PS1 Appreciation/Collectors Thread of Ugly-Ass Polygons

All those Beetle shots are not for me.

Also I think GT still looks and feels great!! Game was mind blowing and yeah the “campaign” seemed so deep to me at the time! Just the sheer variety of not just “cars” but how they handled differently depending on so many factors (AWD v RWD v FWD, plus modifications and stuff). Undeniably landmark software and it still holds up for me.

I agree that it is interesting how it looks like a path to what “realistic looking” racing games look like now, while the Ridge Racers still look unique and cool.

GT2 drew me to The Cardigans. For that alone, I love the game. lol

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Long Gone Before Daylight is my favourite album of theirs

It’s great. Life and Eemerdale are pure joys too.

Their Bossa Nova style Iron Man cover just warms my heart.

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Are those PS1 lasers from China any good. My current PS1 can struggle reading even games that look new now.

No they’re junk.

Where can I get a good one from

TheSlydat on ResetEra anecdotally mentioned that out of three Chinese manufacturers who make replacement PS1 optical blocks one of them is good, unfortunately, it seems like there’s no way to tell the good one from the bad ones as they all use the same packaging. I’ve not checked but there might be a Youtube video in French that has info on what to look for.

At least in French JohnJohn made a detailed list of what to keep an eye out for when buying a new optical block and a replacement PSU for your playstation 1 so we got our asses covered.

I’ve seen Totalconsoles been mentioned on Shmups and Assembler forums as being decent: http://www.totalconsole.com/KSM-440BAM-Laser-Lens-Drive-For-Sony-PS1-PlayStation-1-PSOne-PS-One--BRAND-NEW_p_370.html

They used to be a lot cheaper though and at that price I think you could pick up another PSX/PSOne.

You could buy another PS1 and harvest the OEM laser from that. Ideally one that doesn’t work for one reason or another. It’d have to be the same model unless you can get an extension cable for the ribbon cables.

out of three Chinese manufacturers who make replacement PS1 optical blocks one of them is good

The one I got had a plastic drive rail that failed the same way the oldest models PS1s used to. I managed to take it apart and put the laser itself in the assembly of an OEM drive which seemed fine but I’m not sure how long that’d hold up long run and I ended up switching to just using a PSOne eventually.

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I’ve heard the PSOne is the best one to get if you’re replacing the one in a PSX, there’s also a better rail in later PSXs, right? I think it uses a metal rail but wasn’t perfect, had another issue but I can’t recall what it was.

This great quote came up in a very active thread on twitter today. About the origin of the shapes and colours of the PlayStation controller buttons.

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That’s neat, didn’t know the meaning behind the triangle and square! Circle and ‘X’ seems logical, reminds me of game shows where the audience vote yes or no. Probably one of those obvious things that everyone knows but I noticed a long time after the console came out that the circle is one line, ‘X’ is two lines, triangle is made from three and square is made of four lines, thought that was a cool.

Great find. Like Vespa I got Circle and Cross (the WarioWare games do a great job at enforcing it from a gameplay perspective!) but never really got Square and Triangle.

I think Square would have eventually clicked if RPG developers consistently used it as a menu button but it seems triangle took over as that function.

I picked up a few Tetris games while I was in Japan to play on the Japanese PS2 Slim (got to love that universal power supply!): Tetris X, Tetris Plus and Tetris with Cardcaptor Sakura. Looking forward to trying all of them, though I really need to find a Trinitron or something - the PS2 video output still don’t look so great on my old 2007 Bravia.

I have Tetris Plus, so good, but I saw Sakura in the recent DF Tetris video and it looked great.

I’ve really been getting in to my PS2 again lately however even running it through D-Terminal (Component) on the Framemeister the 480i image looks ass on my 4K screen. So I just ordered the FreeMac Boot PS2 memory card from Yahoo Auctions simply because it will allow me to choose 240p which should look fantastic. I’m not too bothered about playing copies although that is a nice option.

I’ve never used a hacked PS2 before or any Hacked console since the Wii was released all those years ago. Can my aging brain understand what’s going on now :slight_smile: maybe I should video me using it for the first time?

In my experience forcing video on ps2 is REALLY hit or miss and I don’t ever remember seeing 240p as an option in GSM

Bummer :frowning: I hope at least there’s a 480p option. Anything has got to be better that the horrid interlaced video most games output.

PS2 video out just looks awful compared to my Dreamcast running a 480p signal in HDMI or even its 240p RGB signal. Fingers crossed that at least some games can look better. How about PSX games via the PS2? I don’t use an original PlayStation anymore. Got fed up with the lasers always crapping out.

PS2 is one of the main reason I have a HTPC. Upscaled PS2 games can look amazing. Plus I can still play the games from the discs.