Games That Push The Limits of the PlayStation (...and how they do it)

#pushingthelimits
Games that push the limits of the PlayStation!
Head to www.squarespace.com/sharopolis to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code sharopolis.
Support me on Patreon:
/ sharopolis
Limit pushing on the PlayStation, let's have a look at some games that take Sony's first console to the edge and also explain how they do it.
00:00 Intro
00:45 Tekken 3
08:40 Alien Resurection
12:55 Racing Lagoon
19:20 Tomb Raider II
24:15 Other games montage
27:00 Patreon thanks and ending.
Here's that Modern Vintage Gamer link I promised but forgot to put in till someone mentioned in the comments:
• Why PlayStation 1 Grap...
More info about Tomb Raider II reflections:
wiki.arthus.net/?tr2_not_shaders
gpuBladeSoft Plugin
emutopia.com/index.php/emulat...
Getting it set up to run in Windows isn't easy because it requires the GTK library. This forum thread has lots of info.
www.ngemu.com/threads/edgblas...
Also you can download a ready to go version of ePSXe with this plugin preinstalled, but!
I did not make this, I've nothing to do with it. It seems safe, I've used it without any problems, but I can't guarantee its safety. Use it at your own risk.
drive.google.com/open?id=1Qas...

[@veganaiZe]

11:31 Here's the promised (but undelivered) link to Modern Vintage Gamer's video about PS1's texture warp & wobble: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rmm3gGCkp7qnias

[@Sharopolis]

Oops thanks for pointing that out!

[@veganaiZe]

@@Sharopolis No problem! Your video was excellent and I gave it a thumbs up!

[@rodneyabrett]

I was/am a character modeler and I worked during the PS2 era when I first started and while PS1 was much lower poly, there was definitely the same art to getting arms and legs to look good with only 5-sided cylindrical shapes. It was all about those soft normals on the edges(gouraud shading) that the PS1 could do which would trick out the light to make it seem like there were more polygons than there actually were. I still do this today on certain projects designed for low spec hardware.

[@Sinistar1983]

I love to hear tales on how people developed on older consoles. Always a fascinating perspective

[@rodneyabrett]

@@Sinistar1983 We also had strict limitations when it came to skinning/weight painting on bones. Today, you can assign values for each vertex to up to 4-8 joints for really nice blending of the deformation, but back then we had maybe 2-bone max influences or even just 1 and those table values couldn't have values like .05434, they had to be rounded off to something like .05.. It actually affected how you approached the modeling too because it was less about smooth deforms and more about volume preservation as the elbows, knees, foot, fingers, etc. bent to 90 degrees. So you would place edgeloops in a very strategic way to preserve these volumes while still maintaining a low polycount and nice shape. Good times! I miss those days, actually. ha

[@Sinistar1983]

@@rodneyabrett thanks dude I loved reading this and its inspiring knowing that despite how difficult it is. You and many others have shown how cool stuff can be made despite such limitations. Hopefully one day I can develop a ps1 game as I want to not only appreciate the art on a deeper level. But to also see what developers have seen.

[@litjellyfish]

@@rodneyabrett yeah and let’s not forget about those tricks where you did not close polygons on the inside side of the arm. Better to let those cut into each other when bending the arm than get collapsing volume or rubber hose elbow.

[@rodneyabrett]

@@litjellyfish Totally! Segmented geo. That's a classic :)

[@pipikakachu]

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, Wipeout 3, Tobal 2, Fear Effect, Vagrant Story, Einhander, Spyro etc

[@railsrust]

Believe it or not, but one game that really pushes the PS1 is actually the original Crash Bandicoot because of the method they used to load game data on the fly for the game. There's a whole video on the developers talking about their time with the game. It was quite fascinating. Because of how they streamed data off the disc, the game has few if any loading screens, something that seems impossible for a PS1 game.

[@aboriginalmang]

Soul Reaver made use of real time data streaming as well, and unlike the linear Crash series, it's a fairly open world game, comparable to the zelda series.

[@renakunisaki]

Crash pushed the PSX so hard it actually uncovered a hardware bug, where having a timer running really fast and playing with the controller during saving could introduce noise into the signal line and corrupt the memory card. Fortunately this was caught during development, so the finished game is safe.

[@Sly2Cooper]

It's also amazing that Naughty Dog almost doubled amount of polygons in the scene for the second and third Crash games. And the third game also used LoDs to increase view distance up to 10 times more than in previous Crash games.

[@ifrit35]

Yes it's worth watching Ars Technica full episode on that subject.

[@charliekahn4205]

Does the game experience any issues if the disk drive motor starts to wear out?

[@Xilefian]

VAGRANT STORY vagrant story Vagrant Story. Every best PS1 graphics list needs that game on it It achieves edge-rim lighting by rendering characters twice. It uses interpolated/blended pixels to achieve extraordinarily smooth face animations

[@Abesteroni]

Can confirm, Vagrant Story is one of the best games ever made, a serious limit pusher in just about every respect, and good god that soundtrack!

[@BdR76]

The original *Spyro* game should have been mentioned. It was the first big game to properly use Level Of Detail (LOD) rendering, i.e. use lower poly models for far away objects and scenery, so that it could show much larger open spaces. That game really blew me away.

[@xBox360BENUTZER]

Was mentioned 26:10

[@kupokinzyt]

Uh oh, someone tried to comment before watching the video.

[@BdR76]

@@kupokinzytI did see it but that is Spyro 3 and it doesn't mention why it's a limit pusher

[@davidmcgill1000]

Except Super Mario 64 was doing that 2 years prior.

[@Sly2Cooper]

@@davidmcgill1000 Super Mario 64 did not use LoD on level geometry like Spyro. It only culls distant enemies and coins.

[@DiThi]

I'm surprised Crash Bandicoot is not mentioned. The story of the game development is quite interesting. The method they employed so they can have so many polygons in the scene without a Z-buffer is rather crazy and unique. They calculated and stored which polygons are drawn and in which order, *for each camera position* of the level. That couldn't possibly fit in memory so it loaded the next or previous section from CD the moment the player moved the character forwards or backwards.

[@nintendoor1]

i think that the point of these videos is to shed light on games that maybe aren’t talked about as much. in the N64 video, he thought it would be redundant to mention Zelda OoT, because what else could be said that hasn’t already been said?

