Intensive Gaming Diary

Blog about different aspects of retro and new video games.

Category: Retro

The Certain Appeal of PlayStation 1

Posted on by Viljami

What does PlayStation 1 offer that makes you just pick up the controller and play? It was released almost 30 years ago. I still find that it has a lot to offer even compared to modern game consoles.

I can only try to describe what it felt like playing PS1 back in the day. We, gamers, were excited. Technology was new and it was advancing at a high speed. You could literally see how games became more and more realistic. It was the dawn of three dimensional game environments.

Sound quality reached also the level that was offered by the CD format. There were many electronic music artists that produced some cathchy musical vibes to these new kinds of video games. CD-ROM as a platform for video games offered game developers way more space than everyone was used to. Games became more complex and gamers started to spend more time playing. Little by little it came acceptable for grown ups to play games, also.

PC games were also developing. It became clear that computer gaming offered several strategy games and also some very good first person shooters. You really didn’t play FPS games on a console. The first FPS console game is often considered to be GoldenEye 007 that was released in 1997 for Nintendo 64. The point where FPS really conquered consoles and made them break out from only being playable with a keyboard and mouse to getting controlled with a gamepad became when Halo was released for Xbox.

The games that you preferred to play on PS1 were games like Gran Turismo, some early games of Need for Speed series, Crash Bandicoot and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. These games had a combination of action, cool looking graphics and an excellent playability. This is how games of PS1 were presented and this is why they are still causing me to feel this endless joy and also nostalgia still after all these years.

Today I have a PSOne console along with my PS2. As you probably read form that earlier post I have been struggling a bit with my PS2. I currently have my PSOne in storage but I am thinking of moving it to my setup once again. It has luckily functioned very nicely since I bought it back in 2017.

I have a strong history in playing video games with PS1. It was important gaming console and it shaped my knowledge in video games and made me go deeper and deeper. It wasn’t my first gaming console. That spot is taken by Sega Mega Drive. I did play some PC games on DOS before I got to play with consoles.

It hasn’t always been clear in my life that games deserve a spot in my life. That is why I sold my PlayStation 1 back in 2000. I didn’t know if playing video games would make me progress in my life. I also sold all my games that I had. I think I had maybe 30 games back then. I do regret this. If I have to think something positive about this I can at least think that I made the buyer happy.

Today I have bought nearly all games I used to have back in to my collection. This featured image related to this blog post displays my current PS1 games collection. I have recently added games to it and it keeps getting new games to it all the time. I might have to update this image soon.

PlayStation 1 sold over 100 million copies. Its production was discontinued in 2006. You can still get your hands on a PS1 gaming console. You can get a used console for a bit below 100 euros. You can also get your hands on an emulator like ePSXe or DuckStation. For being a legit gamer you must rip these rom files that you use to play from game discs that you own. You also have to copy your BIOS from PS1 console that you own. And otherwise you are basically breaking the law. One other way to play PS1 games that I have to mention is to buy a PlayStation Classic console.

Some Problems with Retro Hardware

Posted on by Viljami

As you have probably noticed I have been lately playing lots of PlayStation 2 games. My console is fairly new. What I mean is that I have only owned it for under a year or so. It is now malfunctioning. I am having problems with audio and video being cut off in the middle of playing a game like Need for Speed Prostreet or Tenchu – Wrath of Heaven. They come back after some seconds but what it comes to playing this is very disturbing.

Well what can you expect? This device is old. PS2 was released over 20 years ago. Would you expect some similar device, like computer, to function after this long of a time? Probably not.

This isn’t the first time that I am coming across issues with old hardware. I have had Xbox, Xbox 360 and earlier I had one other PS2 that started to malfunction. It couldn’t read the disc anymore. Dust can be one issue. One issue is that these old parts just aren’t reliable anymore after all this time that has passed.

You can, of course, try to fix the console yourself. This can be tricky. Not everyone is capable of doing this on their own. You can contact your closest electronic repair shop and ask them how much would they charge for the repairment of your console. There is also one more option and it seems to be an interesting one.

