Playstation thread: The Console that changed gaming forever!

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Dell_Zincht: Nov 5, 2003

Payndz posted:

Nintendo really didn't give a poo poo how we reviewed their games, or if we reviewed them at all. The only mag they were remotely bothered about was NOM (or was it ONM, or NMS at that time? I can't remember), and even then I heard stories about NOM being dropped in it at the last minute by titles that they were supposed to be getting exclusives on being held back long enough to miss their print deadlines.

We got more pressure from our own ad sales department. "If you give [GAME X] a double page spread and a score over 90%, the publisher will book an extra three pages of ads over the next two months! Come on, mate, do me a favour. Nobody'll care." (Game X had already been reviewed on a single page and been given a 53% score.)

There was one guy who used to work for us as a writer before going into PR who would use every kind of emotional blackmail to try to get us to bump up game scores and the number of pages given to his company's titles. Invariably, they would be shovelware poo poo like Rugrats, so he'd end up getting narky and going to ad sales to use the "I'm pulling my advertising if you don't get editorial to bump up the score" routine.

Feel free to PM me if this is sensitive info but was your publisher Paragon by any chance?

(Just realised you don't have plat, don't answer this unless you want to!)

Dell_Zincht fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Jan 12, 2020

# ? Jan 12, 2020 16:44

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# ? Apr 24, 2024 13:36

AntifaSupersoldier: Jul 30, 2003; Reality is what you can get away with; Hell Gem

Randaconda posted:

N64 was a very distant number 2. Sticking with cartridges limited it massively, which probably explains out of the less than ten good games for it, almost all are first party stuff.

Yeah. I owned both and the 64 left such a bad impression compared to the NES/SNES era that I didn't buy another Nintendo product until the new 3DS XL.

# ? Jan 12, 2020 23:42

Randaconda: Jul 3, 2014; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

AntifaSupersoldier posted:

Yeah. I owned both and the 64 left such a bad impression compared to the NES/SNES era that I didn't buy another Nintendo product until the new 3DS XL.

I ended up with a N64, but second hand in like 2001 or so, and that was purely to play No Mercy and Zelda

# ? Jan 12, 2020 23:52

AntifaSupersoldier: Jul 30, 2003; Reality is what you can get away with; Hell Gem

Randaconda posted:

I ended up with a N64, but second hand in like 2001 or so, and that was purely to play No Mercy and Zelda

Cool. I remember having a lot of fun with the create a wrestler feature in WWF attitude. Made a guy that had a chrome shirt called the executioner :thumbsup:

# ? Jan 13, 2020 00:01

DMorbid: Jan 6, 2011; Hello! I see you.

Payndz posted:

NOM (or was it ONM, or NMS at that time? I can't remember)

It was ONM until mid-1998 when it became NOM, which I believe is when their editorial staff changed and the quality of the mag completely went to the shitter for years. They had embarrassing bullshit like Mario's Hammer Time (the aforementioned feature which involved some reader sending in a rival console/peripheral to get smashed to bits with a hammer) before that, but at least the writing still had some semblance of quality.

Then, the changeover to NOM happened. The mag became an ad for Nintendo products crossed with a cult manual targeted at idiots, children, or idiot children (that would have been me), with exceedingly simple writing and embarrassing attempts to cover popular things such as pro wrestling or South Park when games based on them were coming out. That's when their letters section started handing out prizes to the most insane fanboys and every reference to the PlayStation was changed to "GreyStation" which according to them was a complete failure with zero good games and could not possibly withstand the might of the N64.

# ? Jan 13, 2020 02:09

Dell_Zincht: Nov 5, 2003

I never bought "official" magazines as rather naively I thought that independent mags would have more integrity and not just be adverts for the big games companies.

PLAY claimed to be the 100% Unofficial PlayStation magazine and it was a lot edgier than most of the others, it was a games mag crossed with a lads mag and 13 year old me thought I was proper grown up for spending my pocket money on it.

# ? Jan 13, 2020 10:09

Randaconda: Jul 3, 2014; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Remember how the SNES had a shitload of good RPGs and the N64 was the complete opposite, so the Playstation had to pick up the slack

# ? Jan 13, 2020 10:35

DMorbid: Jan 6, 2011; Hello! I see you.

