What are your three best looking Playstation 1 games ever made?

[ReyVGM]

Note: Don't fill the threads with lists, otherwise the thread will be locked. Explain in a sentence or two why your picks are the best looking PS1 games.

What do you consider to be the 3 best looking Playstation 1 games ever made?

It doesn't necessarily have to be the game with the most graphical polygon pushing power. It can be a game that has a particular graphic style that is really unique or appealing, or it could have a graphical effect that elevates the game above all the others. Please stick with games that still look good today.


My three games are:

Metal Gear Solid
I don't know what it is, but to me this game still looks good over most PS1 games. I don't know if it's because everything has a blue or green tint all the time, or the sharp polygon models, but to me it still looks pretty and appealing.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
While the backgrounds are nothing special nowadays, the sprite work is still amazing today. Everything looks so sharp and detailed. This is a game that still looks appealing today.

Tekken 3
I'm not much of a fighting game guy, but this game still looks great for a PS1 game. Everything looks sharp with great polygonal models.

 

[Deleted member 58141]

It's Final Fantasy IX.

 

[sir_crocodile]

3D - Soul Reaver. Disc streaming made this a marvel at the time.
2D - Street Fighter Alpha 3. Beautiful chunky sprites.

 

[Hayeya]

Tekken 3
Metal gear solid
Chrono cross

 

[Apal_ytos]

I agree with MGS and Tekken 3, but I would add Wipeout 3 and Crash 3.
I still remember how amazed I was when I first played them, and how much better they looked compared to their predecessors.

 

[KalBalboa]

It's a hard list to whittle down. Between art style and technical achievement, the PS1 was crazy diverse. Consider this post of mine a placeholder.

Ridge Racer 4, Spyro the Dragon, Silent Hill, Metal Gear Solid, & Tekken 3 for pure technical achievements.

I'll edit this post later with my real 3.

 

[SNRUB]

The Crash Bandicoot trilogy holds up very well in the visuals department.

If you were to smooth things out like the polygons and textures, they can probably pass off as early PS2 launch titles on the level of Jak 1.

 

[liquidtmd]

Artistic direction goes a long way obviously

Final Fantasy VIII was gorgeous to me, despite me much preferring VII's story

Metal Gear Solid - graphically still cuts above Twin Snakes for me which is so weird due to the obvious improvements

Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver. Sure it was somewhat barren but graphically and the art it 'really' sold that world fantastically well

 

[Danielsan]

Soul Reaver
Metal Gear Solid
Tekken 3

Soul Reaver blew me the fuck away. It helps that it's a phenomenal game too.

 

[Danielsff]

Vagrant Story
Metal Gear Solid
Chrono Cross

 

[Lirion]

It's Final Fantasy IX, MGS and Tekken 3.

 

[Replicant]

I disagree on MGS and Tekken.

I personally think Soul Blade is the better looking fighter, even with half the frame rate. It makes up for it with much better backgrounds.

 

[Mr.Deadshot]

Metal Gear Solid and Vagrant Story are the best.
I can't really pick a third one. Gran Turismo 2? Omega Boost? Something like that.

 

[SuperFinal]

2D - Street Fighter Alpha 3. Beautiful chunky sprites.

Click to shrink...

Here's an interesting bit of triva for you. Street Fighter Alpha 3 overcame the PSX's 2D rendering shortcomings by rendering the characters as textured polygons. That's why it was able to load much faster than previous iterations. Not sure whether that technically makes the game 3D though...

Oh, and my favourites.
Wip3out
Ape Escape
Metal Gear Solid

 

[Acquiescence]

Fear Effect with its unique MotionFX tech still stands out to this day. Obviously it has aged along with every other PS1 game, but those backgrounds can still impress in their own way.

The other two I'd probably go with are Spyro the Dragon and Chrono Cross or FFIX.

 

[N64Controller]

Chrono Cross
FFIX
MGS

 

[ciddative]

Gonna avoid the mainstays. Vagrant Story impressed me when it came out, for it's cinematic effects such as Depth of Field and actual facial expressions and emoting which I'd never seen. Omega Boost, a polyphony shooter was crazy for the amount of stuff exploding and debris and particles on screen and still a good frame rate. Tobal #2 was the sharpest game I'd ever seen on PS1, including Tekken 3. It was 60 FPS and used the PS1's high resolution mode for 480p. It looked better than a lot of DC/PS2 games years later

 

[erekiddo]

Vagrant Story. Ahead of its time.

