Personally I find art direction regardless of graphical fidelity to be extremely important. You can have the most realistic looking game, but if the overall theme and environment is trash no one is going to stick around for long.
@@agtr6494 frame rate directly affects gameplay... This is why games should be no lower than 60fps. Modern consoles really should be 120fps at this point. But they're still struggling to maintain 20fps
You're not kidding, I remember unboxing my PS2 and feeling a wave of disappointment when I wasn't immediately smacked with that familiar bassy thrum of the PS1's boot screen. Nothing else quite like it on any console before or since. When someone mentions it I'll play it through in my head, including the ethereal dings of the subsequent disc load tune. I can't off the top of my head think of the boot sound for the PS2, 3 or 4 and I've probably played each just as much as I did the PS1. Iconic is the word.
@@Sevarrius I feel you! Part of that is also the stellar sound chip of the PS1. I used that thing as a CD player back then haha It also came with the dreadful feeling that it might get stuck on that boot logo if you tried to play an old rental or bought a used copy...
I think this quote best sums up retro graphics best: "Limitations breed creativity." Because the tech still had it's limits, devs had to be creative in how to create those worlds. An amazing example is Silent Hill with it's fog.
@@nmrn148 Fact. The DRDR demake looks like it is covered in anal lube. The original is pure SOUL, even today I have fun finding little details and heccin liminal spacerinos in that game. The demake will be forgotten in months
This. I feel like a lot of the retro throwback stuff misses the point. Or maybe that's not fair to say, since they have a certain "vibe" they're aiming for, and a lot of people like it. But people so often focus on the limitations themselves, and I think what makes older graphics so compelling is the art style, not the limitations. One of the main proofs of this is how authentic a PS1/N64 game still looks and feels when it's emulated/ported to PC, running in 4K and 60fps with no wobble. And I've seen cases here and there, where much newer games' graphics somehow remind me of older aesthetics, just with higher fidelity. On the other hand, you can make a new indie game with pixel art, chunky polygons, or a CRT filter, and those still won't give it remotely the same feel or appeal that the classics had.
Limitations create style and ingenuity. A good example is Jaws opening scene with the shark under the water. Spielberg simply wanted a shark to just jump out of the sea. Producers told him it was too hard and too expensive to do. So he came up with just showing the woman go back and forth in the sea and only implying the shark under the water in a scene that became legendary. If it was today they would just cgi a big shark jumping out and attacking her and removing all the suspence that the original scene created by not actually showing you what was under the water. The movie became a classic due to the limitations.
@@SIPEROTH I am happy you brought that up. If you look at special effects from back then, and then today it is clear as day. Older films had magic and passion.
I disagree. There are A LOT of stylized games out today. Even more than there was in the past. The problem is that you aren't looking at the indie gaming world. You see a lot of stylized games in the indie field
IT'S NOT ABOUT THE GRAPHICS. IT'S ABOUT THE GAME! That's why the 90s where so great! Because the games and the music were amazing! Today it's not about the games anymore, it's about the profit!
I think as a general rule, when creative people are forced to work within limitations, it often makes their work better, not worse. Having to overcome challenges forces you to focus and distil your ideas down to what is both possible to produce, and also what maintains the essence of your idea/vision. The constraints of mid-90's technology yielded a lot of brilliant games for this reason. On one hand developers were extremely limited in what they could do, and on the other hand they'd never been able to do so much. Adopting similar aesthetics and constraints in a modern context could be seen as paying homage, but it could also be seen as forcing oneself to work within the same or similar limits for their benefits. See also, all the developers making new games for actual old hardware like the Sega Genesis. For me, the PS1 era will always hold a massive amount of nostalgia. Part of that is because I was a young teenager at the time, but there was also something objectively magical about that generation of videogames. Technology was evolving at a breakneck pace in meaningful ways. When the industry widely adopted CD-ROM technology and then 3D graphics, it seemed like new horizons and possibilities were constantly opening up. Also, nobody knew wtf they were doing, which lead to a lot of janky but interesting titles. The rules for what games could be and how they should function in these new contexts hadn't been written yet, so there was a ton of wild experimentation. I remember being able to buy a videogame magazine (I miss those!) and read it cover to cover, with almost every single game being interesting in some way or another. As the tech evolved further, developers gained more experience, and certain titles started to provide examples of the "right" way to do things, that unbridled creativity started to diminish, and its basically been dwindling ever since along with my interest in videogames. The PS2 generation had better games, but already the innovation and creativity were starting to fade. Since then, only the early indie games scene and the early VR space have rekindled a similar feel to the PS1 era for me. Thank you for reading my TED talk.
You want to relive those times again? You should get a VR headset. So much of what you said about the early days of 3D is the stage VR is in now .. (actually I'd say VR is currently in its NES era)
@@antjones2281 Totally agree, actually. I sort of mention that at the end of my rant that VR rekindled that feeling for me. I got a PSVR 1 years ago and loved it (still play it), but I'm debating what headset to upgrade to at the moment. PSVR 2 would be the obvious choice since I have a PS5 and some of my PSVR 1 games have free or cheap upgrades, but it looks like Sony's bailed on it already (no VR support in the new Astro Bot? WTF?!). I'd consider a new Valve headset, but my PC is trash and would need a complete overhaul (and I can't justify that cost atm). And I hate Meta. Like, intensely. So I'm basically waiting for PSVR 2 to get cheaper and have a few more great games (Behemoth looks awesome), or Valve to announce something that'll convince me to upgrade my PC. But you're totally right, VR is the latest paradigm shift for videogames, and the most profound for me since the shift to 3D. There's a lot of the same lovable jank in VR as early 3D, and similar experimentation. Unfortunately unlike the shift to 3D, the games industry at large hasn't embraced VR, so a lot of developers are hamstrung by scant resources and difficulty finding publisher support.
Not at all, PS1 looked hot garbage when it first came out. Not a single 3D game that came out on the PS1 looked better than Rayman. Most people were not impressed or hated 3D games on the PS1. It was the PS2 that took 3D to the mainstream and wide acceptance.
@@handsomejustinI don’t agree the PS1 completely destroyed the Sega Saturn in sales based on its 3D capabilities, you can read comparisons in gaming magazines from ‘96 onward how the PS1 was praised for its Gourad Shading and Transparencies, the PS2 rode the shoulders of the ps1 from the gate, I of course bought the Saturn because all my mates had PlayStations, and Sega had me with Daytona, Rally and Virtua Fighter
you even made the video to be 4:3, lol, amazing. for some reason i felt so heartwarmed by the end, especially when that song kicked in at the outro, even though i never experienced those times. awesome
@@batmanreborn81To be fair, I don't think many commercial games have deliberately eschewed graphical prowess for gameplay, no matter when they came out. Certainly back in the '80s, most games would take advantage of the hardware they ran on to get the best graphical detail whilst running acceptably. We look back at old games, forgetting they only had primitive graphics because of hardware limitations... at the time they were cutting edge and a lot of effort went in to making them look as good as possible.
notice how because graphics are so realistic and take so much work, all games have the same stealth puzzles, same look-at-stuff puzzles, same exact stuff from final fantasy 7R to spiderman 2 to resident evil . there’s only so much you can do with realistic presentations.
This video is amazing! One of the best video-essay type ones I've watched. The timing, presentation and everything is like some professional work, you're terribly underrated!
In this video, a perspective from someone under 25 who didn’t live through those times is presented. This wasn’t just an art style; it was state-of-the-art graphics for 1995, the best available at the time. To us, it looked amazing and realistic. We viewed Gran Turismo as incredibly lifelike. This narrative that people only cared about gameplay and style is rewriting history. People have always cared about graphics as well.
Yeah too blurry and pixelated. They were just concerned with getting the tiny polygons to move around back then. Most of the gameplay wasn't much different than what they could do prior to 3d aside from the directional movement and analog. That was the game changer of that time that people forget. You could go any direction and the camera would turn as if you did. The graphics got addressed in the ps2 and dreamcast xbox era, then 360 ps3 fine tuned visual and created lots of new gaming ideas and types of games. The graphics did get pushed again with ray tracing and lighting but the only way they are accomplishing that is some very finicky render distance calculations only showing you what is there so now games have that grainy fizzly look of particles when things are struggling to load, or have broken visuals with spotty load times. I genuinely think its because of the number of objects they try to put in the game now to add to the realism. The more objects in an area and the more the game chugs or crashes. People don't realize these amazing visuals aren't running very stable right now without a super rig. So imagine when PS7 comes out how good PC games will look with max settings. And they will have smoothed over the issues of hardware limits by then. I predict that generation is gonna leave everyone speechless.
You know what's also awesome. Taking old low poly games and add RAYTRACING. For some bizarre reason Raytracing looks more compelling on low poly PS1 level geometry than Unreal Engine 5. Maybe because Unreal Engine 5 graphics + Raytracing already looks like the world we're familiar with while PS1 or N64 level geometry + Raytracing looks like uncanny valley. The lighting looks realistic but the geometry looks off. The effect is even more enhanced when you add unfiltered pixelated textures.
Low poly with ray tracing makes the game graphics look more like a toy in real life. Where as the high poly object games look more like the things your parents didn't want you playing with a child.
The coolest thing about Compound Fracture is that it will also let you mess with the visual style so if you want a more PS2 look to the game you can go for it. I wish more games could do that.
Its usually under graphics settings. You can alter a . ini if you really want to downgrade visuals to that level though. Some of the textured faces were pretty good.
Honestly I love this era of gaming. Visually it is fantastic. My only problem with games of that era was actually game controls. So many games had clunky frustrating controls. Designing modern games in that 90s aesthetic but with modern game design knowledge and controls is something that really interests me.
What's missing is developers back then we're all nerds in a room passionate about what they were creating making game companies corporate kind of killed this.
Games started making big money so the suits arrived. There are still guys just making games but the difference is that back then their game could look every bit as good as the expensive game made by a more professional studio due to hardware limitations while now their game will clearly look like a little more simple indie game since they can't do suped realistic detailed graphic that need huge teams of people to be made.
This is indeed a big part of it. The ones on the ground, making the games, are still those same nerds. It's just that now it's not a team of 10-20 people making something, deciding mostly by themselves how to do it, but now the corporation enters every aspect of development and a team of 100+ people has to work on the same thing.. and it becomes a corporate mess instead of a passion project. On the good side, those same small teams make some great indie games these days.
@@SIPEROTH Actually, small teams can make great looking games today, maybe even easier than ever. UE is the de facto stadard game engine for the industry, and anyone can use it. Sure, a team of 100 3D artists will create way more assets than a team of just a few, but when those small teams focus correctly on what matters, they can achieve great results. Great example is Kayak VR, I think I read it was built by a team of just 3 people, and it's one of the most immersive and graphically impressive VR games.
