This is probably the best documentary on PlayStation I've ever seen. So much detail and so well researched. I'm 52yrs old so lived through the early console years and owned everything from Atari 2600 to PS5. Watching this video was like reliving my past. I was big in the rave scene in the 90s and remember seeing PS1s at raves running Wipeout. It was a great time to be a young adult in the UK. Thank you both so much for the incredible video/movie. Amazing stuff
Tough question because I have love for all my consoles but the SNES is probably my favourite. It arrived when I have lots of free time, before wife and kids, and was home to some of my all time favourite games. Dreamcast is probably my number 2. What about you?
Hey John I don't know if you'll read this but I just wanted to say that I absolutely love these type of videos that you do, I can clearly see the passion that you put in all of them, your content is among the best of the best and never let anyone tell you otherwise.
I was born 2000, but got to see the evolution of gaming in a few quantum leaps. Played my uncle's Atari at Grandma's as a real young one. Got my uncle's N64 as a birthday present when I was 8. Played the hell out of that (still did until the controller broke in 2020). And then I got to play Black ops at a sleepover in 2010. Love the PSX/N64 era, but PS3/X360 was a huge jump because I didn't get to experience PS2 until 2015.
Born 83 and Atari was my first console following the Mighty Pegasus (nes clone that became smash hit and give eastern European players a taste of console it was a smash hit and pave the way for Sony to officially enter European market ) we had so called Game Romm a guy who had small shed but had all the console and My and my friends were able to play for 1h for 1 euro , it was amazing because it wqs a chance to test all the console and I wanted a Saturn it was my fav but a guy in the shop told my father nahhh he just saying that get him psx and thats how i got PlayStation 😂 .
April 1980 myself. I have to admit myself, I was unhappy with early 3D at the time. Surely I thought it was cool but whenever I played a 2D game I always felt they looked way better at this time, but Tomb Raider, RE1, MGS and FF7 were so fun I didn't care. Still the PS1 really did usher in the era for me. The PS2 only made it better.
The speed of technological improvement between 1990-2010 was pretty crazy. It's still improving, but not nearly at that rate. Shit would be top of the line one year and obsolete the next. Absolutely nuts.
You did! Speedster which I liked although it's a bit hard. I still have a copy! And I think Vanishing Point which is a game I find interesting but doesn't quite work. Recently beat it too!
@@XeCuTioNR inaccurate physics perhaps. The cars handled pretty weirdly and all felt about the same. It was both clever and extremely limited. A car like the Elise doesn't have that much body roll. Plus the physics would go wrong often. It was quite good. Certainly interesting but the execution was hugely flawed.
I remember 12 year old me going to a shopping mall in Melbourne and seeing a Playstation connected to a huge flat screen tv and hifi system with Wipeout running. To say I was blown away is an understatement.
nevertheless Daytona USA on arcade, seeing SM64 and WipeOut rolling demo has been a kind of trascendal sensation that as kid I thought "future is here and is better than expected" - no way that today's kid can match our feelings of awe during 2D to 3D transition
The lack of z-buffer isn't why the textures warp. Perspective correction doesn't require any storage of the Z values to work. The z-buffer allows you to have per-pixel depth sorting so that any two polygons that intersect don't knock out parts of each other depending on how they were ordered in the draw operations. Without a z-buffer you have to pre-sort your polygons, but with a z-buffer technically you can draw them in any order you want and it'll just work. Caveats abound of course. The affine texture mapping is just because it was cheaper and simpler than interpolating z corrected UV. Later games would do dynamic tessellation to introduce a z correction every N pixels which is basically how Quake on the PC did it. Carmack didn't tesselate, he just did a 1/z every few pixels to avoid the performance drop from true perspective correction while avoiding the worst of the affine mapping warps. Geometry warping is a more complex topic. Fixed point doesn't HAVE to introduce so much error and as developers got better they allocated the bits better to maintain precision and they migrated away from vertex morphing animations which were a major source of wobble that couldn't be solved by z-buffering and perspective correction or sub-pixel accuracy. You can never avoid the fact that the PS1 only took integer pixel co-ords but much of the warping was avoidable in the right hands.
My first encounter with a Playstation was close to release when a local night club had installed a couple of them in their "Chillout room". I was absolutely off my face on pills and Ridge Racer was the most incredible thing I had ever witnessed. The "Chillout room" was busier than the actual club.
My favourite console of all time. By far. I still have a PSOne and a decent collection of games, including some gems, like The Adventure of Lomax, Blazing Dragons, Koudelka, Brave Fencer Musashi and Parasite Eve (which never came out in my home territory of Europe), Omage Boost and I recently got Breath of Fire 4. I would argue, that the PSX had the most varied, eclectic collection of games of any console.
@@mcgruber Perhaps, but I feel like PS2 had less variety, but the games were more refined. But that could very well just be my nostalgia clouding my memory :D Whatever the case, the PS2 was also a tremendous console with a killer library of games.
The PlayStation was the best at the time, but holy hell the quality control was awful. I went through 3 units during the lifetime of the console due to CDROM issues and once when I plugged in the power cord into the back of the unit and heard a *pop*. It was toasted.
We had the best childhood and teen years in human history. SO glad I got to experience the 80s and 90s as a kid! All went downhill after 2001, for some strange reason....
@@unbearifiedbear1885I’m 39 with full custody of 4 kids and have been to prison…people like to take things for granted these days, and I find it amazing how quickly we can get our information and said entertainment stuff all in the palm of our hands.
