Quake II on the PlayStation 1 is an incredible port. Here is why.
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ต.ค. 2023
- Quake II on the original Sony PlayStation 1 is a port that really shouldn't have been possible, yet the team at Hammerhead Studios, skilled with their experience building 3D Worlds on the PlayStation make it possible with a very impressive port that takes full advantage of PS1 hardware. The result? A wonderfully executed game that is arguably the best FPS on the PS1. In today's episode we deep dive as to what make the game so great. Please enjoy.
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#Quake2 #PS1 #ImpossiblePort - เกม
I don’t know why, but I’m a sucker for a good wireframe segment showing polygons/triangles. It’s very illuminating.
It's not as important now as it was back then but being able to push polygons was a big deal. And seeing polygons on the screen from the 4th, 5th and 6th generation of consoles really shows the progression in technology.
Seeing only a handful of polygons like on Star Fox or Virtua Racing really gives an impression of how primitive these first polygonal games were. Then jumping to Mario 64 or Quake II on the PS1, those consoles were drawing more polygons in a single frame than the previous gen was in a single second. Then jump to the 6th gen where environments were becoming super detailed with textures and polygons. Immersive experiences like Shenmue, mini worlds like Crazy Taxi you can drive around, or explorable maps like Halo, all I can say is that that transformation of gaming was my favorite era by far.
Yeah, totally. It's like when you see how a magic trick/illusion (and it is magic!) is pulled off and your like "Ahhhh, that's how they did it!".
Same here!
In the original quake 2, cvar gl_showtris can be set to 1 to show the world geometry. Not sure if it's in the remake as that cvar. You might have to set cheats to 1 for it to work in the original.
SAME
I made a patch for this game which adds a "cheat" menu (basically it replaces the video options). You can enable some debug features there like a timebar, enemy debug render and some other stuff that I found in the debug symbols. Oh and I added looking with the right analog stick because DUH
Funnily enough, they kept using this engine in their future games on PS1, including Jinx and Blade.
Also, looking inside Quake 2's code (from the PS1 port) it looks like they also experimented at one point with Half-Life on the engine! Imagine if we would've gotten a Half-Life on a PS1...
It looks very similar to HL in some scene from this video. It could be massive!
If the loading times on the Dreamcast are any indication, the PS1 load times would have been over a minute long between areas. I don't think it would have been very playable on a 33Mhz CPU.
Where can your patch be found?
@@Charlie-eq3dj I posted a video on my channel a couple years ago.
There is a big bug which I only found out last year when I replayed the game - for some reason "God Mode" is always on, lol, I'll look into fixing it (EDIT: fixed it, I missed a branch delay slot, go figure, I updated the archives)
@@xan1242 Enabling a debug menu is not the same as creating a patch for a game.
@@prawngravy18why can't it be both?
Hammerhead studios were absolute wizards for making Quake II work on a PS1. Thanks for highlighting this port.
definitely :)
I always wondered why some games seem to have significantly less texture warble compared to others. That wireframe segment really opened my eyes.
This port always has a special place in my heart. I remember watching my Grandpa (who unfortunately passed recently) play this on his Playstation 2. Thanks for bringing back great memories MVG!
Your old man was hardcore.
My Grandpa had an imported version of Quake on the Famicom. Always playing it. He stopped mowing the grass for a year. I had to do it for pocket money.
He sounds like he was a really cool grandpa.
I've played lots of Quake II with 4 players in the PS1. Both Quake II and CTR were probably the games i most played in the late 90's.
I was just about to write exactly this! So much fun with 4 player mode.
How?
@@cmbaz1140 a adapter called multitap, It was released in a V format initially (the one i used) and a box for the slim and the PS2.
@@cmbaz1140 Multitap
@@BartekSzzz Somehow, the poor graphics and the small tv made plying it possible even sharing a screen, you couldn't look at other people share of the screen because you would get lost in no time.
wow this is probably one of the best looking ps1 game I have seen. the less warping is easily noticeable and the frame rates are solid. Also after seeing all those doom ports that had major fps issues, this is like night and day. The split screen maintaining 30fps is something of a fantasy.
