't
> researched a way to extract the ISO from them. However, the most popular stuff
> can still be found, sometimes in a zip together with ePSXe (why not pSX???), and
> even some less known games find their way in some trackers. If this lasts, I'll
> plunder the fair we get in december where originals are sold at 3 euro, but
> meanwhile...
>
> This was just to tell all of you that I'm having great fun!
>
> And that's pretty all.
>
>

I play Playstation games on the PC unless there are compatibility issues.



> The Wii was stolen by the girlfriend.
>
> The XBox stopped working after I moved it, the Spiderchip must have lost some of
> its retarded solderless contacts and I am too lazy to open it and fix it.
>
> My PC can barely run UT2003, and nobody would play with me anyway.
>
> So, after some casual R-Type Delta, I decided to go back to PlayStation love,
> went to my parents and took back all the dusted PSX games.
>
> Some jewels are there: Tekken 3, Soul Blade, Gran Turismo 2, R-Types, G-Darius,
> Street Fighter Alpha 3 (with all the secret characters unlocked by my old
> savegame!), Einhander, Harmful Park, Thrill Kill, and then my favourites:
> Resident Evil 1, 2, 3, Silent Hill, Syphon Filter, Metal Gear Solid (got from
> you CA brothers years ago), Parasite Eve 1&2...
>
> Playing the PSX now feels a bit like playing the emulated NES 10 years ago :) Or
> maybe it's the 40" LCD TV... I'd enjoy some SuperEagle filtering for those
> jaggies, but this is the real deal, with earthquake-like rumble on the
> controller (the XBox and Wii rumbles are a joke, compared to this).
>
> My ISP is working hard to get me the stuff that was recorded on shitty Princo
> discs that are now unreadable. My bad, and I'll never go Princo again to save
> some cents. Finding PSX stuff is not as easy as I thought, since most of it
> comes embedded in EBOOT.PBP files to be fed to the PSP and I still haven't
> researched a way to extract the ISO from them. However, the most popular stuff
> can still be found, sometimes in a zip together with ePSXe (why not pSX???), and
> even some less known games find their way in some trackers. If this lasts, I'll
> plunder the fair we get in december where originals are sold at 3 euro, but
> meanwhile...
>
> This was just to tell all of you that I'm having great fun!
>
> And that's pretty all.
>
>


The new and improved King of Lamers 2003!

> The Wii was stolen by the girlfriend.
>
> The XBox stopped working after I moved it, the Spiderchip must have lost some of
> its retarded solderless contacts and I am too lazy to open it and fix it.
>
> My PC can barely run UT2003, and nobody would play with me anyway.
>
> So, after some casual R-Type Delta, I decided to go back to PlayStation love,
> went to my parents and took back all the dusted PSX games.
>
> Some jewels are there: Tekken 3, Soul Blade, Gran Turismo 2, R-Types, G-Darius,
> Street Fighter Alpha 3 (with all the secret characters unlocked by my old
> savegame!), Einhander, Harmful Park, Thrill Kill, and then my favourites:
> Resident Evil 1, 2, 3, Silent Hill, Syphon Filter, Metal Gear Solid (got from
> you CA brothers years ago), Parasite Eve 1&2...
>
> Playing the PSX now feels a bit like playing the emulated NES 10 years ago :) Or
> maybe it's the 40" LCD TV... I'd enjoy some SuperEagle filtering for those
> jaggies, but this is the real deal, with earthquake-like rumble on the
> controller (the XBox and Wii rumbles are a joke, compared to this).
>
> My ISP is working hard to get me the stuff that was recorded on shitty Princo
> discs that are now unreadable. My bad, and I'll never go Princo again to save
> some cents. Finding PSX stuff is not as easy as I thought, since most of it
> comes embedded in EBOOT.PBP files to be fed to the PSP and I still haven't
> researched a way to extract the ISO from them. However, the most popular stuff
> can still be found, sometimes in a zip together with ePSXe (why not pSX???), and
> even some less known games find their way in some trackers. If this lasts, I'll
> plunder the fair we get in december where originals are sold at 3 euro, but
> meanwhile...
>
> This was just to tell all of you that I'm having great fun!
>
> And that's pretty all.
>
>

I think that we all suffer from the same thing - evolution. As time goes by, more advanced game systems are developed. As newer systems are introduced, older system fade into the sunset. Every now and then, you fire up one of the old systems. As you start playing games you think "man, are these graphics bad", forgetting the fact that, at one time, this was the system to beat. After a bit, you stop playing the older systems again and start playing the newer systems.