Makes me so grateful that I grew up during the time when you could walk into a GameStop/EB Games and buy N64/PS1 games from the baskets alongside the newest console titles.
@@sausje I understand your point, although in terms of pound-for-pound impact, I still think the PS1 broke the mould. For example, going from the 2D graphical presentation and synth-centric sound of the 16-bit era to the 32-bit era was a unique and seismic change: the debut of 3D graphics; basking in a symphony orchestral score for the first time ever, and hearing high-quality voice acting (think Metal Gear Solid and Tomb Raider) were mesmeric experiences!
Wipeout was the game that defined the PlayStation experience with it's uber cool graphics, dynamite soundtrack, and easily blew every other launch title out the water. This was the system seller that was even playable in night clubs and the occasional book store. PlayStation had landed and the continued success would establish Sony as the premier console manufacturer, and with the amazing marketing campaign aimed primarily at the 18 to 30 age range the PlayStation established the modern era of gaming. Good times.
I was living in Japan when it launched. Still have a bunch of the brochures and remember the TV commercials with schoolkids chanting “1-2-3, 1-2-3!” (It launched on December 3rd.)
I remember when i got home from hanging out with my friends in mid 1997 and my dad had a PS1 there for me with my first two video games. Air Combat and Twisted Metal. Been a gamer ever since. I also had a demo disc that had FMV sections of the upcoming FF7. Eventually I got Crash Bandicoot and Spyro.
This was absolutely amazing to watch through. Born in 1980, the jump from 16-bit to PlayStation was absolutely mind blowing that time. I loved the 16-bit era but the 32-bit era was just another beast with a plethora of new ideas and new IPs.
Ridge Racer on the PSX was the shit. We would play this into the wee hours of the morning outside on the lawn on those warm summer nights. TV, Amp and Speakers all set up. Those were the days!
The psx really was the ridge racer console. Ridge racer 4 was probably the Pinnacle of the series . There were a few fun ones after 4 but none of them could ever live up to the legacy 4 left
@@anonony90814 is still a goat among racing games….i still play that on my vita as well as GT PSP. Even though I have a gaming laptop and multiple steam decks, I have yet to find a racer like type for or gran turismo…forza horizon is good fun though.
Ridge Racer was in Playstation's DNA even outside of the PS1. The first PS2, PSP, PS3 and PS Vita games were Ridge Racer titles. It feels weird to have a PS4 or 5 without a RR game. At least the best 2 games RRT4 and RR2 (the PSP game) are available as classics so it's not all bad.
I was 22 years old at the time and part of the then rave music scene where the PlayStation become a mainstay of party goers at the time, which Sony really leaned I to at the time.
I was still in my late teens, but this would explain why the PlayStation owner's average age was 34 a year after it was launched since the "rave generation" would have been in their 30s by the late 90s.
I feel like I should be paying for this content…. It’s just too good. You make studios like Netflix or paramount look like chumps with this level of quality. Well done sirs.
Those early 3D days were so creative. The psx and ps2 days stright up created genres. Modern games are so expensive to create they have to cater so much to investors wants.
It's called PS1. It's not PSX and it was never PSX. On the large model you can see that it says PlayStation at 0:43, while on the slim model it says PS one. There is no such thing as a PSX when it comes to PlayStation.
@TheShocker650 its really not a big deal. It's just a nickname at this point then. If people know what is meant when psx is used then it works. A lot of emulation software organizes the roms using this name so that's why I use it interchangeably. You don't have to but telling other people what they should call it is a waste of energy considering it relatively wide use.
Just leaving my usual note that PAL is NOT the reason 50Hz is used. The reason is that TVs used the electrical grid alterned frequency to sync its signal. So, in Europe you have 50Hz grid, and because of that, TVs used the same, thus electronics connecting to it needed to run in the same frequency, even if they took their sync from electronic crystals and not from the power grid anymore, so they could do 60Hz, but the TV would not support that signal. PAL is actually very flexible, that is why there are letter subversions that changes things as resolution, or in the case of Brazil, thatr used a power grid from US but liked the more correct colors from the PAL signal, the frequency. So PAL-M runs at 60Hz and same resolution as NTSC, making conversors a simple thing using a small circuit to get the sinal from NTSC devices, like videogame consoles like Atari 2600. Nowadays, a lot of homebrew for this console actually use the PAL60 format, so that the colors are more correct across all devices - for those who do not know, NTSC does not carry color values, those are generated from diferices between each tone instead; that is why TVs have an adjust that can make the colors go green, blue, red, etc.
I'm sure this has been pointed out by now, but minor correction: Lemmings was released in 1991, not 1987 (you may have been confusing the date that DMA Design was formed, which was indeed in '87... though they did stuff like Menace and Blood Money before Lemmings was created!)
This was a very interesting video/marathon. I hope you guys do more of these. It was very cool to hear from Richard’s seniority perspective as well; how the vibe was in the 90s.
Hey DF crew, brilliant episode as always. Have you ever considered making something similar to this but with a greatest achievements of each platform? Could be anything technical, clever gameplay, genre defining etc.
PS1 launch was memorable... Ridge Racer, Toshinden, WipeOut. I remember playing all day long WipeOut on demo disc. Next do the Xbox launch. In europe it was just crazy. Halo - best fps, Rallisport Challenge - best rally game, Dead or Alive 3 - best 3D fighting, Amped - best snowboard game, Oddworld Munch Odyssey - good adventure/puzzle game, Project Gotham Racing, Tony Hawks 3 and Jet Set Radio Future. I've seen every launch since the Atari 2600 and quality wise the OG Xbox had the best launch I can remember.
