The PS1 Nostalgia Thread

[FLips]

6 hours ago, air_raid said:

I take massive exception to this. Compared to vs the World, it was a dogshit button basher.

If you want dogshit then look no further than the plain silver disc my mate borrowed me that had “WWF BACK DOOR” crudely drawn on with felt tip. No this wasn’t a dodgy copy of one of the old Divas DVDs, it was WCW Backstage Assault. Awful but I still played it more than I should have.

[Merzbow]

I've no idea how that game became so bad when they already had the half decent engine from Mayhem, it wasn't just the shit setting of every match being backstage but the entire mechanics had fell to shit in the mix somehow.

[FLips]

Just going to leave this here.

 

[Supremo]

I remembered me, my brother and my Dad completed the original Broken Sword on the PS1 huddled around the TV together. For whatever reason it was one of the only times my Dad gave a shit about anything we played. It really caught his imagination. I remember him being furious at that goat section. The intro still fills me with nostalgia. The music and art remains lovely.

I absolutely cannot comprehend how we had the patience to complete the entire point and click adventure using the original PlayStation controller though! Just typing in an email address or a password using a controller nearly kills me off these days!

Edited August 9, 2022 by Supremo

[DCW]

Only time I was properly into gaming was in the PS1 heyday. I tried with a PS4 and a Covid impulse Xbox Series S buy, but games these days are just far too detailed for me. Landing a plane in Flight Sim on the S or managing a club on the new Football Manager might as well be in a different language to me at this stage. But the PS1 will always be king to me,

We got ours as a bribe from my mam's new boyfriend when she was unexpectedly knocked up by him at the age of 46. My 10 year reign of terror as the youngest child officially over, so he bought me and my brother off with the delightful grey box, with Fifa 97, Porsche Challange and Wipeout. It worked, and they are still happily together all these years later and I grudgingly accepeted the sister as I realised being the middle child meant I could get away with murder!

So many happy memories of whiling the hours of school summer holidays playing Resident Evil, Fifa RTWC 98 with the Song 2 intro, G-Police, Gran Turismo and loads more. Also first time I played a football management sim, where I unwisely parted with 25 quid to own the awful Alex Ferguson Player Manager. I soon discovered the Premier Manager series and an obscure enough game called FA Manager, which had Brian Moore doing commentary over horrendous in match graphics. I still got Fulham promoted from Div 2 to the Prem though, before my brother overwrote the memory card for some shite F1 sim. Still haven't forgiven him. Would eventually lead on to the crack cocaine like addiction of LMA manager, where me and my 2 friends would stay up most of summer nights of the early 00's playing it.

I also got into wrestling via WWF Attitude (which I found incredibly frustrating) and then the excellent first Smackdown game, bought with my confirmation money. It came free with a game guide which had bios and backstories of all the wrestlers in the game, so when I finally started watching properly around the time C4 started showing the PPV's, I knew bits about nearly everyone on TV at that point.

Only wish I'd kept my console and games!

[RedRooster]

That opening post from @FelatioLipsmight be my favourite thing I’ve ever read on this forum. 

As far as my memories go, outside of the obvious, I want to bring up Tombi - or, specifically, its demo. It was very much the Sean O’Haire of the PS1 for me. That brief glimpse of the game made me feel like it was something special, but in a pre-internet shopping world, I found it impossible to get my hands on the full game.

Years later, when it was released on the PSP as a PS1 Classic, I finally bought it, and realised that after the portion that appeared on the demo…it wasn’t that good. It was brimming with potential, but ran out of steam pretty quickly. That said, I don’t think there was a better demo out there. That short snippet of the game, it turned out, was all you really needed, and fucking hell it was great. It doesn’t matter that the game itself was weak. Demo Tombi was spectacular, and fleeting brilliance is still brilliance all the same. 

Does anyone else have any memories of games like this, that never quite lived up to a fantastic demo?

[Rule One]

The PS1 has always been a blessing and a curse for me.

I loved my multiple PS1's but the reason I had multiple instead of just the one was my cunt of a brother. (He's still one.) Christmas '97 is when it unexpectedly rolled into my household and seemingly the rest of the road too. I had asked for a new bike/sports equipment but instead got a PS1 with two pads, two memory cards and about 10 games. Alien Trilogy, Overboard, Ridge Racer, Tekken, Mortal Kombat, Soul Blade, Crash Bandicoot and few others that I can't remember off the top of my head. I was blown away, it was a monster upgrade from my Megadrive that had served me so well.