 

[cowbanana]

Nice picks, OP. Those are definitely good choices.

I'm partial to the Wipeout series myself. I just love the overall visual design in those games.

 

[Opa-Opa]

It's a 2D game for sure. I refused to think any of those 3D games looked good even at the time.

But that does not exclude games "with 3D", so I vote Final Fantasy IX, Chrono Cross or Castlevania.

 

[ReyVGM]

Metal Gear Solid - graphically still cuts above Twin Snakes for me which is so weird due to the obvious improvements

Click to shrink...

Yeah, even though the GC version looks miles better, there's something about the pixelated PS1 graphics that make the original "look better" for me and I didn't even play the original until AFTER playing Twin Snakes.

 

[Deleted member 679]

Vagrant Story for its stunning art direction, character design and impressive to this day cutscene direction.

Symphony of the Night has some of the prettiest sprite work I've ever seen, and beautiful animations.

Tekken 3 would be my third pick, but mostly to close at 3, only the two above still look amazing to me today, without even considering the hardware.

 

[MegaSackman]

Legend of Mana
Final Fantasy IX
Vagrant Story

Squaresoft fest for me.

 

[ReyVGM]

Chrono Cross
FFIX
MGS

Click to shrink...

Legend of Mana
Final Fantasy IX
Vagrant Story

Squaresoft fest for me.

Click to shrink...

People don't really read the OP, do they...

 

[sir_crocodile]

Here's an interesting bit of triva for you. Street Fighter Alpha 3 overcame the PSX's 2D rendering shortcomings by rendering the characters as textured polygons. That's why it was able to load much faster than previous iterations. Not sure whether that technically makes the game 3D though...

Oh, and my favourites.
Wip3out
Ape Escape
Metal Gear Solid

Click to shrink...

Man, I never noticed! Maybe because of the low res? Makes me want to dig out my copy and try it on an emulator and see if I can tell.

 

[EarthPainting]

Legend of Mana is still the prettiest game I've played, and that was on the Playstation 1. It uses hand-painted backgrounds in Koji Tsuda's signature style. If you've ever seen his work, you'll probably be able to recognise it. A mixture of saturated and earthy tones, shapes being rounded off giving it a cool sense of volume. It's all very pleasant looking It's a perfect fit to illustrate what wasn't possible when you aren't using tile-based pixel art backgrounds. Also really like the aesthetic of Saga Frontier 2, and Breath of Fire 4. They would be my top 3.

Final Fantasy 9 and Chrono Cross aged a bit less gracefully, using 3D models for its characters, but as far as PS1 3D goes, those games look fantastic. They do have the benefit of using pre-rendered backgrounds however. As for full 3D games, Mega Man Legends and Vagrant Story are my faves. Mega Man Legends especially stood out to me with its clean pixel-art textures, making it the most expressive looking game on the system.

 

[TheDarkKnight]

Tekken 3 - The most technical impressive 3d game on the system.
Metal Gear Solid - The Simplified clean design ages well but it's actually the camera work that sets it apart from the rest
Final Fantasy 9 - War, full of life, a fav of mine in the looks department

 

[Kyussons]

Little Ralph is up there for 2D graphics, those sprites <3

 

[ReyVGM]

Legend of Mana is still the prettiest game I've played, and that was on the Playstation 1. Also really like the aesthetic of Saga Frontier 2, and Breath of Fire 4. They would be my top 3.

Final Fantasy 9 and Chrono Cross aged a bit less gracefully, using 3D models for its characters, but as far as PS1 3D goes, those games look fantastic. As for full 3D games, Mega Man Legends and Vagrant Story are my faves.

Click to shrink...

Oh crap, I forgot about Legend of Mana and Saga Frontier 2. I would have definitely added one of them to the OP!

 

[Video Games Are Dumb]

Gotta be Omega Boost. Also, more people should play Omega Boost

 

[Karlinel]

Easy list!
- Wip3out Special Edition: fast, no popping, smooth effects, 60fps mode, variety of models. To be fair, first time I played I thought the PS2 wouldn't be able to really improve this.
- Vagrant Story: Incredible art design, proper cinematography, subdued spectacle at its best.
- Tekken 3: I mean, come on!