This is an excellent video that brings back a lot of memories. It's funny to see games dipping below 30FPS. In my memory, everything on PSX was super smooth. Maybe DF could someday make a similar video but about 50 highest-rated PSX games?
The first time I seen Battle Arena Toshinden, Tekken and Ridge Racer was approximately 1 year before the release if the PSX. I flipped out. My Super Nintendo and Genesis was never looked at the same again. The business was called Diehard games that specialized in import games and consoles.
Your Mahjong Gokuu Tenjiku introduction is going to be part of the videos i rewatch regularly. Good stuff. As a fan of the yakuza series I was busting out with laughter seing that even back then that the game was blown out of proportions to a ridiculous degree.
If you look at the big model at 0:43 it says PlayStation. On the slim model it says PS one. It's not PSX, and it was never called PSX. There is no X in it. Period.
Before the Playstation, video games were for children. And after the release of this new 3D game console, people's mindset was no longer the same. They really succeeded in making the public of the time realize that video games could be interesting for teenagers and adults. I remember the release very well and it was truly a revolution (same for the PS2). Many young gamers don't know this but there was a before and after Playstation. Remember that!
A comparison of Toh Shin Den was expected here with the Ura and Remix versions. What happened ? In Total Eclipse test, you could have said that Solar Eclipse following up this game will be released later on PlayStation and Saturn.
Im surprised that the North American PlayStation Picks! Demo disc wasn't mentioned especially with the Tommy Tallerico flying guitar soundtrack behind it. SingleTrac (devoloper of Twisted Metal and Warhawk) was out of Salt Lake City UT of all places and originally was a defense contractor for rhe US government prior to developing games. David Jaffe was in a recent Twisted Metal Sacred Symbols Plus talking about the early days of PlayStation. Jaffe said that the Sony Music marketing team is who did the North American PlayStation ad campaigns.
2:13:10 I think a big part of that is because it was designed and optimized for Playstation. The Playstation has a small RAM so the game was designed to have a continues flow of data so that there never was big chunks that had to be loaded at once.
I remember how Sony tapped into the European club scene with the Playstation. I was part of the club scene at the time. I once went to a nightclub in Cambridge England where they had screens all over the walls playing that trippy trance stuff you got when you put a music CD into the Playstation. And when you left the nightclub and went back to someone's house party someone would put it on there too. The idea was to try and relax people or trip people out. I remember it being all futuristic for the time lol. Wipeout and Wipeout 2047 were a big part of that scene too. A lot of the top DJs used to play them which helped with their popularity. I also remember some kids turned into DJs by making music on the PS1s music generator game. They made dance tracks on their PS1's in their bedroom and went on to have big club hits with them. Good times.
Music and Music 2000 were the games you're talking about. They were developed by Cold Storage aka Tim Wright, who made the in-house music for the Wipeout games before leaving Sony to start up Jester Interactive. He's the reason I make music today.
John... Audi... I LOVE these types of videos! The DF Retro side of DF is so awesome and I really appreciate all that you guys do. This one was a real banger! I hope you continue this for decades to come (assuming you still enjoy doing them of course!). Thanks for a great video covering a TON of cool stuff!!
What a truly amazing piece of work this is. Phenomenal video. Thank you John and Audi for undertaking what I'm sure must've been one he'll of and undertaking. Hopefully there's more if these to come.
18:15 Z-Buffer is unrelated to perspective correct texture mapping: the thing that's missing is a perspective division component on the vertices themselves (the W component in traditional 3D rendering) You can re-create the affine texture mapping in modern vertex shaders by setting the W component to 0 I've seen this strange misconception repeated in a few PlayStation 1 videos on RUclips, so I think a game of telephone happened at some point
Oh, John likes to spew a lot of misconceptions in DF Retro videos. One severely misinformed statement in this video claims Lemmings (the original) was available in 1987, when in reality its development ended in late 1990.
Another clarification: PS1 doesn't have memory set aside for the framebuffer, it has a shared video memory pool for textures, palettes and framebuffers, all contending the same estate. In fact, there are cases where extreme lack of texture memory might cause compromising of the framebuffer resolution (not saying that's what happened with the first Parodius, but keep in mind that PS1 officially wasn't allowed to mirror tiles/sprites so they would need to be cloned in case the original tile mapping asked for x/y flips, even though later revisions of the system silently added support for the function at the GPU level).
The hype around PS1 was un matched. It actually lived up to it and then some. Wipeout, Toshenden and Destruction Derby, Demo 1 !! My 12 year old self was totally blown away. My mega drive seemed 2 generations behind and was swiftly retired.
Amazing video John. Truly nostalgic and perfect in every way. Your contribution to DF is a priceless and highly appreciated by many of us. Thank you for all the work that you do.
What a great video, thanks! I was one of the people who were super suspicious that the psx would be another 3do/cdi, going nowhere. This perspective only changed for me during 97 when it was clear psx was not going down, the quantity and quality of games was good.
Did I hear Audi say "you realy need to be stroking it hard to get any enjoyment out ot it, either on your own or with a friend" ? Yes I did!! Nice one. 01:43:35 Power Server 3D Tennis
I'm glad of my geographical location during the PlayStation's launch. Back then, I wasn't aware of the other launch titles, but ours (UK) seem to be the best of the bunch despite being limited to 10--which you missed here! Air Combat Battle Arena Toshinden Cyber Sled Destruction Derby Jumping Flash Lemmings 3D Loaded Ridge Racer Tekken Wipeout So the US didn't get a pack-in Demo 1 disk?