I am talking about emulation. You have retro games but you aren’t able to play them since your gaming console is broken. Why not make copies of them for your own use? I think it is reasonable since the console is broken, right? And with games that are on DVD this shouldn’t be an issue. What we know is that PS1 and PS2 games can be ripped to ISO files (files that end in .iso) with proper tools (software).

There are many options available. Some years ago I came across NVIDIA Shield TV. It is a device that makes your regular television a smart device that is basically operating on Android. You can install RetroArch to it. It is this kind of a forntend that you can run retro games on. It combines several emulator together. I found this to be handy with for example PS1 games. You could even hook your PS4 controller to the Shield TV with Bluetooth. You can install RetroArch on several devices. Windows and Linux are also supported along with Raspberry Pi.

You can also use a full Linux operating system on any PC that you can also hook up to any television that has the connectivity required. That is means to transfer video and audio from your dedicated computer to your television. One popular opertating system of this kind is Lakka OS.

Lakka OS boots up to its own user interface. You only need to go through some menus with your controller. This can be any USB controller that you might have. Lakka OS supports several retro gaming platforms including NES, SNES, Mega Drive and so on. The full list can be found from your favorite search engine. I can tell you that this list is long.

What I am most interested about concerning emulation, like using Lakka OS or RetroArch, is playing games of PS1, PS2 and GameCube. I can currently play my NES, SNES, Game Boy, Mega Drive and Master System games with my Retro Trio console and with the assistance of some adapters (Master System->Mega Drive adapter and SNES->Game Boy adapter). I also have a Mega Drive Mini also for playing Mega Drive games. I also play PC games. I also play games on newer systems like Xbox Series X, PS3, PS4 and Nintendo Switch. As you can imagine my setup is huge.

I hope this blog post gave you some ideas concerning playing retro games. The hardware isn’t perfect. It does wear out with time. Software emulation might provide a more stable way for a gamer to enjoy his/her retro games for a long time.

My Take on Tenchu Wrath of Heaven

Posted on by Viljami

Tenchu Wrath of Heaven is the third game of series of Tenchu games. This game was released in 2003 for PS2. The first game of the series was released for PS1. This is also where my interest in this game series came to exist. I really enjoyed playing it. The name is officially Tenchu: Stealth Assassins.

Lets go over shortly about what kind of a game we are dealing with. I played Wrath of Heaven recently. This is not a review. I actually didn’t get too far inside this game. That is mainly because of its difficulty level. There are two characters to choose from. Both of them have ten missions that you can go through. I selected Rikimaru. The other character is Ayame. So, the first mentioned is male and other one is a female. There is also a third character but you have to unlock that feature by completing parts of the game.

This is definitely a game that depends heavily on stealth combat. The easiest way to defeat an enemy is to sneak behind its back where you can finish the enemy with one hit.If an enemy sees you before you strike you enter a combat mode and defeating of the enemy becomes much more heavier and you will probably loose a great deal of your health. In this kind of battle the enemy can take from three to five or even six hits to be defeated. You can try to block hits. Enemy is also very good at blocking your attacks. So battling is way more risky than catching your enemy off guard with a stealth attack.

Battling can be frustrating. There isn’t many ways you can better your situation during a battle. It isn’t a matter of skill. It is more about luck. You can try to block every attack of the enemy and try to hit as many times as you can but that’s about it. I think there is something in the source code of this game that makes winning battles a bit randomized. Timing your attacks doesn’t seem to matter as much and hits that are successful seem to come randomly.

Your weapon is a sword. You also have some health potions and also a grappling hook that you can move with. Sometimes while playing the levels seem like a maze. Poorly aged graphics of PS2 cause also some difficulties. It might help a bit if you have a PS2 HDMI adapter. I use my 4K TV to play also PS2 games with and a CRT TV would probably display the graphics of this game better. You will also get better graphics if you are playing this with a PS2 emulator.

