HAPPY 25TH BIRTHDAY, PS1!! -- I FINALLY got a PSIO "Everdive" PS1...currently working on Tales of Destiny 2 (Eternia)

[Estil | 1,265]

I know this might be really weird/strange of me to make such a fuss over the original Playstation while most everyone else seemingly is all excited and eager for the upcoming PS5...are we seriously up to the fifth Playstation already!?!?    But I digress...

Hard to believe isn't it that next month will be the 25th anniversary of the original Playstation?  And I am so happy and so pleased as punch that at long last I finally got the chance to get the special PSIO "Everdrive" from Stone Age Gamer (and I'm only about 1000 tickets away from a $100 voucher; better keep checking his site for free tickets he sometimes gives away!).  That along with the 512 GB SanDisk micro sd card I picked up on Amazon to go with it, interestingly was about the same price as what you would've paid to get the PS1 at launch counting sales tax; and you got NO games to go with it!  Any of you guys remember the one word/number speech heard 'round the video game world?  Brief presentation indeed!

(Bill O'Reilly would be so proud...he kept it piffy, just the way Bill likes it...AND HE WAS DOING IT LIVE!!!!!!!!!!  )

 

Anyway, I'll never forget the first time I got a PS1 back in my college days in 2001.  It was my first ever non-Nintendo console and I picked it up so I could play the MegaMan games, which of course were (mostly) PS1 exclusive for the 5th gen.  And it was only $100 new at the time plus at the time you could get the three-pack of MegaMan 8/X4/X5 for $50...and a little later I got the Legends Trilogy from there also for $50 (those were the days...).  I stupidly sold the 8/X4/X5 games because I felt I didn't "need them anymore" with the PS2 MegaMan Collections...thankfully I did keep the Legends games (yes including Tron Bonne  ) and in 2003-2004 I even did both transcripts/guides for MegaMan Network (I was on their staff at the time!) which you can still check out at GameFAQs if you'd like.  I'll never forget opening that box and taking out the controller/plug/cable and for a few seconds I was wondering where the console was...and I couldn't believe how tiny that PSOne was!

Now I know the PS1 and the 5th gen in general was all about the big transition from 2D sprite games to (mostly) 3D polygon ones (that was so stupid Sony discouraged 2D sidescrollers at the time...then again because they let Capcom put 8/X4 on the PS1 in exchange for promising a later 3D MegaMan...we probably would've never got one of my favorite video games of all time, the MegaMan Legends Trilogy).  But you know what else I found just as if not more fascinating?  The PS1/5th gen was also exactly like several decades go when movies transitioned from silent films to "talkies"!   Yes sir, thanks for the huge amount of room on a PS1 disc (the biggest N64 games were only 10% as much space) you could get all kinds of neat things like anime/cartoon/live action cutscenes and even voice acting (it was so awesome in Misadventures of Tron Bonne)!  Whereas because of the tiny space on cartridges in previous gens you were very lucky if you got even a few words of spoken dialogue  Hence why the 5th gen is not only the transition from 2D to 3D but also from (mostly) silent games to talkies being realistically possible!  

Then of course in 2013 drag00n (whatever became of him) helped me on my then new RPG quest (before I wasn't sure about the turn based battles) and got Final Fantasy Origins/Chronicles/Anthology and of course I got FF7/FF8/FF9 a little later.  I know it's FF7 that gets all attention but PS9 is by far my favorite of the PS1 "trilogy".

So now at long last I can now play any PS1 game I want and it works just as good as the real disc!  You guys have no idea how awesome it is to have this amazing option and it was well worth the many months I had to wait patiently for it!  And of course my wonderful wife was able to help us squeeze it into our rather meager SSDI-only budget...I know for most of you $300 for a game console or whatnot isn't that big a deal but for us it's a major investment that we can only make at best once in a very great while.  But I always make sure it counts!  

So please tell me your PS1 stories, especially those of you who got into it right around launch and during its prime?  I was just starting HS when the PS1 arrived but I was very much into NES/SNES...I didn't really see anything all that special on the PS1 at the time, but hey better late than never right?

PS: Yes I even have all the demos on my micro sd card; any of those (and any non-game software?) that I might find unique/interesting?

Edited October 4, 2020 by Estil

[Hammerfestus | 3,881]

That love tail was touching man.  
 

 I was an earlyish PlayStation adopter.  Early enough where Resident Evil, Zoop, and Warhawk were the longbox games I got with it.