[@DiThi]

@@nintendoor1 That's not a good example, as Zelda OoT didn't push the machine to its limits, at all. A much better example would be Conker's Bad Fur Day, which uses better textures, more polygons, real time lighting, shadows, skeletal animation, facial animation... all at once! As well as full voice acting on all characters that talk. And that game is not very well known and not mentioned at all in that other video.

[@AndrewTSq]

crash bandicoot 3 is a masterpiece! I sometimes run it on my PS1, and it still looks so good, just low res.

[@juststatedtheobvious9633]

Chrono Cross is doing something weird - if you upscale the graphics, you find the worst texture warping I've seen in any PSOne game. It really mutates their faces. But in the original resolution? It's not noticeable. And you get some of the best character models in any RPG from that time period.

[@MarioPfhorG]

That’s why it’s not so easy to simply port classic PS1 games. People don’t realise that these old games were all designed with the hardware limitations in mind and if they didn’t at least increase the resolution people would complain it’s lazy. But not withstanding that there were often hardware specific tricks that are near impossible to emulate like the video screen in Mario Kart 64. So much rework’s gotta be done or clever programming to emulate those effects and more programming time costs more money.

[@Sly2Cooper]

Even with PGXP plugin?

[@juststatedtheobvious9633]

@@Sly2Cooper I haven't tried, but I imagine anything that corrects the PS1's rough polygon calculations will solve the problem. I also wonder if emulating old code, and then running enhancements over top, is the cause of the performance issues in the Switch version?

[@Sly2Cooper]

@@juststatedtheobvious9633 my GPD Win 2 is just slightly better in performance than Switch and it runs Duckstation with PGXP perfectly (using software mode to keep all special effects true to original with increased internal resolution up to 720p and 1.5x clockspeed of PS1 to get a stable framerate original PS1 games could not achieve). I played alot of PSX emulation on nVidia Shield Portable and it is a prior mobile nVidia chipset to Switch. It also run software mode of ePSXe amazingly with 2x-3x internal resolution and 2x clockspeed to achieve stable framerate, framepacing and get rid of tearing in some games. So I believe problems with Chrono Cross port on Switch lie in bad programming.

[@juststatedtheobvious9633]

@@Sly2Cooper No doubt it's bad programming. But the Chrono Cross port also improved the character models in ways no PS1 emulator would allow....for exactly this reason.

[@mr.topoldgames6222]

There are also some games that look great and push PS1 to the limit. There atre Crash Bandicoot 3, Spyro The Dragon 2,3, Tobal 2!, Vagrant Story

[@exaltedb]

Vagrant Story was really impressive as it used techniques that weren’t often used until the generation after

[@mr.topoldgames6222]

@@exaltedb I also forget first Dino Crisis, really impressive 3D horror, and Fear Effect 1, 2, that look not bad even today

[@Sly2Cooper]

Close-ups of a winner's face in Tobal 2 impressed so much! Game used much more detailed mesh for a face in the winning stance. Dead or Alive is close to Tobal 2 in combining high resolution and 60 fps.

[@Idelacio]

I mean 4000 games on this machine, it's a deep well! :D So many great looking games for the era, amazing what they could drag out of it.

[@Sharopolis]

The PS1 is a clown car of amazing and often forgotten games.

[@worsethanhitlerpt.2539]

This list looks pretty basic RType Delta pushes the PS1 much farther the graphics are way more complex

[@PS2GAMER100]

Yes so many games on this console and alot if games to discover and play on an emulator

[@isntyournamebacon]

You said something about the reflection mapping in TR2. But the save crystals in the first game did that. Very interesting trick. I remember looking at them when i first played the game and wondered what kind of trick i was looking at. Then i fell down in a bear pit. So that was that.

[@design-flux]

Interesting you didn’t mention Crash Bandicoot. Even ARS Technica did a whole hour long video on how naughty dog circumvented the memory and processing of PS1, pushing it to its limits.

[@gerboog]

He is a noob.

[@UnjustifiedRecs]

It's almost like there are many many impressive games on the ps1 and it's only a 30 min video, crazy that he didn't mention every one of them, what a shit bastard he is

[@just_ppe]

Yeah, CB was really pushing the psx limits in every possible way...

[@djmips]

Indeed they did a whole lot of offline processing to map out the data on the disk. Incredible!

[@Gaming-Enthusiast]

Ridge Racer and Metal Gear Solid Pushed the limits of the PS1. Still use my PS1 today for nostalgia next to My Atari Jaguar

[@WaterBug64]

Racing lagoon has some of the cleanest lighting I’ve seen on the ps1 or in any game of that era

[@mikeyjnz]

One thing with Tekken, on characters with bare legs like Xiaoyu, they skip using textures entirely and apply a single colour to the leg polys, which means they can be garoud shaded without the same performance hit as characters wearing textured trousers - noticeable especially in Tekken2 W/ Michelle where they appear to have started using this trick - she's inverted from the Tekken3 style, having a flat shaded upper body, and the untextured but garoud shaded leg rendering

[@Rosa_Canina]

I am probably the only one that thinks Tomb Raider controls perfectly fine. It's just different. You need to play by it's rules. Walk towards the edge, hop back, run and jump. Stuff like that. It's methodical and yes, slow. But if you play it like that... it just works. And I think they work a lot better than a lot of 3d controls from back then. We are just not used to them anymore. That said, they feel a bit better on a Saturn Controller or the PC keyboard IMO. Btw I finished my first classic TR just like three years ago. So no prior muscle memory here

[@KopperNeoman]

The term is "clunky". It's clunky. The levels were designed with the clunk in mind, but it's still clunky.

[@todesziege]

Yeah, I really have no problem with them either. Like you say though, it's better on a Saturn controller.

[@djmips]

It ain't clunky. It was butter when I played back in the day - now I've grown acustomed to modern controls and it takes getting used to when you go back. Just like Megaman legends. Does Sharopolis not realize that dual shock wasn't even a thing yet in the early days of the PS1?

[@marksimons4223]

Wipe3out (wipeout 3) looked a-mazing on the PS1, it was high res, had a full 16x9 widescreen mode and ran silky smooth. Beetle Adventure Racing on the N64 has real time reflections on the player car (or a good facsimile of them!)

