PSX GAME RECOMMENDATIONS |

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The original PlayStation was my first console, and I've got a big soft spot for it. Here's a bunch of games for it I've tried out over the years, either ones I've known for a long time or ones I just found, all of which I think are worth sharing with you.

[#] Doom (Williams, , 1995)

Definitely the technical best of its kind, but the most playable?

Doom is perhaps the single most overrated shooter in existence, but it's hard to deny its simplicity and intuitiveness. If you're somehow not aware, Doom has you controlling a space marine as he blasts his way through an overrun base on Mars. Doom is fun no matter how you play it, and compared to the ports for the Saturn, Jaguar, and 32x, this one runs full-screen and at full speed, making it perhaps the go-to console port of its day. That said, the improvements it tries to make over the PC original can be hit and miss.

Adapting keyboard controls to a gamepad works pretty well, though even with the ability to remap, you're still stuck turning with the D-pad as opposed to strafing. You get used to it, but all the turning and pushing forward makes quick work of your thumb. There's no selectable episodes, nor intermission text; you just play straight through all 30 levels, and without a save function (early PS1 games did not use the memory card well), you have to note down the end stage password wherever you wanna stop. That's a little dumb.

For those improvements, PS1 Doom features colored lighting and a new ambient soundtrack and sound effects. The sound effects are definitely my favorite: the new shotgun sound is so meaty, it alone made me use it the entire run. The colored lights, meanwhile, range from fittingly menacing to garishly dark. I think the dark blue bits are supposed to make you feel tense and in danger, but mostly, they just suck to look at. It might be weird on the eyes and hard on the thumb, but PS1 Doom is still a damn good time and addition to any PlayStation collection.

Recommended for... demon hunters with iron thumbs.

[#] Gran Turismo 2 (Sony, , 1999)

It's a classic for a reason!

I know what I said about the famous games here--I love Gran Turismo 2, and we're talking about it. This is a game that has captured me for five months on and off, beckoning me to the bedroom to finish it off (my save, of course), the perfect balance between in-depth car tuning just before it gets boring and arcade excitement just before it gets goofy. Throw in some 25 absolutely iconic courses, a killer soundtrack featuring The Cardigans, Garbage, Soul Coughing, and Stone Temple Pilots, and oh yeah--almost 650 cars from over 50 manufacturers--and this is the premier PS1 racer. Does it hold up? My God yes.

What strikes me about the heart of the GT2 simulation is how varied all the cars feel. Everything from drivetrain to car weight to tire softness to gear transmission ratios to turbo kits (the cheap and fun way to cake a race!) noticeably affect how your car handles. The courses requires you to practice, appealing to drive but each with their tricky spots, and when you do get good at navigating one, satisfying doesn't begin to cover it. (Of course, the lack of damage modeling means you can drive like an idiot, crash, and use other cars as bumpers, but this game would suck if I had to worry about totaling my car or dying mid-race, so that's a good thing.)

Gran Turismo 2 was legendarily rushed in development, and there are complaints I could raise with it (like how impenetrable it is in its early game unless you use a setup to get a nice car quickly), but it really doesn't detract from how enveloping yet approachable the experience is. Once you start unlocking cars and getting into the weeds of all the manufacturer races and rallies (and less pleasingly, two hour real-time endurance races), GT2 becomes less of a racing game and more a big car collecting playground you'll never quite find the other side of.

Recommended for... anyone wanting to drive like an idiot in a souped-up Daihatsu Midget.

[#] Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (EA Games, , 2002)

Pretty damn good late-arriving castle-em-up.

The first Harry Potter game on PS1 left a lot to be desired with its wonky controls, limited exploration, and linearity. The PS1 was still marginally relevant in 2002, so Argonaut were contracted to produce its follow-up using the same engine. That's the bad news. The models and gameplay are reused wholesale where applicable, and Harry still handles like he's on ice a lot of the time. The good news? There's a lot more to see here, with a much bigger castle of secrets and a wider breadth of minigames.