For me, a few things. [1] Less graphics and resolution, means our brain does more of the filling in with our imagination. Kind of like why someone might defend a comic book vs a regular book as "Why would you read a book, comics have these amazing illustrations. It's so much more interesting!". The equivalent argument also doesn't work for low-fidelity graphics. It's probably why survival horror is one of the genres that indies flock to for this 90s art style. Just like some people prefer the more minimal elements of reading a book that requires more mental work, some people might prefer retro graphics. [2] It's simpler to devleop for indies, and with much more single-person projects popping up mixed with inflating project costs and technological complexities, a lot of smaller teams find the speed of production much faster when constrained to these simpler styles. [3] Readability. There's a reason why pro-gamers competing at a high level will turn their graphics down to the lowest. Not just for the FPS advantage, but also being able to read the screen quicker. Simpler shapes and shading, vs a complex noise on screen makes it easier to distinctively read elements of a scene. [4] Just like art has different art styles, games are finding that certain types of visuals can express ideas and concepts better than others depending on the source material. A music game might do better with abstract shapes and 2k aesthetics like 'Rez' on the dreamcast and ps2. A horror game might prefer low fidelity ps1 graphics so the player's imagination is relied on more to fill in gaps. A 2D pixel art game might be able to control the composition and layout of the scene better to constrain what the player sees to add more emotional impact to certain elements (i.e what you can't see is just as important as what you can). [5] Point of diminishing returns. The chase for realistic graphics was the initial motivation behind a lot of purchase decisions over the last 50 years or so. We chased the new shiny thing. The jump from SNES to PS1 was huge. PS1 to PS2 dramatic. PS2 to PS3 was polished. Now, from PS3 to PS4 is mostly just resolution of the screen and resolution of textures, with some fluff like tesselation and shading making micro improvements over time. The fact that a game like Catherine on the PS3 can look mostly similar technically speaking as the most recent Persona 5, is proof enough that art-style will always trump graphics most of the time (exceptions being things like Crysis where the graphical tech IS the style). We're simply just as a point of 'good enough' now where most people are satisfied with where we're at, and that has kind of blunted those expectations of always pushing forward. Ray-tracing has slightly piqued our interest ever so slightly once more, but generally speaking we're all content for the most part now. We're collectively much happier to accept that these are all art styles now, probably in a simlar way where art history might have similar parallels (I honestly don't know, sound off in the comments if you do!) if we checked. Maybe the chase for perspective and realism in paintings reached the point where paintings became super high fidelity, and then things became more expressionist or abstract as a counter art movement to all of that 'realism' or whatever it was coined as. I wouldn't be surprised if an art history major graduate said that games are just going through the same pattern as what artists went through, but games are doing so on a shorter and more compressed timeline.
Really enjoyed reading your post. Regarding PS1 era graphics being better for survival horror games, I absolutely agree. Many people who try to evoke horror in any medium agree that the most powerful tool is their audience's imagination. The process of using your imagination to fill in the gaps you talk about makes the low polygon counts and even more so the low res textures very effective for horror games. I remember playing System Shock 2 years after it released, and installing a high poly model pack and a high-res texture pack to enhance the graphics. The texture pack in particular made the game noticeably less scary. There are other aspects to PS1 graphics that lend themselves to horror as well. The texture warping caused by a lack of precision in its affine texture mapping makes details such as faces swim and distort in ways that can be unsettling. Similarly, character models jitter and twitch around due to the low precision fixed point math causing vertices to move back and forth between possible locations. Then there's the ways developers overcame limitations which also contributed to horror, like Silent Hill using fog/darkness to cover the short draw distance, or Resident Evil's (or I guess Alone in the Dark's) pre-rendered backgrounds and fixed camera angles. As for your art parallel, it's been a long time since I took an art history class, but I immediately thought you were right. Double-checked and sure enough, art styles had been striving for greater and greater fidelity, became more idealized, then more gritty and realistic in what was literally called the Realism movement. And just as you guessed, that movement was directly followed by a series of much more abstract art movements, starting with Impressionism (Monet) and Post-Impressionism, then Art Nouveau, Expressionism, Cubism (later Picasso), Surrealism (Dali), Abstract Expressionism (Pollock), etc. And only tangentially related, I've always thought that Pointillism (a sub-style of Post-Impressionism) is basically the painting equivalent of pixel art, even though it doesn't look like pixel art. Paintings are created using individual and relatively uniform dots of paint that blur together in your vision to create the image (for example, see the painting "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" by Seurat). Okay that's enough of me nerding out 🤓 [Edit:] Oh one more point about diminishing returns. One of the co-founders of Naughty Dog, Jason Rubin, did a talk at the Game Developers Conference called "Great Game Graphics... Who Cares?" back in the PS2 era iirc about exactly that. Haven't watched it in a while (seems like you need a Flash player to watch it on the GDC website), but he was talking about diminishing returns all the way back then. I remember one of his points was asking the audience if a Tennis game would be more fun (or would the player even notice) if the individual strings in the racket were modelled with polygons instead of just being a texture with transparencies. I remember it being worth watching, but again, haven't seen it in a while. Wild that people have realized games were hitting diminishing returns that long ago, and yet the bulk of the games industry (aside from indies and Nintendo) are still chasing higher fidelity graphics despite what it's doing to game budgets, production timelines, and in some cases gameplay quality and creativity.
That your Point No.1 its a Literal Genre of Video Games "Visual Novel" that Mixes both of Novel and Comic Still Relevant today. As The Visual given you a Base for your imagination with Follow up its The Teks "Novel", You Can Add "Choices" as Gameplay and ETC
@@GreyMatterShades Thanks for informing me about the art history stuff. That's really interesting to see that we're going through a similar phase it seems but on a much faster and compressed timeline in years/decaces vs generations/centuries. Totally agree about the affine texture mapping too. There's someting otherworldy about the lack of floating point values in vertex coordinates and the swimming of texture faces that gives it a charm. I didn't know about that GDC talk. I'll definitely give it a watch later with some pizza. Cheers!
I remember my Aunt, and even my Mother I think, saying that graphics are going to get TOO realistic someday and it will take away the charm of being a video game. My late Mom also said that CGI and A.I. will probably get to the point they may not even need actors anymore. . . She was a prophet lol. 🤣🤣
They are both legends❤ while my mom would just tell me I would get too addicted since I started playing before the age of 6. She is also s prophet, and a legend😂 i started gaming on a knock off Sega dreamcast in 1998/1999 and I am still going strong as a gamer with barely any breaks. Kinda saved my social life in the meantime, don't know how. But moms was right
People cared about graphics in 90's the same way. That is why in the 80's and 90's people liked to go to the arcades even if they had a console at home, and marketing i magazines, TV and so on always talked about the graphics of that new exciting sofisticated game or that new console. This "in old times graphics didn't matter" is just a nostalgic ilusion.
@@TheMrCHELL Exactly, they were obsessed with graphics, it's like they couldn't wait to get to where we are today. And I'm no exception, I was so obsessed that I would stop by the arcade on my way home from school even when I had NO money just to watch the new Killer Instinct arcade machine, whether people were playing it or not I would just watch the graphics because, at that time, killer instinct was really mind blowing to me how far ahead it seemed graphically from any other game. In fact, I was so crazy about graphics, that when hardware cost came way down within the last decade or so, and I'm talking hardware capable of doing graphics art, I spent most of my free time learning 3ds max and how to build 3d models lol. Everybody's dream job in the 90s was to be a special effects artist for Hollywood film, at least that's what I thought because that was my dream seeing how every year a new movie was coming out where the effects blew the previous years out the water.
Speaking as PS1 gamer who owned it in the 90s. All you had was school, friends, magazines and your PS1. No online anything really. PS1 it self was really a single player console, rather than multi player.
Multi-tap and couch co-op was our multi-player. Also having multiple TV's and a link cable. Nothing will beat that feeling of everybody being in the same room and playing the same game, and passing controllers around to those cheering on behind us watching and waiting for their turn.
Metal Gear Solid and Soul Reaver on the PS1 are core gaming memories from my pre/early teens. Thanks for this video, I really loved that you did it in 4:3 aspect ratio too!
It’s almost instinct, that the moment a limitation is overcome, humanity will strive to replicate it, call it nostalgia, call it pandering. I just find it beautiful to know the visual variety we can achieve nowadays
@@ZackSNetwork That is true, embracing the new is just as important as respecting the old, the reason old things remain is because their limitations bred creativity and created a style wholly separated from the limitations themselves, I was born after the era of the ps1 and n64, I grew up with the wii, xbox360 and pc, even so, there is a charm that's unique to the old games, and seeing people take that charm and recreate it with modern gameplay sensibilities is always cool to me.
Of course it's not. We've reached such a high level that it's much harder to make noticeable difference compared to the previous generation. Take for example a car wheel.. a lot of games on PS1 had 8 sides that make up the "circle" that is a tyre. On PS2 that was pushed to 3-4 times more, so the tyre actually looked much closer to a circle. By PS3 there were so many polygons that a tyre looked like a proper tyre. So adding any more doesn't really noticeably increase the quality. Same goes for textures.. when they were 32x32 pixels you saw quite a bit more even at 64x64, not to mention getting to 256x256 or 512x512. But now you again get diminishing returns unless you zoom in on small details like a necklace the character is wearing and stuff like that. We're just there at a position where the increases are not noticeable and we'll never experience the same that happened throughout 90s till about 2010 in terms that every year we'd see noticeable jumps.
@@dmc77 PS3 to PS4 was also impressive. The problem with the PS5 is that no one has really been pushing it. They're mostly just PS4 games with a higher resolution and better shadows (and sometimes reflections)
0:41 Soul Reaver was such a glorious gaming experience. EDIT: 5:12 And so was Silent HIll 1. The fogginess/lack of draw distance actually made the game work better as a horror game.
Wonderful work. You described excellently why Video games from the Ps1 era are no match and completely shaped my imagination like no modern game ever could. I'll definitely share that video. And I'll check out this new trend of experimental Ps1 modern stuff !!
Explain this, when i was young i wanted the "AAA/Next-Gen" graphics we have today, and now i find myself wanting to go back to these simple graphics of the past.
easy. As kids and teenagers we were on the move, going forward,wanting to do the next step. i can not remember one moment I went nostalgic in my younger years. The games graphics,the often horrible music genres. It all had to be gone as fast as possible. And now you look back to those simpler times. Games with pixel or low polygon graphics just bring back those feelings and memories from the past.
because you wanted graphics to keep moving forward, but unfortunately big devs took that and ditched art style. graphics mean nothing without an artistic direction
Because Nintendo had it right. Better graphics do not equal better GAMES. Games should be fun and whimsical; an escape. Hyper realistic tech demos are just that, not games.
This video was so well put together. 🏆 Especially the very last few words, then music used, shots chosen and then to end it on that iconic screen (including the sound). 🙏🏼
Same for me. I'm curious about the game at 7:26. It got me interrested a lot Update : nevermind it's in the description. It's called Compound Fracture.
Sometimes the most important aspect of attention to detail is knowing what details to omit. Video games are not just an experience, they are art. As art, the imagination of the player is the most important tool to make use of for immersing them into the world you are crafting. Their desire to be immersed in a world not their own, for whatever reason they have that desire, will only be boosted by their imagination having more room to work. The visual styles of older consoles like the PS1 and N64 unbound by the original hardware restrictions make the perfect visual style to take advantage of this. There's just enough detail to make out what you are looking at, but yet enough missing for the player's imagination to fill in the blanks and in doing so insert their own meaning, or to struggle to. This omission of detail can be used to make a bizarre fantasy setting feel all the more alien and whimsical or to make horror settings more uncanny, unfamiliar, and eerie. To write off this style as outdated is to fundamentally miss the point of why art is art. Art is not limited to the latest technology; we do not dismiss the Mona Lisa as a work of art because it is old and we have advanced our artistic capabilities since then. If anything, it is only all the more impressive as a work of art that these talented artists making these games are managing to capture and invoke such complicated emotions with such a simple graphical style. Art is not defined by its realism, but by its emotional resonance.
we had a plethora of legendary games man , i was kid switching between resident evil, clock tower 2 , crash, and tomb raider , all block busters , cant forget silent hill
Just as pixel art games prove that you don't need fancy graphics or realism to captivate and attract people to play your game, same goes for low poly PS1 graphics, even games that look like PS2 have a style that gets lost in realism. What gives these games an edge is the artistic liberty taken within the limitations. The indie scene is truly wonderful as it feels like it is games made by fans for fans, it's poetic really.
