diansours was great but is any game ever used even. ı dont remember thaat kinda graphics on dino crisis and lost world game. when you look at jurassic park rampart game its not like that. basilcy it was like unreal 5 showcase never used in real game.
@@MrStrangermoon well it was a standalone dinosaur, so you could do more with it when not trying to cram it into a full game. Tomb Raider 1 had T-Rex models, but they were also much lower quality
PSX UK launch feels like it was drenched in Ecstasy. Club scene, start of 'Cool Britannia', jungle music, Prodigy, GamesMaster becoming more subversive. Meanwhile I had a Saturn.
Me too! I still own my original Saturn and all my games which can't be said about my PS1 as I swapped it for a Motorbike! The Saturn and PS1 are pretty evenly matched, but Sony were masters of marketing and getting 3rd parties on board with the PS1, Sega on the other hand could hardly put a foot right promoting the Saturn and weren't so friendly with 3rd party developers, ruining the US launch killed any chance of the Saturn competing with Sony's machine.
Same here in Poland man, these and the ps2 days were literally the golden age. We also had a few gaming magazines, some of them still exist but they’re just not the same nowadays. Obviously I like the new video games very much as well, but those times are always gonna be just special in some way.
So many fond memories of this time... looking back I'm really glad though I was too young to notice any of those PAL conversion issues. Kind of mindblowing how it was ever considered acceptable to just slow everything down, border it and call it a day.
This issue had existed for many more years prior to the PlayStation, I remember it on 16-bit computers and consoles. In fact, in 2D it's even more difficult to handle this.
its not was issue for me. ı only remember hard time for sonic 1 under water level bcouse it was 2 times slow and that level already so hard. other than that playing after burner , sparkster, sonic 2 and 3 on pal ı was thinking this so fast. like john says it help little slow in some games like after burner bcouse the game so fast. also eu sega boxes was way cooler than usa in mega drive and saturn. ı still chose just for box eu versions.
They didn't slow anything down and they didn't border anything; the NTSC developers literally did nothing to their games which is what caused these problems on PAL displays. They took their low resolution rendered output (designed for a matching low resolution display) and displayed it on a higher resolution display as-is, so that's the reason for the borders. The game speed is tied directly to the framerate in those old game engines, so when the games lost up to 10FPS on a PAL display, the game just runs slower.
This was a thoroughly comprehensive and enjoyable series for someone who had an N64. This threw up so many old, random and forgotten memories of playing PS1 at friends' houses. Great work.
I remember they had Playstations set up in nightclubs, got a lot of non-gamers interested and gave the console a veneer of cool that appealed to the younger market too. I got a Saturn which definitely wasn't cool but I loved it anyway :)
The Saturn cool, it just didn't have much time for nightclubs, it was too busy hooked to my TV while I played Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Shining Force III, Grandia, X-Men vs Street Fighter, KOF95,96,97 and many, many more!
I once met Tim Wright (Cold Storage) and he told me that when 3D Lemmings came out, every game store in Liverpool stopped accepting it as a trade-in because pretty much every Psygnosis employee immediately tried to sell the free copies they were given.
Can we please get a DR Retro episode on Richard Leadbetter and his uneven frame pacing? Besides that though, he's without a doubt a classic masterpiece.
Yes it still is, the kind of dystopian future featured in the intros of the first two games and most of the tracks is what sold WipEout in the first place back then, along with the soundtrack, obviously. I really liked the atmosphere the game conveyed... and it even had weather elements, something that is absent in the more recent games, and it's kind of surprising!! It's also a pity that no one seems interested in taking the franchise back to its original roots for this console gen!...
Funnily enough you could say the UI design of the Wipeout games did predict the future in the way of how minimalist flat graphic designs are used nowadays. The menu designs for Wipeout 3 still look pretty modern.
Thanks guys, this was a great retrospective. Ps1 is still my favorite console of all time. Some people say early 3d aged badly, but I have a real soft spot for it. I love 2d games as well, but wobbly polygons with pixelated textures in low res are my kink.
DF Retro is insanely good and would be even worthy to have it´s own channel. Crazy! It´s just crazy how much fun those episodes are to watch. The current playstation Trio of videos is a masterpiece! Well done!
Jumping Flash... remember renting that for a weekend. Played it non-stop, absolutely loved the 3D world and movement. Pure nostalgia gold. Thanks for that.