While the first one had a few minigames, this one expands the lot with gnome-throwing, flying car racing, first-person shooting galleries, and my personal favorite, wizard duels. These play like real-time Pokémon battles, Harry and another wizard casting spells at one another, trying to coax the other into shooting charmed objects to gain special jinxes. It's highly satisfying. I wish they gave us a duel gauntlet to play through instead of the Quidditch League, because these are over far too soon.

Aside from the rather irritatingly difficult slide segments, Argonaut mercifully built the environments to better suit the controls this time around, so you'll breeze through without much frustration. I'm especially glad they actually let us replay earlier parts of the game, something Sorcerer's Stone did not let you do, astoundingly. Secrets isn't perfect, but it's a pretty damn fun romp through a kids book and I think it's worth a reappraisal. Potter fans especially take notice.

Recommended for... Potter fans who want a good Ocarina-like.

[#] Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (EA Games, , 2001)

Lighter than an hourglass under Wingardium Leviosa.

The early Harry Potter games have always made me quite curious. Each platform was contracted out to a different team and run on very different game engines--and yet they share a lot besides that. Pottermania's splashes on the PS1, courtesy of Croc developers Argonaut Games, are usually derided these days based on their oatmeal character models, but I think that's a bit undeserved. I grew up with these games, and they're, if nothing else and if you'll excuse the pun, charming.

Through the game, you'll run along to classes (Charms, Potions, and Defense Against the Dark Arts are featured with Simon sequences for learning each's spell), be the school's favorite Quidditch seeker, and wander about under an Invisibility Cloak in some clunky stealth stages. The school's atmosphere is really good, with lots of flickering lights, floating junk, and secret passages to some fun minigames. I just wish it was used to its fullest potential.

In fact, that's kind of the issue with Sorcerer's Stone. It's very inconsequential. It doesn't control terribly great (though nothing a kid couldn't get on with), castle exploration is pretty shallow amounting to nothing more than a few extra rooms, and Quidditch matches amount to the same "fly through the rings" sequence every time. I'd really recommend the sequel over this one. This isn't bad, but there's also not a lot you can't get from watching someone else play it.

Recommended for... those nostalgic for it, like me.

[#] Monsters, Inc. Scream Team (Disney-Pixar, , 2001)

Quick and lightweight Pixar platformer with lovely levels.

While hardly a commonly-remembered PS1 favorite, Monsters, Inc. Scream Team is a fond one from my childhood. It's a 3D platformer to tie into the Pixar-y misadventures of our favorite fluffy blue bear (not much of a monster, is it?) and a spindly walking green eyeball (that's more like it), complete with fairly decent quality clips from the movie! It's about as you'd expect, and you can 100% it in an afternoon, but it looks and sounds nice and I enjoyed my time revisiting it.

The premise is Sulley and Mike (you can choose to play as either) are tasked to traverse twelve training courses full of homicidal toys in search of eight "nerves". Nerves are robot child substitutes who bounce around, skip rope, and build snowmen, and your goal, naturally, is to reduce them to shivering wrecks (and subsequently piles of metallic rubble!). The courses are divided into urban, desert, and arctic-themed stages you gain access to as you scare the requisite numbers of nerves.

This game is lovely looking for the PS1. Colorful, imaginative locales, clean, noise-free texturework, and the arctic stages even have motion blur on the falling snow. The platforming's good, though Mike sucks to control, so play as Sulley if you like enjoying yourself. You got collectables, button puzzles, trampolines, speed boost arrows, and annoying-but-infrequent slide segments. There's nothing here you can't get from watching a playthrough online, but I've got a soft spot for it.

Recommended for... Disney fans (and I'm not encouraging them).

[#] NFL Blitz (Midway, , 1997)

Uncalled for, but a LOT of fun to watch.

Despite being raised in a Madden household, my affection for the games begins and ends with the early 2000s entries. I think it was accidental I liked any of them, as they're a bit slow and technical for my taste (but so is the real game). Thankfully, EA didn't yet have exclusivity over the league, so there was no shortage of much speedier, more gratuitous competition--chief among them NBA Jam's sister series NFL Blitz. And y'know what, playing it now? I think I missed out!

