PS1 essentials

oh, and syphon filter. although that probably feels mad dated by now (hell, it even felt dated after MGS)

gah reading stuff about colony wars: vengeance (which i never played) makes me want it so bad:

Examples of missions include defusing mines that lie in the path of the mothership you are guarding. Free floating asteroid rocks must be found and then mined for an essential crystal. Collect radioactive objects with your grappling hook and then drop them off at the entrance to a black hole. Of course there are several dog fights and planet-based missions, where the battles will take place across a range of highly detailed landscapes.

then you had to fire EMP weapons at giant battleships, tow them off by some distance, fire rockets into other things, and race away while they exploded behind you - god that game was awesome - it was also very very hard

so hard. i never got very far, but i still thought the game was cool. it was a good wing commander substitute.

have there been any similar games for gamecube/ps2/etc.?

second grind session.

THERE WAS A SEQUEL?!??!?!

I remember my roommate playing through Colony Wars with an invincibily code and unlimited weapons on THE WHOLE TIME.

Resident Evil 2 not on here yet? It might be a little annoying to play now, as there's a lot of backtracking in it, but it's the first game I ever really had the experience of total cinematic immersion. It's also the first game that scared the shit out of me (the licker in the interrogation room). I played the whole thing through THREE TIMES.

(the licker in the interrogation room)

So much money! I have probably related this story, but owell, I was playing a friend's house where I got to that part of the game, had the gooseberries scared out of me and everyone watching me, and where I promptly died. I played through again, and my friend's bro came in and I guess wanted to show off their then-advanced hi-fi surround sound system. He put the sound on the speakers, and I was all, "WTF are you doing? This is the scary part!" And he was all, "What scary part?" CUE LICKER CRASHING THROUGH GLASS AND EVERYONE FREAKS!!!!! I think I had to give up the controller at that point.

Is that the one that only appears when you walk past it the second time? Great trick. Silent Hill has a room where you can here something moving in a cabinet, but if you open it it's just a cat. Then when you go to leave the room along the same path as you entered it, a monster pops out of another cabinet.

I just loved on Grind Session how every time you timed out on the Detroit level, you heard "No hip-hop connection between us and Janet Reno."

When I said "second grind session" i meant, like, i second the motion. i did not mean to get your hopes up. i always liked it more than the tony hawk games!

yeah, resident evil 2 was pretty sweet. i guess it has been eclipsed in my mind by res evil 4, which is all-time.

I kind of forgot you can download some ps1 titles pretty cheap via the ps3. In the US so far there isn't a lot (but there are some titles from the essential list)...

2Xtreme ($5,99)
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night ($9,99)
CoolBoarders ($5,99)
Crash Bandicoot ($5,99)
Destruction Derby ($5,99)
Hot Shots Golf 2 ($5,99)
Jet Moto ($5,99)
Jumping Flash ($5,99)
Medievil ($5,99)
Rally Cross ($5,99)
Spyro the Dragon ($5,99)
Syphon Filter ($5,99)
Tekken 2 ($5,99)
Twisted Metal 2 ($5,99)
Wild Arms ($5,99)
WipEout ($5,99)

Resident Evil 2's definitely the best RE on Playstation 1

AWWW JET MOTO!!!!! That game ruled! Well, the second one anyway. Twisted Metal also k-classic.

BET was incredibly stupid in all of the right ways.

There was some game called Iznogoud, which reviewers hated and loved saying so using the obvious pun over and over and over again.

You know what else is the Point Blank games!!! This is now sullied by the moronic DS port, but these were some majorly awesome games, probably the best shooting gallery-type games, i.e. nonviolent light gun games, ever. Better than Duck Hunt by a mile. Was it only the first one that was on the PSX with the Namco gun bundled in? God what a great game. I wish I was playing it right now.

The original Warhawk is up for download this week in the US. Did anybody on here ever play it before? Is it worth checking out (for six bucks)?

Man. It's a trap. It's all a trap. None of those are worth getting except maybe Symphony of the Night, and EVEN THEN, there's a superior updated version on Xbox 360 Live Arcade, or you can get it on the PSP with Dracula X Chronicles. But if you don't have those systems, then it's definitely worth $10.

<i>You know what else is the Point Blank games!!! </i>

i bought one of these but then could never find a gun peripheral - a year later i sold it on ebay for 3 times what i bought it for!
a Point Blank Wii is a licence to print money, why have they not released one?

Parasite Eve!!

And I second Xenogears.

I can't remember what it was like, but I do remember that I liked City of Lost Children.

I hated Parasite Eve! First play-through was ok, but the Chrysler Building in the second play-through equals giant eff you.

