It’s difficult because the issues discussed above for Rage Racer don’t show up everywhere, or at least are not as noticeable. I went through several permutations of console/cable testing the splash screens, menus, and starting grids without seeing anything. When I finally went out on course I started to see it in the shadows and tunnels.
For a rpg you could potentially be hours in before noticing something, and then it might go away and never come back, lol. If you have any video concerns I would play it on your ps1. Obviously not everyone’s ps1 is in tip top shape, mine isn’t, so that plays into the equation as well.
Yea. My PS2 slim is in completely mint condition. So that’s what I use. I grabbed it NIB the day Sony announced they were ceasing PS2 production (which actually wasn’t too long ago believe it or not… 2013, the same year PS4 came out).
You may think this is nuts, but, it’s the only PS2 I’ve ever owned. I completely skipped this console in its heyday. I’m glad too because so many of it’s games are dirt cheap now.
That’s the way to do it. I wish I would have grabbed one at that time. However, the one I use now is a Test PS2 so it’s region free and whatnot. But it would have been nice to have one NIB. They were like $79 at the time, I think?
I did buy a brand new PS3 super slim in fall 2013, just before the PS4 was released. Figure it will last quite a while…
I tend to play PS1 games on my PS2 to decrease loading times, it really helps as I played Street Fighter games that had up to 10 second load times cut down to like 3 or so with fast read speed on.
Nah… my PS2 is hooked up via Component. I’d need to grab either a second SCART switch or another SCART to BNC converter to add a PS1 to my BNC matrix switch. (I’d probably opt for the latter).
Plus, I’m not even sure whether I have a PS1 that is in good condition at this point. The one in the basement of my parent’s house (the one I grew up with) may be useable but it gets tons of DREs. I haven’t tested it at length in years.
So I’d probably opt to grab a fresh PS1 or PSONE console at this point. All of that adds to the cost. But finding a PS1 seller that I actually trust? That’s sort of the biggest hurdle for me. These consoles are already 20 years old and owned by tons of people who don’t take care of their stuff.
For what it’s worth, I was recently able to snag a good PS1 on OfferUp for just $10. I know it comes down to location and luck, but it might not hurt to keep an eye out for something.
So I finally booted Rage Racer on my PS2 and can see the vertical lines. They are 100% the result of dithering. Not so bothersome on my LCD but definitely bothersome on my PVM.
I’ve never seen so much dithering in a game - literally everything on the screen is dithered.
Interestingly the game won’t run in progressive scan 480p on my setup, perhaps it’s 240p already?
Anyway, let me know if I can help you switch off dithering for this game, and any other, so you can enjoy playing.
A lot of PS1 games are like that due to the internal conversion from 24-bit to 15-bit color when rendering. Many (most?) PS1 games have a full screen dither like that which may or may not be obvious depending on what’s on screen and what type of screen/connection you’re viewing it on.
The short version is that memory was very tight on PS1 so the framebuffer typically run at 15-bit color but color could be computed by the GPU at up to 24-bit color for better shading accuracy. Most developers took the approach of allowing the higher accuracy render with the trade off that there’s a full screen dither to get it down to 15-bit color, which would typically be blurred away by composite video output anyway.
I rather like the way the full screen dither looks in PS1 games, it adds a certain charm and have a hard games playing games when it’s been removed by emulation.
I remember printing off reviews (no shame they were IGN reviews lol) of SH: Covenant and Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne when both launched trying to decide which to get. I went SH and then promptly got super busy with travel and ended up selling it. I’ve yet to see it in person at a game store since, smh. It was a fun game, I liked the (forgot name) circle (wheel?) in combat. I like turn based RPG’s but I like some added spice to the combat. I never played the first one, also have never seen it in a store lol.
Is it true some PS2 games rendered in 320 x 240 resolution? I don’t think I own any, but I was playing Disgaea on PSP and thinking it looked so blurry because they just lazily downscaled the higher resolution PS2 graphics, text and all. But it looks identical on PS2! So I’m guessing they applied bilinear filtering to the pixel-art text in the menus, making it look blurry on both versions…
There are quite a few titles that run at 240p but I doubt they are 340x240. ICO for example runs at 512x224, the MMX Collection runs all games at 256x224.
PS2 has quite a wide variety of horizontal resolutions supported at 4:3 for both 480i and 240p.
Thanks! I think Ridge Racer 5 did some interesting tricks with resolution to get the framerate up too, which I always found cool. It’s just a bit disappointing with Disgaea - ideally you want everything to be crisp given it looks closer to a PS1 or Saturn game than anything else.