NFL Blitz was originally an arcade game, and it shows in the quick matches, simple control scheme (you pick receivers with the D-pad), reduced player count, no run plays (quarterbacks can still run the ball), and automated kickoffs and punts. The hits are nasty, and you have the ability to toss around and leg drop fallen players on the other team after the play is over. The NFL was not happy about all the violence back in the day, but really, isn't that why people watch real football?

This port looks about standard for 3D PS1 football games, but it's super slick to play. The Season mode is about my only real gripe--you get a few games in, and the game RNGs cheap fumbles and interceptions into existence constantly, cheating you out of easy wins. But then that ridiculous TV commentator pipes up ("that was uncalled for, but a lot of fun to watch!") and I have a giggle and all is well. Seriously, Blitz entertains and satisfies like few other PlayStation football games do.

Recommended for... sports fans, arcade fans, meatheads, insane people...

[#] Rage Racer (Namco, , 1997)

Max speed on the mediterranean.

Here's two things you should know about me: I like racing games and I suck at racing games. The first Ridge Racer is a PlayStation racing classic (how could it not be? It was the pack-in title for the whole system), but it's never been my favorite thanks to the bonkers, slip-and-slide car handling. Rage Racer, on the other hand, the third in the series, may just be my favorite racer on the entire system--I might even like it more than Gran Turismo 2.

Rage doesn't support the analog sticks, but it controls great, with tight turning and a really satisfying weight to the cars. There's still power sliding, but it feels more like a punishment and you'd best avoid it unless you're trying to stall out. You earn credits after each race you can use to very coarsely tune up your car, get a new paint job, or even put your name on the hood of your car, making this one of the first racing games to feature a garage and tune-up system.

While you only get one course, it is eye candy--waterfalls, gigantic cliffs, bridges and tunnels (your speedometer even glows when you're inside, nice touch), and a beautiful Mediterranean shoreline. These are genuinely some of the most appealing 3D graphics I've ever seen the PlayStation put out. A curious midpoint between the bumper cars of Ridge Racer and the sleep-inducing extreme detail of later racing games, Rage actually avoids the pitfalls of both to great success.

Recommended for... arcade racer fans with vertical hunger.

[#] Robotron X (Midway, , 1996)

You'd think neverending Robotron would be a good thing, but...

I'm a huge Robotron: 2084 fan. You can't fuck it up: screen full of robots, two eight-way joysticks, one to move, one to fire. Shoot robots, collect humans for big points. It frazzles your nerves, it looks and sounds like nothing else, and games rarely last more than five minutes. It might very well be my favorite golden age arcade game; it's just unfortunate that Robotron X proves you can indeed fuck it up. It's not all bad! There is good news--very little of it involves playing this game though.

X has two main issues that make it a gigantic headache to play, and that's framerate and pacing. Frames drops all the time when the screen gets busy, something even the arcade game managed to avoid. The pacing is even worse. Each wave is split by an unskippable, several seconds long intermission screen of your unsightly protagonist flipping through space, and in the later waves, new enemies get dropped on your head constantly. Over 200 waves, this becomes an absolute slog.

There's an ugly, eerie feeling to this game, with all its black voids, freakish faces, and grotesque gigantic robot brains. It's a little hard to look at. The one genuine highlight I can cite is the soundtrack, all heavy hardcore and gabber from Midway's unsung soundtrack hero Aubrey Hodges (buy it on Bandcamp, it's good). This one got a much better port for the Nintendo 64 as Robotron 64, so if you want 3D Robotron (and believe me, I do), check out that one instead.

Recommended for... morbidly curious arcade fans with overclockable emulators.

[#] The Adventures of Lomax (Psygnosis, , 1996)

Adorable and punishing, which is also how I like my women.

Lemmings is one of those legacy franchises that's left a ton of forgotten little spinoffs in its way, Lomax being one. Lomax is a squeaky lemming knight out to rescue other lemmings who have been transformed into an army of ugly, ghoulish creeps. Lomax is a platformer, and the classic Lemmings gameplay is the twist on it: Lomax can pick up icons that enable his lemming powers, from building bridges to digging through walls.