[@TheMoney9999]

MegaMan Legends and Vagrant Story are two games I always think of when I think "games that really took advantage of the PS1, ESPECIALLY their cutscene compositions and tricks

[@BeefJerkey]

Mega Man Legends' cutscenes are only impressive in terms of precision. The movement of the characters lines up with the audio and their surroundings very well. But from a technical perspective, the way that the characters are animated is very basic. The characters were simply constructed from different 3D pieces, and those pieces would be rotated/repositioned to create movement. And the faces changed simply by swapping textures. The models never actually bent or stretched in any way. Far more impressive character animations can be found in the Spyro the Dragon games. Yes, those animations are a bit more sloppy, with poor timing and all, but the way that they are accomplished is more complex, and technically impressive for the time. The animations are created by morphing the models, which involves changing the shape the polygons in various ways in order to create the desired pose. So, while Mega Man Volnutt's face changed simply by switching out his anime eyes and mouth for different ones on a flat surface of his head, Spyro's eyes actually blinked and his mouth actually opened and closed without swapping any textures, by morphing the polygons of his face. Mega Man Legends is great, but from a technical perspective, it didn't do anything all that special. Except for the very precisely timed animations for cutscenes.

[@JMFSpike]

@@BeefJerkey Well, he could talk about those precisely timed animations then. I'd also like to see Final Fantasy IX. Not sure if it did anything all that special or not, but it does look super impressive and a huge step up from Final Fantasy VII (probably VIII too, but to a far lesser extent. I'm not at all familiar with VIII though. I never played it, but I know it's one of the most disliked in the series next to XIII.)

[@caifabe8050]

@@JMFSpike the only reason FF8 gets so much hate is because it was the game right after FF7 and it wasn't AS good so people overexaggerated it and made it out to be some horrible game just because FF7 was a 10/10 while FF8 was more of a 9.2/10. FF8's still fantastic, but JRPG nuts are fickle as fuck.

[@JMFSpike]

@@caifabe8050 I highly doubt that's the reason. I've heard people mention that they didn't like the judgement system or something. I've been meaning to play that game for many years now, because I want to see if it's really that bad. My opinion may very well deviate quite a bit from the popular opinion. I personally didn't think VII was near as great as most people do. It was very good, but I liked many others better, like IV, V, VI, IX, and X.

[@dbrokensoul]

@@JMFSpike many people hate the 'Junction System'. I actually can't comprehend why. The Junction system was a quite unique mechanic. You could customize the stats of each character by attaching 'magic' to stats. But, to make it works well, they had to change the magic from using MP to consumable. Meaning you can run out of specific magic. I think that 'consumable' magic and the fact that characters doesn't have speciality anymore (everyone can have big STR or INT) is why it was hated.

[@Schraiber]

A game I've always thought looks amazing on the PS1 is Soul Reaver. Great models and environments, and particularly the real time warping of the environment when you shifted between spectral and material realm. Too bad the cost was that the game ran at like 8 frames per second

[@Sly2Cooper]

Soul Reaver runs at 20-30 fps (while Zelda OoT for example runs 20 fps at max). There's a Digital Foundry Retro technical review on Soul Reaver.

[@mikejenkins4924]

Soul Reaver was really impressive at the time, as far as level streaming and particle and shader effects go. I don't remember it running that bad, though.

[@Sevarrius]

​@@mikejenkins4924 Yeah the fact that you could travel through the entire already impressive semi-open world map without encountering a single loading screen was crazy all by itself for a PS1 game. But yes it was set to run at 30FPS and surprisingly sticks fairly close to that for a lot of the game but could drop to as low as 20FPS in more intensive areas, 8FPS is quite an exaggeration however. It should also be said that low and inconsistent FPS is hardly a rare phenomenon in games on any platform from that era.

[@T0TALLYAWESOMEGUY]

The best version is on Dreamcast

[@joet7136]

The demo for Soul Reaver was absolutely stunning. That made it an instabuy for sure.

[@summerlaverdure]

mario kart used a similar framebuffer trick for the jumbotron in luigi's raceway, emulators stuggle with it

[@acecarrera1]

Rapid Racer comes to mind with its hi res and frame rate graphics, its physics is quite impressive too.

[@Kazeira]

The "reflections" in Tomb Raider II were already in the first game with golden Lara and save crystals

[@tommapar]

How wasn't Tomb Raider 4 or 5 included here instead of 2? The graphics are leagues ahead of 2. Also, the controls are not bad. It's just that you haven't taken the time to learn it, without using the Analogue stick btw, since most analogue games with tank controls aren't nowhere near as precise as when you use the D-pad. Look, I'm a game developer, I love game design and could talk about it for hours. And at least for me, what sells it is the immersion of climbing, and both the amount of buttons and precision you need to have, and the weight of the animations conveys it. You're doing these amazing physical feats traversing these wild environments with weird layouts and traps and gameplay situations that are just cool. Leaving aside the plausible subjective immersion you may feel while controlling the characters, the controls are OBJECTIVELY learnable. What I mean by learnable, is that, once you understand how the game operates (It operates on a grid, and the grid expects you to do jumps perpendicular to its edges. Your different types of jumps take you different distances in terms of tiles. You need 1 tile to do a running jump, and walking to the border and tapping back puts you back exactly one tile. You don't need to do huge run-ups. There's a lot of ways you can chain jumps because it's intended too, and you don't need ANY of this explanation because the tutorial tells you basically the same thing) you can eke out consistent results, minimizing your fighting against the controls themselves and being able to enjoy the game as if you're the one moving through it. And this is also true of old RE games. I don't have the nostalgia factor for those ones like I do so much for Tomb Raider, because I didn't play them as a kid. And they're awesome. The tank controls are learnable as well, you can dodge most attacks consistently (and you will have to, these games are made more with the design sensibilities of more hardcore games, not quite Dark Souls but maybe old Zelda/Metroid. The atmosphere and level design is also top-notch, as is also in a lot of levels in TR games, it's apparent they went and did the best they could with the limitations and time constraints they had. They also iterated well on the different design ideas while also adding new stuff into the mix with each iteration. But in terms of atmosphere, for me the underwater levels in TR2, most of TR4, and some of the spookiest segments in all games that are both in TR3 and TR5 are genuinely chilling and WILL make your kids have nightmares. The low poly aesthetic certainly amplifies the horror aspect. To be fair also to you, TR2 is the one with most fighting in the whole game. And fighting for me is the worst part of old TR games. I appreciate that it's there some times? Absolutely. Some battles are pretty memorable, and TR4 for me nailed the combat by making most enemies have a unique gimmick to beat them. Like mummies being immortal unless blown up or thrown into water. Or skeletons being blown or shotgunned off a ledge (which the first time they introduce them to you, their pathfinding has them jumping over a few gaps so that you accidentally catch them mid-air, genius) or red ninjas have to be baited into lowering their swords and then there's the bosses as well. All this that being said, TR is at its best when you're not fighting, but you're exploring, platforming, finding secrets and solving puzzles. All of it while immersed by the moody atmosphere, or listening to the OST, which again, for me peaked at TR4 (I'm a fan of that one if you can't tell) which gets so dark at some points (like when entering a war and plague ravaged Cairo and it's ambiance music sounds like *death.* ) Welp, if you actually read through my ramblings I can't stress this enough: *Give tank controls another chance. People didn't give a second chance to the Alien game back in the day and they were pioneering a control scheme.*