This game is very difficult. I did get to mission 3 while playing with Rikimaru. I got frustrated with this particular mission. First of all the level is very difficult to move in. Controls aren’t as good with Dual Shock 2 controller. After I finally beat the level I had to face a boss. I could defeat the boss. But there is a but. There was another boss right after the first one which was way harder and of course I couldn’t defeat it. Then I died and had to start the mission three all over again. That makes me want to use a cuss word but I am however not doing that. So, I basically stopped playing.

The game might seem more to your like if you are familiar with these earlier entries in this series. I only have some experiences with the first game. For those of you readers that aren’t yet familiar with Tecnhu series I definitely recommend that you first play a bit of the first game before getting into this one. My opinion might change if I find the other character more into my linking some day. But today I might just change to another game for PS2 since I have lots of games for it.

I sometimes think that all games of this era of PS2 and its competitors aren’t always very good games to play today. Main points for this are poor graphical quality and outdated controls. Sometimes it just feels that many things are way better in today’s newer games. But also I have to tell you that sometimes you can definitely have this feeling of nostalgia. It just depends so much of the game. I have had some happy moments of nostalgia with some PS1 games. How poor are graphics and controls for those? It is nice that you can play PS1 and PS2 games on your PS2 console.

Right now I am going to continue my Sunday. I might play some other PS2 games that I have. I haven’t had time for all of them. I haven’t even tried every game that I own for this system. I have maybe 70 games now for PS2. I am definitely going to publish this post and add something about this post to Instagram and Facebook also. Did you know that I have a page on Facebook also? Well, now you know! Happy day for you the reader of this blog post!

I Finally Got To Add This Game To My Collection

Posted on by Viljami

I am a huge fan of survival horror games. I especially enjoyed first two and maybe also the third game in series of Resident Evil games. Resident Evil 2 was my first touch to this genre back in 1998. I remember first playing the demo that had this time limit in it. It really made an impression. I had to soon buy RE2 for the first PlayStation.

RE 2 is definitely, at least in my opinion, best out of the first three games. But RE1 isn’t a bad game. It isn’t even a decent game. It is actually something very nice. This is also where the story of Resident Evil games starts.

RE 1 was released in 1996. It is a kind of a remake of an early adventure/horror game Sweet Home which was released in 1989. So the roots of this game are deep in video gaming history. RE 1 also takes lots of influence from Alone In The Dark series. The game also brings horror games to the era of 3D environments.

This game only cost me 30 euros. It is a platinum version which might lower its price a bit. Otherwise it is in a great consition. There is not one scratch on the disc. The case is also clean and shiny. The cover leave is also in good consition. You might not expect this for a game of this age.

I had this game when I earlier owned PS1 and tens of games for it. I have several times complained about my decision. I shouldn’t have sold my PS1 and my game collection. I didn’t get so much money. I just couldn’t figure at that moment what kind of a role would video games have later on in my life. Now, as you can witness, I am a serious game collector and also a player of video games.

I somewhat like how games where back in this generation. It takes about 7 hours to beat this game. This is very nice. I don’t like every game to be such a marathon. I mean some games have to be lengthy but I can also appreciate a shorter game at times. I might play latest NBA2K for hundreds of hours but I am not a serious fan of lengthy role playing games. In this era I also finished almost every game I bought.

What else can you say about the first Resident Evil game? If you aren’t familiar with the concept of survival horror games I can tell you that there is a limited amount of ammo. This isn’t actually an action shooter game. There is also limited amount of opportunities to save your game. Music is very important. I can already hear the background track playing when you enter a safe room which is a room that you can make a save in.

Also camera angles and views are somewhat, how to say it, well…evil. This kind of arrengement causes a bit of an anxiety. And it makes you also a bit nervous. I have read that the person that was responsible for the vision of the game had encounteres some very depressing and violent moments, even a trauma, in childhood and this game is some kind of a way to handle these experiences. That would sort of make a sense. I don’t confirm this so this is only a rumor.

There is also a book that I have some deep interest to some day get into. I think it was called “Itchy, Tasty” and it describes how this game came to be. When I last time checked this book was sold out. It would be interesting to read it.

