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What are your three best looking Playstation 1 games ever made?
- Thread starter ReyVGM
- Start date
i'm sorry you took my post so personally (i scrolled through the thread and looked at images without even realizing you had posted both titles in my originating post) but I didn't act like an asshole. You escalated and resorted to name calling.
All the ones I've actually played are posted, and a ton of other good choices, so I'll post Aconcagua here. It isn't especially stylish, but it somehow looks really good for a PlayStation game, maybe because it was a first party game released at the end of the console's lifetime and so had a mastery of the technology.
old thread and hope i don't get a warning for bumping it but I recently modded my PS1 so I'm looking for some gems to play
hope this continues for more pages
hope this continues for more pages
Is this game any good? Seems odd that it didn't get localised when a bunch of the dialogue is already in English.
Also, it's insane how many obscure PS1 games there are that never made it out of Japan. Look up Planet Dob if you want to see the most bizarre of the bizarre.
This is what immediately came to mind.
Some runner ups:
Legend of Mana
Tekken 3
SaGa Frontier 2
2D: Heart of Darkness (due to the sheer quality of the animations)
2D backgrounds with 3D characters: Final Fantasy IX (fantastic CGI backgrounds and poly rich, for PS1 standard, 3D characters)
3D: Vagrant Story (due to a unique cuttlefish color visual design and cinematic presentation that resemble a graphic novel).
2D backgrounds with 3D characters: Final Fantasy IX (fantastic CGI backgrounds and poly rich, for PS1 standard, 3D characters)
3D: Vagrant Story (due to a unique cuttlefish color visual design and cinematic presentation that resemble a graphic novel).
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Vagrant Story and MGS are the stellar looking PS1 games. A lot of games could fill a 3rd place but can't seem to pick one.
Chrono Cross (that art direction)
Vagrant Story for 3D
Symphony of the Night for 2D
EDIT: Oh, I just noticed I chose the same 3 as the user above.
Vagrant Story for 3D
Symphony of the Night for 2D
EDIT: Oh, I just noticed I chose the same 3 as the user above.
MGS1 is a great and obvious choice, the scope and quality of that game on such limited hardware is crazy.
Tekken 3 also looks fantastic, it blew my mind at the time and still looks very playable today.
For the third game, I'd have to go for the Gran Tourismo games. The original GT is what sold me on the PS1.
Tekken 3 also looks fantastic, it blew my mind at the time and still looks very playable today.
For the third game, I'd have to go for the Gran Tourismo games. The original GT is what sold me on the PS1.
GT was possibly the most technically impressive for its time
But, since it was chasing realism its aged quite poorly compared to games that were more stylized imo
The absolute top 3 are Tobal 2, Ridge Racer Type 4 and Vagrant Story.
Thanks to using the PS1's high res mode and using gourad shading instead of textures on the characters it has excellent image quality for the time. Plus it ran at a locked 60fps and has animations that still hold up decently over 20 years later.
Second place goes to Ridge Racer Type 4.
Top tier art design. Great use of colors and lighting for the PS1. R4 also makes use of gourad shading, makes the way light hits the vehicles look more natural than you average PS1 game.
What else can you say about Vagrant Story? This game looks absurd for the system.
VS is basically the peak of texturework and aesthetics for the generation.
Thanks to using the PS1's high res mode and using gourad shading instead of textures on the characters it has excellent image quality for the time. Plus it ran at a locked 60fps and has animations that still hold up decently over 20 years later.
Second place goes to Ridge Racer Type 4.
Top tier art design. Great use of colors and lighting for the PS1. R4 also makes use of gourad shading, makes the way light hits the vehicles look more natural than you average PS1 game.
What else can you say about Vagrant Story? This game looks absurd for the system.
VS is basically the peak of texturework and aesthetics for the generation.
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Seems that way from what I've seen. It's an adventure game where a bunch of the character have unique skills, not super easy to screw up. The story seemed interesting as well.
Yup. Just amazing that this was on PS1.
I want a next gen remake.