Being from the uk i might be biased but i believe we absolutely got the best ps1 launch overall. The number of games we got and the quality of them just blows the other countries launched out the water imo. It was just an amazing experience to live through as a kid. The whole presentation of the system and the adverts and of course the packed in demo 1, it was just phenomenal and nothing has ever come close to that feeling to this day
Fantastic series! I was only a kid during this time so I didn’t know the full details going on, it’s great to find out all this stuff years later. Hoping for more consoles to be covered!!!
Ahh the nostalgia of the PS1 era. I was 9 when I got my PS1 (my first ever console) and I vividly remember the T-Rex, being wowed by Wipeout and Battle Arena Toshinden. Then discovering RPGs with FF7 and playing a TON of FIFA 98, France 98, FIFA 99 on it. Metal Gear Solid was the most mindblowing thing of all time, and I shit myself in Resident Evil. It's all to do with my age of course, but those days were magical. Every game was fun in some way and I didn't think critically about games as I do now. I just let the games entertain me. Nothing is better than discovering games at that age.
Absolutely loving all the little jokes and stuff on DF. The T-Rex was phenomenal. Honestly, it's amazing how DF has grown. It's gone from a place I used to come just to find out the frame-rate of the latest games, to a place I come for the people involved. Brill video.
Back in the early nineties I remember begging my mum to buy me a Sega Saturn. Then after trying a PlayStation at my brother's friends house and trying crash bandicoot and Doom I was blown away! I couldn't believe how much the sound had improved from the 16 bit days and his friend had even plugged the PS1 into his Sony hifi using the audio out phonos on the PS1. As soon as I got my playstation, I plugged it into a hifi and would also regularly use it as a cd player (my hifi only had cassette, radio and aux). Great memories - thanks for another great df retro guys ✌️
This whole problem with PAL version's of consoles didn't go away until 2005 with the arrival of HD TV's, before this our games were 17.5 % slower,black borders on top and bottom of the screen,and if you use a RGB cable,the screen would slightly shift to the left 😟
@@AfterBurnerTeirusu Err, no. The differences between NTSC and PAL were generally built into the hardware of the system, and even on later systems that supported digital output, VERY few-if any-games in this period had any options of the sort. I started gaming in gen2 (pre-NES) and I can't recall having seen more than one or two games with NTSC/PAL selectors.
@@azazelleblack your wrong dude I am able to play ntsc games on my pal ps2 at full speed using swap magic and pal 60htz crt tv. Just to prove it to you I play a lot of classic rhythm games like pop'n, guitar freaks and ddr (I even have original arcade style controllers and metal dance mat bought from djdao). there is no input delay and the songs never go out of sync to the arrows. My 6th gen consoles and below are still set up next to my hd and 4k systems. I can tell you right now that pal hardware is capable of running 60htz games at full speed
The thing I will remember most abut this series Digital Foundry are doing (which is great btw...) is the story about how his Dad bought him a book about Manta Rays for Christmas because he though his son was actually really interested in them due to the demo he liked to play... That gave me feels!
I had both, and back then to me the N64 was the system with the cleanest image, but choppy performance. PS1 had much more consistent performance, but the aliased, unstable image always stood out to me as looking bad. Back when consoles were actually different!
The PAL 50hz vs NTSC 60hz conversation had the opposite problem too. For example, for a game like Destruction Derby you end up with a game that's almost unplayable. These are supposed to be bulky stock cars but you swishing around like it's NASCAR on tracks that definitely aren't made to those kinds of speeds. Destruction Derby 1 and 2 should ONLY be played in PAL format.
Yeah tbh it was more a question of optimisation than any overt shortcoming in the format.. certain titles you'd never even know and some (as you mentioned; DD) actually look and run better on PAL
Yes I recall DD being trash in the US. I don't even recall Psygnosis being behind it and that's probably for the best because at the time I played most of their games on various PCs.
Wipeout IS the reason I sold my SNES and Mega drive. I entered the store , played the demo disk and run to my house to pick the 2 consoles to sell them to the store and pick the PSX . I was young and i lacked money... But wipeout ...it really blown my mind.
I hope we get the same treatment for the SEGA Saturn, Dreamcast, and other console launches in different territories. Also, I used to love reading SEGA Saturn Magazine, which Rich Leadbetter worked on.
While I'm sure there are comparatively few games like this, Novastorm is an excellent example of a game that was clearly designed around being played on a PAL system, and it's always irritating to me when many people blindly assume that the NTSC version of some older games is automatically the best way to play. It'd be interesting to know just how many games that didn't review particularly well in other regions fared much better in Europe because of reduced game play speeds. I'm not expecting this number to be high, but I know more games like this exist.
