Beautiful 2D Shows What the PS1 Is Made Of

[@C.I...]

I attempted to calculate how many sprites/certain types of polygon could be displayed by the PS1 a while ago, according to the developer spec documents, assuming nothing else was going on (no game logic etc.). I was going to make a game, but I don't know C, so I've only (barely) managed a "hello world" so far. These numbers are based on the models I wanted to include many of, so refer to the SCEE developer documents for more general numbers from Sony. I digress; I can't remember the exact reasons for all data gaps, but here are the results of my rough calculations in number drawn per frame, assuming 50/60Hz is kept up: Single dot sprites: ? (probably >4666, but I put "many many") 4x4/8x8/16x16 textured sprites: >/=4666/4666/1833 Single gouraud shaded polygons: 3333 Groups of 8 flat shaded/gouraud shaded polygons: 750/416 Hopefully one day I'll be able to write a test program with PSn00bSDK to find out if I was correct!

[@Sharopolis]

Thanks for that! I couldn't find any reasonable estimates anywhere and I knew that the answer would be complex.

[@Dwedit]

For those doing the math, it takes 300 16x16 sprites to cover up a 320x240 screen. 1833 is enough sprites to cover up the screen 6.11 times with 16x16 sprites.

[@C.I...]

@@Sharopolis Bear in mind, I could be completely wrong! A website/community called psxdev has the original docs/CDs developers would have received, and I extrapolated the data from there (SCEE TECHREF). Lots of things influence the performance on the PS1 - from the texture bit depth, the size of the polygon being drawn, even to where its texture is found in the VRAM (top left is faster, I think). I'm looking through the docs now, and I can't even find where I pulled the numbers from. I vaguely remember that they were probably in "per second" format.

[@BillyCandles]

😮

[@noop9k]

PS1 is faster than Saturn at drawing 2D sprites. Especially if transparent. It just doesn't have "free" 2D/"mode 7" background planes with free SNES-style transparencies that Saturn VDP2 adds..

[@MaxAbramson3]

God bless you, Shar. I've learned more about the 2D hackery of the early 90s from you than almost anyone else alive!

[@Sharopolis]

Well God bless you too, may we never escape the sprite based 90s!

[@MaxAbramson3]

@@Sharopolis I've always wondered why SEGA didn't just cancel the Sega CD (when it proved a colossal failure in Japan) and just release the original 1993 one-SH2 Saturn, maybe even getting it out for Christmas for Euro-NA markets. Then just make tons of arcade games and limit push some sprit-scaling 3D games using color cycling, super scaling, rotation, and other tricks. Even Daytona USA would've looked great, and that system could still draw about 30k flat-shaded polygons per second, enough for the Virtua Series ports in 3D. Plus a two-year head start on SONY and NINTENDO.

[@maroon9273]

​​@@MaxAbramson3the original Saturn would've been ready 1994 in Japan and NA. 1995 in PAL regions. I believe with one SH-2 with or without the added ram. The system would've been much powerful the the jaguar and 3do.

[@jsr734]

@@maroon9273 But without the added Ram it would barely compare to the Ps1 in 2d.

[@orderofmagnitude-TPATP]

Yeah our sharpy is pretty awesome.

[@parazels83]

I'm shocked, how good The Adventures of Lomax looks even today! Why the hell does Sony not port it on PS5?

[@Hologhoul]

A game with such a unique and beautiful look can really pull you in, and make you get into the game deeply where you might not have done otherwise!

[@Shinobi33]

I loooved SF Alpha 3 for the PS1. I was shocked as how well it looked and played despite the system's limitations.

[@mentalhell4846]

PS1 hardware is far more powerful than CPS2, there are two issues when porting or making a sprite based 2d game. 1. PS1 doesn't have any 2d dedicated chip, only 3d. 2. Capcom fighters use lots of animation frames and the cart is fast enough to transfer these animation frames to the CPU unlike CD media. That's why they had to cut some 2d animations in ps1 versions unless they reprogram the game from the scratch to store all animation frames in the CPU via fast command lines and use 3d polygons, then force the camera to face only one direction to fake 2d sprites.

[@Shinobi33]

@@mentalhell4846 if it had had that extra ram hard drive port like the Saturn. It would've helped a lot

[@timmoman]

I remember reading SOTN review from UK Playstation magazine, where it got 7/10 because ”2D games like SOTN are too old school for advanced system as Playstation”

[@thesledgehammerblog]

There was a very prevalent "2D is obsolete" attitude in the games industry at this time, to the point that it was reported that Sony was rejecting some titles outright for being 2D.

[@maroon9273]

Also, Rayman, MK3, MKT, heart of darkness, namco mueseums series, darius gaiden, primal rage, nba jame TE, nba hangtime, mickey mania, earthworm jim 2, spot goes to hollywood, wrestlemania arcade, in your house and the great gunners heaven, panzer bandits, adventures of little ralph, silhouette mirage, Yu-Gi-Oh! True Duel Monsters: Sealed Memories, 2D megaman series, 2D rpgs were all amazing on the PS1. PS1 seriously needed ram expansion card or pack (on its expandion slot) for large 2D games in order to have the saturn run for its money.

[@jsr734]

It would have added to the cost. Losing that important marketing advantage against the Saturn.

[@DesertRainReads]

There was also a game called X2 that got released in Japan and Europe and was slated to release in the US. Real looker, shame it never showed up here. It was a 2D shooter that looked pretty cool.