For the first few months of '98 I bummed those games until my uncle borrowed me a few games, the most memorable, Resident Evil, holy shit I was encapsulated by it but my brother, this began his journey into gaming that has reached freakishly unbearable depths that he's never been able or wanted to come out from. I'd never would have begrudged him using/playing on it but he never ever asked, he always assumed that he could play it whenever/gave a shit that it wasn't his and already had a track record of not looking after other people's items.

From there he did everything he could to get on my PS1 disregarding that it wasn't his and although younger, still knew right from wrong. In a short space of time, he broke a game, deleted my memory cards clear and gave away Alien Trilogy to a kid on our street for nothing, with no explanation given to this day. This culminated in him breaking my TV and original playstation by trying to to plug the aerial in the TV because I took to disconnecting it when I went out in an effort to stop him from getting his hands on it. His pushed the TV off the stand and crushed my PS1 as he'd put it on the floor trying to put the wires in. He didn't even get punished for it.

I didn't get another one for about 4 months as I had to scrimp and save up the little money I earned from working market stalls (Setting up early doors, loading vans, etc.) and managed to buy one of a mate for a cut down price because he had no care/use for it.

That lasted 6 months before my brother was up to his old tricks again and it succumbed to him stabbing the laser with a screwdriver in a fit because I'd hid my pads in my latest attempt to stop him. I had it repaired by selling a few of my good games but he did the same again shortly after.

My third and final playstation came to me through the generosity of my Grandad in Spring '99. He also bought me Brian Lara Cricket, Premier Manager 98 and a FIFA 99 for a ridiculously cheap price in a Cash Generator because they had no idea what they had on their hands.

Slogging away on various North Manchester markets during the summer of '99 is where late to the game, got into copies. I got myself a plug in cartridge and began adding any old shit I could get my hands on until learning from a market trader who specialised in copied media how to copy games/etc. I bought a low level pc off him and maxed it out as best as I could using parts from Micro Direct and became a small enterprise in school by selling off copies of my copies for cheaper which in turn funded my ever exploratory weekends.

I'll always be thankful to Andy the perv who lived a few doors down who gave me a copy of Jenna Jameson interactive. That was a gold mine for me and made me bank for the rest of my high school days. I sold copies for £5 and I don't think anyone whinged about having to pay either.

As my copied collection grew, my originals shrunk as my brother was now appeased with very own PS1, decided the best way for him to get new games was steal off me. At one point he traded off my FIFA collection, FF 7, 8 and 9 and Resident Evils 1, 2 and 3 for his fix. He still doesn't believe he's done anything wrong when it's brought up in conversation.

I enjoyed way too many games to list here but one of my favourites was late into the PS1 run which was World's Scariest Police Chase's. For me, it was so much fun, limited but so much fun. The best console I have had up until I got a PS4. Most of the stuff doesn't hold up today but I wouldn't want it any other way. I still have NTSC Persona 2 discs/covers somewhere in my house that I foolishly didn't cash out on years ago when it was worth something. 

In short I loved the PS1, my brother is a cunt.

[Guest]

Anyone else suddenly up for meeting Rule Two in a dark alley with a screwdriver?

[FLips]

8 hours ago, RedRooster said:

That opening post from @FelatioLipsmight be my favourite thing I’ve ever read on this forum. 

As far as my memories go, outside of the obvious, I want to bring up Tombi - or, specifically, its demo. It was very much the Sean O’Haire of the PS1 for me. That brief glimpse of the game made me feel like it was something special, but in a pre-internet shopping world, I found it impossible to get my hands on the full game.

Years later, when it was released on the PSP as a PS1 Classic, I finally bought it, and realised that after the portion that appeared on the demo…it wasn’t that good. It was brimming with potential, but ran out of steam pretty quickly. That said, I don’t think there was a better demo out there. That short snippet of the game, it turned out, was all you really needed, and fucking hell it was great. It doesn’t matter that the game itself was weak. Demo Tombi was spectacular, and fleeting brilliance is still brilliance all the same. 

Does anyone else have any memories of games like this, that never quite lived up to a fantastic demo?

Tombi would have been my go-to choice too!

I never had the demo, it was actually somewhat of an urban legend at my school. One of my mates had the demo and used to buzz about it but nobody else had a clue what it was so all we had to go on was my mate (who was a notorious bullshitter, like Jay from Inbetweeners but less insufferable) telling us it existed and was amazing.

Years later I played it and wasn’t impressed. In terms of PS1 2.5D platformers Klonoa was better and I had already rented and beat it. To this day I still don’t know if he had the demo or just read about it in a magazine.