The one thing I’ll say was a forever moment back then was the hype, the acquiring, and playing through Final Fantasy VII.  I saw an early screenshot in EGM or something and I had to have it.  Absolutely mind blowing moment in video game history.  At that moment in time absolutely everything about it was fantastic. — same thing with Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil 2.  Also Silent Hill.

Duuuude.  Silent Hill was mind bending fantastic horror madness.  The way they used the fog trick to hide the pop in?  Meisterwerk.  
 

While we’re in this time period let’s not forget ReLoad.  Not Reloaded the sequel to Loaded but the Metallica album.  I listened to a lot of it when it came out about the same time as Duke Nukem Total Meltdown.  They are forever fused for me. Same deal with Suikoden 2 and The Wall.  The Wall is the second soundtrack to that game for me which is awesome considering how fantastic the actual soundtrack is.

 And PSM?  That shit was my bible from issue 1.  I believe my subscription started with issue 2.
 

[Estil | 1,265]

I wish RetroMags would have the Offical Playstation Library magazines in its collection...maybe NextGen magazine can provide some good coverage?  At the moment though I'm working on reading the 1991 Nintendo Power and possibly the EGM and GamePros from that year (I'm also doing my local newspaper archive and my Brittanica yearbook...geez spreading myself too thin much)?  I do in fact have all the demo discs loaded on my micro sd card.  I actually have all the US PS1 isos/roms on my laptop backed up there but you're only allowed up to 1000 folders/titles/games on your PSIO's sd card...and as of yet you sadly are not allowed to make subfolders like "A, B, C..." or "US A-K, US L-Z" or whatever.  It is way cool that for the first time since my college days with that PSone I can do the full Sony and then PS1 intro upon bootup and this time I get the multi-colored 90s looking memory card menu

Any of the demo discs I should especially check out?  I think those and any non-game titles the PS1 may have gotten would be quite interesting to check out.  I did previously have Free McBoot (sounds like some sort of Halloween Happy Meal prize) and it was okayish to experiment with but was VERY flawed (Misadentures of Tron Bonne would not work past the initial dialogue in the intro stage and Tales of Destiny which I was really getting into freezes/crashes if too much stuff happens during battle) but apparently it works much better for playing PS2 isos?  I mean I don't wanna sound greedy but a good PS2 "Everdrive" sort of deal would be awesome too.

[Tulpa | 3,531]

11 hours ago, Estil said:

drag00n (whatever became of him)

He stayed behind at NintendoAge. Not to derail the thread, but he seemed to have some issues with people who spearheaded VGS and pointedly said he wasn't joining. And then NintendoAge sank, and he went down with it.

[Estil | 1,265]

42 minutes ago, Tulpa said:

He stayed behind at NintendoAge. Not to derail the thread, but he seemed to have some issues with people who spearheaded VGS and pointedly said he wasn't joining. And then NintendoAge sank, and he went down with it.

Oh that's too bad  

[ZeldaFreak | 3,612]

54 minutes ago, Tulpa said:

He stayed behind at NintendoAge. Not to derail the thread, but he seemed to have some issues with people who spearheaded VGS and pointedly said he wasn't joining. And then NintendoAge sank, and he went down with it.

Yeah, I'm not sure what exactly his deal was with that, but it was a real shame, since I knew the people who stayed behind on NA would probably not be seen in the community again when that ship inevitably sunk.

[captmorgandrinker | 1,650]

21 minutes ago, ZeldaFreak said:

Yeah, I'm not sure what exactly his deal was with that, but it was a real shame, since I knew the people who stayed behind on NA would probably not be seen in the community again when that ship inevitably sunk.

He's easy enough to find if you want to find him.

[ZeldaFreak | 3,612]

12 minutes ago, captmorgandrinker said:

He's easy enough to find if you want to find him.

Oh yeah, I'm sure he is, it's just a shame he didn't join us in the transition is all, so you don't see him around here.

[Estil | 1,265]

18 minutes ago, ZeldaFreak said:

Oh yeah, I'm sure he is, it's just a shame he didn't join us in the transition is all, so you don't see him around here.

I know, it doesn't matter what forum we're on, it's the people that truly make a forum a community does it not?