[@maroon9273]

@@jsr734 it is accessorie like the n64 expansion pak and saturn ram/action replay cart.

[@RetroMoments]

Symphony of the Night! What a magical experience!

[@Aqua_Xenossia]

Two of the unsung 2D-focused PS1 games that come to my mind are Tales of Destiny and Star Ocean: TSS. The former really looks and sounds like the SNES and Genesis/MD did a fusion dance and took steroids, with huge animated sprites all over the place and enough reverb to kill a moose. The latter, while also using polygons and pre-rendered backgrounds, also had enough detail and animation in those sprites to still hold up some 25 years later, and even before then had its engine reused for the PSP remake of SO1.

[@DesertRainReads]

Yup, and even then, the sprites from Star Ocean 2nd Story were reused again in Star Ocean 2nd Story R while the environments were completely overhauled. That proves how well the game held up in its own right. Tales of Destiny ended up getting a remake which sadly never left Japan, but I also agree about that game. Stunner to look at when it comes to 2D games for sure. Fun fact: Both Star Ocean 2nd Story and Tales of Destiny have music by the same composer. Mr. Motoi Sakuraba. That man is a workhorse when it comes to his music, and he's a legend who deserves to be uttered in the same breath as Uematsu, Mitsuda, Sakimoto, Iwata, Shimomura and Hamauzu.

[@Aqua_Xenossia]

@@DesertRainReads Going even further, some enemy sprites for Star Ocean: TSS were basically taken straight from Fantastic Space Odyssey- which speaks volumes to the artistry and care put in across the decades, given that FSO came out in 1996.

[@NickTaylor-Phantom-Works2]

Fantastic content mate. That's hands down easily the best video I've ever seen on this subject. So many other videos slate PSX 2D capabilities, and don't go into detail like you did here. Really quite excellent mate. Sir, I doff my cap.

[@DanglyLingham]

Great stuff. That first game is gorgeous

[@Stabby666]

Pretty much all the 2D sprite/tile map based systems could show far more sprites per frame than the hardware limit. They could use scanline based interrupts to reuse sprites previously drawn higher up the display - this was used a lot in later games on the systems. Also being able to change the scroll position of backgrounds during the display refresh meant that backgrounds were often used as huge sprites.

[@noop9k]

sprite/tile 2D VDPs had hard limit for the amount of sprite pixels per scanline that could not be circumvented no matter what you do. Framebuffer-based systems don't have that limit and are therefore are more flexible. It doesn't matter for them if you suddenly render all your sprites in a single spot. Older games would instead carefully distribute their sprites along y coordinate, build the entire game around this hardware limitation.

[@Stabby666]

@@noop9k Framebuffer systems do have a limit, as you can only draw so many sprites to the display memory between retrace cycles. This limit is also compounded by needing to erase old sprites and draw the background etc, which hardware-based systems do automatically with tilemaps/sprites. This is why older 8/16-bit computers without sprites/tilemaps would only have a few on screen, or would reduce the update rate to only effectively redraw every other frame. Latter arcade systems like the NeoGeo was totally sprite based - everything on screen was created with sprites, including backgrounds - it could draw so many sprites (each up to the full height of the screen) that multiple parallax layers were possible with them. Framebuffer systems are more flexible in the type of games you can create, although pseudo-3d games have been ported to sprite-based systems by remapping tiles/sprites as the display is drawn, essentially creating a kind of bitmap display using custom cartridge hardware.

[@noop9k]

@@Stabby666 Well, before good hw blitters, wider and faster memory, SRAM caches, 2D raster-based systems made sense. Neo Geo is not the first system that tried to do everything with sprites. Epoch SCV did that, for example. And, after all, all hi-res stuff on VCS/2600 screen is made from sprites. Neo Geo is a limited system though as it only gets its pixels from ROM, making it impossible to do something that can be done on Sega MD or even Famicom(with proper mapper). Using sprites for parallax bg was also highly popular with later PC Engine games, especially CD ones that had access to more RAM (Arcade Card RAM is HUGE). Also the failure of 32x shows that it is hard to match performance of a dedicated 2D VDP from previous generation with raw unassisted power of 2 quite powerful CPUs. You can't just take a framebuffer, add a good CPU and consider it done. The key part of what I said is that the power of a 2D VDP is evenly distributed between all visible lines of the raster, regardless of if you need it or not. And it is typically unflexible, you can't, say, turn sprites off to get more CPU/DMA access cycles instead. And making a fast/cheap framebuffer system is not easy too, many possible approaches and it is not hard to f things up in some way. Early PCs hand naive archs that shared crappy 8/16 bit memory between CPU and video hw, were often too slow for good graphics purely because of bus/RAM bandwidth.

[@Stabby666]

@@noop9k pretty much what I said really. I wouldn’t call the 2600 “hi res” though. I mean it kind of had sprites - really just 8 bit registers - but it was carefully timed code that made it work. At the the the systems were out they used the best options while keeping the prices reasonable. Williams used a raster buffer for Defender etc but it was an outlier at the time. Tile maps and sprites were fast, allowed for pixel perfect collision detection with almost no overhead and didn’t need much RAM or CPU time to update things. The Neo Geo certainly wasn’t limited for its time. It could display up to 96 sprites per raster all at up to 16x512 pixels all with hardware scaling, so you could actually create bitmap displays if you wanted to. No games did of course as they didn’t consider it useful at the time and they were developed to make money. I’ve seen the demoscene hacking old arcade machines to display effects you wouldn’t think they would be capable of though. There’s a recent one on the old Arcanoid machine by Abyss from this year.