To put things into perspective even more, just think - the Gameboy Advance is already a system in the past (as, to my knowledge, no new games are produced for it). And how long ago was the PS2 the top system? Now, that system is in its twilight. Who knows what will happen in three years from now (which isn't a very long time at all) The NDS and maybe even the XBOX will be "retro" systems. How weird does that look, reading "retro" and XBOX is the same sentence?

I think anyone that's been around the gaming industry for long enough to be around when the NES and SNES (I go way back to the Atari 2600) ruled the gaming world can relate to feeling melancholy. It's the way of the gaming world I suppose.

I really could care less for how good a game looks. I'm concerned about how much fun is it to play.

Example: Adventure for the 2600. Graphically, well let's be kind and say the graphics were serviceable. The gameplay is a blast though and I still have a good time playing it every now and then.

It's kind of like having a beautiful girlfriend that's empty above the neck vs a pretty one with a brain. Wait... scratch that.

> I really could care less for how good a game looks. I'm concerned about how
> much fun is it to play.
>
> Example: Adventure for the 2600. Graphically, well let's be kind and say the
> graphics were serviceable. The gameplay is a blast though and I still have a
> good time playing it every now and then.
>
> It's kind of like having a beautiful girlfriend that's empty above the neck vs a
> pretty one with a brain. Wait... scratch that.
>
>
>
>


Jason

> I think that we all suffer from the same thing - evolution. As time goes by,
> more advanced game systems are developed. As newer systems are introduced,
> older system fade into the sunset. Every now and then, you fire up one of the
> old systems. As you start playing games you think "man, are these graphics
> bad", forgetting the fact that, at one time, this was the system to beat. After
> a bit, you stop playing the older systems again and start playing the newer
> systems.

After trying to make all the art assets for a game I wanted to make, I will never say that about any game no matter how crummy it looks.

Plus, I have a lot of appreciation for what people can do under limitations. Demos like Second Reality or Crystal Dream 2... hell, if you've seen the clever tricks people do with bit shifting operations...

Anyway.

Just extracting the full potential out of a certain hardware platform is art enough for me. There are some incredible looking games on the PlayStation with tons of tricks. Squaresoft wrote custom compression/decompression routines just to load the amount of stuff in RAM they needed for the Final Fantasy games on PlayStation. Crash Warped on PSX had a software z-buffer.

On the Genesis, just look at Mega Turrican. Play through it with cheats on but just look at the tricks they did. Gunstar Heroes is a more popular one.

On the SNES look at Donkey Kong Country 2, that has some amazing raster graphics considering the SNES hardware, they really extracted what they could from the PPU when they had mode 7 and transparent honey & shit in that level with the honey dripping down when you're in the cargo compartment of the sailing ship for example.

It's interesting because of the small touches added by the developers to complete the illusion and make it all seamless. The earlier the system, the easier it is to understand the mechanics behind achieving the effect and why it is so ridiculous on the hardware.

If you have a technical mind and you know the hardware behind the various machines you can be blown away. On newer systems it becomes harder to appreciate the technical achievement. Take for example the 360 and PS3, most of the earlier games were ports, and the newer ones just blow you away by having games designed for that hardware in the first place. By the time developers start learning how to take advantage of the hardware they'll have to concentrate on the new generation. Now it's more about art assets, which is interesting but on another level and doesn't really have much to do with exploiting processing power.

> To put things into perspective even more, just think - the Gameboy Advance is
> already a system in the past (as, to my knowledge, no new games are produced for
> it). And how long ago was the PS2 the top system? Now, that system is in its
> twilight. Who knows what will happen in three years from now (which isn't a
> very long time at all) The NDS and maybe even the XBOX will be "retro"
> systems. How weird does that look, reading "retro" and XBOX is the same
> sentence?
>
> I think anyone that's been around the gaming industry for long enough to be
> around when the NES and SNES (I go way back to the Atari 2600) ruled the gaming
> world can relate to feeling melancholy. It's the way of the gaming world I
> suppose.

You can still play those games though and they are still interesting in their own way. It's still interesting to see developers take older concepts and apply them with today's technology and gameplay expectations and succeeding in a spiritual successor that you'd actually rather play than the original, or create new genres altogether. I think now the focus is more on what you can do with gameplay rather than graphics or other limitations in the hardware.