Very great video, with lots of detail. I also greatly appreciate the full-screen shots of actual CRT TVs running the games before transitioning to raw signal so ppl can understand how they actually looked like when being played in the 90s. So many accounts that cover CRT zoom in on individual assets so never show the full experience.
Bloodborne Remake, GTA 6 Enhanced Edition (they added nothing new), Horizon Zero Dawn Remake, The Last of Us Part 1 Remake Remastered, a platforming game which poses no challenge and is 30 minutes long, and some weird AA and indie games nobody cares about in a week I´d buy it.
Gentlemen, this video is incredible. The details, the layout, the comparisons, this is why people trust what Digital Foundry puts out. You've brought back a lot of memories, the majority of them good, and thank you for that. Thanks again!
This is probably the best documentary on PlayStation I've ever seen. So much detail and so well researched.
I'm 52yrs old so lived through the early console years and owned everything from Atari 2600 to PS5. Watching this video was like reliving my past.
I was big in the rave scene in the 90s and remember seeing PS1s at raves running Wipeout.
It was a great time to be a young adult in the UK.
Thank you both so much for the incredible video/movie. Amazing stuff
Do you have any one favourite console from all, in your heart?
Tough question because I have love for all my consoles but the SNES is probably my favourite.
It arrived when I have lots of free time, before wife and kids, and was home to some of my all time favourite games.
Dreamcast is probably my number 2.
What about you?
Ps2 best of all time
@@morpheus9394Dreamcast is there for me for greatest of all time, that and psone, more modern would have to be GameCube.
The OG PS1/PSX startup sound is so iconic. I wish I could set my PS5 to play it at startup.
my ps4 still uses the anniversery theme that has the ps1 startup sound
That’s just what I was going to say
@@thebham95is there a way to get it on ps5?
Maybe when neuralink becomes the standard we can set it so that everyone in our house hears it when we poop.
@@mgnoodle2589I have this theme on my PS4 as well and would like it on my PS4, but sadly that's not supported.
Hey John I don't know if you'll read this but I just wanted to say that I absolutely love these type of videos that you do, I can clearly see the passion that you put in all of them, your content is among the best of the best and never let anyone tell you otherwise.
I was born 1980, and this is my favourite gaming era! The transition from 2D-3D was mind blowing!
I was born 2000, but got to see the evolution of gaming in a few quantum leaps. Played my uncle's Atari at Grandma's as a real young one. Got my uncle's N64 as a birthday present when I was 8. Played the hell out of that (still did until the controller broke in 2020). And then I got to play Black ops at a sleepover in 2010.
Love the PSX/N64 era, but PS3/X360 was a huge jump because I didn't get to experience PS2 until 2015.
Born 83 and Atari was my first console following the Mighty Pegasus (nes clone that became smash hit and give eastern European players a taste of console it was a smash hit and pave the way for Sony to officially enter European market ) we had so called Game Romm a guy who had small shed but had all the console and My and my friends were able to play for 1h for 1 euro , it was amazing because it wqs a chance to test all the console and I wanted a Saturn it was my fav but a guy in the shop told my father nahhh he just saying that get him psx and thats how i got PlayStation 😂 .
@@mctapoutos7426 Always wanted to try the Saturn but I've never seen one in person.
April 1980 myself. I have to admit myself, I was unhappy with early 3D at the time. Surely I thought it was cool but whenever I played a 2D game I always felt they looked way better at this time, but Tomb Raider, RE1, MGS and FF7 were so fun I didn't care. Still the PS1 really did usher in the era for me. The PS2 only made it better.
The speed of technological improvement between 1990-2010 was pretty crazy. It's still improving, but not nearly at that rate. Shit would be top of the line one year and obsolete the next. Absolutely nuts.
The Mahjong Madness bit at 43:50 is really great. Thank you for the laughs!
Lemmings 3D was technically Clockwork Games' first game under that name. I joined them and we went on to make a couple of racing games
You did! Speedster which I liked although it's a bit hard. I still have a copy!
And I think Vanishing Point which is a game I find interesting but doesn't quite work. Recently beat it too!
Oh that's rad!
Loved Rush Hour & Vanishing Point! Vanishing Point especially was ahead of the curve with physics.
@@XeCuTioNR inaccurate physics perhaps. The cars handled pretty weirdly and all felt about the same. It was both clever and extremely limited. A car like the Elise doesn't have that much body roll. Plus the physics would go wrong often.
It was quite good. Certainly interesting but the execution was hugely flawed.
@@volkte37 Speedster was meant to be (a lot) faster. The testers couldn't play it at the original speed, so we had to slow it down massively.
Pure Digital Foundry bliss.
I remember 12 year old me going to a shopping mall in Melbourne and seeing a Playstation connected to a huge flat screen tv and hifi system with Wipeout running. To say I was blown away is an understatement.
nevertheless Daytona USA on arcade, seeing SM64 and WipeOut rolling demo has been a kind of trascendal sensation that as kid I thought "future is here and is better than expected" - no way that today's kid can match our feelings of awe during 2D to 3D transition
I truly wonder how flat a flat screen was back then
@@ThatVSMBro a rear-projection television, probably
@@ThatVSMBro flat in the front, huge in the back
@@xraff2 There were plasma displays in the 90s, but they were pretty rare and costly.
As the description notes, this is just a compilation of previously released videos. Even so, I'm happy to watch it again.