[@noop9k]

@@Stabby666 Hardware raster sprites a like that, ultimately a bunch of registers containing data for 1 raster line, temporarily. and IMO 160 pixels is sufficient to be called high-res in the 70s. It is just that on VCS/800 you need to swap the data in those registers by yourself and the other hardware does it via some form of automatic DMA. On Amiga IIRC this is still visible as you can still directly access the sprite data registers as well. Also the implementation of sprite rendering may differ in other ways but I'm not in a mood to discuss that here. Again, unless my memory is failing me, you COULD NOT have arbitrary CPU-generated bitmaps on NeoGeo unless you created a custom cartridge. You could not make a wolf3d-like game as easily as you could on a Megadrive(or at all). Not many even attempted pseudo-3D raster effects like what Neo Turf Masters did, that were more often encountered even in Famicom/NES games.

[@n64fan60]

The PS1 version of Street Fighter Alpha 3 was actually very impressive. Perhaps Capcom's most impressive work on the console. SFA1 + 2 sucked on PS1, but they really hit it out of the park with SFA3.

[@santitabnavascues8673]

PS1 has support for 8000 8x8 sprites, each of them able to have their on 256 color palette, and unlimited sprites per scanline without special effects save transparencies, for special effects like scaling or rotations, you had to use polygons So it had enough to push great 2D games... except for the limited memory, so the best aproach was to stream in cd data when loading new areas, at least for scrolling games.

[@robertskitch]

12:33 "Please don't put shampoo in your eyes" 12:42 "GeppyX" - "Soy sauce flavoured" - "Sauce flavoured" - "Shampoo"

[@BurritoKingdom]

The PS1's 2D capabilities were limited by its lack of RAM. If it had something like the Saturn's 4MB cart, it probably could have done X-Men vs Street Fighter. Just that loading times before matches would be extremely long. Probably needed something like 32MB to have all the character data and animations for Shang Tsung in MK Trilogy.

[@espfusion]

PS1 could have had a RAM cart on the PIO bus that was easily fast enough for any plausible uses. Just no one bothered.

[@TheTurnipKing]

Definately a problem, and one somewhat exacerbated by the slow CD ROM drives of the time. You have six hundred megs of data there, but you can't access it quickly... and even attempting to nullifies one of your other prime selling points, the CD audio.

[@heardofrvb]

Then how was it able to run Jojo's Bizzare Adventure so well (aside from the Stands having a limited color pallet)?

[@BurritoKingdom]

@@heardofrvb Capcom cut out alot frames of animations compared to the arcade version. Also the PS1 version constantly loads. Before and after every fight and story sequence it loads new data. Trying to keep all the the animation data less than 1MB and game data less than 2MB to fit in RAM.

[@BurritoKingdom]

@@TheTurnipKing yeah that's why Shang Tsung morphing into everyone on CD systems was almost impossible. The options on the PS1 version of MKTrilogy was to limit Shang Tsung to 3 characters and the character he was fighting or have 5 second load between morphs. 😞

[@EricBatterson]

Thanks!

[@AppliedCryogenics]

I heart this episode. Is there a reason your channel lacks a Join button? I'm not sure what the implications of those are for creators, but I'd chip in a few bucks a month if there were one.

[@johnfoster7823]

How is collision handled? When the polygons are shown in the viewer the boundary edges are sometimes much higher than the character is shown walking. If collision was done detecting the boundary of the polygon box the main character would look like it was floating above the platform.

[@pj3352]

Great video as usual fella

[@SomeOrangeCat]

The N64 was a 3-D monster, the Saturn was a 2-D monster, the PS1 did both of those well enough to be a great all around system.

[@nickbond6447]

Nice neat interpretation, no wonder the Saturn myth is so seductive. Saturn is in fact pretty good at 3D. Todays homebrew showcases this best

[@SomeOrangeCat]

@@nickbond6447 Its not that the Saturn couldn't do 3-D. It couldn't do it easily. Sega was very stingy with the technical documentation for the thing, and left most third parties to figure it out for themselves. Sony made a simple system architecture and actually showed 3rd party developers how to work with it.

[@nickbond6447]

@@SomeOrangeCat Thats true. However, the assertion of ‘2D monster’ is off, especially as the quality and quantity of 2D games is best represented by PS1. Saturn is much more of a powerful all rounder also.

[@SomeOrangeCat]

@@nickbond6447 On paper. Not in practice.

[@nickbond6447]

@@SomeOrangeCat so your conclusion is the Saturn is a ‘2D monster’ not because of its 2D games but because third parties found it difficult to make 3D games for it.

[@ridiculous_gaming]

Being a big Amiga fan, I respect the 2D titles of both PS1 & Sega Saturn fantastic. If I had to choose between an N64 and SNES, I'd choose the SNES...and Soldiers of Fortune, Speedball 2, etc.

[@PS1Fan1991]

To me, Suikoden II really showcased what the PS1 could do combining 2D and 3D.

[@b1llygo4t]

Suikoden was super dope

[@sambird7]

Wow, my two years of wasted college Japanese classes actually coming in handy. The game at 17:00 called "Neko no Kaikata" or 猫の飼い方 which means means "How to take care of a cat". Or if you want to translate it directly (one of my favorite passtimes) it is called "Cat's Care-way".