[@garethfairclough8715]

MDK was a big pusher for the PS1. It was even more impressive on the PC though. It would have been a great fit for the saturn as well.

[@PlasticCogLiquid]

MDK was the coolest thing ever when it came out on PC, I was blown away!

[@rexzs794]

God, I love the design work on MDK so much!

[@fandangobrandango7864]

Messiah that was by the same Dev was even more impressive, the player character model of the cherub really was a feat

[@garethfairclough8715]

@Alex Mit Oh man, you poor bugger! It's a night & day difference between PS1 and PC. PC could go up to 60fps on even a pentium 166, while the PS1 would barely make 20 :( Not to mention all the design changes for the PS1 port!

[@ChaunceyGardener]

I always found nice in Need For Speed 4 that you can see inside your car while using the external camera. The car has seats, dashboard console and a driver that even turns the wheel. The game is also very pretty.

[@C.I...]

It seems to run on the same engine as the PC ports , and by extension the same engine as Porsche 2000's PC port. Makes me wish we got an adaptation of that version instead of the one by Eden (which is still a cool game, but just isn't quite as good as the PC version. Also the copy protection is annoyingly good.)

[@ChaunceyGardener]

@@C.I... Every time I try the PC version my brain screams: "THIS FEELS WRONG". The PC versions of III and IV run too fast and the handling is like controlling toy cars.

[@C.I...]

Sheep Dog N' Wolf has a wonderful art and animation style, but it was also programmed really well. Though it runs at 25fps on a console (and sometimes lower), if you overclock the console in an emulator, you find the frame rate is vsynced but actually unlocked and independent of speed! You can run it at double the fps - 50fps (or 60 for those across the pond).

[@Sharopolis]

Wow that really does look amazing. What fantastic graphics and amazing voice acting too.

[@KopperNeoman]

Deckard PS2s don't like it much, however.

[@yoymate6316]

what really makes sheep dog n' wolf for me though is the soundtrack. each and every one of those tracks are way better than they have any right to be, plus they’re full songs instead of loops. sdw is truly the definition of a hidden gem for me

[@Sly2Cooper]

It was one of the first cell-shaded games. PC version even had that black outline on characters.

[@djmips]

What a great treasure Sheep Dog N' Wolf was. A sleeper. One of my favourite games!

[@BdR76]

Crash Team Racing CTR also was a pretty good limit pusher, it had Level Of Detail (LOD) rendering for larger and more detailed tracks AND a 4 player splitscreen mode

[@pipikakachu]

The 4 player mode ran smoothly and it was more detailed than Mario Kart 64. Also, the textures were not pixelated, it looked sharp.

[@Sly2Cooper]

@@pipikakachu Quake 2 4-player mode on PS1 also run much better than on N64. I wonder what a technical beast of a machine PS1 would be if it had a texture correction block.

[@pipikakachu]

@@Sly2Cooper and a bit of antialiasing

[@pipikakachu]

@@Sly2Cooper Quake looked the sharpest on PSX.Also, Naughty Dogs games on PSX had no pixelization, it looked way too good. A lot of N64 exclusives would have ran just fine on the PSX but the opposite can’t be said…

[@Sly2Cooper]

@@pipikakachu true. Jason Rubin, co-founder of Naughty Dog, said in his Crash Bandicoot developer diary that even the first Crash had more detailed level, characters, animation, better collision detection than Mario 64 released in the same time period (not to mention that one level in Crash could take more memory space than the whole Mario 64). It also run at higher resolution and color-mode for textures. And they doubled amount of polygons in the scene for the second game and increased view distance ten times in the third game. Crazy stuff! In many PS1 games developers had to subdivide flat surfaces close to camera for more polygons to hide rexture warping. With texture correction they could use those polygons for more detalisation or draw distance.

[@TheStolenBattenberg]

It's a crime to not mention Vagrant Story when you're discussing games that pushed the boundries of whats possible on the PS1. Pretty sure they used near the entire 2MB of RAM.

[@guardianrandy]

Came to the comments to mention Vagrant Story. I'm going to guess this guy doesn't pay attention to JRPGs from what I can see on this list, or at least JRPGs on the PS1.

[@sundip8849]

That game is not good

[@TheStolenBattenberg]

@@sundip8849 You're right actually, it's not good - it's absolutely incredible.

[@wishusknight3009]

ack. Every character or mob in the game has the shakes worse than my aunt with really bad proportions and painfully low poly count. The environment looks ok, with decent contrast and detail, but there are continual edge artifacts and pop-in at times that are so bad it looks just awful. And there is not much imagination done in level layout to do more than just simple boxes for most rooms. I did like some of the lighting effects, but that was not really unique or hardware breaking at all. Its a pretty average to somewhat above average looking title.

[@TheStolenBattenberg]

@@wishusknight3009 Shaking can be put completely put down to PS1 rendering, and it's only really a problem in cutscenes, where they did go for some super close camera angles (not a good idea on PS1 hardware). Personally I think the environments are pretty beautiful, they used a lot of texture variety to bake in modern-ish techniques like lightmapping and indirect illumination. The low poly can be explained away because they distributed their polygons more evenly - you can see little additional meshes or objects in most scenes, random bits of clutter that make the environments feel a lot more alive. Regardless, why are only titles that look super allowed to push the limits? Like I said, Vagrant Story really made the maximum use out the RAM available possible. That classifies as pushing the boundaries of what's possible IMO.