If I had to pick one of my own it would be Nightmare Creatures. The demo made it seem like a Resident Evil beater. 
When you walk through the first set of doors and a werewolf blasts through the window at you is one of my scariest PS1 moments. Then you go down into a catacomb and fight a bunch of zombie looking things. It was scary, it was action packed and that quick 10 minutes was played over and over.

When I was older and emulated the whole thing I couldn’t believe how bland it was. What a let down.

[Your Fight Site]

20 hours ago, Wideload90 said:

It was the first game - obviously there's better ones but for the first wrestling game, it was glorious. Nothing quite like having your player taunt on the character select screen. Also, for a gaming novice, Nitro was ideal. 

Don’t know why you keep saying this when a quick Google shows it wasn’t the first wrestling game. The release of Nitro was even delayed so as not to compete with sales of WCW vs. The World.

[SuperBacon]

3 hours ago, Uncle Zeb said:

Anyone else suddenly up for meeting Rule Two in a dark alley with a screwdriver?

To stab up his laser?

[Guest]

27 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

To stab up his laser?

What are we, barbarians? I just want to void the warranty on his iPhone.

[Wideload90]

40 minutes ago, Your Fight Site said:

Don’t know why you keep saying this when a quick Google shows it wasn’t the first wrestling game. The release of Nitro was even delayed so as not to compete with sales of WCW vs. The World.

Apologies to both you and @air_raid - for clarification, it was the first wrestling game I played on PlayStation. I shall repent etc...

[Liam O'Rourke]

What a thread.

First time I saw a Playstation in action was early 96 - a friend's stepdad had one and I remember a beat-em-up, likely Tekken, was on the screen and I was just in absolute awe. These are the games I imagined we'd all be playing in five to ten years. But it was now. The leap from the previous generation has been mentioned, but it does need emphasising - this absolutely pissed all over the existing consoles. 

For context, my family was never up to date with the latest systems or anything anyway, I don't think we even got a Mega Drive until...95 I want to say? Something absurd. Then my brother came up with the idea for Christmas 1996 - what if we ask for a joint headliner for a present, the Playstation. To my surprise, the parents seemed to sign off on it, and I couldn't believe it. We weren't just going to have a current hot console...we were getting THE hot console. My brother did some espionage, dug through their wardrobe and found it ahead of time - the Playstation and four games, which were Olympic Soccer (which, shit as it really was, was still a giant leap over Fifa 94 in terms of realism to us), Tunnel B1 (which now has two more mentions than it deserves in this thread), Firestorm: Thunderhawk 2 and the best of the bunch, Alien: Trilogy, which was actually pretty great. After finding the upcoming presents, my brother went out and bought Ridge Racer Revolution so we could play it as soon as we got the console out the box, but had to do a bit of crafty behaviour in playing it, since the Playstaion was in the main room at first and took centre stage as relatives all basked in the glory of these otherworldly graphics, and were otherwise ignored. "What game is this", my Dad asked as he watched us whizzing around the tracks. "Umm...Tunnel B1", lied Kieran.

Can't stress how happy I am that the Playstation came at the age it did for me - 10, where the following few Christmases, this one included, have a heavy PS (or PSX as the magazines always listed it) influence. The year I got it was also the year it got confirmed for sure Father Christmas wasn't real after kinda thinking that for a year or so - pretty hard to keep up the illusion when my brother told me Santa's goods were being stored in the wardrobe. Oh well, fuck it, let's play Ridge Racer Revolution again.

I wish I could remember more about the early games we got after that. Tekken was one for sure, Command and Conquer soon followed, as did the totally shite and disappointing WWF In Your House, and Die Hard Trilogy. Tomb Raider was played for weeks. 

But at some point near the end of Summer 1997, my heart was truly a-flutter. The games magazines at this time were plentiful and amazing, the last true peak of the magazine generation. I read a review of WCW Vs. The World that gave it 8/10. I can't impress enough what a big deal it was to me that a wrestling game got given a legit high score - every wrestling game up to that point was always rated low (for good reason in most cases) and I'd brush it off, thinking the low scores were just because it was wrestling. And it would turn out that it wasn't - the games sucked (WrestleMania: The Arcade Game and In Your House earned low scores, and Power Move Pro Wrestling earned average but respectable ratings, and was the best of the early bunch for sure). Power Move was actually by far the closest to an actual wrestling experience available, and for that reason was actually a ton of fun. But back to WCW Vs. The World...