The ps1 warbling graphics is so sad. To me it’s the main thing that makes the games not quite as fun to play these days. It’s just so offputting to me. Funny thing is I never noticed it when playing the games when they were out 25 years ago, probably because I didn’t have much to compare it to
@@chiarosuburekeni9325 Back in the day you'd play on a relatively low-res CRT TV and it wasn't nearly as noticeable as it is now lol
it even played well in multiplayer.
you're wearing rose colored glasses. it was horrible and was why i was happy having a nintendo 64 instead of a playstation. @@Reydriel
You should try PS1 Quake 2 on the MiSTer FPGA PS1 core, it has some options to enable enhancements like CPU cache, which makes this game and many others have a silky smooth framerate while keeping the original PS1 look and feel. It's amazing!
👍 Sounds great.
🤔 With MISTer, are mouse controller and Dualshock/Digital controller supported when both plugged in for hybrid controls? Can 2 multi-taps be plugged in for 2-4 player with those controls?
This version was my first true love in the fps genre
Same here. Doom was meh. Quake was the first real fps.
Yup, same.
Duke for me . And quake 2 ..and doom . Got them all at once on a cd for pc when I was 12 .. an absolute blast !
Don’t forget SiN: Wages of Sin 😏
Same. I used to play team death match in the ukccl. That was legendary. Kicked off eSports pretty much
I would not have guessed this was running on a playstation. Impressive indeed. Wish these guys made a racing game
I really enjoyed Quake 2 when it came out on Playstation. I remember the graphics being a big step-up from the earlier Playstation shooters. It felt really solid and had some great lighting effects. I don't remember the joypad controls being a problem, but we had to put up with all sorts of crazy control schemes back then. :-)
I remember playing this in 4-player splitscreen with friends on my 29" crt, back in the day. It was so awesome and I got used to the control scheme. I remember being ridiculously impressed with the graphics and subsequently disappointed with other games. I hold this game in very high regard. Thanks for shouting out the well-deserved praises of this awesome port.
Four player? I though it was only split screen it supported.
@@jothainwith a proper multitap, you can indeed play with 4 players splitscreen! And it surprisingly runs REALLY well!
@@TDRR_Gamez Cool never knew it supported that.
We played Quake 3 Arena on Dreamcast in 4 players.
The subdivision is really the secret sauce of this port, for me the PS1's texture warping and vertex snapping is by far my biggest issue with the visuals and this port while not addressing every issue makes it alot nicer looking, almost closer to a Saturn game in terms of polygon and texture precision.
Absolutely. When I first launched Q2 I was thinking how horrible it's going to look, but it was actually one of the best looking games texture wise. Honestly I was surprised to see how little textures moved around. CRT somehow "masked" it quite a bit. Maybe it was something about interlacing or something. Also framerate was way better than I thought it would be.
one of the programmers said the presorted draw lists for each object was the key
@@jc_dogen Yeah, the poly sub-division to reduce warping was present in the first version of the engine used for Shadowmaster. At that point it was basically just a PS1 renderer with the maps being built on SGI workstations and imported onto the console. That version was effectively 2.5d (think Doom) so for Quake2 we needed a much more capable system both to render and author content. We built a tool on PC to build the levels out of modular chunks, handle portaling, entity placement and logic, and allow users to manually pre-sort objects in order to reduce real-time load. That tool (GLMFC) was used for Quake2, Blade, Jinx, and a couple of other unfinished titles, with variations on the target platform renderer in order to suit the project.
Saturn was a weake 3dr console compared to PS1.
Also the texture warping existed in Saturn too and 32bt consoles in general.
@@kostasbousbouras2654 I'm not even sure I should respond with an actual rebuttal because you clearly have zero clue what you are talking about.
This port + the Asci Grip and a PlayStation mouse is pretty slick stuff! Love this version of Quake 2.
Love these Impossible Port videos. Always fascinating.
Exceptional technical analysis and presentation as always, well done!
I remember playing the demo when it first came out. FPSs on the PS1 were always a strange beast. Alien Resurrection was another stand out, although hard as nails. That supported the PS Mouse too if my memory serves me correctly. Might need to play Q2 again on my PS1!
AR was not only really hard but scary as hell too :D. I never completed it shit was just too much lol.
This is amazing. Quake 1 came to Saturn and it featured a form of colored lighting. It is an amazing port as well.