[@ravenrealm718]

So TR2 used a primitive form of Screen-Space reflections! That's cool!

[@jaywray1]

Omega Boost is an absolute must for this series. No debate one of the best looking games on Ps1 with possibly THE best reflections done of any game in that entire generation.

[@chrisred87]

Alone in the Dark The New Nightmare has a fantastic lighting thing with the torch. It had pre rendered backgrounds and managed to get a really good looking torch effect. I assume there were 2 backgrounds and it would switch between them where the torch was shining.

[@TheSoulExplorer]

Yes. The game had two backgrounds that loaded at the same time: lit and dark. They programmed the game to switch between the two in the area where you point at with the flashlight. Great game, lots of memories.

[@jamesprumos7775]

Thanks, Sharopolis, now we just need an N64 limit-pushing video, and we've got each of the big three fifth-gen systems! It's amazing how all three of them were so different from each other.

[@Sly2Cooper]

Most games that tried to push limits of N64 hardware like Conqer or Perfect Dark ended up with framerate around 15 fps.

[@jamesprumos7775]

@@Sly2Cooper I'd still like to see a limit pushing video.

[@Sly2Cooper]

@@jamesprumos7775 I think Shadowman is absolutely gorgeous on N64. Especially with expansion pack. A hidden gem of a game with great atmosphere, story and game design. As a fan of NFS3 I also loved Beetle Adventure Racing on N64 from same development team.

[@MrMarkalroberts]

Excellent thank you. Definitely filling a niche with these approachable limit pushing videos!

[@Sharopolis]

Thanks for your kind words!

[@einlandersvideos6213]

You should take a look at Urban Chaos for the PS1

[@dreamcastfan]

My personal PS1 limit-pushers are Tekken 3, Ridge Racer Type 4, Ridge Racer Tech Demo and Metal Gear Solid. I don’t know how much they actually pushed the PS1, although they likely all benefited from the later profiling tools that helped developers know which parts of the code were bottlenecking. They do all count as the best looking games on the system for me and really showed not only how developers had learned to get the most out of the PS1 but also how their knowledge of 3D graphics was improving. Early PS1 games had little in the way of lighting or shading and most 3D characters were just individual pieces rather than having fully skinned textures. By the end, lots of games were using those techniques which really showed how much learning went on with that generation. In terms of the N64 using the frame buffer to map the environment to a texture, the closest example I know of is Mario Kart 64 where the Mario Raceway and Wario Stadium tracks display the frame buffer on a jumbotron screen above the track. The only noticeable problem is the framerate on those screens is quite poor, but you could map that texture onto a surface to make a reflection.

[@Sly2Cooper]

Banjo-Kazooie also used frame buffer effects when image on screen was combined from puzzle-shaped elements.

[@kevinleite6309]

Metal Gear Solid tries to simulate motion blur effect in cutscenes!! That's was mind blowing to me. Considering that even the ps2 could not achieve it in a profitable quality.

[@dreamcastfan]

@@kevinleite6309 I think that was a library effect created by Sony as the same effect could be toggled on in replay mode of Ridge Racer Type 4. It definitely worked better in MGS though as it added to the cinematic feel.

[@kevinleite6309]

@@dreamcastfan good to know. RR Type 4 has the best soundtrack of the franchise XD But the best car steering/drift are into Ridge Racers 2 on psp and Ridge Racer 7 for ps3. At least this is what I used to remember. The Type 4 drift are kinda Hard to domain in the final races of carreer mode. What do you think?

[@dreamcastfan]

@@kevinleite6309 I’d say Rage Racer had the worst drifting. It’s like the cars would almost come to a standstill when sliding! 😅 But R4’s aren’t much better. I just finished replaying Ridge Racers 2 and I love the dynamic drifting cars in that. You could keep a power slide going through a bunch of bends and have three full nitrous gauges afterwards. Really awesome! I think my personal favourite drifting is RR1 as with some deft steering you can actually exceed the cars top speed! I’ve never been sure if that’s a bug or an advanced feature.

[@Sly2Cooper]

That Terracon game shown in final footage is such a technical marvel of a game. It is absolutely unknown gem way ahead of its' time. A PS1 Halo with huge open levels with draw distances up to horizon. Looking like an early Dreamcast title (especially during cutscenes). Utilising every known PS1 visual effect and adding some more. For example that fish-eye lense effect when aiming - I thought it was only possible on PS2-era consoles. Or footprints with bump-mapping-like effect (first you need to step in water, then make some footprints on the sand, switch to close camera and rotate it around the character to see the effect - it is very subtle but it is there). Cutscenes also create a kind of depth of field effect but it was implemented earlier in MGS and Vagrant Story.

[@-Keen-]

Racing Lagoon is an absolute gem, such a fun game with great music and hilariously meme-worthy cutscenes.

[@Cr4z3d]

One great one that pushed the limits imo that I'm kind of surprised didn't make it onto the list is Einhänder, the models and animations, even the environments looked great, and it all ran at a solid 60 fps.

[@kkeithf]

The flow and the pacing and the chapter transitions of this video are top tier! Very very good man!

[@brynleyy]

Love you brother, just discovered your channel and I'm a big fan of this series!

[@SirCalalot]

Majora’s Mask uses frame-buffer environment maps for various effects - such as the reflections in the Deku Link bubbles that you can blow. Should be quick enough to get to a spot in the very early game and check it out :) Great video as always, mate!

[@wishusknight3009]

Mariocart uses one as well for a billboard that is broadcasting the race as you are driving under it.

[@C.I...]

@@wishusknight3009 Toca 2 Touring Cars for PS1 has similar billboards. I always wondered why they had the HUD on them - now I realise it's because it has to use the previous frame (the other frame in the VRAM'S buffer area that can easily be used as a texture by the graphics processor), not the current one. I would think it was technically possible to exclude HUD elements if the billboard was drawn before the HUD using the current frame, but that would make it draw on top of anything in front of it. I think Wip3out sidesteps this by using the normal previous frame method but they carefully cropped out the HUD since it was close the the sides.