I went through that magazine a hundred times, soaked in every picture. Visualised it. 60 wrestlers...40 moves each...while I was slightly confused as to the premise of all these non-WCW wrestlers when they could just do the WCW roster, I'd been reading Power Slam for about three years by then, so I knew enough to know, similar to @air_raid that Sam Song is Kenta Kobashi, Wu Fang is definitely Misawa, David Harley is Sabu, Black Ninja is Great Sasuke, etc. So if anything, it actually made me more excited in the end. I'd been reading about these guys for years without watching them wrestle, now I'll get to see what moves they do.

I wanted it for months and asked for it for Christmas 97. I even entered the contest on TNT advertised on Nitro commercials to try and win a copy early, if anybody remembers that. I don't know that I ever wanted anything for Christmas as much as I wanted that game. Seeing it in the newly debuting Game store while Christmas shopping with parents that December, I gave a stern notice that there was no excuse for me not to get it on Christmas morning now. My Dad shot a knowing wink my way. The day came, and there it was. The fucking best feeling. The next few months are a blur, the sounds of the backing tracks constantly repeating, cracking bones on submissions and the exhilerating innovation of "Betting The Belt" in matches against family fulfilling the wrestling game experience I'd wanted for years and had only been moderately satisified by efforts like WWF Royal Rumble on the Mega Drive. Moreso than Power Move, this felt like wrestling. 

In that same magazine I read the review for WCW Vs. The World, I'd seen a game called Final Fantasy VII get 10/10. Sounds good, I'll ask for that too. What an awakening that was. Again, the game experiences I'd had for the previous 12 months were fucking mind-blowing compared to everything I'd seen before. But this was another level yet, my first JRPG of course. Unbelieveably engrossing.

WCW Nitro, which I was quite excited for seeing it get a 7/10 in a magazine, smoother graphics and promise of a big roster. Again, the hype train was in motion for a month or so, and I don't think I've ever been as immediately and bitterly disappointed by a game as that. Of the 64 promised wrestlers, 16 were the developers putting themselves in, and 16 were creatures like Frankenstein and a T-Rex. WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT!? These aren't wrestlers. And this gameplay is a load of fucking shit as well. Goddammit. Where's WCW Vs. The World, get that back on.

WWF War Zone seemed to come out of absolutely nowhere. Walking around town with my Dad on a random Saturday morning and seeing a poster of Steve Austin in the window of Electronics Boutique. I zipped in, one look at the back of the case, and it looked like the WWF had finally gotten serious. Wanted it immediately, had no means to get it, and while I am quietly doing the maths in my head of how and when I can afford to buy it, my Dad just flat out asks if I want it and buys it me there and then. It was a genuinely big leap by WWF game standards and it was a lot of fun, the first ever create-a-wrestler especially. Fast forward a little bit, and I see a computerised version of Stone Cold on the cover of a CVG mag with "WWF Attitude" written on the front, and the details and pictures on the inside were amazing. Full entrances promised with music and pyro. All these match types, weapons, blood, swearing, a proper career mode...all while keeping the War Zone dynamics? It was the most anticipated game ever for me, moreso than WCW Vs. The World for one main reason - the bastard thing was supposed to be released in May and got pushed back to June...to early July...to late July...to early August. Find out years later that it wasn't due to anything to do with Owen Hart, as most people probably assumed at the time, but rather because in an extremely late stage of development, the engine essentially broke and they had to put it back together. There were still, in the released game, very rare moments where you'd apply a submission and the guy doing the move would keep doing his motion while the other guy was no longer in it, and the only way out was to restart the console. Not knowing any of that at the time of course, I'm just left there wanting this "perfect" WWF game to come out.

So many trips to the shop that ended with disappointment without the internet around to keep us all clued in. I had pre-ordered the game ahead of time (and got a cool WWF Attitude memory card free), and the Friday it was supposed to be released (for real this time) I was excited but my guard was up. Finally, my brother could take no more and phoned a Game store asking if it had actually been released. When he nodded yes, England may has well have won that penalty shoot-out in 96 for my reaction. When Mom came home from work and I told her the game had been released and asked if I could go to town tomorrow to pick up my copy, she told me that she thought she'd best dip in after work just in case they sold so many that my copy wasn't available, and she pulled out that little purple carrier bag...and there it was. Months of waiting. Mine, mine, all mine. 

Of course, the control system in retrospect was clunky as hell and the game really wasn't as good as WCW Vs. The World for gameplay, not even close, but as an experience that closely reflected the company during the time of it's peak? It had that in spades, it delivered what I wanted.