[@rorychivers8769]

No knowledge is wasted knowledge

[@trulyinfamous]

​@@rorychivers8769 if it's never used then it is

[@rorychivers8769]

@@trulyinfamous That would have more meaningful impact, if you weren't trying to pour cold water on someone that just found knowledge that they thought was wasted turned out to pay unexpected dividends. But perhaps you are the ultimate arbiter of which knowledge will become useful in the future, and which will not, who am I to question your wisdom.

[@skywalkerranch]

Fantastic content as always. A belated Happy New year to you.

[@AnthonyRiddle]

Dang, I called this one. Excellent video!!! Thank you so much.

[@geekehUK]

I don't know if it's how it's done, but I doubt Vib Ribbon needed to buffer the actual audio, it would just need to perform Fast Fourier Transforms, and store a table of basic EQ data.

[@thecunninlynguist]

i loveeeed this port of alpha 3

[@PrekiFromPoland]

I wish there could be more recommendations on 2D games for the good old "gray one", since this console as well as Saturn was the peak of 2D home gaming. During the 6th gen era this style went out of fashion completely, the only 2D game (as in sprites, flat backgrounds and sidescrolling action) for PS2 I can think of is the action-RPG Odin Sphere and that's it. Speaking of PS1, my personal 2D favorites for this system are Gradius Gaiden (the ultimate Gradius experience) and Advanced V.G. 2 (a guilty pleasure "waifu fighter" that started out as an H-game series on PC-98) - both Japanese exclusives, and a lot of strictly 2D games stayed in that region, because the rest of the world wanted all this new, fancy 3D, and Sony's American division noticed this, giving more promotion to three-dimensional games.

[@ArtemyMalchuk]

My personal recommendations would be Twinbee Yahho, the entire Rockman roster on the PSX, which includes 8 and X3 through X6 (ok ok stop at X5), Mr. Driller and, as a honorable mention, Disney's Hercules. The latter is really a 2,5D scrolling game but it has god-tier 2D sprites and animations.

[@michaelcalvin42]

Even if the PS1 had not had any features geared specifically toward creating 2D sprites, it easily could have faked it to the point where nobody could notice by just constructing each sprite out of two triangles. Texture warping is only a problem if you rotate a polygon relative to the Z axis (into/out of the screen) so they would be indistinguishable from sprites.

[@C.I...]

If I recall correctly, it does just that - the rectangular sprite is just an abstraction/function in the SDK that joins two polygons together.

[@michaelcalvin42]

@@C.I... That makes perfect sense to me. If I were designing the hardware and writing the SDK, that's how I would have implemented it.

[@C.I...]

@@michaelcalvin42 Just looked it up in the Dev doc, and there seem to be 3 types of sprite (done like this) available, the fastest of which does not support scaling/rotation.

[@michaelcalvin42]

@@C.I... Ah, so there is some kind of special sprite available. I would expect all triangle-based sprites to inherently support scaling/rotation.

[@espfusion]

​@@C.I...There is in fact an actual rectangle (not quad) drawing primitive that renders up to 2x faster than quads that get broken into triangles.

[@xenorac]

That was a quick 27 minutes! Great one as usual!

[@bitwize]

The PS1, Saturn, and N64 were 2D powerhouses that could deliver sprite-based experiences like nothing ever before seen in the home. If you have something that can draw 3D polygons with texture maps fast, what you have is a strict superset of what a 2D blitter can provide. Unfortunately, MARKETING got in the way of the PS1 realizing its full potential in this regard in the NA market. SCEA was positioning the PlayStation as the polygon-based successor to obsolete sprite gaming, and decided on a blanket ban of 2D games on the PlayStation in North America. Special exceptions were made as they always are, typically for large publishers seeking to release tentpole franchise entries. So we got Street Fighter and SotN, but there were a lot of smaller 2D titles the North American PlayStation just didn't get.

[@TurboXray]

The PS1 is made from the tears of Saturn fans haha. Just kidding.

[@loganford3921]

Also Capcom used polygon hits effects in SFZ 3 to give more frames of animation for the Characters in the PSX version.

[@m.i.smithology]

The ps1 actually helped the evolution of 2d games by adding polygons to it, thus helping 2d fighting games that combined 3d backgrounds and special effects in the arcade games and next gen consoles, especially the dreamcast 👍.

[@mohammedganai9636]

So did the Saturn. Two words: Radiant Silvergun.

[@b1llygo4t]

No bro the lack of 2d support on ps1 and the death of the saturn meant the death of 2d games in general. There were a last few hurrahs like castlevania. But now entire genres are relagated to "xbox arcade" status.

[@lil_thang]

bruh the merzbow and vibribbon shoutout, what a grand combination

[@ecernosoft3096]

Note- CD ROM can hold 700 megabytes.

[@Hologhoul]

I think I might have to check out The Ads of Lomax, looks wonderful!

[@ChaunceyGardener]

One ignored aspect of early 3D specially on PSX is that the textures had to be so low res that they are in fact pixel art themselves just not locked to screen coordinates. One extreme good example of pixel-like texture work is the Hokuto no Ken - Seikimatsu Kyūseishu Densetsu​ and Breath of Fire III.

[@noop9k]

You get slightly better texture cache usage if 16 colors and scaled up

[@brianpaul5667]

When I think beautiful 2D on PS1 I always think Legend of Mana did you ever play that?