So, you probaply get the picture. This is a game for me that left a serious impact. I had to get it once again to my collection. This is also a good game for you if you want to get intoduced to this genre called survival horror games.

The Future of Physical Content

Posted on by Viljami

Best Buy has announced that it is not going to sell physical copies of DVDs, Blu-Rays and 4K discs anymore in the near future. This is the way things are going right now. Consumers are moving on to digital media when it comes to games and movies. It doesn’t help that there are consoles that enable you to play older retro games and also new games on discs.

Is the physical media going to disappear? We don’t know the exact answer. I think there is always going to exist some gamers that need to have their game as a physical copy. These copies might be some kind of collectors editions that have a little more higher price than the regular standard version of the game. We have already witnessed an increase in in prices of games be that they are digital or physical. So, the amount of games sold as physical copies has been decreasing but I think we are not ready to move on to a world without these discs that we have our games on even today.

This is very interesting and I have recently been reading a lot about this matter. If you think about upcoming game releases and purchasing a copy of your favorite upcoming game beforehand I think digital is way easier and more trustworthy to be handled when it comes to delivering the game. Just last summer when Diablo IV was released I wanted to order it beforehand. You can probably guess how it went, right? Game developers don’t want their games to be released before their actual release day so they won’t let game shops deliver these games too early. This problem doesn’t exist in a digital world.

I have to admit that I like to own a physical copy of my game. Well, maybe not every game, right? Big box games still look good on a gamer’s bookshelf. There are many ways to view this matter. Having loads of games can be a challenge if you are considering to collect these games. I have loads of games on my bookshelf and I had to move some of them away from this bookshelf because they take so much space.

We have already seen how things are today with PC games. Steam and many other online game stores have taken over the markets. You hardly ever see a DVD drive on a PC. If you like you can of course get a drive that you can use by connecting it to your PC with a USB cable. It is although easier to just buy the game from Steam or some other web shop. I myself have a special retro laptop for playing older PC games. It runs Windows XP. It works very nicely.

If we are talking about PC games you have this constant feel that you have to buy newer operating system and/or newer computer that has a good GPU, CPU and SSD hard drive. This is a reason to keep consumers to pay for their ability to use a computer be it for playing games or for some other use. Everybody needs a PC today, right?

What about older games? I think there is something a bit wrong in this way of thinking. We should make sure that old games are available for us in the future also. These retro consoles aren’t going to last for 20 years. We have to come up with solutions to these questions so we won’t loose our precious history in video gaming. This is at least how I am thinking right now here and today.

Playing Some Tony Hawks Pro Skater On Nintendo Switch

Posted on by Viljami

I have now played THPS 1+2 for a bit over seven hours. It really makes me to go back, with an amount of nostalgia, to this game series that so many of us still do love. I am playing this on Nintendo Switch. I have also this very neat controller that is actually Pro Controller. I think it is the best way to play sports games and many action games and also driving games. I do not have a driving game currently for Switch but it might be a fun to have one some day.

I first started playing the first THPS game on PS1 back in the 90s. It made a huge impact on me as a player of video games. Skateboarding has been popular but that hasn’t always been the case. Some other famous skateboarding games are Skate or Die for NES and Skate series. I also have to mention a game called OlliOlli right here. But if you think about THPS back in the end of 90s you have to consider that it made skateboarding a very popular field of extreme sports.

How it feels to play it once again remastered one might ask. I think that these developers have made a great job. The music is  a big part of the game. In the original game it at times felt like the music stopped too soon since the runs were only one or two minutes long. In this remake they have kind of corrected this issue and the music track continues to play more constantly.

All these tricks are present in this remake. You can grind and manual to get some points in your run. You can also do air tricks like grabs and also flip tricks. You get more points by combining tricks as creatively as possible. This guarantees a good score of points for you. You have different attributes that you can add points to also. So your skater is also developing all the time as is also the case of your actual skills in playing the game. There are many famous skaters for you to choose from. Of course Tony Hawk is included as well.