A good friend of mine was a game tester on wipeout, he said that the company was really not sure about it at the time, and it was the enthusiasm of the testers that helped to push it through
Jumping flash blew my mind when I saw the VHS game demo reel that I got from some gaming magazine. I remember wanting that game so hard and feeling jealous as a Sega Saturn owner.
This Retro series is an insanely impressive project. Huge congratulations to the DF team for this. I'm from the UK and learning more about the PAL vs NTSC stuff is fascinating.
Psygnosis designed the PC-based development kits used by most PS1 developers, which was a huge boon for Sony's third party developer relations. However, Psygnosis defied Sony and continued to release games on other platforms despite being owned by Sony, and this led Sony to become so angry with them they literally tried to sell them off at one point, but eventually resorted to clipping their wings in 1999 by restructuring them into SCE Studio Liverpool.
Great video DF! Jumping Flash- my childhood right there. These videos really bring forward how far gaming has come and how consumers really are spoiled by the consoles that are out today.
Wow, this really brings back some memories. I remember when it launched here. At the local mall there was a demo booth running a demo disc. I would often find an excuse to go there just to get a chance to play for a few minutes or to get a glimpse while others were playing. Wipeout, Destruction Derby, Loaded and Toshinden are the games I remember the most. I wanted so badly to get a PS but I was a kid and what limited money I had I was saving up for the N64. I was happy with my choice in the end, but I also feel that I missed out on a lot.
Nice work on this one John & Audi! Both entertaining and informative from start to finish- my favorite kind of video. Found that rare diamond-in-the-rough scenario when a PAL game is actually superior in some ways. Gonna have to try the Sega CD version of Novastorm now also. Rare that something turned out better than other systems on that platform, even if it wasn't the best version perhaps.
If a game was created for the PAL PlayStation first, it didn't need to be 'optimised'; so therefore Wipeout would have been optimised for the NTSC market.
That was thoroughly enjoyable, thank you very much for such a fun, entertaining series. This episode in particular reminded me a lot of what Tim Rogers has been doing lately, and that's great in my book.
I was 19 at the time and bought the original PlayStation for two reasons: Ridge Racer and Battle Arena Toshinden. These two games were so impressive to me as a PC gamer and someone who came from the NES and SNES that I had to have the console.
I’m so happy that I was there. Will never forget the commercials, the hype and the first time I saw Wipeout. That was the biggest leap in generations ever!!!
It was interesting to see the difference between Sony's output, and almost everyone else's on the Playstation. Most of the technically proficient Japanese games came from outside of Sony Japan, such as Resident Evil, or Namco with their amazing Tekken 3 conversion. The other heavy-hitters were the likes of Psygnosis and Core from the UK (even Gremlin and Ocean seemed to be quite capable with the hardware), or Naughty Dog and Crystal Dynamics from the USA side. I'm struggling to think of any Japanese titles developed by Sony, or in a lot of cases, published by them, that really impressed on the hardware. The first Tenchu was either published or developed by them, and it suffered from a poor draw distance that was compounded by seeing the likes of TombRaider in action. It seems to have become a theme across their consoles, with many of the most praised Sony Japan games being noticeably weaker technically. Jumping Flash, Tenchu (ps1), ICO, Shadow Of The Colossus, Forbidden Siren, Sky Odyssey (ps2), The Last Guardian (ps4): they're some brilliant games, and you certainly couldn't accuse Sony of being one-note with what they backed, but it always came with the caveat they'd be behind almost everyone else when it came to being lookers, or having steady performance. Whilst their English studios such as Psygnosis and Sony Cambridge would have great tech, but not necessarily the creativity when it came to the gameplay. I believe Sony owned both at the time, and have always wondered why there wasn't a transference of engines / technical know-how etc with their Japanese counterparts even when it was Sony Japan doing the development.
I got my playstation in 97 for Xmas! Got crash, Porsche challange and steering wheel and destruction Derby 2 then a week later I got resident evil and it was RE that changed everything for me I was 11
I got my PlayStation for my 11th birthday with Porsche Challenge and it blew me away haha! I was too scared to play resident evil back then so I used to watch my cousin play it at his house! Ahhh memories!
One day while in high school I walked into a KB toy store and for the first time saw the Playstation in person. It was running Battle Arena Toshinden on demo and I was simply dumbfounded. I searched for wires running to a larger, more powerful machine. I just couldn't comprehend something so small creating graphics like that.