[Estil | 1,265]

I can't believe the PS1 came out right when I was entering HS...another neat story was in my senior year (spring '99) I got to go with the baseball team (I was their student manager jr/sr years) to Florida (first time I ever saw the ocean...I even got to see Cape Kennedy/Canaveral where they launched the shuttles waaaay off in the distance but I got to see it!) and they had brought both a PS1 and a N64...and even at that time I thought the baseball game on the PS1 (I think it was one of the Triple Play ones maybe?) looked really weird/jaggedy compared to the N64 one (All Star Baseball 99) was so realistic looking!  But I guess I figured it was only natural that it was because 64 bits is twice a good as a mere 32 bit system, right?  

Edited August 22, 2020 by Estil

[Tulpa | 3,531]

10 minutes ago, Estil said:

I know, it doesn't matter what forum we're on, it's the people that truly make a forum a community does it not?

That was his issue, though.

[Magus | 169]

22 minutes ago, Tulpa said:

That was his issue, though.

TBH i left NA for a year because of HIM and a couple of other members that made the site not enjoyable anymore because of how they acted. I came back to see NA was now VGS and those members didn't cross over which was a big part of why i ended up signing up here and giving it a shot. Although i don't post nearly as much as i used to and most of it is GVN stuff. 

As for the OP, i have had my PSIO for over a year now and love it. Very easy to use, and the performance is amazing. Some small quirks to deal with like the audio, but overall money well spent. My newest hardware is the GCloader for the gamecube. Very excited to install it. 

Edited August 22, 2020 by Magus

[Estil | 1,265]

4 minutes ago, Magus said:

TBH i left NA for a year because of HIM and a couple of other members that made the site not enjoyable anymore because of how they acted. I came back to see NA was now VGS and those members didn't cross over which was a big part of why i ended up signing up here and giving it a shot. Although i don't post nearly as much as i used to and most of it is GVN stuff. 

As for the OP, i have had my PSIO for over a year now and love it. Very easy to use, and the performance is amazing. Some small quirks to deal with like the audio, but overall money well spent. My newest hardware is the GCloader for the gamecube. Very excited to install it. 

Oh yeah?  What does this GCloader do?  I mean, I already have Nintendon't on my Wii and I already have my GC for Game Boy Player use so...

[Magus | 169]

Just now, Estil said:

Oh yeah?  What does this GCloader do?  I mean, I already have Nintendon't on my Wii and I already have my GC for Game Boy Player use so...

It's the same as the PSIO. It lets you run GC games from an SD card.

And if you are using the GB player, make sure you are using GBI instead of the terrible Nintendo GB player disk/software. 

[Estil | 1,265]

2 minutes ago, Magus said:

It's the same as the PSIO. It lets you run GC games from an SD card.

And if you are using the GB player, make sure you are using GBI instead of the terrible Nintendo GB player disk/software. 

What do you mean?  I've been using the GC/Game Boy Player since 2003 and it's always done a fine job for me.  Much better than that TV Advance thing I tried a couple years prior  

[Magus | 169]

6 minutes ago, Estil said:

What do you mean?  I've been using the GC/Game Boy Player since 2003 and it's always done a fine job for me.  Much better than that TV Advance thing I tried a couple years prior  

Skip to 32:00 in this video. The stock GB player disk has awful input lag and picture quality. The GBI software solves all of that. 
 

 

[Estil | 1,265]

I'm especially excited to finally get to play Tales of Destiny properly!  It's clearly just like its predecesor, Tales of Phantasia which I've gone on record as saying it's a very funny/cute game full of neat surprises (including eh, very colorful ones).  In 'Destiny for example, it shows Tweetie (who I named the cute gray hair chick after because my dearly departed Tweetie Cat had gray fur) did just like Simon's Cat and hit me (not with a baseball bat though) to wake me up (I can in fact be a deep "dead to the world" sleeper sometimes; my wife might have to scream at me 2-3 times to get me up!)!  And there's even a crazy cat grandpa too!  These are early in the game so hopefully I'm not spoiling too much.  And the gray hair chick (I named Tweetie) and the green braided chick (I named Misty, after my first ever pet when I was real little; beagle hound) have such cute victory poses after battle  

On that note, I think I got all the other multi-disc games set up alright but for Tales of Destiny 2 I'm not so sure...it's kinda hard to explain (the PSIO comes with a special program to download onto your computer to set up the isos on your sd card properly)

[MegaMan52 | 2,456]

On 8/22/2020 at 11:42 AM, Estil said:

What do you mean?  I've been using the GC/Game Boy Player since 2003 and it's always done a fine job for me.  Much better than that TV Advance thing I tried a couple years prior  

Same. I haven't had any major issues with the Game Boy Player since first using it in 2004 or so. Nowadays, my GameCube is hooked up to an HDTV with it's Component cable and I use a WaveBird controller. No noticeable lag, and my Game Boy Player still works just as well as it did 16 years ago.