Then Smackdown came along and took things up another notch in terms of look and gameplay. I didn't even absorb until a few years ago that the engine was...Power Move Pro Wrestling amped up. It has to be said that as much as I loved the Smackdown games, I was very aware that over on the other console during the War Zone/Attitude timeframe, there was a REALLY awesome looking game called WCW/NWO Revenge that looked like everything I actually wanted - huge roster, gameplay that looked like WCW Vs. The World (I'd played World Tour on my cousin's N64 and knew it was pretty good) and cool looking arenas, music, the lot. It would pain me that some of the best wrestling game experiences I could have...I couldn't have.

But my God, offsetting that, we have Grand Theft Auto where I can drive recklessly around an open city, run away from cops and shoot civilians? Metal Gear Solid where I use all my tact and guile to hide in a cardboard box and choke out or execute soliders with an unreal depth of story and immersion? We can keep rattling off the experiences - going through Victory Boxing's career mode, playing Worms endlessly, buying Tony Hawk's Skateboarding after playing a demo of it when Attitude was once again delayed and having so much fun on it...Driver got a mention and I'm glad, because never before or since has making videos of yourself driving through Miami and crashing through the tables and chairs seemed like such a blast. Being a ninja in Tenchu: Stealth Assassins and fighting unsavory types with a big fuck off sword. GRAN TURISMO~! felt like graphics taken to yet another insane level with a career mode that was frustrating enough that it would legitimately piss you off, and at the same time rewarding enough to make it worth the agony and try one more damn time. Getting Crash Team Racing and a multi-tap was a thing of beauty as well. As a family without Mario Kart, that game is pure fun, utterly fantastic. 

The Playstation will forever be my true childhood console. The one friends came over and played on during that sweet spot of 10-14 years old, where games grew up before my eyes and I was on the crest of the wave for the first time, as opposed to playing Alex Kidd in Miracle World on Master System 2 in 1994.

It's funny how things line up. I never quite realised this until now - in 2001, my parents separated fairly out of the blue, devastating me and my brother to the core. My Mom's parting gift to us a couple of weeks after she left was a PS2 for Christmas, in many ways drawing a line under that wonderful period of time in another fashion. My childhood was over as I knew it, marked by one less person in the house and symbolically with the big black box replacing the grey one. I really did like the PS2 a great deal, but in terms of affinity, it will never beat the first. It's not just the quality of games, it was the excitement around the new possibilities being explored and living it together for the first time. And of course, the age is a big part of it too.

When lockdown kicked in, like many others I was looking for either new things to stay excited for and, more relevantly for this thread, old pleasures to relive. I made the decision to go and play through a ton of games again because, for whatever reason, I rarely ever finished any of them as a kid. The next unbelievable exprience was around the corner and I never got to find out what happened in so many stories. With the extra time I played through Tomb Raider, Tomb Raider II, Metal Gear Solid, Command and Conquer and Final Fantasy VII (the game I asked for on a whim in 97 and ended up playing years after the one I was actually pining for for months) start to finish. What a fucking console.

Since this has just been a pointless meandering whistful look back, to close I'll just add that when I was going through that period in lockdown I told my wife the story about longing for WCW Vs. The World and it being my most anticipated present. Anybody who played the game will appreciate this, but that Christmas she bought me these coasters for my office:

Edited August 10, 2022 by Liam O'Rourke

[Rule One]

@Uncle Zeb & @SuperBacon As much as I hate my brother and have thought about strangling him Homer Simpson style countless times I acknowledge that he has lifelong legitimate problems. It doesn't fully excuse what he's done and there's a long, long list of similar behaviour, I wouldn't wish or see any harm come to him. However if his precious X-Box SX suddenly burst into flames, that would be nice too!

Thank-you to @FelatioLips for evoking so many memories of the PS1 too, great thread.

I can't remember who brought it up but did anyone do the double Multiple-Taps? I remember spending some weekends at a friend's house with a bunch of us squeezed into a packed living room playing Micro Machines V3, FIFA, Street Racer and sitting around waiting for our designated turns in our Knockout Kings/Smackdown games tournaments.

I was also mercilessly ribbed because I brought third party equipment along. I had see through Connect Pro (IIRC) pads, multi tap and memory cards. Mad Catz equipment was acceptable though for some reason. Ah, to be young again.

Speaking of demo discs, I'm pretty sure that everyone jizzed themselves when Playstion Magazine Disc 42 was released with the Metal Gear Solid demo. Through them I discovered the amazing Anna Kournikovas Smash Court Tennis and there was a Micro Machines rip off that was incredibly good to play.

Did anyone encounter a problem with copied versions of Smackdown 2 when it was due to be released? It was a big thing in our area as someone managed to get a copy of it and that was copied many many times over however, the season mode would always crash/you could never get past the first years King Of The Ring event. Other than that it satisfied our wrestling fix until better working copies became available.