That's true recently XL2 pulled an Unreal 1 port on the saturn as well, it looks amazing.
@@summerishere2868 Bloody hell that xl2 person is an absolute maniac.
I loved that objects were lit directionally. Quake2 on pc had objects light uniformly. So in this it was actually an improvement over the original.
Lobotomy (makers of the Saturn port of Quake) created a demo of the PS1 version of Quake. They easily got it to 30fps and maybe with optimization could have gotten it to 60fps. But they couldn't get any publishers willing to take it and eventually went out of business sadly.
I actually played through this fairly recently and as long as you can make yourself learn the proto-dual stick controls it holds up really well and I had a lot of fun with it. Impressive stuff.
I love these retrospective breakdowns on retro ports you do, really makes you appreciate older games in a whole new way. I already have the N64 port but I've grabbed a cheap copy for the PS1 from ebay so I can give this a good crack. I spent SO many hours on this back in the day on my PC, doing various upgrades to get it running better. Many happy memories of this game.
When friends came over that hadn't played Quake 2 on PSX we always appreciated the cannon fodder, struggling with the controller layout. Quickfire and Cold Storage were probably our most played levels
I remember the equally incredible Quake l on the Sega Saturn by the Lobotomy software boys. An amazing port which used the staggeringly fast Exhumed engine.
I played this on SLI with dual Voodoo 2 cards, it was friggin' sick. Locked at 60FPS of course! Mind blowing that they ported this.
This is why I appreciate your videos so much - you dive into technical details regarding game engines written from scratch and explain all the algorithm genius behind it so well.
Makes low-level programming so inspiring and magical in a way. Thank you for your time making these deep dives.
It's amazing what was going on behind the scenes of this game. It's a pretty seamless experience with so much going on under the hood. Great video, I'ma go play some quake now.
I really love this version of Quake II as much as I enjoyed the N64 one. They are so similar and so different at the same time. I love how in this era consoles had personality and games looked so different depending on which console they run. Great video. Thanks!
This was indeed the game I bought a PS mouse for back in the day, but you can also run it at 60fps in Duckstation which is just sublime.
Corrections: Quake 1 came out mid-96, not in 95. The Voodoo 5500 came out in 2000, which, for the speed of releases in both hardware and software during this era, was well after the "at the time" of Quake 2's release in late 1997.
Never thought about it at the time, but yeah - played a bunch of splitscreen at the time, and it just hit me how great it runs. Also, coming from pre-analogue stick PS1 games, the entire friend group universally rejected the twinstick control scheme and insisted on using the shoulder buttons to aim up/down for way too long, lol
Quake 2 on Playstation was a big piece of my teen years. It is definitely one of most memorable PS1 games for me personaly.
This is truly a fascinating conversion. True coding artistry there. Impressive.
I had this on both PC and Playstation and was truly blown away by how...not terrible it was.
Played it back in 1998. as a teen that had Sega mega drive 2 at home, I was at my aunts house playing deathmatch duels with a cousin.
I cannot describe what it was like playing Contra at home and then after a short drive, playing Quake 2 against another player. Like a total mindbreaking paradigm shift in games. Next such "jump" was playing Quake 3 in an internet caffe LAN with 9 other people.
The Quake 2 port for N64 is also outstanding and arguably the best FPS engine on the system in terms of both resolution and framerate.
I have quite a soft spot for the presentation in this port compared to the pc original. Obviously the textures and output resolution are lower and the performance isn't as snappy, but the lighting and color schemes used for the PS1 rendition of Q2 levels are just so nice, very vibrant too
Quake 2 on ps1 was probably my all time most played game on the ps1.
This was the game that most blew me away with the PS1's S-Video cable - it was leaps and bounds more clear with brighter visuals than the standard composite cable on a 90's CRT tv.