People cared about graphics in 90's the same way. That is why in the 80's and 90's people liked to go to the arcades even if they had a console at home, and marketing i magazines, TV and so on always talked about the graphics of that new exciting sofisticated game or that new console. This "in old times graphics didn't matter" is just a nostalgic ilusion.
One note on this aesthetic: _It requires a CRT to truly pull off,_ as textures of the era were made _around_ the limitations and faults of CRT masks/aperture grilles. The real reason CRT enthusiasts prefer playing this generation of games on the era's display tech, isn't just due to a nostalgia fad; it's because the games _physically look so much better_ on them.
@@martincerny3294 It is true though no? Atleast that CRT screens introduce dithering and breathe extra life into pixelised graphics. It's widely known I'd recommend googling it if you're unfamiliar
@@martincerny32942D pixel art back then was definitely made with the artifacts of crts and composite inputs in mind. It is incredibly easy to find examples of it.
Indie graphics are evolving. One thing doesn't change - those responsible for graphics does not bother make it more "readable" or gives more clarity... which was a thing that old developers (from that era of graphic) tried to do. Seems like people who lived in an era of "graphical pollution" where maps were filled with details and junk could not provide something more easy to read...
I like there is space for both, nothing better than jumping from an old classic to a new game getting those 60 frames and 4k, but then again going back cause the games were simpler not all lore, story or open world, turning off one’s brain and just playin’ a game.
I think the most obvious reason why 70% of your audience didn't have a PS1 is simply because they weren't born yet. Your audience probably skews overwhelmingly Gen Z and Alpha with a smaller Millennial and X component, and I think the poll reflects that.
It make sense because back then, video games was made by relatively smaller teams (hence the genuine unique and creative ideas for a gameplay/story etc), only when X360, PS3, PSP era, corporate industry took notice of video game industry's potential market, and only focuses on graphics fidelity, To this day, the indies (small time game dev) still holds true to the old school game devs ethos
Important detail: any new graphical tech used for rendering ultra realism CAN be used for stylistic unrealism. quoted by me. to that extent, ray-traced lighting on a PS1 style-environment
0:38 Resident Evil isn't a good fit for when you say "artistic decisions" lol. The director has always stated fixed camera was due to technical limitations and 3D inexperience.
working within limitations often makes for a better work of art, be that music, movies, or even video games. silent hill would have been very generic were it not for the need for the fog to hide the low render distance. and really, I think most games should avoid realism. it's nice for games like death stranding, but no ps1 game needed that.
I will never forget when my parents took me to toys r us and out of nowhere bought me a ps1 while I was playing the demo in the store. Some of the happiest memories of my life
beutiful video, i almost cryed looking at it, cuz when i were a bit younger played a lot ps1 one games and that was like a love letter to it. thank you.
3:07 My imagination never tried to fill-in the blanks. My mind was just accepting the fact that the world looked like this, as if it was real. When I'm looking at Silent Hill, RE, Tenchu, Tomb Raider and so on, all the technical shortcomings and "outdatedness" from a modern pov, is and was just part of the bizarre atmosphere and immersion. I'd argue that updating these games with up-to-date graphics and all the bells and whistles wouldn't result in a better *feeling* game, because it simply would be something totally different. It'd probably be way worse in comparison.
They used tons of tricks to hide visibility and design problems. Giving it a facelift often exposes those problems, making the game seem even more dated than originally created to look.
I think this is why the PS3 and XBOX 360 era was so good. They still had graphical limitations while still focusing on style, story and substance. Think about it, Bioshock, Halo, Rachet and Clank, Sly Cooper, Diablo 2, WOW, heck, I'd even include Team Fortress 2 and COD4 in the same vain. Personally I think the 2000s were the golden age of video games and the PS1 days were something of a precursor to that.
Right that's exactly how I feel ps3/xbox360 was where games were at their peak for creativity.... it'd a shame how everything has become battle passes and spending the opposite of micro transactions on just cosmetics.
IMO it was the worst era. My biggest gripe is that a lot of games launched in unplayable state. GTA 4 had awful fps drops to tens and never ran at even 30 fps. Test Drive Unlimited had stupid load times when you were running at high speed on highways. If you turned car, and then load screen starts, you will most likely spin out. There were so many performance problems in so many titles. Sega Dreamcast ran entire library at 60 fps without BS and X360/PS3 era went backwards. A lot of these problems were never fixed in updates and infuriating thing is that a lot of these problems are due to devs being lazy or cranking up resolution too high for no reason. A PC with weaker hardware, but sensibly adjusted graphics settings ran things just fine and at way more than 30 fps.
That's funny, I can't think of a single game from that era that reaches out and grabs me. I had to legit sit here for 10 minutes going, "resistance? Nah. Nier? Mayyybe.. OBLIVION?! Hahahahahahaha! and the best example I could come up with for a game that blew my mind the way ps1 games did was Shadow of the Colossus and Dark Souls. Sorry not sorry. Tell me you never played THPS 2 without telling me you never played THPS 2. Dude, we would grind for hours to get that bails vid and see what the next secret character was going to be. Kids these days don't know McSqueeb. Same for MG:S, FF7, tactics, Brave Fencer Musashi, Silent Hill... Nightmare Creatures, Legacy of Cain, Megaman Legends... The fact that they even got Quake 2 to boot up on PS1 was a programming marvel, and it's a damn good port, too. I'd say the x360 and PS3 were the last of the GOOD consoles. Now everything is online only multiplayer, and that sucks. If I wanted to play online, I got a computer that does what my consoles do, only better. Screw that I want couch co-op so I can have friends over for gaming and beers. I'll never buy another new console as long as they continue this online only garbage. I spent $180 on extra controllers for the PS4 and the only games that can use them are frikken minecraft, rayman and diablo. Get out of here with that crap, what an absolute waste of money.
True golden age was actually early 90s in PC gaming. Next one was the late 00s. Games were much more innovative and bold, but then they started to copy same genres and try to appeal bigger audiences and there was console and PC gaming converge. There was time of true, hardcore PC gaming with kind of games that never been released to any console and games that made for grown up people. We even have so advanced simulations that we need to read manual how some military vehicles operate or some naval warfare tactics. I don't think PS3/Xbox360 hardware wasn't limited if properly used. GTA V is good example.
That was the right mix, they looked and played fine but didn't take 6 years to make a game. PS1 era nostalgia is misplaced unless you were there. I don't have any desire to play a blocky and clunky first gen 3D game like I did in 1997. Don't fall for the meme.
@@fillerbunnyninjashark271you act like some people don’t think the same thing for PS1/N64/Saturn visuals. Right now much of the nostalgia sits in the 5th gen and 6th gen
@@crestofhonor2349 most nostalgia is still Genesis/SNES. PS4 games looked like shit, just like PS3 games. Also PS5 games still look exactly like PS3/4 games
@@fillerbunnyninjashark271 now that’s an opinion I disagree with. PS5 games don’t look like PS3 games unless you don’t play games. The difference is so clear. PS4 games look far better than PS3 games. Most nostalgia still is in the 4th - 6th gen
the video I needed to see years ago. I dont know what it is. but something about this style of video look feels like an adventure and more real. enough to see/know whats going on. yet a little imagination left to fill in the gaps. also, nothing has ever beat the aww inspiring PSX boot up logo. I still love its greatness.
01:59 Thank you. This is what fascinated me most when playing PS1 as a kid. Countless hours were spent exploring every corner of the map, trying to find secrets and figure out how it all worked.
I feel like something important to note is that it is also easier for indie devs to do this, rather than high poly counts. As one myself, I don't have a team. It's just me. If I were to do high poly, it would take me over a decade to make one game.
Boomer Shooters have been comfortably living in this era for a bit now, and it's been amazing. Sprawl was a game that made me go "I have to play this" when I saw it. Gorgeous in its own way, and reminiscent of a bygone era in another. Boltgun is having success with this, and obviously games like Dusk. Thanks for turning me on to Compound Fracture, I can't wait to play this!
That "special something" was more of a focus on gameplay and just pure fun... fun gameplay was the focus.. everything else came secondary because of the limitations to the hardware. Modern games focus on graphics sound and presentation before gameplay and fun.. that's the difference. I love how all these kids are just basically experiencing nostalgia for the first time, and make video essays on the subject, when really they're just experiencing what my generation has experienced for awhile now with games like shovel knight and shante..
Yeah it's a little disappointing that there's no mention towards game design. These indie devs love to imitate from older games but fail to understand what makes these them special like the innovative mechanics, difficulty modes, enemy design, map design etc... These indie games feel more like art projects rather than games. This is where unfounded nosalgia gets you
As someone who went from an Amiga500 to a PSX in 1996. The jump was huge, it felt like the future. All those problems the console had, never borthered me back in the day, I saw them, I noticed them, but they never ruined anything for me. The marked a transtion point, It my 11th birthday present. The playstation felt like it wasnt made for kids as the main focus group, but rather the 13-21 year olds, which made me feel like beeing in a kinda headstart position at the right time. A special time with alot of innovation, ideas and new concept that were so much fun. i had 3 very special years, with the PSX, untill i got my first PC, which started the end of me owning a console. Stilled used and played on my psx, but never got a PS2 and sold the psx off in 2002
OMG - You´re so right - PS1 was so freaking magical and special at all and yeah... missing those times a lot - where games have been just games... to bring fun!
Developers worked to do something revolutionary that time. Now they do any trash just to make money, they not do anything actualy, ai to the work for them😢😢😢
To anyone who is also really excited for Compound Fracture, I can recommend Dino Trauma and Signalis. Dino Trauma is actually very similar to Compound Fracture, but the HUD looks too modern, I wish the devs would rework the HUD so that it fits better into the rest of the graphics, it's still in early aaccess, maybe they'll do it if enough people ask. And Signalis is kinda like Silent Hill but you're in space and play as an android. It is also very much inspired by Neon Genesis Evangelion so prepare to be emotionally hurt and confused by the story.
What made it so appealing to me compared to the new games was that they were simple products. and I was able to just start playing in the afternoon without having to spend hours learning the mechanics like in many games today
i grew up with ps1 games growing up because my dad bought them when they were a few bucks each in the 2000s and they were some of the best games i have ever played till this day like dino crisis 1, croc, metal gear solid, test drive 5, final fantasy 7 (i played that game so long on one save that the counter is broken at 99:99:99 which is insane) and future cop lapd arguably one of the best mech games on the ps1 and invented moba games which is cool af, the style is important but so is the classic pre render like lighting, also I'm siked to see games use the cartoon/cel style that the ps1 did perfectly like mega man legends and ghost in the shell among others also they can make ps1 style 2d games with 3d elements like Gundam assault and einhander
I don't want realistic graphics. If I want I go outside. I grew up with 8/16bit game consoles and they had much deeper games than most of those 3d games of nowadays! 8/16bit was the golden era of videogames, period.
I predicted this would happen 8 years ago when i saw how good retro style 2D games were becoming. I couldn't be happier that we're now getting the 3D version of that.
Agree. Made my prediction even earlier not due to how good things could be. That I knew. But more that when realism in render got high enough people would start to look back in time
I think i stopped being wowed by realistic graphics after Crysis came out, it was insane, it was so insane nobody even had the hardware to play it at the time, there were many moments as a kid thinking "games are never going to look better than this" but after Crysis they... kind of didn't, i'm not blind graphics have advanced but you need a magnifying glass to really see it. Suffice to say diminishing returns is in full effect and has been for a while, games are costing hundreds of millions more to make while looking on par with things made a decade ago and in some cases worse, so we're at a crossroads, which matters more the artwork or the ray tracing? I think it's the artwork. There are people who hate the PS1 style but i think it's beautiful, it sort of represents the minimum required to pull off a detailed 3D world but still requires the player to fill in the gaps, when people see remasters and say "this is what i remember X looking like" that's what they're referring to and it's something that is lost completely by photo realistic graphics, there's no mystery or surprise or effort required of the viewer when everything is crystal clear. I can't wait to see more games use it in the future, that Compound Fracture game looks amazing.