Mr. Kutaragi was one of the most talented and passionate people in video games. His absence at Sony has been sorely missed the past few decades.
Past few decades? He left in like 2010
He ain't been gone for decades! 2010 to date is 13 years and a few months.
He was costing Sony billions of dollars because of the Cell processor on PS3.
He had to retire or Sony was going to sink.
@@MAGA4EVA1986 He was replaced by Kaz Hirai as head of PlayStation in 2009
@@jayclarke777 He didn't design the PS3
The GOAT channel for retrospectives, thanks John and the rest of DF
The lack of z-buffer isn't why the textures warp. Perspective correction doesn't require any storage of the Z values to work. The z-buffer allows you to have per-pixel depth sorting so that any two polygons that intersect don't knock out parts of each other depending on how they were ordered in the draw operations. Without a z-buffer you have to pre-sort your polygons, but with a z-buffer technically you can draw them in any order you want and it'll just work. Caveats abound of course. The affine texture mapping is just because it was cheaper and simpler than interpolating z corrected UV. Later games would do dynamic tessellation to introduce a z correction every N pixels which is basically how Quake on the PC did it. Carmack didn't tesselate, he just did a 1/z every few pixels to avoid the performance drop from true perspective correction while avoiding the worst of the affine mapping warps.
Geometry warping is a more complex topic. Fixed point doesn't HAVE to introduce so much error and as developers got better they allocated the bits better to maintain precision and they migrated away from vertex morphing animations which were a major source of wobble that couldn't be solved by z-buffering and perspective correction or sub-pixel accuracy. You can never avoid the fact that the PS1 only took integer pixel co-ords but much of the warping was avoidable in the right hands.
Thanks for the analysis professor.
This guy z-buffers.
Fascinating, what is your background?
Much of this went over my head, but thanks for sharing the knowledge!
That’s John Carmack, famous programmer/code-architect of Doom and Quake
My first encounter with a Playstation was close to release when a local night club had installed a couple of them in their "Chillout room". I was absolutely off my face on pills and Ridge Racer was the most incredible thing I had ever witnessed. The "Chillout room" was busier than the actual club.
Yeah they used to have Wipeout booths set up quite regularly at raves in London back in the day lol
Good times
Amazing
Oh man. When a Mitsubishi wasn't a car😂
@@somatyk Haha! Nice one ;)
Similar to me. I remember spewing all over the demo unit kiosk and getting kicked out.
My favourite console of all time. By far. I still have a PSOne and a decent collection of games, including some gems, like The Adventure of Lomax, Blazing Dragons, Koudelka, Brave Fencer Musashi and Parasite Eve (which never came out in my home territory of Europe), Omage Boost and I recently got Breath of Fire 4. I would argue, that the PSX had the most varied, eclectic collection of games of any console.
PS2 was more varied imo.
@@mcgruber Perhaps, but I feel like PS2 had less variety, but the games were more refined. But that could very well just be my nostalgia clouding my memory :D Whatever the case, the PS2 was also a tremendous console with a killer library of games.
AGREED!!!
The PlayStation was the best at the time, but holy hell the quality control was awful. I went through 3 units during the lifetime of the console due to CDROM issues and once when I plugged in the power cord into the back of the unit and heard a *pop*. It was toasted.
Ps2 catalogue dwarfs the OG PlayStation both in volume and variety.
The PlayStation start up reminds me of the 90s ‘wow’ factor.
The digital revolution was a fantastic time to be a teenager 😢
We had the best childhood and teen years in human history. SO glad I got to experience the 80s and 90s as a kid!
All went downhill after 2001, for some strange reason....
It instantly reminds me that I was about to play Final Fantasy VII, Resident Evil 1 & 2, Metal Gear Solid, and Final Fantasy Tactics.
@@unbearifiedbear1885I’m 39 with full custody of 4 kids and have been to prison…people like to take things for granted these days, and I find it amazing how quickly we can get our information and said entertainment stuff all in the palm of our hands.
@@Silvergun_Raven wipeout for me 🙌
Makes me so grateful that I grew up during the time when you could walk into a GameStop/EB Games and buy N64/PS1 games from the baskets alongside the newest console titles.
The PS1 represented the single greatest improvement over the previous console generation in terms of presentation and sound, in my opinion.
Even though I've played the PS1 for MANY years, the PS2 had the bigger jump IMO. Loading up GTA3 for the first time left me in awe...
@@sausje I understand your point, although in terms of pound-for-pound impact, I still think the PS1 broke the mould. For example, going from the 2D graphical presentation and synth-centric sound of the 16-bit era to the 32-bit era was a unique and seismic change: the debut of 3D graphics; basking in a symphony orchestral score for the first time ever, and hearing high-quality voice acting (think Metal Gear Solid and Tomb Raider) were mesmeric experiences!
Always a solid choice to start a video with a Tekken 3 song
Wipeout was the game that defined the PlayStation experience with it's uber cool graphics, dynamite soundtrack, and easily blew every other launch title out the water.
This was the system seller that was even playable in night clubs and the occasional book store.
PlayStation had landed and the continued success would establish Sony as the premier console manufacturer, and with the amazing marketing campaign aimed primarily at the 18 to 30 age range the PlayStation established the modern era of gaming.
Good times.
I was living in Japan when it launched. Still have a bunch of the brochures and remember the TV commercials with schoolkids chanting “1-2-3, 1-2-3!” (It launched on December 3rd.)