I remember this era very well and with Richard Leadbetter as the editor of the Sega Saturn Magazine. It sucked being a Sega fan back then lol. But I did enjoy the games a heck of a lot.
Europe/PAL: Aka the region where we get screwed over with game releases (I first learnt of this when I got a reproduction copy of Chrono Trigger for my PAL SNES a few years back lol)
Back then I just didn't knew about the differences. And I cannot remember reading in game mags about framerate performances. Well, unless they would say 'it runs like shit'.
@@MisterCasket 100%. As a kid who played Master System, Amiga 500, PS1 ect. It was just the norm. When you have nothing to compare it to, it did not matter. That said i would never go back to that. Even today owning a highrefresh monitor 60 feels bad at times.
Was playing ASTRO bot a few days ago on PS5 (finally got one). The level where you roll in a ball, I think the giant robot rabbit was Jumping Flash. I almost cried in joy.
the dinosaur with richard leadbetter's voice was hilarious, truly funny.
Richard voice "phenomenal stuff"
Its radical!
Indeed 😭😂
diansours was great but is any game ever used even. ı dont remember thaat kinda graphics on dino crisis and lost world game. when you look at jurassic park rampart game its not like that. basilcy it was like unreal 5 showcase never used in real game.
@@MrStrangermoon well it was a standalone dinosaur, so you could do more with it when not trying to cram it into a full game.
Tomb Raider 1 had T-Rex models, but they were also much lower quality
PSX UK launch feels like it was drenched in Ecstasy. Club scene, start of 'Cool Britannia', jungle music, Prodigy, GamesMaster becoming more subversive. Meanwhile I had a Saturn.
Ouch.
Me too! I still own my original Saturn and all my games which can't be said about my PS1 as I swapped it for a Motorbike! The Saturn and PS1 are pretty evenly matched, but Sony were masters of marketing and getting 3rd parties on board with the PS1, Sega on the other hand could hardly put a foot right promoting the Saturn and weren't so friendly with 3rd party developers, ruining the US launch killed any chance of the Saturn competing with Sony's machine.
So much nostalgia for this whole era here in the UK. Special mention to the golden era of gaming magazines of which Rich Leadbetter was a HUGE part :)
Same here in Poland man, these and the ps2 days were literally the golden age. We also had a few gaming magazines, some of them still exist but they’re just not the same nowadays. Obviously I like the new video games very much as well, but those times are always gonna be just special in some way.
Completely agree with both of you. It's absolutely nostalgia related for me but there's something about the PS1 to PS2 era that was so exciting.
So many fond memories of this time... looking back I'm really glad though I was too young to notice any of those PAL conversion issues. Kind of mindblowing how it was ever considered acceptable to just slow everything down, border it and call it a day.
This issue had existed for many more years prior to the PlayStation, I remember it on 16-bit computers and consoles. In fact, in 2D it's even more difficult to handle this.
its not was issue for me. ı only remember hard time for sonic 1 under water level bcouse it was 2 times slow and that level already so hard. other than that playing after burner , sparkster, sonic 2 and 3 on pal ı was thinking this so fast. like john says it help little slow in some games like after burner bcouse the game so fast. also eu sega boxes was way cooler than usa in mega drive and saturn. ı still chose just for box eu versions.
I always thought Tekken 3 was meant to run so slowly, until I saw a Video of the NTSC-version...it was like a different game
They didn't slow anything down and they didn't border anything; the NTSC developers literally did nothing to their games which is what caused these problems on PAL displays. They took their low resolution rendered output (designed for a matching low resolution display) and displayed it on a higher resolution display as-is, so that's the reason for the borders. The game speed is tied directly to the framerate in those old game engines, so when the games lost up to 10FPS on a PAL display, the game just runs slower.
Never had a problem with Sonic the Hedgehog. I thought the game was amazing. The game however that felt far too slow was Golden Axe.
This was a thoroughly comprehensive and enjoyable series for someone who had an N64. This threw up so many old, random and forgotten memories of playing PS1 at friends' houses. Great work.
I remember they had Playstations set up in nightclubs, got a lot of non-gamers interested and gave the console a veneer of cool that appealed to the younger market too. I got a Saturn which definitely wasn't cool but I loved it anyway :)
The Saturn cool, it just didn't have much time for nightclubs, it was too busy hooked to my TV while I played Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Shining Force III, Grandia, X-Men vs Street Fighter, KOF95,96,97 and many, many more!
