PS1 Appreciation/Collectors Thread of Ugly-Ass Polygons

I know some games with native widescreen support. Wip3out SE and Colin McRae Rally, p.e.

Sure.

In fact 2 of the 3 golf games I’m playing have widescreen support. But the third one doesn’t and I wondered if it was possible to hack in widescreen support.

Done!

Writing my reply to you about the first two games and seeing how much they resemble each other I figured I would poke around to see if anything regarding Wide View was still in the game. There was, and it turns out the feature is still there and can be enabled relatively easily!

The first sign of success was using CWCHEAT (I’d much rather recommend TempAR for this; I discovered it after doing this hack) on PSP to browse through game memory. I found references to Wide View (as well as some other stuff leftover from the previous games). Check it out:

I then switched to my Mac and used a memory browser on RetroArch, meaning I had multi-tasking so I could see the changes in realtime as I toggled the various settings. The values are all next to each other in memory:

53819582_2190474294549972_7698020869901123584_n

Changing the 00 to 01 and starting a game meant we were done!

Here’s how the three settings screens look:


Masters: Shin Harukanaru Augusta

  • all settings have their own icon

01


Pebble Beach no Hatou PLUS

  • the two camera options are combined into one

02


Jun Classic C.C. & Rope Club

  • wide mode removed, vibration added

03


The beauty of this approach memory editing approach is that the game saves the changed value with my save, so there’s no need to reapply the cheat every game. I just load and it’s done.

A little bit more work is required to make the cheat into an Action Replay code so it can be easily enabled/disabled on demand.

Edit: I did this AR code today and it was a pretty huge waste of time. Ah well.

With more time I’d look to see if an 8th icon could be re-enabled on the settings, and even see if Sound Test could be brought back (doubtful as the art files for it are not on disc).

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I figured out why they removed widescreen mode - it’s not compatible with some of the cutscene movies used in the game (the ones where it plays cutscene and has game graphics overlaid, not full-screen videos). The game crashes to a black screen. So I have to disable the memory hack it from time-to-time.

I’ll see if I can create a cheat code that will enable it only on certain setup screens.

Im kinda in the mind of starting Wild Arms 1 after beating Suikoden 1 or Grandia 1. I know the idea would be to jump immediately into Suikoden 2, but i’m not sure if I like going series back to back.

I’m deep down the cheat code rabbit hole. :wave::rabbit::hole:

I’ve used cheat codes to add two features to the golf game:

  1. tilt camera (standing perspective, rather than kneeling down) whilst I hold Square button

  2. camera switching. if I tap Cross it will use reverse cam, Circle will use my preferred camera. This usually requires interrupting play and navigating two menus.

I really need to make these conditional on a value that says “we are playing a hole” as they can crash some menu and cutscene screens.

Been using my Playstation classic controller on my ps3 to play Ps1 games. They really got the controller right. It feels great.

How does it compare to an original PS1 controller?

Feels like a brand new Ps1 controller

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Is anyone doing the Popstarter homebrew for the PS2? It’s great but compatibility is really low. There are patches to make games work though. Multiple discs work as well and has virtual memory cards. I ripped half of my games for it. Also it has instant switching to smooth textures and back with a button combination in-game. I have learned to love non-smooth textures especially in Mega Man Legends.

I use it extensively. I must be playing the right games because I don’t run into much compatibility issues. I use cheat codes disable dithering in a few games.

Both Suikoden games don’t work properly. Same with Spyro but at least Spyro can e used with a compatibility patch. Are you running the games from the internal HDD? What build are you using?

Wait. Cheats to disable dithering? How?

Some info about the dithering on Chris Covell’s site here and there’s also a tool made by cr4zymanz0r for brute forcing dither removal by patching an iso mentioned in this post on Shmups.

I can’t wait to test it out when I get home. Hahahaha! I’m excited to see MGS without dithering though I do expect some color banding but since MGS is a game that often dark, I doubt I’d notice much.

I run from a usb stick on my PS2 Slim.

You need to use an emulator to figure out the dithering code and then put it in your pops setup.

I’ve been meaning to try this on my PS2, especially with games like Quake II.

I’d love to see how that looks with the dithering removed and bi-linear filtering. The sub-division of the geometry of that game make it already one of the best looking on the platform.

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Does anyone have any experience or expertise on box protectors for their PS1 games? I recently “completed” my PS1 collection and while the games are all in their jewel cases, I’ve been wondering if another layer of protection would be worth it. Something like this:

https://retroprotection.com/Playstation-PS1_c8.htm

Would cost about $45 for everything. For my games in cardboard boxes this is a no-brainer, but unsure of the value of this for CD-based games in jewel cases.

Does anyone know why the PAL big box/black label Mickey’s Wild Adventure is so rare whereas the platinum version is one of the most common releases? For a long time I thought it only received a platinum release.

Does anyone here have any experience with the PSIO?, I’ve been tossing it up for a while and decided to treat myself after my tax return.

I’m tempted to do the installation myself but I have fairly middling soldering skills so I’m not sure.

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A friend of mine has just lent me his psio and modded system to play around with.

I’m going to run it through its paces over the next couple of weeks.

I’ll post anything if note as it comes up.

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