A nearly 3 hour DF ps1 marathon oh my god amazing
Yes with unfortunately some of the worst games available on an arguably GOATed console
Ape Escape - Time Station in the outro. Godlike, you get it John. Bravo.
my dad worked for sony at yhe time and came home.with a ps and tekken. my life was never the same
Back in the day! When the console we owned actually mattered.
I remember when i got home from hanging out with my friends in mid 1997 and my dad had a PS1 there for me with my first two video games. Air Combat and Twisted Metal. Been a gamer ever since. I also had a demo disc that had FMV sections of the upcoming FF7. Eventually I got Crash Bandicoot and Spyro.
This was absolutely amazing to watch through. Born in 1980, the jump from 16-bit to PlayStation was absolutely mind blowing that time. I loved the 16-bit era but the 32-bit era was just another beast with a plethora of new ideas and new IPs.
The choice of music in this retro is top notch. Great work John!
Ridge Racer on the PSX was the shit. We would play this into the wee hours of the morning outside on the lawn on those warm summer nights. TV, Amp and Speakers all set up. Those were the days!
The psx really was the ridge racer console. Ridge racer 4 was probably the Pinnacle of the series . There were a few fun ones after 4 but none of them could ever live up to the legacy 4 left
@@anonony9081PS5 could do with a Ridge Racer game.
@@anonony90814 is still a goat among racing games….i still play that on my vita as well as GT PSP. Even though I have a gaming laptop and multiple steam decks, I have yet to find a racer like type for or gran turismo…forza horizon is good fun though.
Ridge Racer was in Playstation's DNA even outside of the PS1.
The first PS2, PSP, PS3 and PS Vita games were Ridge Racer titles. It feels weird to have a PS4 or 5 without a RR game. At least the best 2 games RRT4 and RR2 (the PSP game) are available as classics so it's not all bad.
It's not PSX, it's PS1. FFS.
Great choice of background music across the entire video guys, lots of bangers.
I was 22 years old at the time and part of the then rave music scene where the PlayStation become a mainstay of party goers at the time, which Sony really leaned I to at the time.
I was still in my late teens, but this would explain why the PlayStation owner's average age was 34 a year after it was launched since the "rave generation" would have been in their 30s by the late 90s.
I feel like I should be paying for this content…. It’s just too good. You make studios like Netflix or paramount look like chumps with this level of quality. Well done sirs.
Overall excellent video and amazing work!!! Thank you so much DF team for taking us back to an awesome fantastic time.
omg I only noticed this video is THREE HOURS after a few minutes. I need to schedule some time for this shizzle
The PlayStation 1 era was such an exciting time. Great video, thank you!
I never imagined watching such a long video, but time flew by, amazing work :)
Those early 3D days were so creative. The psx and ps2 days stright up created genres. Modern games are so expensive to create they have to cater so much to investors wants.
It's called PS1. It's not PSX and it was never PSX. On the large model you can see that it says PlayStation at 0:43, while on the slim model it says PS one. There is no such thing as a PSX when it comes to PlayStation.
@TheShocker650 its really not a big deal. It's just a nickname at this point then. If people know what is meant when psx is used then it works. A lot of emulation software organizes the roms using this name so that's why I use it interchangeably. You don't have to but telling other people what they should call it is a waste of energy considering it relatively wide use.
Japanese Launch
0:00-Development
5:59-The Joy of Sex
8:59-Console Overview
12:31-Ridge Racer
19:00-Parodius
26:19-Tama
29:39-Crime Crackers
35:33-A IV Evolution
38:07-Nekketsu Oyako
43:48-Mahjong Games
48:19-Closing
American Launch
48:50-Overview
52:27-Games Overview
54:43-Total Eclipse Turbo
1:00:20-Battle Arena Toshinden
1:06:22-Rayman
1:17:01-Street Fighter The Movie
1:26:22-The Raiden Project
1:30:53-NBA Jam TE
1:43:37-Power Serve 3D Tennis
1:46:17-ESPN Extreme Games
1:51:54-Kileak
1:56:14-Closing
European Launch
1:57:51-Overview
2:02:25-Demo 1
2:05:10-50hz
2:07:45-Wipeout
2:15:09-Air Combat
2:17:20-Rapid Reload
2:25:24-Novastorm
2:32:04-Jumping Flash
2:38:35-3D Lemmings
2:43:05-Closing
And the king was born
Another bluray worthy documentary! Fantastic work
Just leaving my usual note that PAL is NOT the reason 50Hz is used. The reason is that TVs used the electrical grid alterned frequency to sync its signal. So, in Europe you have 50Hz grid, and because of that, TVs used the same, thus electronics connecting to it needed to run in the same frequency, even if they took their sync from electronic crystals and not from the power grid anymore, so they could do 60Hz, but the TV would not support that signal.
PAL is actually very flexible, that is why there are letter subversions that changes things as resolution, or in the case of Brazil, thatr used a power grid from US but liked the more correct colors from the PAL signal, the frequency. So PAL-M runs at 60Hz and same resolution as NTSC, making conversors a simple thing using a small circuit to get the sinal from NTSC devices, like videogame consoles like Atari 2600. Nowadays, a lot of homebrew for this console actually use the PAL60 format, so that the colors are more correct across all devices - for those who do not know, NTSC does not carry color values, those are generated from diferices between each tone instead; that is why TVs have an adjust that can make the colors go green, blue, red, etc.
But why 50Hz?
That doesn't actually explain why 50hz. I think it has more to do with the film speed (25fps was standard for film in Europe rather than 24, 25x2=50).