 

[Kirabochips]

Metal Gear Solid : What more can I say ?

Vagrant Story : Best use of complex pixel-art on low-poly models. Gorgeous.

SaGa Frontier 2 : Amazing artwork and backgrounds.

 

[Macca]

Spyro: Year of the Dragon has to be in the conversation.

 

[Cactuar]

Xenogears. Pixelated, yes, but I love it. Doesn't hurt that it's my second favorite PS1 game after Final Fantasy VII as well.

 

[lazygecko]

Breath of Fire 4 to date remains the most seamless marriage of 2D visuals in a 3D environment. It's really hard to find screenshots to do it justice since the internet is littered with emulation shots/footage using filtering or higher than 240p rendering which instantly breaks that precarious balance in fidelity between the two elements.

It came out at the right time for the right system, because I think that modern attempts like Octopath Traveler don't come nearly as close to capturing that sense of consistency where you can barely even tell where the 3D ends and 2D begins.

Yeah, even though the GC version looks miles better, there's something about the pixelated PS1 graphics that make the original "look better" for me and I didn't even play the original until AFTER playing Twin Snakes.

Click to shrink...

It's probably down to toeing the line between 3D and pixel art aesthetics as many of the best looking games pre-texture filtering did. Twin Snakes goes for a more typical early to mid 2000s 3D look. The texture work in games like MGS1 are deliberately designed to leverage the lack of texture filtering to convey more fine details just using the raw pixel lines. I think it also plays very nicely with the PS1 dithering pass. After filtering became standardized, 3D visuals overall just started getting more blurry and muddy overall as we then only had polygon geometry to convey sharpness. Barring a few exceptions I think it was only really with the advent of 2K-4K texture fidelity we started to overcome this.

I had a similar revelation about Jedi Knight on PC. Released in 1997 and was one of the first games I experienced with hardware acceleration to filter the textures. Thought it looked amazing at the time, but now in retrospect I think it looks much more interesting without it. Texture filtering just blurs out all those deliberate pixel lines in the artwork.

 

[Triggerhappytel]

Vagrant Story is probably the best overall. The character models and animations were really excellent for their time.

After that it's a free-for-all between Final Fantasy IX, Spyro 3, Crash Bandicoot 3, Crash Team Racing, Metal Gear Solid, Gran Turismo (I always thought GT1 looked better than its sequel), Ridge Racer Type 4, Tekken 3, Omega Boost and maybe Speed Freaks.

 

[No Depth]

Vagrant Story
Breath of Fire IV

Last one is a tough call, can't quite decide.

 

[Boy]

2d wise it would be rayman

3d wise

Metal gear solid

3d with pre-rendered backgrounds

Final fantasy 8 / resident evil 3

 

[Roto64]

Gran Turismo 2
Metal Gear Solid
Ridge Racer Type 4

 

[Alex Connolly]

There are obvious graphical powerhouse titles, but here is my personal underdog pick.

Warpath: Jurassic Park
An unsung visual gem, with detailed Dino models that feature some early cosmetic local area damage decaling.

 

[Hayama Akito]

2D on PlayStation is definitely a better experience, especially those days.

Adventures of Lomax is still awesome to my eyes. It was super cheap until three years ago, now is expensive as fuck... the japanese version is still somewhat payable.

SaGa Frontier 2 is not really a super essential RPG on the console but holy shit... I still can't believe it was released on PS1.

Harmful Park is still great for its oldschool dotart work... and also is super expensive too (my copy cost less than 100 seven years ago, lucky!).

 

[Deleted member 721]

Best 3d looking game
1) Megaman Legends (1 and 2)

Its a game that still looks great today and its a full 3d ps1 game thats very rare. If you play in high res in an emulator it looks amazing.


2) Legend of mana

Hand drawn gorgeous backgrounds, its the most beautiful 2d ps1 game, like everyone said before me.

3. Chrono Cross

Chrono cross is a very beautiful game, the only problem is the resolution, and AI upscalers show how beautiful this game is, i dream of a ps1 emulator with support for mods HD textures, backgrounds etc.

 

[finfinfin]

Yeah, even though the GC version looks miles better, there's something about the pixelated PS1 graphics that make the original "look better" for me and I didn't even play the original until AFTER playing Twin Snakes.