The first thing you notice about Lomax is that it's gorgeous. The backgrounds and animations are intricately detailed pixel art, cloud cover drifts through the stages, 3D is worked in as foreground-background stuff, it's genuine eye candy. The second thing you notice is the difficulty. Lomax can only take two hits. Worse yet, he can't swim, and platforms tend to be a little loose with their collision detection. I wouldn't call it unfair, just exacting.

My recommendation for Lomax comes on the basis that you enjoy trial-and-error platformers. The controls aren't well-explained in the game itself (double-tap X for a spin attack, Circle is your hat attack, Select picks abilities, and Square uses them), and you only get so many lives and continues, so be sure you're keeping track of your passwords and restart the whole game if need be. It's a very pretty game with a lot to like about it--provided you can handle the intense difficulty.

Recommended for... the baddest and toughest platformer fans.

[#] Tony Hawk's Pro Skater (Activision, , 1999)

The one that landed the first 900.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater is a fucking powerhouse. Everyone loves this game, and going back to the first game leaves no doubt as to why. You play a skater given two minutes to accomplish a set of tasks in a building or part of a city, stuff like scoring a certain amount of points, smashing scenery, or grabbing items or letters. Points are awarded for ridiculous flippy grabby grindy trick combos. Land the combo, get the points. Fall on your ass, you get nothing. It's dead simple.

You'll be taken from a dingy, leaky warehouse to schools, malls, dams, and top-secret government labs on your quest to skate everything. The flavor of the game is excellent, from the absurd trick names to the videos of each skater you unlock, and if Dead Kennedys, Primus, Suicidal Tendencies, and Unsane float your boat, great songs from each play during your runs. Some people defer to the Dreamcast version for its smoothness and draw distance, but the PS1 holds its own very nicely graphically.

Pro Skater can be a little wonky to return to after playing the later ones in the series. Combos and lines are less extravagant, spins feel stiffer, no manuals, no reverts, and it's harder to perform nollies or tell when you're skating switch. The core of the game was always here though, and that's what counts. The series would return to these locales several times in its run, which I think speaks to its icon status. Seriously, even my girlfriend loves these games.

Recommended for... skaters throwing it back super old school.

[#] Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (Activision, , 2000)

Improved to near-perfection.

If the intro video, with its crazy rooftop jumps set to "Guerrilla Radio", didn't clue you in, you're not paying enough attention. The pinnacle of this series on PS1, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 is that perfect sequel that keeps all the good stuff and polishes everything else to a sheen. This time around, the scores and the jumps get higher, and manuals (where you press up or down and then the opposite and try to balance) help you glue it together. It gets downright absurd at times--and I love it.

The first game suffered from some stiffness, and I wouldn't pick most of its levels as personal favorites, but 2 gets everything right. The levels are much more intricate, more fun to explore, and visually, I think they're more inviting. It's hard to forget the summer heat of Venice Beach, the creepy, seedy subways of New York, or the, er, Bullring (featuring a loop! Must be a Tony Hawk game). I even think the soundtrack is better--less ska and more Fu Manchu and Styles of Beyond, yes please.

There's tons to unlock in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, from cheats to secret characters to entirely new secret stages, and believe me, you'll wanna play to unlock them all. Add in a create-a-skater mode and a fucking park editor, and you simply will not get bored. You can play through ten times and find new things every time. You even have the ability to remap tricks and specials this time around! Sublime. Possibly the best game on the entire system.

Recommended for... uh, basically everybody?

[#] Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 (Activision, , 2001)

An odd duck blend of new and old.

I was a little harsh on this port in my initial review. In the halcyon days of the PS2, because the PS1 was still quite a strong seller, companies would sometimes backport their new PS2 games to it, leading to strange little ports like this. Using the 2 engine with warped versions of the much more expansive 3 levels, it sounds pretty lame on paper, but y'know, I enjoyed the hell out of it. If you liked the other PS1 Pro Skater games, it's more of the same--but how can you go wrong with that?