[@edwardperkins1225]

So PS1 couldn't draw square polys if scaled or rotated, but Saturn could? Were they actually sprites on Saturn or really just square polys that could scale and rotate?

[@BurritoKingdom]

Every 3D console except the Saturn, Jaguar and 3DO uses triangles as the primitive. Quads are not as malleable as triangles and would waste a lot resources. And the way the PS1 does 2d is how every console now does 2d unless they're using a software renderer or emulation

[@espfusion]

​@losermike PS1 does have rectangular "sprite" primitives, they just don't work with all of the pixel pipeline. You can see this throught the video. N64 has something similar with its "copy" mode.

[@liamh1982]

The Saturn works pretty much the opposite of how you've described - it draws polygons by heavy manipulation of the sprite engine, so technically you could say that other than background and floor layers, everything you see on Saturn is a sprite.

[@Psythik]

As a kid I used to believe the opposite of what this video discusses, that the PS1 wasn't meant to play 3D games. The "warbly" textures caused by the lack of a Z buffer - along with the fact that the original controller didn't have any joysticks - only helped to reinforce this belief.

[@michaelcalvin42]

The classic "warbly" look of the PS1's textures didn't have anything to do with the Z buffer. Z buffers only deal with polygon occlusion (i.e. figuring out which polygons are in front of others). The actual "warbly" texture look was caused by a combination of factors, including rounding errors and texture lookup imprecision.

[@C.I...]

Wasn't caused by the lack of a Z buffer - if you mean the jiggly movement, it was caused by the fact the GPU could only draw polygons' corners on the exact centre of a pixel. If you meant the warped textures at acute angles, that was the affine texture mapping.

[@mattuw82]

You guys are talking about two separate reasons, both of which are true. The lack of z buffer made it difficult for the PS1 to do perspective correct textures. The affine texture mapping it uses causes distortion that could be described as warbly.

[@ridiculous_gaming]

Playing CROC with a directional pad.😮...such memories.

[@michaelcalvin42]

@@mattuw82 Z buffers are not used in texture perspective correction. It is possible to have a renderer without a Z buffer that does indeed map perspective-corrected textures. You do need to preserve the Z coordinate of each vertex after projection, but this is a separate issue from the concept of a Z buffer, as this result does not need to be buffered in any way (except while rasterizing that particular triangle.) You can test this by turning Z write off while rendering triangles on a modern GPU. The textures will still map correctly because the projected Z coordinates (as well as W) are preserved internally for the duration of the rendered triangle. All this without writing the Z buffer at all.

[@Raderade1-pt3om]

What are best metrics or benchmarks to compare different systems? Fps, calculations, flops, no, of polygons etc and can u incoperste in your videos

[@zuijderwijk]

It would be nice to see a Sega Saturn comparison as that was a 2d powerhouse. The Playstation was the system for early 3d due to almost arcade perfect ports early titles like Ridge Racer and Tekken.

[@opaljk4835]

What was the second to last shmup being shown? Right before Zanac

[@uchusky08]

Always loved how Breath of Fire 3 and 4 looked. Leaning more into 2D was definitely the better move in retrospect, despite 3D being the shiny new thing. So many of those PSX 3D games have not aged well. The 2D games are still standing strong.

[@gdassspar6nar]

It's not fair to judge early 3d like that.Besides,many 3d games of that era look really charming even today (banjo kazooie,tooie)

[@Sinn0100]

I know I already posted but there is something I would like to add. You said 'The Adventures of Lomax' couldn't be emulated on any other hardware before it and you're probably right. However, I do believe it might be possible for the AES to come very close in quality. I'm actually very interested in knowing how many colors per screen were used to produce 'The Adventures of Lomax' at its highest load? It may very well display well over the AES's 65,000+ color pallet. What do you think? Addendum- Can you shed some light on how the color count on consoles exploded like it did? We went from 56 colors to 64 colors...then to 65,000+ colors, back to 32,000+...next generation 16.9 million colors?! How did they pull that off? That's not an incremental increase...that is exponential.

[@DesertRainReads]

The 5th gen wasn't even a contest. PSOne handily won and quite easily at that. I had both Saturn and PSOne. Decided to skip the N64 as it didn't have a lot in its software library that appealed to me. In most cases? The Saturn was better at 2D games. It truly was a powerhouse, and with RAM carts? It left PSOne in the dust. Sadly, many of those gems never left Japan but the ones that came here showcased what I'm talking about. When it came to 3-D offerings? The PSOne easily took the cake. So many unique games that you simply couldn't find anywhere else. They went all in and it showed. Some of those games rivaled the best graphics of the N64 to boot. But yes, the PSOne was an absolute juggernaut, it did have some damn good 2D games in it's own right but it was 3D where the sucker shined. Sony achieved in one generation what took Sega and Nintendo two or three generations to do, thanks to thinking one step ahead of the competition. As we keep gaming on PS5, XBSX and Nintendo Switch, many of the PSOne's library has seen remasters on countless other systems too. So its legacy and impact on today's games are felt even now.

[@BubblegumCrash332]

I would love to see Guardian Heros ported to the PS1

[@dan_loup]

The playstation had some sprite functions, but they were broken in some models. However if you did the two triangles thing CORRECTLY, it would just work.

[@califaern3sto]

Broken in the 1001 model and 3001 model i bet

[@dan_loup]

​@@califaern3stothe techdoc is not very specific, it claims it might be the ones with PU-7 on the board. but yes, older PSX consoles can't flip sprites.