As someone else pointed out, the restraints seemed to really lend themselves towards very distinct styles. Music in older games seems so much better at adding to that style IMO. The limit on what could be displayed causing a kind of fog in spookier games really added to the tenseness. The games weren't trying to capture the feeling of watching a movie, with camera movements that mimic big blockbusters (and adding to the spooky games thing, having a camera that was limiting how easy it was to maneuver made it more panic inducing). That nothing was photo-realistic made the games feel surreal and almost dreamlike, and if the player is already using their imagination to fill the gaps on realistic things like a box or the character model, extending that to something like a giant robot or a cartoonish goblin kind of a character was easier. Gaming at the time was definitely getting more popular, but I wouldn't have called it mainstream at that point, so you wouldn't have massive financial investment going into a product that absolutely HAD to have the broadest possible appeal to cover that, so you'd get more games that might be kind of 'out there', and would resonate much more with a more narrow fan base, as well as often be quite difficult. Also, obviously, nostalgia plays a big role and I'm not going to act like that's not the case. But just to add to why the LOOK is so appreciated, I really like that older games didn't need an internet connection to play, didn't have DLC, bugs couldn't be patched but were considered endearing for the most part, the manuals that came with the game were cool and would world build a fair bit, cheat codes were so much fun, multiplayer required you to be actually present with your friends, and probably many other things I'm spacing.
It represents a time when things were simpler and when new technology (for the most part) delivered on its promises instead of being either severely underdeveloped before hitting the market (no internet meant devs had to get it right straight away; no shipping the beta with a day 1 patch), or another way to be data mined.
Games did have patches then. It wasn’t uncommon for games to get silent rereleases with bug patches. Still there were lots of broken promises and buggy games. Neither era was perfect. Just because the big studios are shipping broken games today didn’t mean it didn’t happen then
@@warmpabst it is a lot of nostalgia. I play lots of older games and newer ones. The push for it is coming from those who mostly grew up with those games. Most early 3D games have not aged well at all. Some people like that look of older 3D games because it brings them back to an earlier time in their life. I play a huge variety of games ranging from new to old stuff so no your assessment is wrong
@@crestofhonor2349 nah you said yourself 2D aged better which is a bold lie your bias is obvious nobody is out here fawning over pacman but plenty of new games take inspiration from 20 year old titles like hifi rush.
@@warmpabst all games take inspiration from something. hi Fi Rush is a rhythm game mixed with DMC because of the director of the game. 2D games from the 5th gen are better.
TOTALLY AGREE! so nostalgic. and yeah your mind dfinitely filled in what wasn't there. which is hard to explain to people these days! good times. sony absolutely smashed it.
Honestly most of the slop that comes out today is unapproachable for me. And the communities completely ruin all of the old stuff. The best way to experience games is to play nothing after the PS2 era and stay far away from other people.
I have an XBox 360, but that's my newest system. I have since then picked up an NES, OG XBox, PS1, Genesis, and SNES. If Dreamcast and Gamecube games were cheaper, I'd pick them up. And, I went through the library of N64 games, and there's only 11 that I would want, and the price negates my will to sink into it. I've played the PS3,4,and 5, the XboxOne, Wii, WiiU, and Switch, and they are all crap. Unless you like being tethered to an internet connection, and cheapness of quality.
Or you could just play the games without bothering to look up what people on the internet think about it. There are not THAT many games that bring the insufferableness right into the game.
I think with graphics we have grown too far for going for realism instead of an art style. Side note I wish there was a demake category but with modern gameplay/framerate
I almost cry to the end of the video, was like a love letter to a videogame era that will never come back . . . and the 4:3 resolution, hmm chef kiss 🤓
Honestly it was all art direction & the artists themselves. They were super gifted & I think under appreciated. Other companies had their own versions of the same capabilities but looked & felt way different. Ahead of their time
I do not understand the weird obsession with wanting things to look worse. And this is coming from someone who plays Minecraft. If it can look more real, then let it.
Honestly, PS1 games were so terrifying to me as a 10 year old, and also still as an adult. The fact that camera angles were limited, backgrounds were dark, things were hard to see due to the polygons, made it so much more frightening. When I play Tomb Raider remaster, I opt for the remastered graphics because the original ones just really scare me! Silent Hill was another one. Absolute, pure terror.
There is a simple purity to the older graphics, and when done well it feels iconic. The Nintendo 64 with its early 3D blocky graphics, some things look dated but DK64 for example, it's so colorful and silly/goofy and the animations and sounds and music are fantastic. The original Half Life (1998) and the Gold Source engine games IMO is perfection of the mix of old and new look. Older style 3D but the resolution and textures are awesome. Even going back to Game Boy Color, the pixelated graphics can look very pure and neat when done correctly. Great video and you put a lot of thought into it
I remember back when i got it. I was at school and my dad brought it to me in 1999 and it was one of the best gifts I ever had. Used it for 3 years and then in 2002 my mom got me PS2 and I loved that console more than any other console ever.
04:57 that laugh 🤣🤣🤣why?? Go further back like 04:47 so you can see just how random and passionately driven by the inner darkness taking over your soul it was. I have to subscribe to you just for that lol.
Narrator here. Really happy you liked the laugh! This comment means the world to me coming from someone named SoulxEdgexx. I have never felt so validated lmao
Personally I find art direction regardless of graphical fidelity to be extremely important. You can have the most realistic looking game, but if the overall theme and environment is trash no one is going to stick around for long.
💯
Neither of those matter of it plays like crap
@@fillerbunnyninjashark271 Neither if it runs at 15 fps and so on..
@@fillerbunnyninjashark271 He was referring to visual aspect only.
@@agtr6494 frame rate directly affects gameplay... This is why games should be no lower than 60fps. Modern consoles really should be 120fps at this point. But they're still struggling to maintain 20fps
Its like 90s anime. When everyone went hard in the paint.
Exactly
Agreed.
And proud to be this comment’s 69th like
@@smileywarhead5178nice
Yep, that pretty much sums it up
What do you mean?
The ps1 loading screen gave me such a feeling as a kid. Still gives me goosebumps now when i see and here it. Beyond iconic
You're not kidding, I remember unboxing my PS2 and feeling a wave of disappointment when I wasn't immediately smacked with that familiar bassy thrum of the PS1's boot screen. Nothing else quite like it on any console before or since.
When someone mentions it I'll play it through in my head, including the ethereal dings of the subsequent disc load tune. I can't off the top of my head think of the boot sound for the PS2, 3 or 4 and I've probably played each just as much as I did the PS1. Iconic is the word.
@@Sevarrius I feel you! Part of that is also the stellar sound chip of the PS1. I used that thing as a CD player back then haha
It also came with the dreadful feeling that it might get stuck on that boot logo if you tried to play an old rental or bought a used copy...
So it's just nostalgia.
One of the only sounds in the world that makes me fully relax. I can feel it like a wave through my body. It's weird as hell.
yeah its engraved in my brain
I think this quote best sums up retro graphics best: "Limitations breed creativity." Because the tech still had it's limits, devs had to be creative in how to create those worlds. An amazing example is Silent Hill with it's fog.
Simple:
Art style > Fidelity
Detail > Realism
gameplay > graphics
It depends on the creative vision
it's true -- even with all of the realism, more recent games are much less detailed than earlier ones were.
@@shinygoldenpotion1587 gigachad_at_computer.jpg
@@nmrn148 Fact. The DRDR demake looks like it is covered in anal lube. The original is pure SOUL, even today I have fun finding little details and heccin liminal spacerinos in that game. The demake will be forgotten in months
I don't miss pixelated games, i miss stylized games. Games today don't have a distinct style
This. I feel like a lot of the retro throwback stuff misses the point. Or maybe that's not fair to say, since they have a certain "vibe" they're aiming for, and a lot of people like it. But people so often focus on the limitations themselves, and I think what makes older graphics so compelling is the art style, not the limitations.
One of the main proofs of this is how authentic a PS1/N64 game still looks and feels when it's emulated/ported to PC, running in 4K and 60fps with no wobble.
And I've seen cases here and there, where much newer games' graphics somehow remind me of older aesthetics, just with higher fidelity.
On the other hand, you can make a new indie game with pixel art, chunky polygons, or a CRT filter, and those still won't give it remotely the same feel or appeal that the classics had.
Kinda. With only pixel graphics doable back then they had to be creative.
Limitations create style and ingenuity.
A good example is Jaws opening scene with the shark under the water.
Spielberg simply wanted a shark to just jump out of the sea. Producers told him it was too hard and too expensive to do.
So he came up with just showing the woman go back and forth in the sea and only implying the shark under the water in a scene that became legendary.
If it was today they would just cgi a big shark jumping out and attacking her and removing all the suspence that the original scene created by not actually showing you what was under the water.
The movie became a classic due to the limitations.
@@SIPEROTH
I am happy you brought that up. If you look at special effects from back then, and then today it is clear as day. Older films had magic and passion.
I disagree. There are A LOT of stylized games out today. Even more than there was in the past. The problem is that you aren't looking at the indie gaming world. You see a lot of stylized games in the indie field
IT'S NOT ABOUT THE GRAPHICS. IT'S ABOUT THE GAME! That's why the 90s where so great! Because the games and the music were amazing! Today it's not about the games anymore, it's about the profit!
90s games were about graphics though. That’s why the push for 3D was so big, especially in the US. Gaming was still about making money too
@@crestofhonor2349 Modern games is more about money than older ones. They putting shitton of goddamn DEI in each game to get money from funds
The games looked great on a CRT TV
@@nemo_sw277just say the n word man
@@nemo_sw277gamergate 2 ahh comment
I think as a general rule, when creative people are forced to work within limitations, it often makes their work better, not worse. Having to overcome challenges forces you to focus and distil your ideas down to what is both possible to produce, and also what maintains the essence of your idea/vision. The constraints of mid-90's technology yielded a lot of brilliant games for this reason. On one hand developers were extremely limited in what they could do, and on the other hand they'd never been able to do so much. Adopting similar aesthetics and constraints in a modern context could be seen as paying homage, but it could also be seen as forcing oneself to work within the same or similar limits for their benefits. See also, all the developers making new games for actual old hardware like the Sega Genesis.
For me, the PS1 era will always hold a massive amount of nostalgia. Part of that is because I was a young teenager at the time, but there was also something objectively magical about that generation of videogames. Technology was evolving at a breakneck pace in meaningful ways. When the industry widely adopted CD-ROM technology and then 3D graphics, it seemed like new horizons and possibilities were constantly opening up. Also, nobody knew wtf they were doing, which lead to a lot of janky but interesting titles. The rules for what games could be and how they should function in these new contexts hadn't been written yet, so there was a ton of wild experimentation. I remember being able to buy a videogame magazine (I miss those!) and read it cover to cover, with almost every single game being interesting in some way or another.
As the tech evolved further, developers gained more experience, and certain titles started to provide examples of the "right" way to do things, that unbridled creativity started to diminish, and its basically been dwindling ever since along with my interest in videogames. The PS2 generation had better games, but already the innovation and creativity were starting to fade. Since then, only the early indie games scene and the early VR space have rekindled a similar feel to the PS1 era for me.
