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DF Retro: Sony PlayStation Revisited - Every Launch Game Tested - Part 3: Europe
- Thread starter Equanimity
- Start date
SCEA was particularly against having 2D games on their 3D system. They relaxed their weird standards later but we missed out on a lot of good stuff in NA because of it.
Must have been part of the contract until Sony changed them to Studio Liverpool.
It's actually pretty wild how well PlayStation succeeded in spite of some pretty poor leadership in the States. They seriously benefited from being handed the right hardware from SCEJ and Sega of America just dropping the ball as hard as possible with the Saturn. (And I love the Saturn.)
I mean, if you talk to indies or most Japanese devs it's not like much changed. Except now it's as if SCEA's in charge of everyone.
There's a part of my brain that's all "I loved 3D Lemmings!" but that has to be the strongest rose tinted glasses in history because man that definitely does not look okay to play at all lmao
Rapid Reload was definitely the highlight for them and I really wish we could have gotten it here too. I remember seeing it in magazines and expecting it ANY DAY NOW and....nope. Didn't get to play it until it came out as a PS1 Classic on PSP/PS3.
I think Jumping Flash is still my favorite PS1 launch title overall though. I still play through it and 2 pretty regularly.
Rapid Reload was definitely the highlight for them and I really wish we could have gotten it here too. I remember seeing it in magazines and expecting it ANY DAY NOW and....nope. Didn't get to play it until it came out as a PS1 Classic on PSP/PS3.
I think Jumping Flash is still my favorite PS1 launch title overall though. I still play through it and 2 pretty regularly.
Even though they were organizationally under SCE, Psygnosis were still functionally independent. That didn't change until the first big SCE reorg in the early 2000s, where Sony shut down their publishing arm and all their dev teams and studios except the Wipeout/F1 team in Liverpool.
It was sort of similar for SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) until SCE gutted them in the late 2000s. SOE actually had to go through 3rd party cert and pay licensing fees on their PS2, PSP and PS3 games.
Yeah the look at that game was interesting. As soon as it came on I was like, is the main character Rudy from Wild Arms?
I'm in NA but I was able to rent Gunner's Heaven from a local store that had imports and run it using the disc swap trick. I remember hoping it would be the next Gunstar Heroes and being let down. I should try it again to see if I like it more now.
Truly. All of those Konami compilations (Gradius, Salamander, Parodius) and 2D Games (Gradius Gaiden, the 2D Goemon) would have been great US releases but...
i played it much later (2001 or so?) and felt it was a pretty neat novelty for an early PS1 game, but doesn't really compare favorably to many of the run n gun classics.
it was the main reason I wanted a PS1 at launch. got the system with only tekken-- no memory card and NO jumping flash for Christmas 1995. i barely played Tekken because i also got VF2 the same christmas lol
Loved this, brought me back through memory lane. Would love a Saturn or Dreamcast equivalent of these episodes one day.
I didn't get a PS1 until a year after it came out I believe, but I played Jumping Flash! not too long after receiving one as a Christmas gift and it blew my mind. It was just utterly mesmerising and unlike anything I had played before. A fully 3D first-person platformer with popping colours, a boppin' soundtrack and a surreal sense of humour. I still love it and its sequel to this day. I think the guy who talked about it kinda undersold it a bit to be honest (especially when he had a lot of positive things to say about Battle Arena Toshinden and Street Fighter: The Movie: The Video Game... wtf!) and would've really liked to have heard John's thoughts on it instead. Oh well.
It's nice to get a couple of really good quality, side-by-side comparisons of PAL vs NTSC versions of games. It doesn't tend to come up much any more since the days of PAL conversions are thankfully long since dead, but actually having to explain the issues of poor PAL conversion to someone unfamiliar with them tended to be a little tricky since there were very few good quality side-by-side videos, and the ones that existed tended to focus on the obvious ones (Sonic, FFX).
I wonder if it'd be worth their while doing a dedicated DF Retro on particularly good and particularly terrible PAL conversions. It's probably a bit of an under-comprehended part of industry history.
That behaviour continued well into the PS2's lifetime - I remember that there were lots of weird (usually quite niche) games that got PAL releases despite never being released in NA. Sony in Europe really benefited from being the newest entrant in a market where Sega and Nintendo had just had their licensing model squished by the EU, allowing them to collect third party support that otherwise might not have happened.
I wonder if it'd be worth their while doing a dedicated DF Retro on particularly good and particularly terrible PAL conversions. It's probably a bit of an under-comprehended part of industry history.
It was especially weird because there were some totally 2D games available at the launch of the PlayStation in North America (like Rayman and The Raiden Project as well as Street Fighter: The Movie). Definitely some strange double standards at work there.
That behaviour continued well into the PS2's lifetime - I remember that there were lots of weird (usually quite niche) games that got PAL releases despite never being released in NA. Sony in Europe really benefited from being the newest entrant in a market where Sega and Nintendo had just had their licensing model squished by the EU, allowing them to collect third party support that otherwise might not have happened.
Looking back, I think Sony and Namco got quite lucky that the Tekken/Virtua Fighter comparisons played out the way that they did, with Saturn getting an initially underwhelming version of the original Virtua Fighter and then having publications tend to compare Tekken on PlayStation to that game as much as to VF2. I'm a pretty big Tekken series fan but the first game was rough in and really struggles in any comparison with VF2.
Same! I watched all ~3 hours of this and could easily watch so much more. I'd also love a deeper dive into the first year of notable PS1 games (as well as their much-improved sequels) as I have so much nostalgia for those early 3D games.
SEGA should have stuck to the fall release for the US Saturn and released VF Remix as the pack-in-- things would have been a lot better for the system launch.
It would have been better but I think it still would have been an uphill battle with the launch price, and the advertising not being as good as on Genesis.