Just wanted to say I love you guys. Everything you put out is so laid back. We are lucky to have you in frantic times :D
Wow! What a [video]! This is all I wanted to see!
I'm kinda obsessed with the first Playstation, it's probably my favorite console of all time.
I'm sure this has been pointed out by now, but minor correction: Lemmings was released in 1991, not 1987 (you may have been confusing the date that DMA Design was formed, which was indeed in '87... though they did stuff like Menace and Blood Money before Lemmings was created!)
Man I just loved that PS1 era, what a glorious time.
This was a very interesting video/marathon. I hope you guys do more of these. It was very cool to hear from Richard’s seniority perspective as well; how the vibe was in the 90s.
First time experiencing Ridge Racer and Battle Arena Toshinden at home was my biggest "W-W-W-What is happening here?!!!" moment in gaming.
Hey DF crew, brilliant episode as always. Have you ever considered making something similar to this but with a greatest achievements of each platform? Could be anything technical, clever gameplay, genre defining etc.
Saving this one for night time, thank you so much John :)
I would watch a 2 hour DF special about every single Rayman difference across verions. Loved that bit.
PS1 launch was memorable... Ridge Racer, Toshinden, WipeOut. I remember playing all day long WipeOut on demo disc.
Next do the Xbox launch. In europe it was just crazy. Halo - best fps, Rallisport Challenge - best rally game, Dead or Alive 3 - best 3D fighting, Amped - best snowboard game, Oddworld Munch Odyssey - good adventure/puzzle game, Project Gotham Racing, Tony Hawks 3 and Jet Set Radio Future.
I've seen every launch since the Atari 2600 and quality wise the OG Xbox had the best launch I can remember.
This is an excellent video that brings back a lot of memories. It's funny to see games dipping below 30FPS. In my memory, everything on PSX was super smooth. Maybe DF could someday make a similar video but about 50 highest-rated PSX games?
I definitely had to watch to this whole epic thing again:)
I already watched these, but it was really nice to revisit them. Also, the (new?) cameo from Game Sack at the end was hilarious.
The first time I seen Battle Arena Toshinden, Tekken and Ridge Racer was approximately 1 year before the release if the PSX. I flipped out. My Super Nintendo and Genesis was never looked at the same again. The business was called Diehard games that specialized in import games and consoles.
I remember my jaw being on the floor when I first saw the Tekken CGI intro 😂
Simpler times
DF retro really spoils us. The only other channel that came close to this was gaming historian and he went MIA.
16:37
Sonic R (Ridge Racer)
CAN YOU FEEL THE SUNSHINE!
sonic r, absolutely awful game to play, but I played the crap out of it
Your Mahjong Gokuu Tenjiku introduction is going to be part of the videos i rewatch regularly. Good stuff. As a fan of the yakuza series I was busting out with laughter seing that even back then that the game was blown out of proportions to a ridiculous degree.
Dope retro series. Memories of when PSX first dropped. It was a revelation compared to the 16bit era.
If you look at the big model at 0:43 it says PlayStation. On the slim model it says PS one. It's not PSX, and it was never called PSX. There is no X in it. Period.
Thanks for including the Parodius Deluxe Pack comparison! I had both, Gradius- and Parodius Deluxe Pack on Saturn...
And i love 'em
Before the Playstation, video games were for children. And after the release of this new 3D game console, people's mindset was no longer the same. They really succeeded in making the public of the time realize that video games could be interesting for teenagers and adults.
I remember the release very well and it was truly a revolution (same for the PS2). Many young gamers don't know this but there was a before and after Playstation. Remember that!
Are you ignoring Mortal Kombat, Doom, and Night Trap and how not-for-children they were?
Thanks for making this. Please do this for every console pre 2004!
2h30m.... This is gold! Thanks!!!!!
A comparison of Toh Shin Den was expected here with the Ura and Remix versions. What happened ? In Total Eclipse test, you could have said that Solar Eclipse following up this game will be released later on PlayStation and Saturn.
OK, this is a content I didn't know that I need from DF.
I was literally just about to post this comment to 😂❤
The editing lead in to Ridge Racer with Electric Fountain at 12:30 is soo satisfying!
Wow that's quite a project, congrats!
Im surprised that the North American PlayStation Picks! Demo disc wasn't mentioned especially with the Tommy Tallerico flying guitar soundtrack behind it.
SingleTrac (devoloper of Twisted Metal and Warhawk) was out of Salt Lake City UT of all places and originally was a defense contractor for rhe US government prior to developing games. David Jaffe was in a recent Twisted Metal Sacred Symbols Plus talking about the early days of PlayStation. Jaffe said that the Sony Music marketing team is who did the North American PlayStation ad campaigns.
Another excellent work by Linneman, thanks.
2:13:10
I think a big part of that is because it was designed and optimized for Playstation. The Playstation has a small RAM so the game was designed to have a continues flow of data so that there never was big chunks that had to be loaded at once.
I remember how Sony tapped into the European club scene with the Playstation. I was part of the club scene at the time. I once went to a nightclub in Cambridge England where they had screens all over the walls playing that trippy trance stuff you got when you put a music CD into the Playstation. And when you left the nightclub and went back to someone's house party someone would put it on there too. The idea was to try and relax people or trip people out. I remember it being all futuristic for the time lol. Wipeout and Wipeout 2047 were a big part of that scene too. A lot of the top DJs used to play them which helped with their popularity. I also remember some kids turned into DJs by making music on the PS1s music generator game. They made dance tracks on their PS1's in their bedroom and went on to have big club hits with them. Good times.