THPS has been released in many forms for many different consoles. One of my favorite games in this series is THPS 4 for GameCube. Switch offers you a decent an similar way of control that was utilized in the original game for the first PlayStation. I am talking mainly about the layout of buttons. Pro Controller doesn’t differ so mmuch from Dual Shock controller that is actually the game pad of PS1.

It is nice to play this skateboarding game once again. I feel so much of this nostalgia. At the same time I am glad that this remake turned out to be a good game in overall. While it does require good reflexes I can compensate a bit on my skills in playing this game. Who knows how many hours I did spend on this one. I mean especially the first game. I picked up also THPS 3 for PC back in the early 2000s. Today I have also a copy of that game for my PS2. I am also glad that my PS2 is currently working and that I can utilize it perfectly. Although I haven’t recently played any particularly excellent games on it. I am hoping to get some time to play Tenchu – Wrath of Heaven and also continue my campaign in Gran Turismo 4. I would like to complete it but it seems to take a long time and also a deep dedication if I wish to finish it.

I think this is all for now. Hope you are feeling nice. This game I think is available nicely and it doesn’t cost so much if you are buying it for Switch like I recently did. It is also available for any other modern gaming consoles including Series S/X and PS5 and PS4. It is available also now on Steam for PC so if you are more into some personal computer gaming I guess you can check that out.

Some Undisputed Classics Released Again

Posted on by Viljami

There is no excuse for not knowing what these two amazing titles are: Asteroids and Space Invaders. These two games were very popular firstly in arcades back in the late 70s and early 80s. They were published by Activision and were later ported to consoles like Atari 2600.

You can only admire the quality of game design. As these games were meant to be played on machines that weren’t so powerful you had this certain style that you had to apply to the game. Another good game of that era is Arkanoid. Also Pong has to be mentioned here.

These games had only this one screen where the whole game took place. There were no scrolling screens like we could see later on in games like Nintendos Super Mario Bros, which came out a a bit later. There were also not so many colors as graphical capability was limited. I propably don’t have to mention anything about sound effects, music or audio at all. They were meaningless.

These games are classics. In twenty years designing games goes some steps further. This is unavoidable. The first PlayStation was capable of producing some very high quality graphics already. So it is comfortable to say that these games deserved to be re-made to a more modern system.

I bought these games for my PS1. I thought they are a fun addittion to my video game collection. They offer some re-designed graphics, sound effects, music and also methods to control the objects in the game.

The idea behind Asteroids is that you have a space ship that can shoot. Your mission is to cut a huge rock, asteroid, to small pieces by shooting it. You can turn your ship to any direction, like 360 degrees and give your ship a boost so it moves. It keeps moving, since we are in space, there is no gravity, to the direction that it has had a boost to unless you turn your ship to another direction and give it a boost again. The game ends if you hit a piece of an asteroid. You get to next level if you succeed in shooting the asteroid to tiny bits.

The other game here in this picture is Space Invaders. In this game you face a group of aliens. Your mission is to shoot all of them. So this is definitely a shooter. An alien disappears when you shoot it. You start from the bottom of the screen. You have some obstacles that you can use for cover if you like. Enemies keep moving towards you step by step. You win the level if you can shoot every alien enemy and you lose if they reach the botttom of the screen.

These games are not so expensive. I thought they were a fun addition to my collection. You can probably get one these like under 20 euros from your favorite retro game dealer. These kinds of classic games are an important part of gaming history. You can probably also find copios of these released for even newer systems. You can also try them out if you an emulator. I don’t know if it is possible to play these games’s original arcade version but maybe this would be possible in some kind of a gaming museum.

Also if you are into programming it could be a nice idea for a project to program a clone of Asteroids for example. You could use maybe JavaScript with some image editing software or something like that. Just keep in mind that while these games seem simple there is a lot going on in them and it isn’t an easy task to just remake one.

Playing Some Spyro The Dragon (Spyro Reignited Trilogy)

Posted on by Viljami

During this weekend I had an opportunity to play Spyro The Dragon with my PS4. In this blog post I am going to introduce to you this awesome 3D platform game that made a serious impact on how we play video games today. It was first released for PS1 in 1998.