Thank you for reading my TED talk.
thank you for the TED talk 👍
You want to relive those times again? You should get a VR headset.
So much of what you said about the early days of 3D is the stage VR is in now .. (actually I'd say VR is currently in its NES era)
@@antjones2281 Totally agree, actually.
I sort of mention that at the end of my rant that VR rekindled that feeling for me. I got a PSVR 1 years ago and loved it (still play it), but I'm debating what headset to upgrade to at the moment.
PSVR 2 would be the obvious choice since I have a PS5 and some of my PSVR 1 games have free or cheap upgrades, but it looks like Sony's bailed on it already (no VR support in the new Astro Bot? WTF?!).
I'd consider a new Valve headset, but my PC is trash and would need a complete overhaul (and I can't justify that cost atm).
And I hate Meta. Like, intensely.
So I'm basically waiting for PSVR 2 to get cheaper and have a few more great games (Behemoth looks awesome), or Valve to announce something that'll convince me to upgrade my PC.
But you're totally right, VR is the latest paradigm shift for videogames, and the most profound for me since the shift to 3D. There's a lot of the same lovable jank in VR as early 3D, and similar experimentation. Unfortunately unlike the shift to 3D, the games industry at large hasn't embraced VR, so a lot of developers are hamstrung by scant resources and difficulty finding publisher support.
@@paulsika1205 Thank you for the thank you! 🍻😂
You have interesting views, you should start a gaming blog.
The graphics on PlayStation 1 were never that pixelated because they were designed to be played on a crt TV that greatly smoothes out the picture.
CRT was all we had
This, the CRT really hides the outdated graphics. Don't trust me? Search it on TH-cam, comparison has already been done so judge with your own eyes.
gran turismo back then was real life graphics
Not at all, PS1 looked hot garbage when it first came out. Not a single 3D game that came out on the PS1 looked better than Rayman.
Most people were not impressed or hated 3D games on the PS1. It was the PS2 that took 3D to the mainstream and wide acceptance.
@@handsomejustinI don’t agree the PS1 completely destroyed the Sega Saturn in sales based on its 3D capabilities, you can read comparisons in gaming magazines from ‘96 onward how the PS1 was praised for its Gourad Shading and Transparencies, the PS2 rode the shoulders of the ps1 from the gate, I of course bought the Saturn because all my mates had PlayStations, and Sega had me with Daytona, Rally and Virtua Fighter
the fact you kept the whole thing a 4:3 aspect ratio is great. And played lovely on my old jvc crt
you even made the video to be 4:3, lol, amazing. for some reason i felt so heartwarmed by the end, especially when that song kicked in at the outro, even though i never experienced those times. awesome
List of (most) games that appear on the video
0:07 / 9:36 Wild Arms
0:07 ??
0:08 / 8:34 R4 Ridge Racer Type 4
0:08 / 8:37 Final Fantasy VII
0:09 Jumping Flash
0:10 / 2:25 / 2:40 / 9:46 Spyro
0:14 / 2:15 / 2:32 / 8:43 / 9:32 Metal Gear Solid
0:16 / 2:03 / 9:38 Medal of Honor
0:18 Sled Storm
0:20 Vagrant Story (?)
0:23 / 1: 23 / 2:41 / 9:28 Crash Bandicoot
0:26 Pong
0:27 Space Invaders
0:28 Donkey Kong
0:29 Super Mario Bros
0:31 Secret of Mana
0:32 / 1:35 / 2:13 / 9:17 Tomb Raider
0:37 Driver
0:39 / 3:24 / 5:02 / 5:24 / 6:50 Resident Evil
0:41 / 2:42 Soul Reaver
0:43 / 1:25 / 1:52 Gran Turismo
0:46 / 1:09 / 7:26 Compound Fracture
0:51 Night of the Consumers
0:53 The Last Night
0:55 Red Handed
0:56 Eastward
0:58 Minecraft
0:59 Hyper Light Drifter
1:00 / 5:36 Paratopic
1:02 ?
1:03 OK/NORMAL
1:03 Dream Aether (from the C.H.A.I.N game compilation)
1:03 ?
1:04 Szrot
1:06 Haunted PS1 Demo Disc 2021
1:26 / 2:39 Parasite Eve
1:28 / 2:36 Ape Escape
1:33 / 2:11 / 5:10 / 9:26 Silent Hill
1:35 Tomb Raider
1:38 / 6:58 Dino Crisis
1:40 Ridge Racer
1:42 / 3:02 Spider Man
1:44 The Mummy
1:50 Tony Hawk Pro Skater
1:55 Incredible Crisis
2:00 Jackie Chan Stuntmaster
2:05 Danger Girl
2:07 Tenchu
2:17 Resident Evil 2
2:20 Martian Gothic Unification
2:23 Syphon Filter 2
2:29 / 2:33 Chrono Cross
2:43 Red Dead Redemption 2
2:49 Marvel's Spider Man
3:18 HALO 64 (not a game just a youtube video)
3:21 Silent Hill 2
3:22 Silent Hill 2 Remake
3:26 Resident Evil Remake
3:27 Dead Space Demake
3:30 SuperHot Demake (youtube video)
3:31 Resident Evill Village | PS1 Demake (youtube video)
3:36 Cyberpunk 2077 but it's for PS1 (youtube video)
3:41 Death Stranding - PS1 Trailer Demake (youtube video)
3:47 ELDEN RING - PS1 EDITION (youtube video)
3:52 If Portal Was Made in 1998 (youtube video)
3:57 The Last of Us - Ps1 Demake (youtube video)
4:05 Location Withheld
5:04 / 5:22 Alien Ressurection
5:06 / 5:25 Overblood
5:27 Alone in the Dark The New Nightmare
5:29 ?
5:30 ?
5:33 HOME (itch io)
5:35 Security Booth
5:41 The Big Catch
6:29 Project Nostalgia
8:41 Tekken 3
8:46 Crash Team Racing
8:51 Apolysis
8:57 Death Flush
8:59 ?
9:00 Lunistice
9:05 The Lunar Effect
9:07 Bloodborne PSX
9:08 ?
9:10 Pink Panther Pinkadelic Pursuit
9:14 Monsters Inc (Scream Team or Scare Island not sure)
9:22 The Incredible Hulk: The Pantheon Saga
9:31 Vigilante 8
9:40 Mortal Kombat Trilogy
9:42 Silent Bomber
Thank you. He should really include the game title on screen when showing the footage.
1:55 Incredible Crisis
9:42 Silenr Bomber
You da MVP!
7:26 ?
@@umacreanonoyt9477 Compound Fracture.
I tired of graphics over gameplay, we need the reverse for a little while.
Look at all Nintendo 1st party games. Gameplay comes first with Nintendo games. I find realistic games boring.
same here I miss the days when gameplay was more important than graphics
they should also leave political ideology and gender ideology out of games.
@@batmanreborn81To be fair, I don't think many commercial games have deliberately eschewed graphical prowess for gameplay, no matter when they came out. Certainly back in the '80s, most games would take advantage of the hardware they ran on to get the best graphical detail whilst running acceptably. We look back at old games, forgetting they only had primitive graphics because of hardware limitations... at the time they were cutting edge and a lot of effort went in to making them look as good as possible.
notice how because graphics are so realistic and take so much work, all games have the same stealth puzzles, same look-at-stuff puzzles, same exact stuff from final fantasy 7R to spiderman 2 to resident evil . there’s only so much you can do with realistic presentations.
This video is amazing! One of the best video-essay type ones I've watched. The timing, presentation and everything is like some professional work, you're terribly underrated!
You are far too kind. We really appreciate the kind words, seriously.
In this video, a perspective from someone under 25 who didn’t live through those times is presented. This wasn’t just an art style; it was state-of-the-art graphics for 1995, the best available at the time. To us, it looked amazing and realistic. We viewed Gran Turismo as incredibly lifelike. This narrative that people only cared about gameplay and style is rewriting history. People have always cared about graphics as well.
Very good comment.
Many of these games became classic for some reasons. When you played them, you didn't even notice the graphics. You felt those games!
They are just modern games but with ugly polygons and limited gameplay.
Yes 🙌 when I watch Crash gameplay 1-3 I can almost cry
Yeah too blurry and pixelated. They were just concerned with getting the tiny polygons to move around back then. Most of the gameplay wasn't much different than what they could do prior to 3d aside from the directional movement and analog. That was the game changer of that time that people forget. You could go any direction and the camera would turn as if you did. The graphics got addressed in the ps2 and dreamcast xbox era, then 360 ps3 fine tuned visual and created lots of new gaming ideas and types of games. The graphics did get pushed again with ray tracing and lighting but the only way they are accomplishing that is some very finicky render distance calculations only showing you what is there so now games have that grainy fizzly look of particles when things are struggling to load, or have broken visuals with spotty load times. I genuinely think its because of the number of objects they try to put in the game now to add to the realism. The more objects in an area and the more the game chugs or crashes. People don't realize these amazing visuals aren't running very stable right now without a super rig. So imagine when PS7 comes out how good PC games will look with max settings. And they will have smoothed over the issues of hardware limits by then. I predict that generation is gonna leave everyone speechless.
@@nak3dxsnake your missing the point
But at the time, these graphics were cutting edge and amazing.
You know what's also awesome. Taking old low poly games and add RAYTRACING. For some bizarre reason Raytracing looks more compelling on low poly PS1 level geometry than Unreal Engine 5. Maybe because Unreal Engine 5 graphics + Raytracing already looks like the world we're familiar with while PS1 or N64 level geometry + Raytracing looks like uncanny valley. The lighting looks realistic but the geometry looks off. The effect is even more enhanced when you add unfiltered pixelated textures.
I do like the look of Super Mario 64 + ray tracing
half life 1 with raytracing is a pure joy and terror!
Low poly with ray tracing makes the game graphics look more like a toy in real life. Where as the high poly object games look more like the things your parents didn't want you playing with a child.
@@simonjacksons Only for those with crippled imagination. A symptom of having room temperature IQ.
I wish on PS6 we got simple graphics + ray tracing like Quake 2 RT.
The coolest thing about Compound Fracture is that it will also let you mess with the visual style so if you want a more PS2 look to the game you can go for it. I wish more games could do that.
Its usually under graphics settings. You can alter a . ini if you really want to downgrade visuals to that level though. Some of the textured faces were pretty good.
Honestly I love this era of gaming. Visually it is fantastic. My only problem with games of that era was actually game controls. So many games had clunky frustrating controls. Designing modern games in that 90s aesthetic but with modern game design knowledge and controls is something that really interests me.
Your music choice is great! Is like I'm watching a trailer of something great is coming!
What's missing is developers back then we're all nerds in a room passionate about what they were creating making game companies corporate kind of killed this.
Games started making big money so the suits arrived. There are still guys just making games but the difference is that back then their game could look every bit as good as the expensive game made by a more professional studio due to hardware limitations while now their game will clearly look like a little more simple indie game since they can't do suped realistic detailed graphic that need huge teams of people to be made.
@@SIPEROTH realistic graphics are kind of dumb anyway.
This is indeed a big part of it. The ones on the ground, making the games, are still those same nerds. It's just that now it's not a team of 10-20 people making something, deciding mostly by themselves how to do it, but now the corporation enters every aspect of development and a team of 100+ people has to work on the same thing.. and it becomes a corporate mess instead of a passion project.
On the good side, those same small teams make some great indie games these days.
@@SIPEROTH Actually, small teams can make great looking games today, maybe even easier than ever. UE is the de facto stadard game engine for the industry, and anyone can use it. Sure, a team of 100 3D artists will create way more assets than a team of just a few, but when those small teams focus correctly on what matters, they can achieve great results. Great example is Kayak VR, I think I read it was built by a team of just 3 people, and it's one of the most immersive and graphically impressive VR games.