38:02 Except music in level 1? Are you kidding me? That's absolutely the best track in the game!
so right
yeah I came to say this as well. haha. It's absolutely fantastic.
I agree! It’s the best track in the game together with the boss music track!
I once met Tim Wright (Cold Storage) and he told me that when 3D Lemmings came out, every game store in Liverpool stopped accepting it as a trade-in because pretty much every Psygnosis employee immediately tried to sell the free copies they were given.
PC version was the best.
3:42
LOL!, No 90s rave footage would be complete without the Dimitri finds out meme :)
🤚 🤪🖐️
Очень плохая музыка, мэм.
WipEout was easily one of thee standout launch games for the PlayStation, and probably my favourite title on the console in the early days.
Can we please get a DR Retro episode on Richard Leadbetter and his uneven frame pacing?
Besides that though, he's without a doubt a classic masterpiece.
Bought it on release date with Ridge Racer and Wipeout. I also enrolled at university that same day. Cant believe it’s over 25 years ago!
I'll take mid 90s Playstation straight into my veins.
Hey let me get a hit too man
Love the aesthetic of the games, the console and the marketing of it. It's so appealing to me
Wipeout!! Love that you mentioned the graphic design of that game, the presentation is still amazing
Yes it still is, the kind of dystopian future featured in the intros of the first two games and most of the tracks is what sold WipEout in the first place back then, along with the soundtrack, obviously.
I really liked the atmosphere the game conveyed... and it even had weather elements, something that is absent in the more recent games, and it's kind of surprising!!
It's also a pity that no one seems interested in taking the franchise back to its original roots for this console gen!...
That graphic design was so influential it even inspired the recent Formula 1 redesign.
Funnily enough you could say the UI design of the Wipeout games did predict the future in the way of how minimalist flat graphic designs are used nowadays.
The menu designs for Wipeout 3 still look pretty modern.
Thanks guys, this was a great retrospective. Ps1 is still my favorite console of all time. Some people say early 3d aged badly, but I have a real soft spot for it. I love 2d games as well, but wobbly polygons with pixelated textures in low res are my kink.
The European PlayStation launch was truly amazing.
This video reeks of 90s nostalgia... And I love it!
Thanks for taking me back and re-awakening my memories of these awesome times - appreciate it.
Playstation's Europe Release was such a good time to be alive ...
DF Retro is insanely good and would be even worthy to have it´s own channel. Crazy! It´s just crazy how much fun those episodes are to watch. The current playstation Trio of videos is a masterpiece! Well done!
Jumping Flash... remember renting that for a weekend. Played it non-stop, absolutely loved the 3D world and movement. Pure nostalgia gold. Thanks for that.
I still remember seing that tech demo with the dinossaur, for the first time.
It was trully amazing for the time.
🤯
I was GLAD to Witness Demo1! OH, YEAH! That Thing Blew Me Away!!! Glad you mentioned IT, guys!!! 👍👏👏👏😁
That manta ray scene is so well made in how it uses clever small fish sprites that feel fully 3D
Rich must be the coolest boss ever
Being from the uk i might be biased but i believe we absolutely got the best ps1 launch overall. The number of games we got and the quality of them just blows the other countries launched out the water imo. It was just an amazing experience to live through as a kid. The whole presentation of the system and the adverts and of course the packed in demo 1, it was just phenomenal and nothing has ever come close to that feeling to this day
Fantastic series! I was only a kid during this time so I didn’t know the full details going on, it’s great to find out all this stuff years later. Hoping for more consoles to be covered!!!
Ahh the nostalgia of the PS1 era. I was 9 when I got my PS1 (my first ever console) and I vividly remember the T-Rex, being wowed by Wipeout and Battle Arena Toshinden. Then discovering RPGs with FF7 and playing a TON of FIFA 98, France 98, FIFA 99 on it. Metal Gear Solid was the most mindblowing thing of all time, and I shit myself in Resident Evil. It's all to do with my age of course, but those days were magical. Every game was fun in some way and I didn't think critically about games as I do now. I just let the games entertain me. Nothing is better than discovering games at that age.
The "about Rich" part. X'D
The Tinder profile at 36:38 ? Yeah, it's amazing.
Alloy Rich is bae
Thanks for editing the Patreon video down to these episodes for us
Amazing! Phenomenal work, guys!