There is a great difference between a 2D platform game, like Super Mario Bros 3 or Sonic The Hedgehog, and a 3D platform game like Spyro The Dragon. The first thing that comes to my mind is how do you position the camera inside the game. In Spyro The Dragon you move your character and rotate the camera at the same time. In 2D games you don’t have to worry about moving your camera all the time. In Spyro the jumping feels also a bit like floating which emphasizes the sensitive and complex three dimensional positioning used in the game.

There are many things that Spyro can do. You can jump, float or fall after jumping, blow some flame out of your throat and run and rush against enemies. There are various enemies that our main character encounters. Some can be defeated by rushing on them while some are defeated by blowing out a flame. Some enemies need also something extra if you want to defeat them.

The main goal in Spyro The Dragon is to progress. You achieve this by freeing dragons and collecting gems, or as they are called in this game, treasures. Some gems are more valuable than others. They can have a value of one, two, five or even greater than that. Defeating enemies also gives you gems. If you have defeated an enemy earlier in the game you get a point. If you get enough points you get an extra life. There are also particular extra lives that can be collected.

The game play feels very nice in overall. There are lots of puzzles to be solved including how do you get to some area that has a dragon to be saved or some gems to be collected. I don’t even understand how this game was originally released for PlayStation 1 in such an early moment in video gaming.

Is Spyro a bit childish game? Maybe so, but I think that it offers problem solving and deep thought and challenge while also being a game that the whole family can enjoy and play. The trilogy, Spyro Reignited Trilogy, consists of three first games of this series. I am currently playing it with my PS4. It is also available for PC and the latest Xbox and also for Nintendo Switch. It was released already in 2018.

So, the original Spyro The Dragon was released in 1998 by Insomniac Games for Sony PlayStation. It is considered a very strong and well-known piece of gaming. It definitely stands out being a platform game designed to be played in a 3D environment. If you haven’t played Spyro The Dragon games earlier this trilogy release might be a good point to start your experimenting. It also isn’t a pricey choice as a game. I bought it some weeks ago for 20 euros as a used copy for PS4. There are also many Spyro games released for many consoles in the history of gaming. This trilogy introduces three first games of the series.

Xbox Series X Has a Nice Backwards Compatibility (But Far From Full)

Posted on by Viljami

My Xbox 360 has been suffering. It doesn’t read game discs anymore. Otherwise it is fully functional. I tried opening it a bit through the disc unit as was insturcted on an official guideline I found from internet. I read from the guide that you should first power the device off, remove all cables and then try to push the wheel of the disc unit so that it opens up a bit. This was instructed to do with paper clip that has been straightened. Then you should bloww some compressed air to it.

I did mangae to do this and it fixed the problem. I was able to start a game once again. Then some weeks went by. I wasn’t playing anything with my Xbox 360. I played my other game conmsoles. As you might know Xbox 360 has a backwards compatiblity with original Xbox games. 463 games out of all 996 published are backwards compatible. We can make a quick calculation and find out that this makes 46,5 % of all games that were published for original Xbox.

If you think about PS3 and PS4 and their backwards compatibility you can propably figure how differently Microsoft and Sony deal with this issue. PS4 wasn’t at any moment backwards compatible at all. This pissed off some people. You were able to play PS1 games on PS3. Some PS3 models you are able to play also PS2 games with. PS5 however has limited backwards compatibility for PS4 games.

Xbox Series X, the latest Xbox, is fully compatible with older Xbox consoles’s games. However every game is not supported. There are 63 original Xbox games out of 996 and 633 out of 2155 Xbox 360 games compatible with the latest Xbox console. Xbox Series S doesn’t even have a disc drive so apparently it doesn’t support older consoles’s game discs. All Xbox One games are compatible with Series X.

With this information available I decided to remove my oddly acting Xbox 360 from my current setup. This meant actually that I had to remove also tens of games from my lineup. I like to keep every game that I am able to play with any console in my setup in this huge shelf. I had to remove many Xbox and Xbox 360 games.