While 3 on the PS2 was known for its breathing worlds that feature pedestrians, this version has zero pedestrians, making the levels feel like ghost towns--something Shaba Games clearly noticed, given the post-apocalyptic makeover they gave Los Angeles. Even still, the reworked levels definitely have a unique vibe, so it's still a pretty different experience. Reverts are included, though hilariously, the score goals from 2 haven't been increased at all, making them pretty trivial.

A lot has been recycled from 2, actually, like the park editor and create-a-skater options, though the game features all the skaters from the next-gen versions (plus some exclusive ones, like Wolverine) and retains their kickass soundtrack. This still isn't the ideal way to experience Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, but it's still a lot of fun, and even if it basically amounts to a 2 expansion pack, there's a lot worse you could be than that. You should play them both, really. Really!

Recommended for... Tony Hawk fans who just can't get enough.

[#] Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 (Activision, , 2002)

A long-forgotten swan song to one of the PS1's greatest series.

Frankly, it's impressive this port even exists. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 for the PS1 was a pretty simple level swap in the 2 engine, understandable, but the fourth entry brought the series open world, free roaming levels and goals given by pedestrians. How can the PS1 handle such a game? Surprisingly capably! Who would want to play such a port? Only me! But that's okay. This probably stretches the Apocalypse engine to its absolute limits in terms of technology and good taste, and you will get a workout from the increased difficulty playing it, but for the morbidly curious hardcore Tony Hawk fanatics, the dozens of us, it's a cool way to round out the series on PS1.

Each locale brings your skater a set of about thirty goals towards going pro (even though they're already pros, but stay with me here). A lot of the goals are your classic score goals. Sometimes, you gotta grab all the letters without breaking your combo (fuck those ones). Each stage now has its own competition goal. Remember Horse in the earlier games' multiplayer modes? Goal here too. All credit to Vicarious Visions, it's familiar without ever being transparently repetitive. This game does something really nice in sharing all goal progress and stat boosts across skaters--that's right, the days of doing the campaign fourteen times are done. Beat it once, do each pro's unique goal (2-3 per stage), and you've completed the game.

Alongside the timerless free roam between goals, THPS4 for PS1 includes all the spine transfers, hidden tricks, and grind extensions from the next-gen versions (skitching is obviously not included). I've heard people online complain about reverts into manuals not registering, but they not only felt the same as THPS3 on PS1, but I didn't have much issue with them. The only real trouble with this game is the sometimes sadistic difficulty, especially in the pro-specific goals. We're talking "wheelie down three ramps and around a corner and not bail" type stupidity. The market for this port is no doubt exceedingly small, but those in that group will find this a fun and fascinating final entry.

Recommended for... the hardest skaters (ew).

[#] Xevious 3D/G+ (Namco, , 1997)

An arcade-to-PS1 conversion done right?

Xevious was a pioneering vertical scrolling shooter arcade game with several innovations--namely, multiple levels of targets to shoot, secrets, and a difficulty that adapts to how well you're doing. This disc is primarily a port of Xevious 3D/G, a 3D remake from when such things were fashionable, but as the name suggests, you also get ports of Xevious, Super Xevious, and Xevious Arrangement as extras. This disc is for the Xevious fanatic in your life (who doesn't know one?).

3D/G makes damn good use of the extra dimension, with crazy camera moves and huge end bosses. There's three upgradable weapons to choose from, a green laser and a red tendril cannon that locks onto enemies, but I still prefer the zapper you spawn with. It sounds short with only five levels, but they're ridiculously difficult, so I've yet to beat it. Nice bonus from Namco though: the ability to completely customize your control scheme, complete with a built-in rapid fire function!

As far as the other games go, they're all quality additions. Super Xevious rearranges the locations of the secret flags and citadels for folks who got bored of the original, and Xevious Arrangement is another remake of the game featuring weapon powerups. The menus are a bit funky (Circle is OK, like on the Japanese PS1), and you have to manually save your high scores, but this disc is a rooty-tooty point and shooty good time, and if you like arcade games, you should own it.

Recommended for... SHMUP fans of all stripes.

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