@@KafanskaTV Yeah exactly the nerds passionate about said thing get pushed to the way side to focus on profits above all else.
For me, a few things.
[1] Less graphics and resolution, means our brain does more of the filling in with our imagination. Kind of like why someone might defend a comic book vs a regular book as "Why would you read a book, comics have these amazing illustrations. It's so much more interesting!". The equivalent argument also doesn't work for low-fidelity graphics. It's probably why survival horror is one of the genres that indies flock to for this 90s art style. Just like some people prefer the more minimal elements of reading a book that requires more mental work, some people might prefer retro graphics.
[2] It's simpler to devleop for indies, and with much more single-person projects popping up mixed with inflating project costs and technological complexities, a lot of smaller teams find the speed of production much faster when constrained to these simpler styles.
[3] Readability. There's a reason why pro-gamers competing at a high level will turn their graphics down to the lowest. Not just for the FPS advantage, but also being able to read the screen quicker. Simpler shapes and shading, vs a complex noise on screen makes it easier to distinctively read elements of a scene.
[4] Just like art has different art styles, games are finding that certain types of visuals can express ideas and concepts better than others depending on the source material. A music game might do better with abstract shapes and 2k aesthetics like 'Rez' on the dreamcast and ps2. A horror game might prefer low fidelity ps1 graphics so the player's imagination is relied on more to fill in gaps. A 2D pixel art game might be able to control the composition and layout of the scene better to constrain what the player sees to add more emotional impact to certain elements (i.e what you can't see is just as important as what you can).
[5] Point of diminishing returns. The chase for realistic graphics was the initial motivation behind a lot of purchase decisions over the last 50 years or so. We chased the new shiny thing. The jump from SNES to PS1 was huge. PS1 to PS2 dramatic. PS2 to PS3 was polished. Now, from PS3 to PS4 is mostly just resolution of the screen and resolution of textures, with some fluff like tesselation and shading making micro improvements over time. The fact that a game like Catherine on the PS3 can look mostly similar technically speaking as the most recent Persona 5, is proof enough that art-style will always trump graphics most of the time (exceptions being things like Crysis where the graphical tech IS the style). We're simply just as a point of 'good enough' now where most people are satisfied with where we're at, and that has kind of blunted those expectations of always pushing forward. Ray-tracing has slightly piqued our interest ever so slightly once more, but generally speaking we're all content for the most part now.
We're collectively much happier to accept that these are all art styles now, probably in a simlar way where art history might have similar parallels (I honestly don't know, sound off in the comments if you do!) if we checked. Maybe the chase for perspective and realism in paintings reached the point where paintings became super high fidelity, and then things became more expressionist or abstract as a counter art movement to all of that 'realism' or whatever it was coined as. I wouldn't be surprised if an art history major graduate said that games are just going through the same pattern as what artists went through, but games are doing so on a shorter and more compressed timeline.
Great read/ points
Really enjoyed reading your post.
Regarding PS1 era graphics being better for survival horror games, I absolutely agree. Many people who try to evoke horror in any medium agree that the most powerful tool is their audience's imagination. The process of using your imagination to fill in the gaps you talk about makes the low polygon counts and even more so the low res textures very effective for horror games. I remember playing System Shock 2 years after it released, and installing a high poly model pack and a high-res texture pack to enhance the graphics. The texture pack in particular made the game noticeably less scary.
There are other aspects to PS1 graphics that lend themselves to horror as well. The texture warping caused by a lack of precision in its affine texture mapping makes details such as faces swim and distort in ways that can be unsettling. Similarly, character models jitter and twitch around due to the low precision fixed point math causing vertices to move back and forth between possible locations. Then there's the ways developers overcame limitations which also contributed to horror, like Silent Hill using fog/darkness to cover the short draw distance, or Resident Evil's (or I guess Alone in the Dark's) pre-rendered backgrounds and fixed camera angles.
As for your art parallel, it's been a long time since I took an art history class, but I immediately thought you were right. Double-checked and sure enough, art styles had been striving for greater and greater fidelity, became more idealized, then more gritty and realistic in what was literally called the Realism movement. And just as you guessed, that movement was directly followed by a series of much more abstract art movements, starting with Impressionism (Monet) and Post-Impressionism, then Art Nouveau, Expressionism, Cubism (later Picasso), Surrealism (Dali), Abstract Expressionism (Pollock), etc.
And only tangentially related, I've always thought that Pointillism (a sub-style of Post-Impressionism) is basically the painting equivalent of pixel art, even though it doesn't look like pixel art. Paintings are created using individual and relatively uniform dots of paint that blur together in your vision to create the image (for example, see the painting "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" by Seurat). Okay that's enough of me nerding out 🤓
[Edit:] Oh one more point about diminishing returns. One of the co-founders of Naughty Dog, Jason Rubin, did a talk at the Game Developers Conference called "Great Game Graphics... Who Cares?" back in the PS2 era iirc about exactly that. Haven't watched it in a while (seems like you need a Flash player to watch it on the GDC website), but he was talking about diminishing returns all the way back then. I remember one of his points was asking the audience if a Tennis game would be more fun (or would the player even notice) if the individual strings in the racket were modelled with polygons instead of just being a texture with transparencies. I remember it being worth watching, but again, haven't seen it in a while.
Wild that people have realized games were hitting diminishing returns that long ago, and yet the bulk of the games industry (aside from indies and Nintendo) are still chasing higher fidelity graphics despite what it's doing to game budgets, production timelines, and in some cases gameplay quality and creativity.
That your Point No.1 its a Literal Genre of Video Games "Visual Novel" that Mixes both of Novel and Comic Still Relevant today.
As The Visual given you a Base for your imagination with Follow up its The Teks "Novel", You Can Add "Choices" as Gameplay and ETC
@@GreyMatterShades Thanks for informing me about the art history stuff. That's really interesting to see that we're going through a similar phase it seems but on a much faster and compressed timeline in years/decaces vs generations/centuries.
Totally agree about the affine texture mapping too. There's someting otherworldy about the lack of floating point values in vertex coordinates and the swimming of texture faces that gives it a charm.
I didn't know about that GDC talk. I'll definitely give it a watch later with some pizza. Cheers!
@@GreyMatterShades Is it this video you're talking about? th-cam.com/video/uhmYENdFZc8/w-d-xo.html
I remember my Aunt, and even my Mother I think, saying that graphics are going to get TOO realistic someday and it will take away the charm of being a video game. My late Mom also said that CGI and A.I. will probably get to the point they may not even need actors anymore. . .
She was a prophet lol. 🤣🤣
Now that's a cool aunt lol
They are both legends❤ while my mom would just tell me I would get too addicted since I started playing before the age of 6. She is also s prophet, and a legend😂 i started gaming on a knock off Sega dreamcast in 1998/1999 and I am still going strong as a gamer with barely any breaks. Kinda saved my social life in the meantime, don't know how. But moms was right
No. Muhammad was the last prophet.
People cared about graphics in 90's the same way.
That is why in the 80's and 90's people liked to go to the arcades even if they had a console at home, and marketing i magazines, TV and so on always talked about the graphics of that new exciting sofisticated game or that new console.
This "in old times graphics didn't matter" is just a nostalgic ilusion.
@@TheMrCHELL Exactly, they were obsessed with graphics, it's like they couldn't wait to get to where we are today. And I'm no exception, I was so obsessed that I would stop by the arcade on my way home from school even when I had NO money just to watch the new Killer Instinct arcade machine, whether people were playing it or not I would just watch the graphics because, at that time, killer instinct was really mind blowing to me how far ahead it seemed graphically from any other game. In fact, I was so crazy about graphics, that when hardware cost came way down within the last decade or so, and I'm talking hardware capable of doing graphics art, I spent most of my free time learning 3ds max and how to build 3d models lol. Everybody's dream job in the 90s was to be a special effects artist for Hollywood film, at least that's what I thought because that was my dream seeing how every year a new movie was coming out where the effects blew the previous years out the water.
Speaking as PS1 gamer who owned it in the 90s. All you had was school, friends, magazines and your PS1. No online anything really. PS1 it self was really a single player console, rather than multi player.
No social media or hyper politics either
Multi-tap and couch co-op was our multi-player. Also having multiple TV's and a link cable. Nothing will beat that feeling of everybody being in the same room and playing the same game, and passing controllers around to those cheering on behind us watching and waiting for their turn.
Tekken or Goldeneye for the N64 were definitly not single-player. It was more like "I want to play on my console. Lets call some buddys."
Metal Gear Solid and Soul Reaver on the PS1 are core gaming memories from my pre/early teens. Thanks for this video, I really loved that you did it in 4:3 aspect ratio too!
It’s almost instinct, that the moment a limitation is overcome, humanity will strive to replicate it, call it nostalgia, call it pandering. I just find it beautiful to know the visual variety we can achieve nowadays
Nailed it 😊
Yeah nostalgia is annoying as all hell. If you like it cool but when people came everything that is old is better is just dumb.
@@ZackSNetwork That is true, embracing the new is just as important as respecting the old, the reason old things remain is because their limitations bred creativity and created a style wholly separated from the limitations themselves, I was born after the era of the ps1 and n64, I grew up with the wii, xbox360 and pc, even so, there is a charm that's unique to the old games, and seeing people take that charm and recreate it with modern gameplay sensibilities is always cool to me.
i think graphics evolution from PS4 to PS5 isn't as impressive as PS1 to PS2
edit :
look at ps5 games today, its basically ps4 games at solid 60 fps.
Yep.
Of course it's not. We've reached such a high level that it's much harder to make noticeable difference compared to the previous generation.
Take for example a car wheel.. a lot of games on PS1 had 8 sides that make up the "circle" that is a tyre. On PS2 that was pushed to 3-4 times more, so the tyre actually looked much closer to a circle. By PS3 there were so many polygons that a tyre looked like a proper tyre. So adding any more doesn't really noticeably increase the quality.
Same goes for textures.. when they were 32x32 pixels you saw quite a bit more even at 64x64, not to mention getting to 256x256 or 512x512.
But now you again get diminishing returns unless you zoom in on small details like a necklace the character is wearing and stuff like that.
We're just there at a position where the increases are not noticeable and we'll never experience the same that happened throughout 90s till about 2010 in terms that every year we'd see noticeable jumps.
Unreal Engine 5 is going to change that.
even PS2 to PS3 was really impressive, too
@@dmc77 PS3 to PS4 was also impressive. The problem with the PS5 is that no one has really been pushing it. They're mostly just PS4 games with a higher resolution and better shadows (and sometimes reflections)
That montage at the end gave me goosebumps. It felt like one of those late 90s demo disc videos. Awesome job with the editing.
0:41 Soul Reaver was such a glorious gaming experience. EDIT: 5:12 And so was Silent HIll 1. The fogginess/lack of draw distance actually made the game work better as a horror game.
It's better on the Dreamcast where the true vision can be realised. It's Jank on PS1. A remaster is coming out soon and will be even better.
Wonderful work. You described excellently why Video games from the Ps1 era are no match and completely shaped my imagination like no modern game ever could. I'll definitely share that video. And I'll check out this new trend of experimental Ps1 modern stuff !!
Explain this, when i was young i wanted the "AAA/Next-Gen" graphics we have today, and now i find myself wanting to go back to these simple graphics of the past.
easy. As kids and teenagers we were on the move, going forward,wanting to do the next step. i can not remember one moment I went nostalgic in my younger years. The games graphics,the often horrible music genres. It all had to be gone as fast as possible. And now you look back to those simpler times. Games with pixel or low polygon graphics just bring back those feelings and memories from the past.
because you wanted graphics to keep moving forward, but unfortunately big devs took that and ditched art style. graphics mean nothing without an artistic direction
@niemand7811 hmm, well said. I think you are on to something here 🤔
If you go back and stay too long there, you would want next gen again. All you ever want is CHANGE.