Absolutely loving all the little jokes and stuff on DF. The T-Rex was phenomenal. Honestly, it's amazing how DF has grown. It's gone from a place I used to come just to find out the frame-rate of the latest games, to a place I come for the people involved. Brill video.
Oh man that Demo 1 intro.. its '98, I'm 13 again and life is *great* ❤❤❤
Europe really was the place to be with regards to the hip, changing zeitgeist of the early-mid 90's.
Lol.
Honestly, these 3 Videos were incredible, thank you
Good to see Richard getting involved in DF Retro. Keep up the great retro/vintage content guys! Nice work.
36:40 I’m struggling to remove Aloy Leadbetter from my head. 🙀
What an excellent 3-part series! Well done John and Audi! Thanks for bringing back the mid-90s memories of PS1. :)
Back in the early nineties I remember begging my mum to buy me a Sega Saturn. Then after trying a PlayStation at my brother's friends house and trying crash bandicoot and Doom I was blown away! I couldn't believe how much the sound had improved from the 16 bit days and his friend had even plugged the PS1 into his Sony hifi using the audio out phonos on the PS1. As soon as I got my playstation, I plugged it into a hifi and would also regularly use it as a cd player (my hifi only had cassette, radio and aux). Great memories - thanks for another great df retro guys ✌️
Nice to see, that Richard also has a part in this video and DF Retro in general!
the music is always on point with these videos!
This whole problem with PAL version's of consoles didn't go away until 2005 with the arrival of HD TV's, before this our games were 17.5 % slower,black borders on top and bottom of the screen,and if you use a RGB cable,the screen would slightly shift to the left 😟
Good times.
@@AfterBurnerTeirusu Err, no. The differences between NTSC and PAL were generally built into the hardware of the system, and even on later systems that supported digital output, VERY few-if any-games in this period had any options of the sort. I started gaming in gen2 (pre-NES) and I can't recall having seen more than one or two games with NTSC/PAL selectors.
Just the unoptimized game were 17.5% slower not all games
Seem to recall playing Pal 60hz on Dreamcast with a CRT.
@@azazelleblack your wrong dude I am able to play ntsc games on my pal ps2 at full speed using swap magic and pal 60htz crt tv. Just to prove it to you I play a lot of classic rhythm games like pop'n, guitar freaks and ddr (I even have original arcade style controllers and metal dance mat bought from djdao). there is no input delay and the songs never go out of sync to the arrows. My 6th gen consoles and below are still set up next to my hd and 4k systems. I can tell you right now that pal hardware is capable of running 60htz games at full speed
The thing I will remember most abut this series Digital Foundry are doing (which is great btw...) is the story about how his Dad bought him a book about Manta Rays for Christmas because he though his son was actually really interested in them due to the demo he liked to play... That gave me feels!
Y'all talking about 50 and 25 fps unadjusted games while I was playing Perfect Dark on the N64 at 8 frames per second and not noticing 💀💀💀
I remember when my boy got it. I told him it looked like trash and he kicked me out his house😂😂😂
I didn’t notice low frame rates back then and I still don’t lol
I had both, and back then to me the N64 was the system with the cleanest image, but choppy performance. PS1 had much more consistent performance, but the aliased, unstable image always stood out to me as looking bad.
Back when consoles were actually different!
@@steel5897 Clean is...a stretch. N64 games even back then looked like they had a thick layer of vaseline slapped over them.
@@Essu_ the N64 had (mediocre naturally by today's standard) anti aliasing "smeared on" every game AFIK.
Excellent soundtrack in this episode.
Good lord the Alpha Waves shoutout. Spent so much time playing that as a kid. Still has some of my fav game music ever
The 32 bit era was truly the "wild west" of gaming...I really miss the innovation of the time.
"Hear it Now, Play it Later" USA PSX demo was pretty cool. Love that dino!
The PAL 50hz vs NTSC 60hz conversation had the opposite problem too. For example, for a game like Destruction Derby you end up with a game that's almost unplayable. These are supposed to be bulky stock cars but you swishing around like it's NASCAR on tracks that definitely aren't made to those kinds of speeds. Destruction Derby 1 and 2 should ONLY be played in PAL format.
Yeah tbh it was more a question of optimisation than any overt shortcoming in the format.. certain titles you'd never even know and some (as you mentioned; DD) actually look and run better on PAL
Yes I recall DD being trash in the US. I don't even recall Psygnosis being behind it and that's probably for the best because at the time I played most of their games on various PCs.