[@orderofmagnitude-TPATP]

​@@dan_loupso...were there any games that did this, and did they not work on those machines?

[@dan_loup]

@@orderofmagnitude-TPATP It would be a pretty terrible idea to do that.

[@anon_y_mousse]

You misspelled Ecsaform, which for anyone who's never played it could be a bit of a stumbling block in finding it.

[@bsdetector6908]

A 2D sprite is a textured orthogonal quad - 2 triangles making a square shape. The PS1 could handle these in its sleep.

[@ned3and]

I think animation of sprites was like texture swapping / animation. But RAM was too small to handle more fluid animation.

[@bsdetector6908]

@@ned3and Depending on the game, you could save memory in sprite frames by X flipping and Y flipping them using 3D transforms. So if you have a walking left animation you would get walking right for free.

[@maxdickens-l2h]

Great video. Could you tell me what emulator you're using for the PS1 wireframe mode? I've used ePSXe and have the Pete's GPU thing but I just can't find the wireframe/line mode anywhere in the settings.

[@SomeBlokeOrWhatever]

As you kept saying "PlayStation" I was hit by a brain synapse. The name PlayStation. It's wordplay. It's a pun on "Workstation", isn't it? As in Workstation computers being highly powerful professional machines. Am I stupid for only realising this now?

[@sunderark]

It was literally the first thing they mentioned when they announced it 30 years ago. Haha

[@hirschlord341]

Very good video because you show sfa3 and castlevania sotn🎉

[@hirschlord341]

I played so many years pixel games , i love them . The 3d games are more realistic … maybe , but with love animated pixels look better to me 😂🥰

[@TheTurnipKing]

Problem is that there can be texture fringing where the triangles meet, and worse very little of the actual code needed to create a platformer on a more traditional raster based system would be directly applicable. Even worse, you're NOT making much use of the system's ability to move and warp the polygons if you're just billboarding them towards the camera. The Misadventures of Flink, by the same developers on Amiga demonstrates that problem. There's very little in Lomax that COULDN'T be done on the previous generation of hardware, which is not what people had just paid 299.99 for.

[@Sinn0100]

Interesting...I thought it was polygons or pieces of them with textures stuck to them to create sprite like...ummm things I guess (minimalist explanation)? Thank you for sharing!

[@orderofmagnitude-TPATP]

😅 I did too...

[@liamh1982]

Maybe you're both thinking of the N64?

[@Blotling360]

Lomax is my favorite 2D platformer.

[@kevinbissinger]

13:24 Holy crap somebody else who knows who Merzbow is!

[@paulrobinson4870]

Some blistering games here, lemmings spin off?!!

[@athos5359]

it s fillrate,the ps1 had that at least and the 2kb textuur cache.

[@Viper4ever05]

If PlayStation got released just a bit earlier as a competitor to Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis it would have been an amazing 2D system.

[@TheOtherClips]

The Lomax 3d effects aren't really much more than mode 7 could do on the SNES. It counts as 2D!

[@techknow9237]

Whats the PS console to get for 2D Shumps, Fightes ? Still prefer arcade 2D games.

[@claudiosacchi3720]

Harmful park and time bokan 1 and 2 are other examples of great sprite based games on the ps1

[@fattomandeibu]

2D games pretty much work the same way on modern GPUs to this day. Of course, they have a lot more features and a much bigger frame buffer(my mid-range GPU has 12GB, an absolutely mental amount for a fully 2D game) so if you wanted to make a 2D game, you could probably go with 8K graphics.

[@acem7749]

Should have shown the outlines per game.

[@partlyawesome]

why would you put merzbow in this

[@jaysistar2711]

The only system of that generation that is actually 3D is the Nintendo 64. With the PlayStation, 2D coordinates are sent to the hardware, and it could take triangles. The Sega Saturn could only take quads, and they don't call the primatives "polygons", they call them distorted sprites. The Nintendo 64 hardware took 3D coordinates, which are needed for interpolating 1/Z across each scanline for perspective correct textures (eliminates the texture sliding problem common at some angles on the other 2 systems), and for trilinear filtering.

[@sebastiankulche]

The simple fact that it can handle polygons makes it 3d internally. Lacking z buffer has nothing to do with being 3d.

[@returnofmerenguespersempre]

Couldnt hit that thumbs up button faster

[@almeidachannel7121]

Nice Video ! Sub & Big Like ! And Love Retro Ps1 Games !

[@SmeddyTooBestChannel]

OMFG GEPPY-X

[@wimwiddershins]

I was annoying that everything "had to be 3D" when the PS1 came out. I wanted to see ports of the titles that had struggled on 16bit machines with low memory, especially Amiga 500 stuff.

[@TheTurnipKing]

Ironically, the A1200 had pretty much as much memory as the PS1.

[@Athesies]

It's insane how good the ps1 was good at 2d games. 2d was what the saturn was built from the ground up to do really well yet it seems like the ps1 could match the capabilities of its base hardware most of the time, crazy

[@orderofmagnitude-TPATP]

Nah... not really, you said it - the Saturn absolutely owned 2d as built for it. It was night and day. Does not mean there were some good attempts and conversions, but you could blatantly see the concessions made.

[@Athesies]

@orderofmagnitude-TPATP outside of ram expansion games you really think the saturn was drastically better with 2d than the playstation? Huh interesting, if you could provide some examples I'd like to see them, I can't think of much on the Saturn that's tons better than stuff like symphony of the night or the megaman x games. Do you have specs that show how it's way superior also?