[@barry-allenthe-flash8396]

Man, there are a lot of cool tricks in this video! I never noticed before that Tekken 3 characters were lit in two ways, even though I noticed the flat shading on the clothes making them look blocky and the non-flat shading on the skin making them look smoother... I guess my brain just accepted it and moved on, lol. The Tesselation trick in Alien Resurrection is also one of those things I'm seen before - probably on one of your older videos! I think Wipeout does that on the Saturn, at least, but I always just wondered why you'd do that in older games besides in stuff like Wave Race where you needed a denser poly mesh near your character for deformation purposes. Again, I never really thought about the fact that it reduced texture warping/wobble. My brain just said, "Yup, this game looks good. Moving on" lol. This was all really fascinating! Loved to see these old PSX tricks shown off! And it's great to hear Racing Lagoon has been fan-translated finally; definitely gonna give that a shot!

[@astrideavolta]

Great video as always sharo - the tomb raider bit was really fascinating! Keep it up good man!

[@sergiodetter1417]

great channel bro!! keep them coming

[@3DSage]

This makes me want to replay my old ps1 games!

[@nugboy420]

Also ending the video recommending any Spyro and MGS was amazing.

[@zynidian]

Always a good day when Sharopolis uploads :)

[@pashaxyz9496]

...another outstanding video!! Love console technical explanations !

[@stepheng8061]

Dude love this channel so good I could watch your content for hours and hours and never loose interest

[@leslie5202]

You need to take a look into Ace Combat 3 and Delta Force: Urban Warfare.

[@jong2359]

Colony Wars is a PS1 game that I never understood how it looked so damn good compared to other similar titles on the platform.

[@thefurthestmanfromhome1148]

One of the earliest titles to use the higher resolution modes of the platform.

[@infinity2z3r07]

Space shooter games have notoriously good performance bc most of it is empty space

[@gipgap4]

@@infinity2z3r07 the third game had sections on planets as well.

[@ktvx.94]

Mario Kart 64 is often used as an emulation benchmark due to it using frame buffering in one of the tracks's signs.

[@nambona890]

Since you sort of touched on the warping textures in Alien Resurrection, one thing I'd like to mention is that Doom on the PS1 actually managed to entirely eliminate the warping texture issue by having each polygon be a 1-pixel wide vertical strip.

[@sloppynyuszi]

I don’t think Doom uses polygons to render out its environment. It’s called raycasting or something like that. Looks nice, but it’s not really 3D. As an example you can’t have floors, or rooms above rooms. Why the maps are clear as no room is covered by another room. I think Dark forces and Duke 3D had a more complex engine where you have rooms above rooms, but still not a polygon game.

[@nambona890]

@@sloppynyuszi Doom doesn't use raycasting, but Wolfenstein does. What I meant was how PS1 Doom renders walls as opposed to other PS1 games.

[@sloppynyuszi]

@@nambona890 looked it up, you are right, it uses something called BSP engine to render it. It’s still not polygons though. Looked into some online debate between the ps1 and Saturn version. And looks like a few posters were saying that the PS1 didn’t use polygons which why it doesn’t have texture warping.

[@SerBallister]

@@sloppynyuszi BSP is for visibility/sorting of (groups of) polygons, it's not related to perspective correct texturing.

[@sebastianaliandkulche]

​@@sloppynyusziIm a bit sick of this lie. Doom IS 3D and its already proved. If it wasnt 3D you couldnt have a 3d hitbox for some of the attacks like the fireballs for example. Just look at Doomkid video.

[@ninjapants7688]

The Saturn can do proper environment mapping reflections. Look up "XL2" and his game engine, he got it working

[@Sly2Cooper]

According to GameHut channel from the head of Travellers Tales he had to write a custom code to implement an environmental reflection on Sonic R logo and it run in a form of software mode or something like that. Because texture coordinates on PS1 were not tied to polygon vertices unlike quads on Saturn. PS1 could make it much more easy for developers. XL2 demos are VERY impressive tho. I wathched his z-treme engine quite some time ago hoping for an actual game release. Pushing the limits of a hardware like that is a form of art on its own.

[@ninjapants7688]

@@Sly2Cooper GameHut's solution is Software based and can only be done on the Sonic R loading screen. XL2s solution is hardware based, reflects the actual surrounding environment and can be done in game.

[@Sly2Cooper]

@@ninjapants7688 dedicated fans sometimes make more impressive stuff than most of game developers 👍 I wish Sega made less stupid decisions and stayed on the console market. Burning Rangers showed so much system potential. And demo of Shenmue for Saturn was sooo impressive technically.

[@ninjapants7688]

@@Sly2Cooper Yes very. Sega's biggest mistake with the Saturn was rushing and not thinking about developers immediately when they decided to go with experimental hardware designs, their sudden launch was also strange and they forgot to mention that the Saturn came with a game and onboard memory for the price they sold it at. Sony undercut them with the "299" announcement but failed to mention you had to buy an additional memory card and game on top of that, but the damage was already done and people did not care about the details.

[@kayleigh1991]

Love these types of videos from you 🙂 keep them up!

[@rapidloaf]

Your videos give me an appreciation for these games on a whole other level

[@jordanbenson2980]

Your videos are great mate. Looking forward to watching this one very much

[@jhna314]

You should have a look to Rollcage and Terracon.

[@Sly2Cooper]

Love the technology explaining part!

[@C.I...]

That tomb raider example must be the earliest version of Screen Space Reflections ever! I wonder if it would be possible to do the effect on a car if you selected the area of the screen carefully enough.

[@Sharopolis]

I didn't realise it was called that, I just thought it was a type of environment mapping, but now I've looked it up and I realise that it is actually a sort of separate thing. I'm not nearly so well versed in 3D technology as I am in old school 2D stuff, but its great to learn more. I think it might actually work on something like a car, if like you said you selected it right. I'll be on the lookout for games that did something similar.

[@jhna314]

@@Sharopolis the question is why it wasnt used in tomb 3 and 4

[@C.I...]

@@Sharopolis I think "ray tracers" did something like it, now I think of it. It was used on the windows of the cars only. As an aside, the reason I thought of SSR is that the Need for Speed (2015) reboot uses it to patch the gaps between a series of spherical pre-baked environment spheres that only the reflections on the car "drive" through. The game takes place exclusively at night and the lights from lampposts etc. are all real-time, so it looks indistinguishable from real reflections until you put a camera really close to one of the wing mirrors and see that the reflections will transit through the edges of the miniature skybox-esque environment spheres.