Like Zool. 😊
Great work, really enjoyed all 3 Episodes. Thank you so much for this wondeful retrospective on the legendary Playstation.
Stupendous work!
*THANK YOU* for this series of vids!
That is really sweet of your dad to try and notice something that you are into and not just ask you want to get like most Dads do.
Wipeout IS the reason I sold my SNES and Mega drive. I entered the store , played the demo disk and run to my house to pick the 2 consoles to sell them to the store and pick the PSX . I was young and i lacked money... But wipeout ...it really blown my mind.
My dude, the bagpipe track in Jumping Flash is one of the best on the whole soundtrack! To each their own, I suppose, but that song brings me joy.
I hope we get the same treatment for the SEGA Saturn, Dreamcast, and other console launches in different territories.
Also, I used to love reading SEGA Saturn Magazine, which Rich Leadbetter worked on.
Lovely docuseries. You guys at DF are killing it lately. Thank you so much
While I'm sure there are comparatively few games like this, Novastorm is an excellent example of a game that was clearly designed around being played on a PAL system, and it's always irritating to me when many people blindly assume that the NTSC version of some older games is automatically the best way to play. It'd be interesting to know just how many games that didn't review particularly well in other regions fared much better in Europe because of reduced game play speeds. I'm not expecting this number to be high, but I know more games like this exist.
A good friend of mine was a game tester on wipeout, he said that the company was really not sure about it at the time, and it was the enthusiasm of the testers that helped to push it through
Jumping flash blew my mind when I saw the VHS game demo reel that I got from some gaming magazine. I remember wanting that game so hard and feeling jealous as a Sega Saturn owner.
The Feature about Wipeout was so great. I was a great Fan of the Game, with ist fantastic Soundtrack.
34:53 'The genre was still having problem making the jump' I see what you did there :D
Fantastic watch, thank you!
Awesome job guys!.. kudos for you all...
I love the bagpipe song in Jumping Flash!
This Retro series is an insanely impressive project. Huge congratulations to the DF team for this. I'm from the UK and learning more about the PAL vs NTSC stuff is fascinating.
Psygnosis designed the PC-based development kits used by most PS1 developers, which was a huge boon for Sony's third party developer relations. However, Psygnosis defied Sony and continued to release games on other platforms despite being owned by Sony, and this led Sony to become so angry with them they literally tried to sell them off at one point, but eventually resorted to clipping their wings in 1999 by restructuring them into SCE Studio Liverpool.
This makes a lot of sense!
Actually exclaimed "yeah!" when you pulled out that demo 1 disc
Oh yeah the Manta Ray demo ❤️
Thanks for putting together such a wonderful trilogy!
Great video DF! Jumping Flash- my childhood right there. These videos really bring forward how far gaming has come and how consumers really are spoiled by the consoles that are out today.
Wow, this really brings back some memories. I remember when it launched here. At the local mall there was a demo booth running a demo disc. I would often find an excuse to go there just to get a chance to play for a few minutes or to get a glimpse while others were playing. Wipeout, Destruction Derby, Loaded and Toshinden are the games I remember the most. I wanted so badly to get a PS but I was a kid and what limited money I had I was saving up for the N64. I was happy with my choice in the end, but I also feel that I missed out on a lot.
With the design of the character's feet, I can't help but think that Jumping Flash is actually a game starring Homestar Runner.
Nice work on this one John & Audi! Both entertaining and informative from start to finish- my favorite kind of video. Found that rare diamond-in-the-rough scenario when a PAL game is actually superior in some ways. Gonna have to try the Sega CD version of Novastorm now also. Rare that something turned out better than other systems on that platform, even if it wasn't the best version perhaps.
If a game was created for the PAL PlayStation first, it didn't need to be 'optimised'; so therefore Wipeout would have been optimised for the NTSC market.
That was thoroughly enjoyable, thank you very much for such a fun, entertaining series. This episode in particular reminded me a lot of what Tim Rogers has been doing lately, and that's great in my book.
Hell yeah! Great way to spend Sunday morning.
Myyyyy goodness, this is such a nostalgia trip!!! WipeOut, Ridge Racer, Destruction Derby... omg...
I have been thoroughly enjoying these episodes. Love all the humor y’all have been putting into these.
Very much enjoyed this series. Thanks for putting it together!
I was 19 at the time and bought the original PlayStation for two reasons: Ridge Racer and Battle Arena Toshinden. These two games were so impressive to me as a PC gamer and someone who came from the NES and SNES that I had to have the console.