[@nickbond6447]

The original intention was a lean to 2D but the final design is more an all rounder. Some corners of the media like to say it was SEGAs sole intention thus purporting ‘Saturn was a 2D powerhouse’ myth.

[@orderofmagnitude-TPATP]

@@Athesies yes, yes I do - there are tonnes of 2d games on both platforms where the Saturn wipes the floor with it 2d wise. Litterally find a game yourself on both and look. Forget the ram expansion, even without that - Just look how many frames of animation are missing on say neogeo ports compared to the Saturn... I don't know what you want from me, but thats pretty much common knowledge. Sadly back then nobody in the west cared for 2d games, believing it was old hat and 3d is the future, so most 2d amazing games were released in Japan. From loading times to frames of animation and as a knock on effect poor sound sampling too. It is what it is...

[@orderofmagnitude-TPATP]

@@nickbond6447 Saturn also had on paper better 3d capabilities, but there was an issue.... It was very hard to program for. But if you wanna see the Saturn beat PlayStation in 3d Check some fighting games like virtua fighter 2 and last bronx compared to say tekken series, or even dead or alive on both. Exhumed/powerslave as first person shooter on both. Saturn only beat the PlayStation in 3d when developers actually knew what they were doing and not utilising just one sh2 chip as an example

[@nicolasjonasson4820]

Its not surprising Sony did well in video games considering the companies history

[@breakdancelessonsamsterdam9367]

surpriced you didn't mention Rayman 1, it showed beautiful 2d graphics and was quite succesful even in the west.

[@janijoeli]

Merzbow mentioned. Would subscribe, if I hadn't already.

[@Sharopolis]

Thanks!

[@ned3and]

FMV''s on the PS1 had something like mjpeg codec. It was run at 15 fps not 30. Every frame was a key frame and most of 2D animation runs at 12 fps so 15 fps was fairly enough.

[@Fattydeposit]

Lomax was arguably the prettiest tech demo on the system. Utterly beautiful but that's really the only thing it has going for it.

[@MRX-cw1cy]

You mentioned Strider2 but what about Strider that was 2D and wasn't emulation

[@orderofmagnitude-TPATP]

Good point.

[@Ichibuns]

I think the PlayStation could've been better if it used cartridges instead of disks. I get disks were the new thing to have but fixing the PlayStation's issues with more RAM would've just increased load times. In this time period, ROM was still a better choice. Even today, a cartridge would be faster, store far more data, be less prone to pirated copies, and save storage space on the user end. The downside would be cost. My question is if Sony chose disks on the PS1 because of popularity, cost of production, or both?

[@dcikaruga]

The handicap was the 2MB RAM and 1MB VRAM really, while the Saturn had 1.5MB VRAM and even more with a RAM expansion, offering more frames of animation for 2D games like X-Men vs Street Fighter.

[@AlexDestroyerOfEarth]

Symphony of the night on Saturn was a botched port for sure, there are Chinese modders that have begun trying to fix some of the more glaring issues. Konami barely tried to make use of the Saturn and effectively just directly ported what they could and added a bit.

[@jsr734]

It certainly looked like a rushed port. There is no reason the Saturn hardware couldn´t handle the game flawlessly.

[@AlexDestroyerOfEarth]

@@jsr734 honestly with access to the ram carts it should be able to run even better, my best assumption would be that they rewrote as little code as possible that could have optimized it for Saturn. Considering the difference in quality with the Capcom ports it's pretty obvious.

[@orderofmagnitude-TPATP]

Konami litterally just "plonked" it on the Saturn and said "yup, that'll do... oh here's some extra content as an apology"

[@AlexDestroyerOfEarth]

@@orderofmagnitude-TPATP they weren't really sold on the hardware and Sony gave many entitlements for third party support while Sega failed on that front, not to mention SCEA had no major issues with Sony Japan, which Sega America and Japan were at loggerheads at the time you could see the writing on the wall

[@davidmcgill1000]

Everyone always forgets Rayman.

[@diebesgrab]

Legend of Mana. That is all.

[@dyscotopia]

It's really interesting how the 2d games look so much more impressive and less dated than the, at the time, cutting edge 3d ones

[@rockapartie]

Many 3D games actually look quite nice upscaled and with Duckstation's PGXP, but most of them were hard to stomach on original hardware due to the absolutely massive flickering, wobbling, warping and clipping issues. The PSX was anything but cutting edge, it lacked many basic features to keep costs down.

[@HaakonAnderson]

I hope Joe from Game Sack will watch this video. 👞 🎮 🛍️ ⌚ 📷

[@orderofmagnitude-TPATP]

I'll send it too him now.

[@SirJonSoda]

I wonder if the PSX could have had a RAM expansion and Sony just chose not to make one and go for total compatibility instead. I mean, the initial models did have that back parallel port which was used by cheating devices and, recently, by the PSIO, although I don't know if it had enough bandwidth.

[@FZuloaga]

Castlevania on Saturn looks and plays like garbage because it was a rushed port. Even the sprites are off proportion because the different resolution. It was also made by a different team. KCET made it for PSX and KCEN for Saturn.

[@omegarugal9283]

the ps1 could have been a 2D powerhouse if only had more ram. sony engineers noticed 1 mb is too little and asked the big shots if they aproved 2 mb... they said no...