[@garethfairclough8715]

Not quite, TR1 did it as well.

[@djmips]

For all the things you've dismissed even slightly, you can't with the gran turismo series. These are true masterpieces. I don't know if you truly experienced how astounding Gran Turismo was when it debuted onto the scene. It still transcends the grainy pixels and the other rough edges of the PS1 graphics hardware and if you squint your eyes it almost looks real!

[@RiverReeves23]

I love your perspective man! Your personality is mapped perfectly on to a rich body of nostalgia. Cheers buddy!

[@sebastianaliandkulche]

There are some games that are missing here, but one that i wanted to share that probably no one knows is Choro Q Wonderful (thank god one guy released an english patch). It is probably the most impressive open world i ever seen in a PS1 game alongside Spyro 3 and Crash Team Racing, no noticeable LOD, no noticeable popping, high draw distances, extremely detailed and very big overall.

[@DenkyManner]

I had never considered the idea of using flat shading and Gouraud shading on the same character.

[@Larry]

Could you look at the original Crash Bandicoot if you do a follow up too? Naughty Dog found a way to stream the game from the disc rather than use memory. Sony apparantly hated them doing it as they were worried it would burn out people's drives.

[@RetrOrigin]

Soul Reaver also streams data from disc to hide loading times, it's really neat to see what developers did back then to overcome the RAM limitations of the console.

[@aboriginalmang]

@@RetrOrigin and considering that it had a bigger and less linear world than crash bandicoot, its impressive how they could get around the slow seek time of the CD while choosing which chunk of the environmental data to load.

[@Sly2Cooper]

@@RetrOrigin many PS1 games began to stream data from disc after Crash Bandicoot. Naughty Dog were the first to implement streaming chunks of levels on PS1. It was a somewhat prohibited technique for PlayStation by Sony themselves, but they changed their minds when they saw the results. Although From Software made seamless transitions between levels in their King's Field series before Crash. But in King's Field game engine loaded the whole level into memory while player walked through a long corridor connecting two levels. This way King's Field 3 had huge seamless open world with 16 big levels and 16 dungeons beneath each of them years befor Ocarina of Time. The same seamless level transition technique without loading screens was used in Killing Time - an early 3D Metroidvania for a 3DO game console.

[@fandangobrandango7864]

@@aboriginalmang The environmental data would have been very well organised so that the laser didn't have to travel far to find the next chunk.

[@aboriginalmang]

@@Sly2Cooper i remember playing a kings field game and seeing loading screens upon entering new areas. Crash 1 was a lot smoother.

[@anon_y_mousse]

Have you ever played FFT? Probably not something anyone will do a video on these days, but it's one of my favorite games for any system and I still play it to this day. Keep trying to get the perfect team. Lately I've been doing lengthy battles in Zeklaus Desert where I level down a character as a bard using the level degenerator trap, then level them up from 1 to 99 using the various stat boosting jobs, like priest, ninja, thief and monk. Haven't been able to do Ramza that way because I need his yell skill external to the character I build, but if anyone has a more efficient method I'm open to any ideas. My two best characters top off just shy of 500 hp without any equipment and can hit for enough to kill most monsters in 1 hit, let alone 2 with two swords equipped.

[@Rubbercookie]

Majora's Mask does environment mapping on the bubble you blow as the Deku Scrub, I'm sure there's plenty of examples besides ~ Great vid tho, loved the deeper look into my Playstation favs!

[@chemergency]

Delta Force: Urban Warfare is an often-overlooked game that isn't amazing in-terms of gameplay, but visually it's surprisingly impressive despite a less-than-ideal framerate, with some really ambitious lighting effects and facial animation by PS1 standards. Omega Boost is also amazingly good-looking and smooth for a PS1 game, could easily pass-off as a Dreamcast or early PS2 title with all its particle effects, same developers behind Gran Turismo too.

[@ImJecht]

Im surprised kings field 2 (3 Japan) wasn’t on here. It was HUGE with interlocking areas with hidden paths. And also, had zero loading screens between areas.

[@jimmicrackhead12]

It didn't load much. The graphics were shite

[@_yadokari]

From what I remember later Tekkens and RR4 used the undocumented (well it was used by the library to upload textures) contiguous DMA mode to draw particles and subdivided polygon outlines (to hide sparkles). Gave a nice speed boost for presorted packets.

[@illiteratedino]

WaveRace 64 does some good environment mapping.

[@HeavenlyKnight96]

Wow. "Every button does something you don't want it to do". That's a classic line right there.

[@OathOfRevenge]

Consider showcasing ps1 games on a crt or at least a good scanlines filter, all this games were designed with that in mind. The dithering in Silent Hill in particular looks like actual shading under scanlines, and all messy textures blend together.

[@carlcouture1023]

Silent Hill is a really interesting case because when you load it up in an emulator and switch on all the HLE bells and whistles like perspective correction and higher res output it starts looking WORSE. Native res, no upscaling and dithering enabled might look chunky and the textures and models might wobble around but "improving" it just makes everything look smeary and more cartoonish. It's like finding a restored master of an original Star Trek episode and displaying it in HD only to realize just how bad the practical effects are and seeing all the uniforms have huge stains on them.

[@kamilpotato3764]

Don't forget that lot's of ps1 games look better through composite on crt because of heavy dithering. Silent Hill is best example. On composite running on crt dithering gets nicely blended. Same game through rgb scart on crt shows horrible dithering.

[@julesgamergourmand]

It was a really interesting video thank you.

[@suicideposter]

If you look at those wireframe clips of Tekken 3, you'll see the shadows are just more polygons just flattened out. It's almost like the characters are rendered twice but the models that make the shadows appear a bit more simplified to cut down on polys.

[@asterchades2082]

Supposedly "Blasto" (Sony Interactive Studios America) was the ultimate limit pusher on the PSX. None of the existing Sony graphics libraries were used to make it - everything was made from the ground up to get extra speed and features. Levels were comprised of anything between 70 thousand and 150 thousand polygons, vertex lighting was abundant (and adaptive), hundreds of animations were employed for each enemy (thousands for Blasto himself), joint skinning in models, contextual music (part forced due to data streaming preventing CD audio from being used), true environment mapping, variable transparency, and even a software Z buffer, all being output in 512x240. As a game it's kind-of a let down, and the humour (Blasto being voiced by the late Phil Hartman - you might remember him from such TV shows as "The Simpsons" and "News Radio") isn't to everyone's taste so may not keep you invested. The PAL version is also missing level 3 due to needing more space for extra languages. But it really does seem like a technical marvel.