38:02
But I love that bit of music from Jumping Flash, it's wonderful
Thanks for mentioning the demo 1!
I’m so happy that I was there. Will never forget the commercials, the hype and the first time I saw Wipeout. That was the biggest leap in generations ever!!!
Just outstanding content!
10:28 - Awesome see that logo there
I remember first time firing up the PSX and playing demo 1 ... It utterly blew my mind. Biggest gaming "hooooly fuck" moment of my life.
It was interesting to see the difference between Sony's output, and almost everyone else's on the Playstation. Most of the technically proficient Japanese games came from outside of Sony Japan, such as Resident Evil, or Namco with their amazing Tekken 3 conversion. The other heavy-hitters were the likes of Psygnosis and Core from the UK (even Gremlin and Ocean seemed to be quite capable with the hardware), or Naughty Dog and Crystal Dynamics from the USA side.
I'm struggling to think of any Japanese titles developed by Sony, or in a lot of cases, published by them, that really impressed on the hardware. The first Tenchu was either published or developed by them, and it suffered from a poor draw distance that was compounded by seeing the likes of TombRaider in action. It seems to have become a theme across their consoles, with many of the most praised Sony Japan games being noticeably weaker technically.
Jumping Flash, Tenchu (ps1), ICO, Shadow Of The Colossus, Forbidden Siren, Sky Odyssey (ps2), The Last Guardian (ps4): they're some brilliant games, and you certainly couldn't accuse Sony of being one-note with what they backed, but it always came with the caveat they'd be behind almost everyone else when it came to being lookers, or having steady performance. Whilst their English studios such as Psygnosis and Sony Cambridge would have great tech, but not necessarily the creativity when it came to the gameplay. I believe Sony owned both at the time, and have always wondered why there wasn't a transference of engines / technical know-how etc with their Japanese counterparts even when it was Sony Japan doing the development.
"Rapis reload" also takes HUGE inspiration from "Alien soldier", which is the most impressive title from "Treasure" on the SEGA Mega drive.
got the chills on that Ace Combat 3 OST. Thanks, guys.
I got my playstation in 97 for Xmas! Got crash, Porsche challange and steering wheel and destruction Derby 2 then a week later I got resident evil and it was RE that changed everything for me I was 11
I got my PlayStation for my 11th birthday with Porsche Challenge and it blew me away haha!
I was too scared to play resident evil back then so I used to watch my cousin play it at his house!
Ahhh memories!
@@Liam_blake00 yesssss mate well chuffed, the memories indeed my man
I have really enjoy this series. A well done and thank you to Jon and Audi for all three videos. 👍
I had no idea about the history leading up to Jumping Flash! One of my favorites, if not favorite early PS1 titles.
PlayStation 1 was already very impressive when I played it during the mid-late 90's. I can't imagine how much better it must have been on NTSC.
One day while in high school I walked into a KB toy store and for the first time saw the Playstation in person. It was running Battle Arena Toshinden on demo and I was simply dumbfounded. I searched for wires running to a larger, more powerful machine. I just couldn't comprehend something so small creating graphics like that.
Wipeout was my first PlayStation game. I love the series and hope a studio can bring the series back.
From next week we are going to watch the "SEGA Saturn Revisited" documentary series.
I remember this era very well and with Richard Leadbetter as the editor of the Sega Saturn Magazine. It sucked being a Sega fan back then lol. But I did enjoy the games a heck of a lot.
Dam- how awesome was og wipeout. That game changed the landscape of gaming
I can never get enough of PS1, but I would love to see also a Sega Saturn Retrospective.
Europe/PAL: Aka the region where we get screwed over with game releases
(I first learnt of this when I got a reproduction copy of Chrono Trigger for my PAL SNES a few years back lol)
And game perfomance.
50hz my ass😅🤣
Back then I just didn't knew about the differences. And I cannot remember reading in game mags about framerate performances. Well, unless they would say 'it runs like shit'.
@@MisterCasket its not about fps its about refresh rate...Pal=50hz Ntsc=60hz and it runs like shit
@@MisterCasket 100%. As a kid who played Master System, Amiga 500, PS1 ect. It was just the norm. When you have nothing to compare it to, it did not matter. That said i would never go back to that. Even today owning a highrefresh monitor 60 feels bad at times.
Was playing ASTRO bot a few days ago on PS5 (finally got one). The level where you roll in a ball, I think the giant robot rabbit was Jumping Flash. I almost cried in joy.
Me too!