[@jsr734]

Did you mean Video Ram? The Play Station already has 2 Megabytes of main ram.

[@orderofmagnitude-TPATP]

Yes. Its common knowledge PlayStation has 1MB

[@nickbond6447]

RAM is the main thing to be a 2D powerhouse?

[@orderofmagnitude-TPATP]

@@nickbond6447 yes. Frames of animation my guy. Its not everything but it is basically necessity. The extra 4mb ram cart really sets the Saturn free to do cps2 arcade perfect conversions.

[@nickbond6447]

@@orderofmagnitude-TPATP I would attest that the PS1’s larger and more varied library of 2D games is more deserving of ‘2D powerhouse’ label, then a system giving a few extra frames of animation within one genre that needs additional hardware to achieve it?!

[@anglo-saxonconnor817]

People always remembered the PS1 2d capabilities are weak compared to Saturn but during their era it was still the second most powerful system around and the 2d games were still very beautiful when compared to what the previous gen 16 bit consoles can offered.

[@orderofmagnitude-TPATP]

True...

[@nickbond6447]

PS1 was always best with 2D, simply through quality and quantity. With Saturn, u had to have a RAM cart if you want superior 2D games!

[@orderofmagnitude-TPATP]

@@nickbond6447 so way off. And I don't think you understand the ram cart. Without it, it trashed the PlayStation. With it allowed it to be arcade perfect. Sorry but your statement is completely misguided Go check the Japanese library of Saturn 2d games. Most were not released in the west because people thought 2d was old hat and 3d was the thing to go for. Sorry dude, way out on that one. And as I said, its not that PlayStation was bad at 2d , it really wasn't. Its just the Saturn was so much better at this Hence the ram cart - to fully capitalise on it and open up possibilities. A lot of games didn't need it but you could use it for the extra animation Without it, it still was quite a bit better than the PlayStation With it, it was on another level. Basically a cps2 board.

[@nickbond6447]

@@orderofmagnitude-TPATP I can tell you’re a 2D fighting fan. With a RAM cart they are best, no doubt. But can I play Guilty Gear or SNK vs Capcom on Saturn? This video underlines other types of games and highlights the fact that there was much more variety on PS1 as good as anything 2D for that generation. Your assertion that without a RAM cart Saturn is superior?!? What evidence is there? X-men? Alpha 2? No way, squint and you can’t see it. Personally I’d rather play Fighters Megamix or Last Bronx. If anything Saturns 3D fighters shine out more!

[@orderofmagnitude-TPATP]

@@nickbond6447 fair point on the 3d fighters, but as for the 2d 'squint and you can just see it then' From loading times, to the frames on animation, then the sound suffers as well due to the memory restrictions.... sheesh metal slug looks odd with the baddies "gliding along" *and im pretty sure that ain't a ram cart game on Saturn. As for also snk vs capcom - thats not even a same game and played the way its meant to be played on PlayStation. However marvel vs street fighter is that same type of game - granted needing the ram cart - but its practically a perfect cps2 port. Neogeo ports also don't hold well on PlayStation, ram/rom cart or not. As for variety, there was plenty like Sillhouete mirage, don don, shed loads of shooters, puzzlers, astal was an amazing original title that that to this day is on nothing else.... I don't think you know how strong the Japanese library was on the Saturn. 2d and 3d.

[@PAINNN666]

Saturn put a decent challenge to PS1 There is no Dominance. Or you about PS2-5 dominance? Also until 97 SNES was still strong.

[@chloedevereaux1801]

megabits not bytes......

[@ciredecgellar8232]

Of course there some amazing 2D games on PS1 as well as amazing 3D games on Saturn .... things are not so binare.

[@williamtalbot5040]

You're thinking of the Sega Saturn

[@paolozago6123]

The PlayStation approach to 2D is not much unlike the Neo Geo one: Neo Geo doesn't have tile mapped layers like other consoles of the time, but just a huge number of sprites that are used to construct backgrounds and characters. They are not technically sprites in the PS, but they are more similar to Neo Geo sprites than, say, SNES background tile maps

[@noop9k]

There are dedicated graphics primitives for drawing "sprites" on Playstation that are somewhat more efficient than general triangles, but aren't scaled or rotated. And it actually draws these faster than Saturn. The problem is that Saturn also has SNES-like tile layers with SNES-like limited transparencies literally for free.

[@hirschlord341]

For me , the best animated sprites did have capcom, konami, square and nintendo in the snes times 🥰

[@fthprodphoto-video5357]

Is it technically possible to add RAM to the Ps1 to develop new 2D games on it ?

[@parazels83]

Who will fund these new ps1 hardware and games?

[@axilmar254]

Any 3d engine can do 2d...just set the z depth to 0 for all graphics.

[@johneygd]

Did the playstation really revolutionized and changed gaming?? I don’t think so,it was both the saturn,3DO etc,, as those systems did came first,BUT we can say that sony ps1 became i real big hit,if it wasn’t because sony did research and learned from the mistakes from it’s competitors, Now while it is true that the ps1 cannot do sprites,but it’s square polygonal feature was intended for 2D games BUT each polygon is made out of several sprites whether square or triagonal, Now about those rotation and zooming capabilities ,i believe it could be also done on 4th gen systems BUT it has to be done trough software instead and you got to make sure that things wouldn’t slowdown to a crawd,also since most 4th gen systems did use cartrides,it could load stuff instantly i wich game developers could take advantage off unlike CD based systems.