Randaconda posted:

Remember how the SNES had a shitload of good RPGs

No, because almost none of them ever came to the PAL region. That was still a problem with the PlayStation (RIP Parasite Eve and Chrono Cross, among others), but at least we got the Final Fantasies even if the PAL conversions were shoddy and FFIX had to be published by Infogrames.

# ? Jan 13, 2020 11:35

Randaconda: Jul 3, 2014; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Doc M posted:

No, because almost none of them ever came to the PAL region. That was still a problem with the PlayStation (RIP Parasite Eve and Chrono Cross, among others), but at least we got the Final Fantasies even if the PAL conversions were shoddy and FFIX had to be published by Infogrames.

You guys got Terranigma and the US didn't :colbert:

# ? Jan 13, 2020 11:38

The Kins: Oct 2, 2004

Yeah, PAL regions got nowhere near the amount of JRPGs the NTSC regions did. I suspect having to translate all that text into like four different languages gave publishers pause, especially in the cartridge days. That situation improved a little in the PS1 era, but they still lagged behind.

# ? Jan 13, 2020 11:53

Hyrax Attack!: Jan 13, 2009; We demand to be taken seriously

More stories about working as a game reviewer for the magazine please, that was fascinating.

I grew up thinking Nintendo Power was the standard and then got an EGM issue as a gift. Holy cow, I didn�t know reviews could be so scorching and coverage well written. This was the Seanbaby era too.

# ? Jan 13, 2020 16:36

Randaconda: Jul 3, 2014; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Hyrax Attack! posted:

More stories about working as a game reviewer for the magazine please, that was fascinating.

I grew up thinking Nintendo Power was the standard and then got an EGM issue as a gift. Holy cow, I didn�t know reviews could be so scorching and coverage well written. This was the Seanbaby era too.

God, Nintendo Power was terrible for actual reviews

# ? Jan 13, 2020 23:55

SchwarzeKrieg: Apr 15, 2009

I was so happy when I stumbled on an archive of old gaming magazine scans a few weeks ago and so horrified when I started reading some PSM scans. I loved that magazine as a kid but nothing about it holds up now.

Next Generation was probably my favorite all-around magazine and after a quick glance it doesn't look like it aged too poorly, aside from a five star review of the first Dead of Alive with the byline "The Breast Fighter Ever!? :circlefap:

# ? Jan 14, 2020 15:08

Parachute: May 18, 2003

Payndz posted:

OT, I know, but I'll do a little example of Nintendo's attitude to the gaming press (and how it contrasted with Sony's): the Ocarina Of Time launch.

Because Mohammed must come to the mountain, Nintendo said that if you want to see Zelda 64, you have to come to Nintendo Europe's HQ in Germany. So obviously all the UK press go, because it's literally the only chance to play it before release - they would not under any circumstances send out demo cartridges. (On a sidenote, when Rare sent out Goldeneye for review, it was on a toast-slice-sized EEPROM cart. Because they were expensive, there weren't enough to go around all the UK mags. So one of our rivals deliberately held off on sending their cart on to us to try to block our review; it took Rare threatening them with an embargo on any future games before they finally put it in the post.)

Anyway, I was despatched to Germany. Because my company was notoriously cheap, I had to fly out on Saturday (for the event on Monday) to get the lowest-cost flight. When I got to Frankfurt, I waited for someone to collect me and take me to the hotel, as I'd been led to expect.

Nope.

After an hour, it became clear nobody was going to pick me up. Since it was Saturday night, there was nobody at Nintendo (Europe or UK) I could call. So I had to get a taxi. The hotel was in a tiny village, which the driver had never heard of (these were the days before satnavs), and even after she checked a colleague's road atlas, it turned out said village was actually split into two parts a couple of miles apart. The hotel, inevitably, was not in the part we reached first, so she drove around for 20 minutes before finding someone who knew where it was.

Finally, we got there. And the hotel was closed.

I eventually found the owner in a nearby house. Because I was so late arriving, they'd thought I wasn't coming and locked up. Because I was the only person booked in that night - everyone else was arriving on the Sunday - I spent the night as the sole living thing in a huge and empty hotel in the middle of nowhere.

Sunday was fun: everything in Germany closes on that day, apparently even restaurants. All I had to eat all day were bar snacks at a random pub I found by wandering the streets.