Because Nintendo had it right. Better graphics do not equal better GAMES.
Games should be fun and whimsical; an escape.
Hyper realistic tech demos are just that, not games.
This video was so well put together. 🏆
Especially the very last few words, then music used, shots chosen and then to end it on that iconic screen (including the sound). 🙏🏼
It would be nice to get a list of games featured.. I'm especially curious about the one at 0:55
Same for me. I'm curious about the game at 7:26. It got me interrested a lot
Update : nevermind it's in the description. It's called Compound Fracture.
Some1 in the comments listed most of the games.
@@JReef awesome thanks, I'll check them out
Sometimes the most important aspect of attention to detail is knowing what details to omit. Video games are not just an experience, they are art. As art, the imagination of the player is the most important tool to make use of for immersing them into the world you are crafting. Their desire to be immersed in a world not their own, for whatever reason they have that desire, will only be boosted by their imagination having more room to work. The visual styles of older consoles like the PS1 and N64 unbound by the original hardware restrictions make the perfect visual style to take advantage of this. There's just enough detail to make out what you are looking at, but yet enough missing for the player's imagination to fill in the blanks and in doing so insert their own meaning, or to struggle to. This omission of detail can be used to make a bizarre fantasy setting feel all the more alien and whimsical or to make horror settings more uncanny, unfamiliar, and eerie.
To write off this style as outdated is to fundamentally miss the point of why art is art. Art is not limited to the latest technology; we do not dismiss the Mona Lisa as a work of art because it is old and we have advanced our artistic capabilities since then. If anything, it is only all the more impressive as a work of art that these talented artists making these games are managing to capture and invoke such complicated emotions with such a simple graphical style. Art is not defined by its realism, but by its emotional resonance.
Simple but you get so much from it. Beautiful
The good old days
Doesn't really fit when it comes to technology.
we had a plethora of legendary games man , i was kid switching between resident evil, clock tower 2 , crash, and tomb raider , all block busters , cant forget silent hill
Just as pixel art games prove that you don't need fancy graphics or realism to captivate and attract people to play your game, same goes for low poly PS1 graphics, even games that look like PS2 have a style that gets lost in realism. What gives these games an edge is the artistic liberty taken within the limitations. The indie scene is truly wonderful as it feels like it is games made by fans for fans, it's poetic really.
Hyper Light Drifter makes me think of this
I played dead cells and I have to try to look past its jumble of blurry pixels to even enjoy it.
People cared about graphics in 90's the same way.
That is why in the 80's and 90's people liked to go to the arcades even if they had a console at home, and marketing i magazines, TV and so on always talked about the graphics of that new exciting sofisticated game or that new console.
This "in old times graphics didn't matter" is just a nostalgic ilusion.
Aesthetics > Graphics
This is more true than anything.
graphics helps you build the aesthetics. they're using modern lighting
get some BloodbornePSX (an wonderful free demake) pure Aesthetics
One note on this aesthetic: _It requires a CRT to truly pull off,_ as textures of the era were made _around_ the limitations and faults of CRT masks/aperture grilles. The real reason CRT enthusiasts prefer playing this generation of games on the era's display tech, isn't just due to a nostalgia fad; it's because the games _physically look so much better_ on them.
this is not true whatsoever.
CRT owner here: that is complete and utter horseshit, and you should shut up.
@@martincerny3294 It is true though no? Atleast that CRT screens introduce dithering and breathe extra life into pixelised graphics. It's widely known I'd recommend googling it if you're unfamiliar
@@martincerny32942D pixel art back then was definitely made with the artifacts of crts and composite inputs in mind. It is incredibly easy to find examples of it.
totally correct.
Indie graphics are evolving.
One thing doesn't change - those responsible for graphics does not bother make it more "readable" or gives more clarity... which was a thing that old developers (from that era of graphic) tried to do.
Seems like people who lived in an era of "graphical pollution" where maps were filled with details and junk could not provide something more easy to read...
I like there is space for both, nothing better than jumping from an old classic to a new game getting those 60 frames and 4k, but then again going back cause the games were simpler not all lore, story or open world, turning off one’s brain and just playin’ a game.
I think the most obvious reason why 70% of your audience didn't have a PS1 is simply because they weren't born yet. Your audience probably skews overwhelmingly Gen Z and Alpha with a smaller Millennial and X component, and I think the poll reflects that.
It make sense because back then, video games was made by relatively smaller teams (hence the genuine unique and creative ideas for a gameplay/story etc), only when X360, PS3, PSP era, corporate industry took notice of video game industry's potential market, and only focuses on graphics fidelity,
To this day, the indies (small time game dev) still holds true to the old school game devs ethos
What a great analysis and video!
Thank you!
Important detail: any new graphical tech used for rendering ultra realism CAN be used for stylistic unrealism. quoted by me. to that extent, ray-traced lighting on a PS1 style-environment
0:38 Resident Evil isn't a good fit for when you say "artistic decisions" lol. The director has always stated fixed camera was due to technical limitations and 3D inexperience.
If anybody is making any games like this that need some ambient jungle/drum and bass to go with it, please boogie my way!
How is this Dino Crisis FPS named?
Edit : Compound Fracture
i thought it was Dino Trauma, which i planned to buy
Loves the video! Just wish it wasnt so short! I seriously could watch hours and hours about this, and similar topics.
working within limitations often makes for a better work of art, be that music, movies, or even video games. silent hill would have been very generic were it not for the need for the fog to hide the low render distance. and really, I think most games should avoid realism. it's nice for games like death stranding, but no ps1 game needed that.
I will never forget when my parents took me to toys r us and out of nowhere bought me a ps1 while I was playing the demo in the store. Some of the happiest memories of my life
I also like the style because it's sort of reminiscent of the OG Nintendo DS games, they were low res and jittery in a manner similar to the PS1
PSP better
I see this and think of Ari Buktu. A throw back adventure game coming out.
Thing is, every time I think back to games from that era, I don't remember them looking bad.
beutiful video, i almost cryed looking at it, cuz when i were a bit younger played a lot ps1 one games and that was like a love letter to it.
thank you.
7:26 game Compound Fracture
3:07 My imagination never tried to fill-in the blanks. My mind was just accepting the fact that the world looked like this, as if it was real. When I'm looking at Silent Hill, RE, Tenchu, Tomb Raider and so on, all the technical shortcomings and "outdatedness" from a modern pov, is and was just part of the bizarre atmosphere and immersion.
I'd argue that updating these games with up-to-date graphics and all the bells and whistles wouldn't result in a better *feeling* game, because it simply would be something totally different. It'd probably be way worse in comparison.
They used tons of tricks to hide visibility and design problems. Giving it a facelift often exposes those problems, making the game seem even more dated than originally created to look.
Because it looks so f ing cool. The ambiguity of horror games in particular with these graphics makes the game more unsettling. Love PS1 graphics
2:19 Those eere living, breathing characters!
I have the theory that the wobbling of the environment is very similar to how we perceive dreaming and thats why we relate so much to it .
Interesting theory. What makes you think that way?
Uh?? A couple hundred views only??
This was fantastic, loved the video. Had no idea this was a thing.
AI voice clone narrated copypaste of several other videos? Nah. Not worth even a couple of hundreds of views but yet, here we are.
@@Astraalilaama what the big F are you talking about
@@Astraalilaama Narrator here. We're affiliated with Lucasmelor, the spanish version of this channel, and I'm not AI (at least, I don't think I am 😱)
I think this is why the PS3 and XBOX 360 era was so good. They still had graphical limitations while still focusing on style, story and substance. Think about it, Bioshock, Halo, Rachet and Clank, Sly Cooper, Diablo 2, WOW, heck, I'd even include Team Fortress 2 and COD4 in the same vain. Personally I think the 2000s were the golden age of video games and the PS1 days were something of a precursor to that.
Right that's exactly how I feel ps3/xbox360 was where games were at their peak for creativity.... it'd a shame how everything has become battle passes and spending the opposite of micro transactions on just cosmetics.
IMO it was the worst era. My biggest gripe is that a lot of games launched in unplayable state. GTA 4 had awful fps drops to tens and never ran at even 30 fps. Test Drive Unlimited had stupid load times when you were running at high speed on highways. If you turned car, and then load screen starts, you will most likely spin out. There were so many performance problems in so many titles. Sega Dreamcast ran entire library at 60 fps without BS and X360/PS3 era went backwards. A lot of these problems were never fixed in updates and infuriating thing is that a lot of these problems are due to devs being lazy or cranking up resolution too high for no reason. A PC with weaker hardware, but sensibly adjusted graphics settings ran things just fine and at way more than 30 fps.
That's funny, I can't think of a single game from that era that reaches out and grabs me. I had to legit sit here for 10 minutes going, "resistance? Nah. Nier? Mayyybe.. OBLIVION?! Hahahahahahaha! and the best example I could come up with for a game that blew my mind the way ps1 games did was Shadow of the Colossus and Dark Souls. Sorry not sorry.
Tell me you never played THPS 2 without telling me you never played THPS 2. Dude, we would grind for hours to get that bails vid and see what the next secret character was going to be. Kids these days don't know McSqueeb. Same for MG:S, FF7, tactics, Brave Fencer Musashi, Silent Hill... Nightmare Creatures, Legacy of Cain, Megaman Legends... The fact that they even got Quake 2 to boot up on PS1 was a programming marvel, and it's a damn good port, too.
I'd say the x360 and PS3 were the last of the GOOD consoles. Now everything is online only multiplayer, and that sucks. If I wanted to play online, I got a computer that does what my consoles do, only better. Screw that I want couch co-op so I can have friends over for gaming and beers. I'll never buy another new console as long as they continue this online only garbage. I spent $180 on extra controllers for the PS4 and the only games that can use them are frikken minecraft, rayman and diablo. Get out of here with that crap, what an absolute waste of money.
True golden age was actually early 90s in PC gaming. Next one was the late 00s.
Games were much more innovative and bold, but then they started to copy same genres and try to appeal bigger audiences and there was console and PC gaming converge. There was time of true, hardcore PC gaming with kind of games that never been released to any console and games that made for grown up people. We even have so advanced simulations that we need to read manual how some military vehicles operate or some naval warfare tactics.
I don't think PS3/Xbox360 hardware wasn't limited if properly used. GTA V is good example.
That was the right mix, they looked and played fine but didn't take 6 years to make a game.
PS1 era nostalgia is misplaced unless you were there. I don't have any desire to play a blocky and clunky first gen 3D game like I did in 1997. Don't fall for the meme.
Can't wait till people start longing for the PS4 era or fifth generation, when graphics where... semi-realistic
No one cares for boring visuals
It will happen eventually. It happens every time. Once the people who grew up with PS4/Xbox One games grow up they’ll feel nostalgia for this era
@@fillerbunnyninjashark271you act like some people don’t think the same thing for PS1/N64/Saturn visuals. Right now much of the nostalgia sits in the 5th gen and 6th gen
@@crestofhonor2349 most nostalgia is still Genesis/SNES. PS4 games looked like shit, just like PS3 games. Also PS5 games still look exactly like PS3/4 games
@@fillerbunnyninjashark271 now that’s an opinion I disagree with. PS5 games don’t look like PS3 games unless you don’t play games. The difference is so clear. PS4 games look far better than PS3 games. Most nostalgia still is in the 4th - 6th gen
the video I needed to see years ago. I dont know what it is. but something about this style of video look feels like an adventure and more real. enough to see/know whats going on. yet a little imagination left to fill in the gaps.
also, nothing has ever beat the aww inspiring PSX boot up logo. I still love its greatness.