[TDIRunner | 2,770]

I was lucky enough to get a PSIO from the first round of pre-orders for what feels like forever ago.  Unfortunately for me, it arrived during a time when I had too many projects and other things going on in my life to take the time to install it on my PS1 and enjoy it.  Since I knew it was going to sit for a while before I could even install it, and considering what they were selling for at the time, I made the difficult decision to sell it.  I would still like to get another one sometime, but I will wait at least until my basement is completed.  

I enjoyed your story as it reminds me a lot of my self during that time.  I was also a pretty early PS1 adopter after being a huge fan of the NES and SNES.  It was weird not getting another Nintendo system, but for some reason, I knew the PS1 was the right decision for me.  My brother and I got it as a Christmas present and since it didn't come with a game, my parents also got us Crash Bandicoot and Tomb Raider.  I already knew about CB and had played it many times.  I was super excited for that one.  But at the time, I had never heard of Tomb Raider.  My parents bought it because a kid working at Best Buy recommended it.  I'm so glad he did, because I loved that game and still consider it to be my favorite PS1 game of all time.  The PS1 is still my favorite system to this day and my favorite to collect for.  It's the only system that I truly have any desire to collect a full set for.  Although, I only have about 45% of the US library and prices continue to climb each year, it's still a fun set to collect for.  

[Estil | 1,265]

10 minutes ago, TDIRunner said:

I was lucky enough to get a PSIO from the first round of pre-orders for what feels like forever ago.  Unfortunately for me, it arrived during a time when I had too many projects and other things going on in my life to take the time to install it on my PS1 and enjoy it.  Since I knew it was going to sit for a while before I could even install it, and considering what they were selling for at the time, I made the difficult decision to sell it.  I would still like to get another one sometime, but I will wait at least until my basement is completed.  

I enjoyed your story as it reminds me a lot of my self during that time.  I was also a pretty early PS1 adopter after being a huge fan of the NES and SNES.  It was weird not getting another Nintendo system, but for some reason, I knew the PS1 was the right decision for me.  My brother and I got it as a Christmas present and since it didn't come with a game, my parents also got us Crash Bandicoot and Tomb Raider.  I already knew about CB and had played it many times.  I was super excited for that one.  But at the time, I had never heard of Tomb Raider.  My parents bought it because a kid working at Best Buy recommended it.  I'm so glad he did, because I loved that game and still consider it to be my favorite PS1 game of all time.  The PS1 is still my favorite system to this day and my favorite to collect for.  It's the only system that I truly have any desire to collect a full set for.  Although, I only have about 45% of the US library and prices continue to climb each year, it's still a fun set to collect for.  

Oh no no no no no no, I was a late PS1 adopter...I didn't get one until 2001, a full six years after it was released!  So all the more reason I'm so eager and excited to get caught up on some more of the PS1 that I originally missed!  And I like how you said "only about 45% of the the US library" that's so cute    I only have about maybe 40ish PS1 games (the real kind, on actual discs)    So while most of them are major blue chip games, I still only have not even what, 4-5% at most?  

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,105]

I didn't even know that there was a PS1 flash cart. I guess I need to check it out.

[Tulpa | 3,531]

https://stoneagegamer.com/psio-playstation-flash-cart.html

[Estil | 1,265]

2 hours ago, Bearcat-Doug said:

I didn't even know that there was a PS1 flash cart. I guess I need to check it out.

https://stoneagegamer.com/flash/playstation/

Get the console while it's still in stock (and don't get it from any other US dealer besides SAG).  No really, you blink you might miss it.  And it could be weeks, even months before you get another chance (I can tell you from personal experience I wish I was exaggerating but I'm not, honest).  And I really would not recommend doing the mod yourself unless you're like a really confident expert at it or something...I personally leave nothing to chance if I can at all avoid it.

No really you do NOT want to do the operation yourself!  

 

Edited August 24, 2020 by Estil

[Daniel_Doyce | 477]

I guess it was in stock briefly last week and isn't anymore?

[Estil | 1,265]

4 hours ago, Daniel_Doyce said:

I guess it was in stock briefly last week and isn't anymore?

Like I said, you blink, you might miss it.  Apparently these are not only in high demand but they're not particularly easy to make either?