Monday finally arrived, and at last Nintendo laid on some transport to take now 20 or so journos to their HQ. Which is a weird place; it's a big tower in an industrial estate in (again) the middle of nowhere. We went in to find a bunch of N64s with EEPROM carts literally padlocked into them. We were given something like six hours to play the game, and that was it. For extra fun, there was only one computer capable of taking screengrabs, and it wasn't made available until the afternoon. Because my cheapskate publishers had booked me on a late afternoon flight, I got first dibs, to the annoyance of the guy from NOM who thought he was going to get priority access to everything. So to get grabs, I had to run Link back through as much of the game as I could as fast as possible. IIRC, someone else then had to hurriedly burn them onto a CD-ROM before I left.

But I had my review. All done, right? Wrong! Because Nintendo had one last surprise for me. Remember how they'd implied they would collect me from the airport, but didn't? They'd also implied that they would pay for the hotel - but didn't! So after a furious phone call from the owner to Nintendo, I had to go back to the hotel to pay the bill on my own credit card (company card? Hahahahaha, nope) and then get to Frankfurt airport in a ludicrously short time to catch the flight. Luckily (?!?), German taxi drivers on the autobahn are insane.

So that was one of my experiences of dealing directly with Nintendo. Meanwhile, the guys on the PlayStation mags were regularly jetted around the world on Sony's dime to see pretty much anything they wanted. Bastards.

you always share really awesome stories, and this is one of them. thanks for taking the time to do so!

im glad to see nintendo finally came back around though because like another poster said they sounded arrogant as hell after the SNES.

# ? Jan 14, 2020 17:22

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

In addition to RPGs, the PS1 also had Gran Turismo, a game which was light years ahead of everything else in the genre. It was insanely detailed for its era, had an insane number of cars, and was the first sucessful attempt at a realistic driving experience on consoles. I consider it one of the first examples of a modern AAA game, in that it took a large team several years and a ton of money to develop, while making back its investment several times over. Now that the people who grew up playing it have a lot of disposable income, the prices of late 90s Japanese sports cars have gone through the roof.

# ? Jan 17, 2020 21:36

SchwarzeKrieg: Apr 15, 2009

Gran Turismo is the direct cause of countless terrible car-related decisions in my life up to and including the MA70 Supra that's currently broken down in my driveway. I played through a decent chunk of the career recently and while I wouldn't necessarily say it holds up to modern racing games, I still had a lot of fun with it. The driving model does some things like weight transfer surprisingly well for its age, although the tire physics and some other things let it down pretty hard. There's a huge amount of charm to it though. I've actually got a dumb 15 minute YouTube rant about how the game holds up that I've been working on for awhile and will probably never finish because :effort:

SchwarzeKrieg fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Jan 17, 2020

# ? Jan 17, 2020 22:48

TheHoosier: Dec 30, 2004; The fuck, Graham?!

PSX RPGs were hard to top. Only the SNES did it better. FF7-9, Chrono Cross, FFT, Breath of Fire 3, etc. If Symphony of the Night counts, then fuckin lay it up there too. Bangers all the way down

# ? Jan 18, 2020 01:18

excellent bird guy: Jan 1, 2020; by Cyrano4747

watching speed runs in the background while engaging in other activities, my god. I wanted to play Final Fantasy Tactics but after what the pros do I don't even want to try. with all the mods and poo poo now that have developed, I'd really like to give Tactics Ogre a run. No seriously watching runners who devastate the game sort of ruins my casual play.

# ? Jan 18, 2020 01:53

njsykora: Jan 23, 2012; Robots confuse squirrels.

Gran Turismo got completely obsoleted by its sequel though, and the N64 wasn't nearly as hard up for racing games (Extreme-G, Mario Kart, F1 World Grand Prix etc) as it was for RPGs. As revolutionary as GT was, you could probably point to the likes of Wipeout being more immediately influential. Then once the floodgates were opened you got Codemasters effectively dick slapping everyone else with Colin McRae Rally, Micro Machines V3 and the TOCA series.

Really my hottest PS1 racing game take is that V-Rally is massively misunderstood since everyone compares it to CMR when really it was way closer to being the PS1 equivalent of Sega Rally, which gave it a much more sustainable niche.