I have now only six original Xbox games left in that shelf. The picture related to this post shows my current games that I am able to play with my Xbox Series X. I didn’t count the games that I removed so carefully. I think I set aside maybe 70 games in total. I had to put games like Halo 1 and 2, Tony Hawks Pro Skater 4 and many others to storage. These were games that I haven’t had time to get into thoroughly.

I would like to be able to play every game that has ever been released for any Xbox system. This is just the way that things go. You are updating your setup and getting into some new or retro consoles. You don’t actually play every game that you own. Some games and systems you just have to set aside at least for a while. Xbox 360 is an old gaming console. It was first released in 2005. I bought my Xbox 360 as a used copy. This was about six years ago. So maybe it was time for me to move on.

Games do get old. Systems do get old. There are many games that you just can’t play, buy or enjoy in any way no more. I think there should be something that could be done to this issue of great games just disappearing somewhere. We seem to be still moving so fast forward that we can easily completely forget a nice old game.

I don’t know the exact answer to this question. Will there be in the future some websites or collectins of old games. Are we going to be able to finally play these games with an emulator? Would it be nice to have a museum that could hold many old games? I know that there are already some websites that are dedicated to old Commodre 64 games. They have archived thousands of games which are also available as downloads.

There cetainly is some knowledge about gaming that also I as a gamer have been able to develop in myself. From the moment when I first gazed at a video game in some arcade I have been curious to find out more about games. I went as far as studying the field. I dreamed I would be able to make a game or something similar. And I think I am not alone with my knowledge and I think this is an interesting topic all in all.

Competition Between Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation

Posted on by Viljami

Yesterday I ended up watching a video from YouTube. It dealt with some difficulties that Sega Saturn had and how it could compete against Sony PlayStation back in the 90s. The person that was interviewed was Hideki Sato. The interview took place in 2018. I will place a link to this video at the end of this blog post. So, just keep reading.

There were differences in hardware between these two gaming consoles. PlayStation was able to bring 3D environments to gamers while many Saturn games had 2D graphics that were based on graphics created with sprites. Although Sega tried to bring some developers that had some ability in designing 3D games they weren’t as successful. Sega did have games like Virtua Fighter and Virtua Racing that were also popular in arcades.

Sony had an opportunity to utilize hardware that they manufactured by themselves while Sega had to use contractors. Parts that were needed were different kinds of chips, processors and, for example, CD drives. Sega was more of a software and game development company. This was a matter that would be stressed to Sega by Sony several times. This was also the direction that Sega finally took later when also Dreamcast seemed to fail.

Sony also made it easier for other game developers to make games for their new console. We were then living the age of 1990s. Sony PlayStation was released in 1995 and so was also Sega Saturn. Sega relied on assembler code while Sony gave game developers a full SDK (“software development kit”) that they could develop their games with.

If you think that Saturn ended up selling 9 million units in its lifespan while PlayStation sold 102 million units it isn’t hard to figure that there were also much more games sold for PSX than there actually were for Saturn. As usually manufacturers have to sell consoles with a loss and make up with game sells. This was difficult for Sega and they made a strong loss in sales. They took a beating.

In the end of the 1980s when Sega’s last console, Mega Drive, or Genesis in USA, Sega had the most powerful gaming console in the markets. It competed mainly with Nintendo Entertainment System or NES for short. This console also sold nicely. It sold 31 million units while NES sold 62 million units. With all this information available Sega wasn’t done with manufacturing their own consoles. After all, still, Sony was unbeatable. Sony has remained a top console manufacturer since it released their first console PlayStation. Microsoft entered the competition when their Xbox was launched in the beginning of the 2000s. Xbox mainly competed with PS2 but also with GameCube and Dreamcast.

When it comes to who won the competition between these two gaming systems Sony PlayStation is a clear winner. Saturn still remains a popular console in minds of serious retro gamers. It has games that are unique and cannot be found on other retro consoles. This topic seems to be very interesting. At least it is that way in my mind.

You can find the video that inspired me to write this blog post here.

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