Music and Music 2000 were the games you're talking about. They were developed by Cold Storage aka Tim Wright, who made the in-house music for the Wipeout games before leaving Sony to start up Jester Interactive. He's the reason I make music today.
John... Audi... I LOVE these types of videos! The DF Retro side of DF is so awesome and I really appreciate all that you guys do. This one was a real banger! I hope you continue this for decades to come (assuming you still enjoy doing them of course!). Thanks for a great video covering a TON of cool stuff!!
The PSX was the first time I had seen 3D game in my life as a kid. It was revolutionary at that time!
PS1, not PSX. Which model of the console has the name PSX on it? Neither. It's not PSX. Period.
What a truly amazing piece of work this is. Phenomenal video. Thank you John and Audi for undertaking what I'm sure must've been one he'll of and undertaking. Hopefully there's more if these to come.
18:15 Z-Buffer is unrelated to perspective correct texture mapping: the thing that's missing is a perspective division component on the vertices themselves (the W component in traditional 3D rendering)
You can re-create the affine texture mapping in modern vertex shaders by setting the W component to 0
I've seen this strange misconception repeated in a few PlayStation 1 videos on RUclips, so I think a game of telephone happened at some point
Oh, John likes to spew a lot of misconceptions in DF Retro videos. One severely misinformed statement in this video claims Lemmings (the original) was available in 1987, when in reality its development ended in late 1990.
Another clarification: PS1 doesn't have memory set aside for the framebuffer, it has a shared video memory pool for textures, palettes and framebuffers, all contending the same estate. In fact, there are cases where extreme lack of texture memory might cause compromising of the framebuffer resolution (not saying that's what happened with the first Parodius, but keep in mind that PS1 officially wasn't allowed to mirror tiles/sprites so they would need to be cloned in case the original tile mapping asked for x/y flips, even though later revisions of the system silently added support for the function at the GPU level).
The hype around PS1 was un matched. It actually lived up to it and then some. Wipeout, Toshenden and Destruction Derby, Demo 1 !! My 12 year old self was totally blown away. My mega drive seemed 2 generations behind and was swiftly retired.
Incredible work!! Holy shit!
A “Richard Remembers…” segment is always brilliant
I could listen to John talk about ridge racer till the end of time.
Amazing video John. Truly nostalgic and perfect in every way. Your contribution to DF is a priceless and highly appreciated by many of us. Thank you for all the work that you do.
Retro stuff is the best stuff.
What a great video, thanks! I was one of the people who were super suspicious that the psx would be another 3do/cdi, going nowhere. This perspective only changed for me during 97 when it was clear psx was not going down, the quantity and quality of games was good.
Unlocked the Black Car people check in!🚗
Did I hear Audi say "you realy need to be stroking it hard to get any enjoyment out ot it, either on your own or with a friend" ? Yes I did!! Nice one. 01:43:35 Power Server 3D Tennis
I'm surprised he finished so quickly, that part of the video.
Magical times.. so lucky to witness the 90s man.. 😭❤🔥 first time playing RE1,tekken,FF7,MGS1.. it was like watching & playing something REAL 😂
Let's take a moment to appreciate John and Audi's incredible effort to put this video together! Thank you for doing it, and for sharing it with us! 😀🏆
Those really were the days
@@stonecodfish2365 exactly mate those days not these days, everyone’s thinking they are the day these days! My days!
I'm glad of my geographical location during the PlayStation's launch. Back then, I wasn't aware of the other launch titles, but ours (UK) seem to be the best of the bunch despite being limited to 10--which you missed here!
Air Combat
Battle Arena Toshinden
Cyber Sled
Destruction Derby
Jumping Flash
Lemmings 3D
Loaded
Ridge Racer
Tekken
Wipeout
So the US didn't get a pack-in Demo 1 disk?
Love the retro videos.
Very great video, with lots of detail.
I also greatly appreciate the full-screen shots of actual CRT TVs running the games before transitioning to raw signal so ppl can understand how they actually looked like when being played in the 90s. So many accounts that cover CRT zoom in on individual assets so never show the full experience.
Ah. The DF historical treatise on the PSX. This is amazing
Great video!
Especially loved the Gamesack outro bit! 😂
The single greatest home console of all time
That would be the ps2.
@@DoritosBurger that is almost certainly true; but I was being empassioned and hyperbolic, so I win
This shows very well the love for the craft. I salute you, Sir John!
best part was mahjong 😂 loved that
Hell yeah brother
What an incredible and enjoyable video! Thank you so much for it!
Sony, please remake Legend of Dragoon. Please oh please.
Wow this was so good! Excellent work!!! I love DF.
I would be grateful for a PS6 launch marathon video next week
Bloodborne Remake, GTA 6 Enhanced Edition (they added nothing new), Horizon Zero Dawn Remake, The Last of Us Part 1 Remake Remastered, a platforming game which poses no challenge and is 30 minutes long, and some weird AA and indie games nobody cares about in a week
I´d buy it.
@@ThomasVvVdon't forget the return of RIIIIIIIIDGE RAAAAAAACER
Gentlemen, this video is incredible. The details, the layout, the comparisons, this is why people trust what Digital Foundry puts out.
You've brought back a lot of memories, the majority of them good, and thank you for that.
Thanks again!
It's crazy that I knew about pal and NTSc in early 90s as a kid and now people are getting so stupid that they basically don't know anything 😂
Benevolent dictator Richard "Exclamation point" Leadbetter is gonna have your heads for this one