I wish I owned a PlayStation back in the day tbh. I didn't even know PlayStation existed back then. Literally had no idea. The first time I knew PlayStation existed was when I went over my friend's house and saw gta San Andreas. There was nothing quite like that game on GameCube and I knew I had to move on from Nintendo. Their games aren't for me and they give me no enjoyment anymore. Idk why, but yeah.
Anyways, seeing this thread makes me wonder how my gaming life would have changed if I bought a PlayStation. I never got resetera levels of serious about gaming until Xbox 360. Thanks for the thread. That's the TLDR: thank you
Anyways, seeing this thread makes me wonder how my gaming life would have changed if I bought a PlayStation. I never got resetera levels of serious about gaming until Xbox 360. Thanks for the thread. That's the TLDR: thank you
I roll my eyes at anyone who says PS1 games are hard to go back to because of how they look. PS1 games are beautiful and the PS1 remains my number 1 favorite system of all time.
*Edit: my picks:
•MGS-wonderful looking game
•Chrono Cross-the colors alone make this beauty shine
•Resident Evil 3-some of the best prerendered backgrounds I've ever seen on the system.
*Edit: my picks:
•MGS-wonderful looking game
•Chrono Cross-the colors alone make this beauty shine
•Resident Evil 3-some of the best prerendered backgrounds I've ever seen on the system.
Threads of Fate is a nice, underrated game with a super pleasant art style:
Legend of Mana, because just look at it:
Megaman Legends (and Tron Bonne) hasn't visually aged a goddamn day:
Legend of Mana, because just look at it:
Megaman Legends (and Tron Bonne) hasn't visually aged a goddamn day:
1) Mega Man Legends (1 or 2, doesn't matter). The best looking 3D game.
The game's art-style just works to perfection, despite the low polygon count, low texture resolution, lack of advanced graphical features (shaders, dynamic shadows etc) and low rendering resolution. Just look how expressive these characters' facial expressions are with all these technical limitations. If you were to make a modern game with this same art style, would you really perceive something that's missing due to technical limitations on PS1? Probably not, and that blows my mind on so many levels.
This pair of god damn gorgeous games holds up today in original form, and looks INCREDIBLE in high resolution. However, just for effect, what follows is the game in its original form, native resolution and all, just to show how freaking good it looks despite that.
2) Final Fantasy VII (most unique visual design that still looks incredible)
Final Fantasy VII does something special with its visual presentation. It mixes high detail, more realistic 3D models for battles, simplified, chibi 3D models for the overworld and drop-dead-gorgeous pre-rendered 2D backgrounds which are a mixture of an underlying 3D model rendered to a 2D image, and then manual editing by artists on top of the rendered result.
Somehow all of these ingredients don't sound like they belong together but oh boy, do they. Final Fantasy VII doesn't just look great. It looks special. It looks unlike anything else, even its own successors. Some would say that its visual presentation is a dated compromise born out of technical limitations. But I'll tell you what it actually is: A work of art, so unique that even in an endless sea of videogames from all eras, Final Fantasy VII's visual presentation stands out as something anyone should experience at least once. The sheer scope, the feeling of grandiosity conveyed by its outstanding background art sets the perfect tone for your adventure every step of the way.
Just look at this design. Jaw-dropping.
3) Street Fighter Alpha 3 (the best looking 2D game)
It's bright. It's colorful. It's gorgeously animated. The art style fits it to a T and it's a tragedy that the series has not revisited it. I know this is technically not a made-for-ps1 game. It's not even the best version of the game. But it's on the system and looks damn good in it too.
One of my favorite parts of this game's visual presentation is how each frame of animation conveys fluidity, motion, momentum, weight and impact. For a fighting game, I could feel all the dynamism and the force behind each strike. My favorite Street Fighter game to date, even in terms of gameplay, but the visuals are a crucial component in how this game's overall package actually feels when you play it.
The game's art-style just works to perfection, despite the low polygon count, low texture resolution, lack of advanced graphical features (shaders, dynamic shadows etc) and low rendering resolution. Just look how expressive these characters' facial expressions are with all these technical limitations. If you were to make a modern game with this same art style, would you really perceive something that's missing due to technical limitations on PS1? Probably not, and that blows my mind on so many levels.