# ? Jan 18, 2020 21:34

Tarkus: Aug 27, 2000

I don't remember what made me buy a PS back in '98 but I bought it with FF8 and 7. I played FF8 first and loved it but FF7 worried me at first because it was initially so ugly compared to 8. That said, I have never played a game as thoroughly as FF7. I got every materia, chocobo and whatever else I could get in the game and probably played it a good 600 hours.

Another classic was Gran Turismo 2. I thought that simulation could never get much better than that and I filled the garage up with all the best cars I could get. I miss the mechanic in car racing whereby you plow full speed into the side of turning cars and leave them behind in your dust. Escudo Pikes Peak 4 Lyfe!!!!11! The Spyro series was loving awesome too, I completed the poo poo out of 2. Getting to dragon shores was such a big thing for me at the time.

I could never get into Resident Evil 2 or Parasite Eve. The clunky movement and asinine puzzles just weren't my thing. Who the gently caress was in charge of the construction of the police HQ in Raccoon City anyways? A loving Mad Man, that's who.

# ? Jan 19, 2020 03:53

Phantasium: Dec 27, 2012

Parasite Eve didn't really play like RE at all though.

At least not until the second one.

# ? Jan 19, 2020 04:24

Scalding Coffee: Jun 26, 2006; You're already dead

Tarkus posted:

I don't remember what made me buy a PS back in '98 but I bought it with FF8 and 7. I played FF8 first and loved it but FF7 worried me at first because it was initially so ugly compared to 8. That said, I have never played a game as thoroughly as FF7. I got every materia, chocobo and whatever else I could get in the game and probably played it a good 600 hours.

Another classic was Gran Turismo 2. I thought that simulation could never get much better than that and I filled the garage up with all the best cars I could get. I miss the mechanic in car racing whereby you plow full speed into the side of turning cars and leave them behind in your dust. Escudo Pikes Peak 4 Lyfe!!!!11! The Spyro series was loving awesome too, I completed the poo poo out of 2. Getting to dragon shores was such a big thing for me at the time.

I could never get into Resident Evil 2 or Parasite Eve. The clunky movement and asinine puzzles just weren't my thing. Who the gently caress was in charge of the construction of the police HQ in Raccoon City anyways? A loving Mad Man, that's who.

The Police HQ was a converted museum.

# ? Jan 19, 2020 05:35

njsykora: Jan 23, 2012; Robots confuse squirrels.

Phantasium posted:

Parasite Eve didn't really play like RE at all though.

At least not until the second one.

This was something of a revelation to me when I first saw footage of Parasite Eve a few months back. I'd always assumed it and Fear Effect were Resi-likes.

# ? Jan 19, 2020 05:47

I said come in!: Jun 22, 2004

Currently playing through Xenogears for the first time, and really enjoying this game a lot. Early last year I played through a bunch of classic PSX games, and now i'm trying to continue that this year. There are so many PS games to play that are classics.

# ? Jan 19, 2020 07:15

Tarkus: Aug 27, 2000

Scalding Coffee posted:

The Police HQ was a converted museum.

Well, I suppose that makes sense. Is that explained in-game or the previous game?

# ? Jan 19, 2020 07:17

hannibal: Jul 27, 2001; [img-planes]

I said come in! posted:

Currently playing through Xenogears for the first time, and really enjoying this game a lot. Early last year I played through a bunch of classic PSX games, and now i'm trying to continue that this year. There are so many PS games to play that are classics.

Early Xenogears is great... it's later on that it starts to become a slog.

# ? Jan 19, 2020 07:49

The Kins: Oct 2, 2004

It's once you hit the second disk of Xenogears that the developers run out of time and/or money and you end up with vast, endless cutscenes of characters sitting in a chair under a spotlight and giving you a Powerpoint presentation on what's happening instead of letting you see or play it.

Final Fantasy was a huge success, but man, some of Square's other PS1 RPGs (Xenogears, both SaGa Frontiers...) suffered from a pretty bad case of the clearly-unfinisheds.

# ? Jan 19, 2020 10:38

Phantasium: Dec 27, 2012

The disc 2 thing is unusual but the amount of time you're in it has been endlessly inflated by the internet over the years, especially considering it is broken up by an occasional dungeon.

# ? Jan 19, 2020 17:32

pmcTRILOGY: Feb 9, 2014; MY BRAND!