I was checking out the going Amazon prices for JRPG stuff the other day - suikoden, suikoden ii, xenogears, etc - INSANE

well not insane but HIGH

i too hated parasite eve, never even came close to finishing it

Funny, I loved that game. I beat it in one extremely long sitting in first-year uni. Why did I love it so? I remember cool weapons and being dazzled by the recognizable real-life environments, which I don't think I'd seen up till then.

I also loved it; but I did finish it and in another massive two day stretch. I loved the world and the creepy shit and the great cinemas and the odd attach scheme.

"attack"

"ghost in the shell"!!!!!!!!!!!!1111!!!1111!!!11

not "single cell complex" or whatever

one of the top 10 ps1 games ever without a doubt

the scenario: third-person shooter in which you control a mechanical spider that can walk up walls and across ceilings and fall any distance without taking any damage

you can strafe endlessly (even forward and backwards), shoot up to six missiles at once, each of which is capable of locking onto a different enemy

a typical level sees you in a city of skyscrapers, at night, needing to destroy four superguns scattered throughout the nieghborhood, which are protected by helicopters, fighter jets, fixed gun turrets, cyborgs with shoulder rpgs, and other mechanical spiders which can shoot blue lasers at you and also crawl up walls

strangely, the closest thing i can think of to this game is tenchu, which is all about stealth, whereas this is a full-on, guns blazing strafe fest. i think it's because both of them allow you to climb on onto roofs and both allow total freedom of 3-D movement (although ghost in the shell does have two thrilling levels on "rails" -- one at sea and one on a highway, where your little spider is always carried in a certain direction and must dodge things and rotate to deal with other things)

probably the best shoot em up PS1 game ever

another thing: this is one of the few, proud playstation games in which the training level is the most difficult and most satisfying level of all

oh, and the soundtrack is by takkyu ishino!!

I recently found an old stockpile of PS1 RPGs. Give me an honest assessment of which of these games are actually worth revisiting in the year of two thousand ought nine:

Chrono Cross
Persona 1
Vagrant Story
Valkyrie Profile
Xenogears

I haven't played any of them but the ones I remember getting the most positive press were Xenogears and Persona.

chrono cross - disappointing, boring story with a weak battle system. not hard enough. at the time i think it was well-received but i think now the game would same extremely formulaic

persona 1: is this revelation? or the jpn version? this game is kind of a mess and not worth investing time in imo i'd rather play 4.

vagrant story: yes!!! really rad game and i think it would still be extremely challenging. and the look will have dated well. so much to do with this one

Valkyrie Profile - i dont think i ever beat this game fully. it may actually play better now. battle system is the best on this list and i liked the puzzle stuff but there are A LOT of retarded points in this game where yr stuck wandering around and need to just guess at wtf yr supposed to do

xenogears - :D i really loved this game when it came out idk its tied to a specific aesthetic that requires the player to really buy in - i can see how someone trying to play this shit now for the first time would just be O_O at the story and voice-acting and battle system but... i mean i voted for this in that 100 best poll so i would def replay it.

Vagrant Story: definitely
Xenogears: only if you have a way to speed up the text (emulator, or maybe some sort of game genie device?)
Chrono Cross: I never beat this. I hear it gets better towards the end. Dumb battle system and tons of redundant characters.

Haven't played the others.

intelligent cube

don't do xenogears if you just want a pick me up game

seconding twisted metal

Valkyrie Profile-

saw this played but never played it. seemed to have a great deal of neat things going on but I don't think I'd invest that much time in it myself? certainly nothing that fried itself into my brain, unlike

Xenogears

This is best RPG ever made for the PS1. I played through it to the end only once and would probably drop $200+ just for the game if they ever rereleased it.

Most importantly, I'm not ashamed to say so.

There are copies of Xenogears for around fifty bucks on amazon

tombot you'd rank xenogears over suikoden II?

you can grab xenogears on the US PSN now I think?

nah, Suikoden has just been added on there (for $6), not Xenogears.

ah, that's right! sorry

My PS1 essentials (not that I ever had that much for the system) - Symphony of the Night, Parappa or Umjammer. Tony Hawk: 1 and 2 are both great, I probably sank more time into 2 which just adds TONS of stuff, but it does lose a few of the most fun things about the first one, mainly the downhill courses! Definitely need two players to get the most out of either, they are definitive dorm-hallway collective games for me.

I really loved Soul Reaver but I think I might just not have known the genre well enough, all I had to compare it to was Tomb Raider and I think it was slightly more fun than that (although less of a revelation). But there are probably much better games in the 3rd person "leap, shove cubes" genre.

tony hawk 1 was kinda my life at this point

I never played suikoden II! I still need to get around to suikoden V!!