This pair of god damn gorgeous games holds up today in original form, and looks INCREDIBLE in high resolution. However, just for effect, what follows is the game in its original form, native resolution and all, just to show how freaking good it looks despite that.
2) Final Fantasy VII (most unique visual design that still looks incredible)
Final Fantasy VII does something special with its visual presentation. It mixes high detail, more realistic 3D models for battles, simplified, chibi 3D models for the overworld and drop-dead-gorgeous pre-rendered 2D backgrounds which are a mixture of an underlying 3D model rendered to a 2D image, and then manual editing by artists on top of the rendered result.
Somehow all of these ingredients don't sound like they belong together but oh boy, do they. Final Fantasy VII doesn't just look great. It looks special. It looks unlike anything else, even its own successors. Some would say that its visual presentation is a dated compromise born out of technical limitations. But I'll tell you what it actually is: A work of art, so unique that even in an endless sea of videogames from all eras, Final Fantasy VII's visual presentation stands out as something anyone should experience at least once. The sheer scope, the feeling of grandiosity conveyed by its outstanding background art sets the perfect tone for your adventure every step of the way.
Just look at this design. Jaw-dropping.
3) Street Fighter Alpha 3 (the best looking 2D game)
It's bright. It's colorful. It's gorgeously animated. The art style fits it to a T and it's a tragedy that the series has not revisited it. I know this is technically not a made-for-ps1 game. It's not even the best version of the game. But it's on the system and looks damn good in it too.
One of my favorite parts of this game's visual presentation is how each frame of animation conveys fluidity, motion, momentum, weight and impact. For a fighting game, I could feel all the dynamism and the force behind each strike. My favorite Street Fighter game to date, even in terms of gameplay, but the visuals are a crucial component in how this game's overall package actually feels when you play it.
R-Type Delta deserves more love. The game is gorgeous and has the best soundtrack in the entire franchise.
Racing Lagoon looks incredible. Shame I had no idea what was going on.
Metal Gear Solid. The first time I felt like I was playing something more than a game.
Tenchu and Tenchu 2, loved the aesthetic of these.
Metal Gear Solid. The first time I felt like I was playing something more than a game.
Tenchu and Tenchu 2, loved the aesthetic of these.
That BoF4 footage is very inspiring. I wish I could make characters and background blend AND stand out like that. The colour choices seem to be key. , Everything us covered in this warm/cream hue but they all feature very colorful designs so, the end result is really subtle.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.
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.
I wish we got more games aiming for this style and Legend of Mana's nowadays, because as you said whenever they go for 3D + sprites nowadays it's pretty easy to tell what is what in most cases.
MGS
FF8 (9 performed like dogshit and 8 was more impressive at the time imo)
Wipeout 3 / Ape Escape
Shoutouts to Vagrant Story, Tekken 3 and Valkyrie Profile. Can't agree with Chrono Cross, it was a fuzzy, smeary mess on the original hardware. Looks amazing up-resed though.
FF8 (9 performed like dogshit and 8 was more impressive at the time imo)
Wipeout 3 / Ape Escape
Shoutouts to Vagrant Story, Tekken 3 and Valkyrie Profile. Can't agree with Chrono Cross, it was a fuzzy, smeary mess on the original hardware. Looks amazing up-resed though.
2D games are cheating imo so I'll pick just 3D games
Sheep Raider looked like a Looney Tunes short come to life with it's bright colors and amazing effects
Crash Bandicoot 3 was hyper-detailed for an early 3D game that was brimming with details and the lightning was amazing as well.
and MGS since it made decently good looking realistic models
Sheep Raider looked like a Looney Tunes short come to life with it's bright colors and amazing effects
Crash Bandicoot 3 was hyper-detailed for an early 3D game that was brimming with details and the lightning was amazing as well.
and MGS since it made decently good looking realistic models
This game looks incredible on a PSP screen!
R-Type Delta deserves more love. The game is gorgeous and has the best soundtrack in the entire franchise.
My three candidates: Vagrant Story, Tekken 3, Omega Boost (and that soundtrack! )