[@Sly2Cooper]

Too bad the gameplay and level design in Blasto weren't even close to its technical achievements. I played through several levels just for its graphics alone. But broken platforming mechanic made me rage-quit afer some time.

[@sebastianaliandkulche]

I never though Blasto was pushing the PS1 in any way. It also has a very low draw distance. According to Andy Gavin the PS1 could easily render tons of polygons if they were flat shaded which is like the entirety of this game. In fact i think Blasto looks just as "good" as Bubsy 3D. And at least Bubsy 3D managed to do 480i. It does seem like something even the weakest 3d hardware of the era like an early MS DOS, the 32X, the Atari Jaguar, the 3DO or even a Super FX SNES could run.

[@Ratchetti]

Spyro: Year of the Dragon looked awesome, woukd love to see it in a more in depth video

[@robmclaughjr]

Thanks! You do excellent analyses. It’s an education!

[@Sharopolis]

Thank you! Much appreciated!

[@cristianmolina6889]

17:00 This reflection technique of a fixed image is the same used on need for speed underground 2 for the menus and car lots.

[@roberto1519]

The PC reflections you mentioned in TR2 do only only exist but are better on PC.

[@fuzzix]

Cheers shar! Appreciate you taking the time to get ePSXe going - that wasn't the easiest software to wrangle even when it was fresh.

[@Sharopolis]

Hi Fuzz. It was more google-fu than anything that got it working in the end. That plugin uses GTK for the configuration gui which was the big problem.

[@mavadelo]

I would say that FFIX (and even VIII) very much pushed the PS to its limits, especially with some of the summons. Got you on the recommended tab today, not a bad suggestion from youtube for once. subbed.

[@joshuariddensdale2126]

Yup. Final Fantasy 8 and 9 came out towards the end of the PS1's life. Another game I would say pushed the PS1 to its limit was Gran Turismo 2.

[@epp6681]

A minute in i already like this chanel, straight to the point, no bs. 👍

[@AndrewTSq]

The games I miss is Bloody Roar 2, which even ran at hires (something like 480i ) and even was 60fps(!) We also had some techdmeos like the Ridge Racer on the type4 which was way more arcade accurate this time, than the first release.

[@nugboy420]

GT2 had my thought of entertainment and powers. The game used here is amazing here. Also the limitations explained here had me really making happy about this game.

[@paranoidgenius9164]

I agree, the control system for Tomb Raider was like trying to navigate a donkey when you wanted a whippet! But I got used to it😊👍

[@AlyxxTheRat]

Watching people play Tomb Raider who aren't used to the controls is painful. Especially when they blame the controls for being bad at it.

[@garethfairclough8715]

This. It's a matter of practice and understanding how the game works.

[@benjaminshiels1824]

Alien Res went well with the mouse/controller too! 👍

[@lc1565]

Gran Turismo II was mind blowing to me as a 7th grader.

[@slowlymakingsmoke]

Great video. I am going to be that person and point out that metal Mario and Tombraider are both environmental mapping, just that TR is taking a realtime dynamic buffer rather than Mario’s static one.

[@leomon32]

You have to show Tobal 2 with characters with capes and on the replay/first person view!

[@KopperNeoman]

Last time racial pride was woke blokes wore white hoods.

[@YeOldeGamerGrampsofOlde]

Einhänder was missing from the list as well as R-Type Delta. Those two games held consistent framerates and had very detailed graphics both on fore and background with animations and effects galore.

[@ruadeil_zabelin]

17:25 I feel called out. But a good explanation nonetheless :) 19:50 I didn't know any better. Though I mostly played tomb raider 3; maybe thats are improved a bit I don't remember.

[@rodddossantos1437]

Awesome! Please do MSG 1 and/or Silent Hill 1! Not partial to Konami, promise! This was the first video I’ve watched on the channel, brilliant! Now a subscriber. ;)

[@TMracer73]

Tomb Raider ? So many games released later at the life cycle of the concole looks absolutly gorgeous. There games are never mentioned.

[@mr.someoneudontkno698]

Noone talks about tekken 2. To be honest that counts too with 3. WONDERFUL soundtrack with clear audio. (More faves in 2 than 3 (some tracks in 3 overuse distortion making them sound more odd to me. Definitely improved the models over 2 but both are over 1. ) character number is larger in 3 so thats good. Both have a place in my heart

[@datbo7974]

Alien resurrection is an imperfect game that I love. Atmosphere amazing and the game looks amazing. I feel like ace combat 3 or ridge racer r4 could also have a video about them

[@renakunisaki]

In theory, N64 could do the same kind of framebuffer effects. Majora's Mask uses a similar technique for its blur effect. I don't know if any game used it for reflections like Tomb Raider did. The problem is N64 memory is excruciatingly slow and shared between CPU and video, so such an effect would cost a huge amount of performance. (The Zelda games ran at a measly 20 FPS!) There was of course the giant mirror in Super Mario 64, but that's fake; it's simply a copy of the environment plus a Mario clone mimicking your movements. If you want a Nintendo example, Star Fox Adventures on GameCube does use the same reflection trick for all reflective surfaces. It looks good enough most of the time, but sometimes you can see things that are quite wrong, like your character's reflection being above them instead of in front of them, or popup icons that aren't actually part of the game world being reflected. (I should check if the N64 beta leaked version has this effect too...) Also why have I never heard of this idea before, of tessellating the polygons on the fly based on distance? I guess it's not really useful outside of PSX due to its janky texture mapping? Seems like it would be great for LOD though...

[@Sly2Cooper]

Many PS1 games used frame-buffer effects not for reflections but rather for stealth camouflage-like effect. It became famous after MGS1. But it was also used earlier on save crystals in Tomb Raider 1 or in RayTracers car windows reflection even before. >>Star Fox Adventures on GameCube does use the same reflection Some PS2 games also did that, but we are talking about PS1/N64-gen. >> it's not really useful outside of PSX due to its janky texture mapping Saturn did that too for the same reason.

[@Roanski]

I was surprised to not see Vagrant Story anywhere in this video. That game blew me away back in the day and still kind of amazes me to this day.