01:59 Thank you. This is what fascinated me most when playing PS1 as a kid. Countless hours were spent exploring every corner of the map, trying to find secrets and figure out how it all worked.
I feel like something important to note is that it is also easier for indie devs to do this, rather than high poly counts. As one myself, I don't have a team. It's just me. If I were to do high poly, it would take me over a decade to make one game.
Boomer Shooters have been comfortably living in this era for a bit now, and it's been amazing. Sprawl was a game that made me go "I have to play this" when I saw it. Gorgeous in its own way, and reminiscent of a bygone era in another. Boltgun is having success with this, and obviously games like Dusk. Thanks for turning me on to Compound Fracture, I can't wait to play this!
That "special something" was more of a focus on gameplay and just pure fun... fun gameplay was the focus.. everything else came secondary because of the limitations to the hardware.
Modern games focus on graphics sound and presentation before gameplay and fun.. that's the difference.
I love how all these kids are just basically experiencing nostalgia for the first time, and make video essays on the subject, when really they're just experiencing what my generation has experienced for awhile now with games like shovel knight and shante..
Yeah it's a little disappointing that there's no mention towards game design. These indie devs love to imitate from older games but fail to understand what makes these them special like the innovative mechanics, difficulty modes, enemy design, map design etc... These indie games feel more like art projects rather than games. This is where unfounded nosalgia gets you
As someone who went from an Amiga500 to a PSX in 1996. The jump was huge, it felt like the future. All those problems the console had, never borthered me back in the day, I saw them, I noticed them, but they never ruined anything for me. The marked a transtion point, It my 11th birthday present. The playstation felt like it wasnt made for kids as the main focus group, but rather the 13-21 year olds, which made me feel like beeing in a kinda headstart position at the right time.
A special time with alot of innovation, ideas and new concept that were so much fun. i had 3 very special years, with the PSX, untill i got my first PC, which started the end of me owning a console. Stilled used and played on my psx, but never got a PS2 and sold the psx off in 2002
OMG - You´re so right - PS1 was so freaking magical and special at all and yeah... missing those times a lot - where games have been just games... to bring fun!
Developers worked to do something revolutionary that time. Now they do any trash just to make money, they not do anything actualy, ai to the work for them😢😢😢
To anyone who is also really excited for Compound Fracture, I can recommend Dino Trauma and Signalis.
Dino Trauma is actually very similar to Compound Fracture, but the HUD looks too modern, I wish the devs would rework the HUD so that it fits better into the rest of the graphics, it's still in early aaccess, maybe they'll do it if enough people ask.
And Signalis is kinda like Silent Hill but you're in space and play as an android.
It is also very much inspired by Neon Genesis Evangelion so prepare to be emotionally hurt and confused by the story.
What made it so appealing to me compared to the new games was that they were simple products. and I was able to just start playing in the afternoon without having to spend hours learning the mechanics like in many games today
i grew up with ps1 games growing up because my dad bought them when they were a few bucks each in the 2000s and they were some of the best games i have ever played till this day like dino crisis 1, croc, metal gear solid, test drive 5, final fantasy 7 (i played that game so long on one save that the counter is broken at 99:99:99 which is insane) and future cop lapd arguably one of the best mech games on the ps1 and invented moba games which is cool af, the style is important but so is the classic pre render like lighting, also I'm siked to see games use the cartoon/cel style that the ps1 did perfectly like mega man legends and ghost in the shell among others also they can make ps1 style 2d games with 3d elements like Gundam assault and einhander
I agree, also the outro of the song was perfect to describe nostalgia, the memories and etc 😢 with the ps1.
I don't want realistic graphics. If I want I go outside. I grew up with 8/16bit game consoles and they had much deeper games than most of those 3d games of nowadays! 8/16bit was the golden era of videogames, period.
I predicted this would happen 8 years ago when i saw how good retro style 2D games were becoming. I couldn't be happier that we're now getting the 3D version of that.
Agree. Made my prediction even earlier not due to how good things could be. That I knew. But more that when realism in render got high enough people would start to look back in time
I think i stopped being wowed by realistic graphics after Crysis came out, it was insane, it was so insane nobody even had the hardware to play it at the time, there were many moments as a kid thinking "games are never going to look better than this" but after Crysis they... kind of didn't, i'm not blind graphics have advanced but you need a magnifying glass to really see it.
Suffice to say diminishing returns is in full effect and has been for a while, games are costing hundreds of millions more to make while looking on par with things made a decade ago and in some cases worse, so we're at a crossroads, which matters more the artwork or the ray tracing? I think it's the artwork.
There are people who hate the PS1 style but i think it's beautiful, it sort of represents the minimum required to pull off a detailed 3D world but still requires the player to fill in the gaps, when people see remasters and say "this is what i remember X looking like" that's what they're referring to and it's something that is lost completely by photo realistic graphics, there's no mystery or surprise or effort required of the viewer when everything is crystal clear.
I can't wait to see more games use it in the future, that Compound Fracture game looks amazing.
As someone else pointed out, the restraints seemed to really lend themselves towards very distinct styles.
Music in older games seems so much better at adding to that style IMO.
The limit on what could be displayed causing a kind of fog in spookier games really added to the tenseness.
The games weren't trying to capture the feeling of watching a movie, with camera movements that mimic big blockbusters (and adding to the spooky games thing, having a camera that was limiting how easy it was to maneuver made it more panic inducing).
That nothing was photo-realistic made the games feel surreal and almost dreamlike, and if the player is already using their imagination to fill the gaps on realistic things like a box or the character model, extending that to something like a giant robot or a cartoonish goblin kind of a character was easier.
Gaming at the time was definitely getting more popular, but I wouldn't have called it mainstream at that point, so you wouldn't have massive financial investment going into a product that absolutely HAD to have the broadest possible appeal to cover that, so you'd get more games that might be kind of 'out there', and would resonate much more with a more narrow fan base, as well as often be quite difficult.
Also, obviously, nostalgia plays a big role and I'm not going to act like that's not the case.
But just to add to why the LOOK is so appreciated, I really like that older games didn't need an internet connection to play, didn't have DLC, bugs couldn't be patched but were considered endearing for the most part, the manuals that came with the game were cool and would world build a fair bit, cheat codes were so much fun, multiplayer required you to be actually present with your friends, and probably many other things I'm spacing.
This whole video feels like the 90s even the way you edited it together the voiceover the music it all feels like a 90s movie lol good stuff
Imma drop here and say
Carnal, en serio ¿Soy yo o estás robando el contenido del canal @lucasmelor ?
yeah the video is a literal copy paste
@@heroees7627and with an AI voice over also that has not been disclosed. Reported.
gracias por informar
Narrator here. We're affiliated with Lucasmelor, the spanish version of this channel, and I'm not AI (at least, I don't think I am 😱)
Lemme just answer the title's question: Because, much like pixel art, they look gorgeous.
or because they weren't born...
Great video, tight editing. Excellent.
That song “where did you go” was the perfect ending for this 😊
It represents a time when things were simpler and when new technology (for the most part) delivered on its promises instead of being either severely underdeveloped before hitting the market (no internet meant devs had to get it right straight away; no shipping the beta with a day 1 patch), or another way to be data mined.
Games did have patches then. It wasn’t uncommon for games to get silent rereleases with bug patches. Still there were lots of broken promises and buggy games. Neither era was perfect. Just because the big studios are shipping broken games today didn’t mean it didn’t happen then
@@crestofhonor2349 its not all nostalgia just because you have a 2D or 4k bias and probably enjoy simplistic trash
@@warmpabst it is a lot of nostalgia. I play lots of older games and newer ones. The push for it is coming from those who mostly grew up with those games.
Most early 3D games have not aged well at all. Some people like that look of older 3D games because it brings them back to an earlier time in their life.
I play a huge variety of games ranging from new to old stuff so no your assessment is wrong
@@crestofhonor2349 nah you said yourself 2D aged better which is a bold lie your bias is obvious nobody is out here fawning over pacman but plenty of new games take inspiration from 20 year old titles like hifi rush.
@@warmpabst all games take inspiration from something. hi Fi Rush is a rhythm game mixed with DMC because of the director of the game. 2D games from the 5th gen are better.
Very polite of you to not mention the actual reason nobody in your audience had a PS1.
👶🏾
Back when games looked, sounded & played like games
This video is absolutely EXCELLENT! Very good work, my friend! Bravo!
TOTALLY AGREE! so nostalgic. and yeah your mind dfinitely filled in what wasn't there. which is hard to explain to people these days! good times. sony absolutely smashed it.
Honestly most of the slop that comes out today is unapproachable for me. And the communities completely ruin all of the old stuff. The best way to experience games is to play nothing after the PS2 era and stay far away from other people.
I have an XBox 360, but that's my newest system. I have since then picked up an NES, OG XBox, PS1, Genesis, and SNES. If Dreamcast and Gamecube games were cheaper, I'd pick them up. And, I went through the library of N64 games, and there's only 11 that I would want, and the price negates my will to sink into it.
I've played the PS3,4,and 5, the XboxOne, Wii, WiiU, and Switch, and they are all crap. Unless you like being tethered to an internet connection, and cheapness of quality.
gigachad_handing_over_crown.jpg
Or you could just play the games without bothering to look up what people on the internet think about it.
There are not THAT many games that bring the insufferableness right into the game.
I think with graphics we have grown too far for going for realism instead of an art style.
Side note I wish there was a demake category but with modern gameplay/framerate
Reality can be boring. The more real games become the smaller the imagination and creativity will become
I almost cry to the end of the video, was like a love letter to a videogame era that will never come back . . . and the 4:3 resolution, hmm chef kiss 🤓
Honestly it was all art direction & the artists themselves. They were super gifted & I think under appreciated. Other companies had their own versions of the same capabilities but looked & felt way different. Ahead of their time
That's how it goes with a lot of the best artists. Always too early to the party, and only appreciated when it's too late to be the guest of honor.
I do not understand the weird obsession with wanting things to look worse. And this is coming from someone who plays Minecraft. If it can look more real, then let it.
Honestly, PS1 games were so terrifying to me as a 10 year old, and also still as an adult. The fact that camera angles were limited, backgrounds were dark, things were hard to see due to the polygons, made it so much more frightening. When I play Tomb Raider remaster, I opt for the remastered graphics because the original ones just really scare me! Silent Hill was another one. Absolute, pure terror.
There is a simple purity to the older graphics, and when done well it feels iconic. The Nintendo 64 with its early 3D blocky graphics, some things look dated but DK64 for example, it's so colorful and silly/goofy and the animations and sounds and music are fantastic. The original Half Life (1998) and the Gold Source engine games IMO is perfection of the mix of old and new look. Older style 3D but the resolution and textures are awesome. Even going back to Game Boy Color, the pixelated graphics can look very pure and neat when done correctly. Great video and you put a lot of thought into it
I remember back when i got it. I was at school and my dad brought it to me in 1999 and it was one of the best gifts I ever had.
Used it for 3 years and then in 2002 my mom got me PS2 and I loved that console more than any other console ever.
04:57 that laugh 🤣🤣🤣why?? Go further back like 04:47 so you can see just how random and passionately driven by the inner darkness taking over your soul it was. I have to subscribe to you just for that lol.
Narrator here. Really happy you liked the laugh! This comment means the world to me coming from someone named SoulxEdgexx. I have never felt so validated lmao