The disc 2 Xenogears bit about running out of money is largely correct, although according to Takahashi it was an active decision to avoid an even weirder outcome: just ending at disc 1.

https://kotaku.com/the-real-story-behind-xenogears-unfinished-disc-2-1796151112

# ? Jan 19, 2020 17:33

njsykora: Jan 23, 2012; Robots confuse squirrels.

Tarkus posted:

Well, I suppose that makes sense. Is that explained in-game or the previous game?

It's mentioned in a file somewhere I believe.

# ? Jan 19, 2020 19:25

Scalding Coffee: Jun 26, 2006; You're already dead

pmcTRILOGY posted:

The disc 2 Xenogears bit about running out of money is largely correct, although according to Takahashi it was an active decision to avoid an even weirder outcome: just ending at disc 1.

https://kotaku.com/the-real-story-behind-xenogears-unfinished-disc-2-1796151112

Is it considered executive meddling if you have a short amount of time to make games of any genre? They didn't have the "gotta beat the Christmas rush, finish it now" reason, but two years for RPGs seems limiting.

# ? Jan 19, 2020 20:02

The Kins: Oct 2, 2004

Scalding Coffee posted:

Is it considered executive meddling if you have a short amount of time to make games of any genre? They didn't have the "gotta beat the Christmas rush, finish it now" reason, but two years for RPGs seems limiting.

There was a period of false starts on SNES and N64, but the final PS1 version of Final Fantasy 7 was apparently developed in a little over a year. A very expensive year, due to all the hiring, outsourcing and CGI hardware purchasing going on, but a little over a year regardless. FF8 took two years, IIRC. I suspect that probably informed the thinking.

# ? Jan 20, 2020 10:32

Shadow225: Jan 2, 2007

Looks like the best place to ask.

What are the best Japanese exclusive games that either have English fan translations or are more or less playable with no knowledge of the language?
I don't have the space to store literally every PSX game, but I do want the standouts including non NA releases

# ? Jan 28, 2020 17:22

Randaconda: Jul 3, 2014; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

The Kins posted:

There was a period of false starts on SNES and N64, but the final PS1 version of Final Fantasy 7 was apparently developed in a little over a year. A very expensive year, due to all the hiring, outsourcing and CGI hardware purchasing going on, but a little over a year regardless. FF8 took two years, IIRC. I suspect that probably informed the thinking.

FF7 on the SNES might have been interesting

# ? Jan 28, 2020 17:27

Phantasium: Dec 27, 2012

Randaconda posted:

FF7 on the SNES might have been interesting

from https://www.unseen64.net/2008/04/11/final-fantasy-7-beta/

# ? Jan 28, 2020 17:33

AngryRobotsInc: Aug 2, 2011

Shadow225 posted:

Looks like the best place to ask.

What are the best Japanese exclusive games that either have English fan translations or are more or less playable with no knowledge of the language?
I don't have the space to store literally every PSX game, but I do want the standouts including non NA releases

LSD: Dream Emulator is a pretty interesting, if really obtuse game, and doesn't require any Japanese knowledge. If you like shmups, there's also some of those like DoDonPachi, Parodius, Gradius, and whatnot, though most are arcade ports.

# ? Jan 28, 2020 17:34

Randaconda: Jul 3, 2014; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Phantasium posted:

from https://www.unseen64.net/2008/04/11/final-fantasy-7-beta/

That actually looks good, but imo, 16bit era sprites have aged way better than PS1 3d, so I might be biased.

# ? Jan 28, 2020 17:37

Shadow225: Jan 2, 2007

AngryRobotsInc posted:

LSD: Dream Emulator is a pretty interesting, if really obtuse game, and doesn't require any Japanese knowledge. If you like shmups, there's also some of those like DoDonPachi, Parodius, Gradius, and whatnot, though most are arcade ports.

great answer.

please keep them flowing friends

# ? Jan 28, 2020 17:38

Randaconda: Jul 3, 2014; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Shadow225 posted:

great answer.

please keep them flowing friends

I don't any titles specifically, but I'm pretty sure a couple of good fighting games never made there way over here

# ? Jan 28, 2020 17:42

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# ? Apr 24, 2024 13:36

TheBystander: Apr 28, 2011

Not sure if it's your thing, but the Super Robot Wars series had some good stuff on the Playstation. Alpha Gaiden has an English translation patch, too.

# ? Jan 28, 2020 18:35

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Retro Games > Playstation thread: The Console that changed gaming forever!

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