Click to shrink...

The PS1's weird 3D texture warping makes some games feel just perfect. I'm mostly thinking of King's Field and Shadow Tower, for that fever dream combination of wobbly pixels and agonisingly slow turning and some of the monsters and audio apparently coming straight out of a nightmare.

Best looking games on the system, no, but still.

 

[Dogui]

Legend of Mana is still the prettiest game I've played, and that was on the Playstation 1. Also really like the aesthetic of Saga Frontier 2, and Breath of Fire 4. They would be my top 3.

Final Fantasy 9 and Chrono Cross aged a bit less gracefully, using 3D models for its characters, but as far as PS1 3D goes, those games look fantastic. They do have the benefit of using pre-rendered backgrounds however. As for full 3D games, Mega Man Legends and Vagrant Story are my faves. Mega Man Legends especially stood out to me with its clean pixel-art textures, making it the most expressive looking game on the system.

Click to shrink...

My top 3 as well, no contest there.

LoM is still my favorite audiovisual experience even today. Most beautiful game with the most beautiful music.

 

[MarcelRguez]

If I had to just pick 3 that haven't been mentioned, I'd choose:

Resident Evil 3: The pre-rendered backgrounds add a ton of detail to the environments, and they make Raccoon City to come alive (hah) in a very particular way. Even the most mundane locations (like the warehouse right at the beginning) are insanely detailed.

Rayman: You can't beat the art direction and spritework quality of the original Rayman. For my money, it's easily one of the best looking games ever.

Darkstalkers 3/Vampire Savior EX: The even more colorful, more outlandish cousing of Alpha 3. It just oozes personality.

Edit: damn, Rayman was mentioned. Fuck it, I'll say Policenauts. If that's considered cheating, then swap it with Dr. Slump. I never played that one, but it looks really good, shares a similar artstyle with Mega Man Legends.

 

[N64Controller]

People don't really read the OP, do they...

Click to shrink...

I'll take the L. However, if you're going to point out specific people for things like this, quote everyone who did it. Or else don't quote at all.

After reading OP, here are short reasons why these N64 PS1 games are the console's best looking ones :

Chrono Cross
Still looks great to this day. Anyone with eyes can see that. Has gorgeous bright colors, and some of the best looking environments era for era in the history of video games. Also has pretty good looking characters for the time. Not thinking it aged well is the wrong opinion.

FFIX
A lot of FFIX's charm comes from its art style, but just looking at it with the new HD ports just tells you a lot about how good looking it was for the time. Like Chrono Cross, it was carried a lot by the quality of the environments. It was varied, colorful and beautiful.

MGS
Such a good looking game for the time. It didn't have the environment variety of my previous two choices, but it was still really cool sytllistically (not even sure if that's a word) because of awesome character design and the whole base feeling good. Looking back at it now, it doesn't look that good obviously. But at the time, it was one of the most impressive games visually.

 

[NovumVeritas]

Easy list!
- Wip3out Special Edition: fast, no popping, smooth effects, 60fps mode, variety of models. To be fair, first time I played I thought the PS2 wouldn't be able to really improve this.
- Vagrant Story: Incredible art design, proper cinematography, subdued spectacle at its best.
- Tekken 3: I mean, come on!

Click to shrink...

I am curious, are you sure there was an 60 fps mode in WP3 SE? It only came out as PAL version.

 

[Dreamboum]

It's Vagrant Story first and foremost. It's the team behind FF Tactics that made one of the most good looking game on the PS1, if not the best. It's literally a team of 2D pixel artists that went on making a gorgeous 3D game. They painstakingly went over all the textures pixel by pixel, inserted vertex colours in order to give the impression of an intricate lighting system.

The characters in this game has three times LESS polygons than characters in FF8 and FF9, and they still look considerably better.

Then Chrono Cross, the artistry behind that game is unmatched. This game is a painting at avery step. Then Legend of Mana, which is the sam ething as Cross, but with a different art style.

 

[Rogue Agent]

For me it's MGS, FFIX and Ridge Racer Type 4.

 

[BerserkHobo82]

I think FFIX the whimsical nature blended with 3d graphics were astounding IMO.
Silent Hill just for the lighting is a highlight for me.
Metal Gear solid is always a good entry.
I decided on 3D games as I thought the Saturn was a much better 2D powerhouse