Back in the day at home our PC was only a mere 486-SX and couldn't run Quake...let alone Quake 2. So I was thrilled that Quake 2 was actualy coming to the Playstation (which we had). Controls were indeed a bit tricky, because even with analog sticks it was still tricky to move and aim properly (most modern games are set to use both sticks, but what I remember that wasn't posible with Q2 back then as it only used 1 stick). Years later, I tried it again on the PS3 (it has PS1 backwards compatibility after all) and an USB mouse, but unfortunatly that didn't work (the USB mouse with Quake2 that is). Nice to see you made a video about this little gem ;)
Love quake. I have the physical versions on the PS5 and switch. Just played a couple rounds yesterday. Thanks for the info and video MVG
Quake 2 released 1997. The 3dfx Voodoo 5 5500 released in 2000. So it wasn't the "best in class at the time". The fastest card at the time was the Voodoo 1, as even the Voodoo 2 was released in 1998. But Quake 2 and Unreal sold probably the most Voodoo 2 cards.
Also, the original Quake released in 1996, not 1995 as mentioned in the intro.
The Voodoo5 5500 wasn't even best in class for its own time, either. It managed to outperform the GeForce 256 through brute force despite the lack of AGP texturing fast writes. But that's the card it was designed to compete against, not the one it actually competed against. It was delayed so hard that it came out several months after the GeForce 256's successor: the GeForce 2, which handily outperformed the Voodoo5 5500. So there's no interpretation where what MVG said makes sense. The Voodoo5 5500 is a cool historical artifact and it is (or at least was, since dgVoodoo2 may have gotten a lot better) the best way to play old games using Glide, but it was a flop, and it did not flop without reason.
I really enjoy these videos. The detailed technical analysis is very interesting.
MVG you're killing it with these videos, I love it! Keep up the great work, also do you have a FLAC version of your intro music "Pacific Drive", I love the theme tune but can't find a high quality version anywhere sadly! :)
this is among the best PS1 games I've ever seen graphic-wise. the textures look super crisp.
This game was a childhood favorite of mine :) My parents very rarely moderated what games I should be playing, and I enjoyed every moment of this PS1 port of Quake II. The action and the rocking soundtrack by Sonic Mayhem made it memorable for me. 😎My grandpa got this game for me back in the day around my birthday.
You can use the Dual shock on Quake II. It uses 1 analog stick and the D-pad and somewhat mimicks the modern control system we have for modern shooters.
Top stuff as always, been enjoying playing through the Nightdive remaster and checking out the N64 version, I had to no idea this came out on the PSX and N64 at the time. Really pushing boundaries!
I love quake. The 3rd is my favourite right enough but Im currently running through the Q2 with its RTX patch. Great game :)
“… or even a Voodoo 5500 card” - that card came out LONG after Q2. At the time of release Voodoo 2 would’ve been state of the art. Voodoo 3 came out a little before Quake 3 Arena was released (and any of them would’ve been absolutely fine for Quake 2). The Voodoo 4 4500 and Voodoo 5 5500 were a while both, and neither were particularly good compared to the competitors at the time (the OG ATi Radeon and GeForce 256)
Yeah the Voodoo 3 ran this game really well, whereas you started to see 3dfx limitations with Quake 3 due to the 16 bit colour, lack of texture compression and transform and lighting
The Voodoo 3 was fantastic. It may have been technically limited compared to nVidia's cards at the time, but even back then the Voodoo had great open source support and worked beautifully under Linux, while nVidia was already showing the douchebaggery that was to come from them long before they were one of the biggest companies in the world, overtaking all other PC hardware manufacturers combined.
@@christophclear1438 Yeah it was a real nice card, and well priced too. I had a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI that alongside my sketchy AMD K6-2 366MHz (stable @ 400MHz) served me well until a while after I upgraded to an AMD Duron 700, until I got a GeForce 2 MX. All bargain bin parts, you may notice :D
Yep. This is a Voodoo Banshee kind of game. Voodoo 5s were more for playing Unreal tournament or Descent or Quake 3.
@@friendly_inlaw The PCI one was really awesome since it also worked in Amiga hardware if I remember correctly. I had an AGP version... but a sweet 3000. Oh the bragging rights it still carries to this day! ;-)
Nice video. Quake 2 was released in December 1997 and the Voodoo 5 5500 in mid-2000. Even the Voodoo 2 was released a few months after Quake 2.
In terms of stability; this was easily one of the best looking games on the system
I can't thank enough for this video. When I was a child, my father gave me this PS1 port and my eyes couldn't believe what they saw. I hope that it starts to get more recognition.
I did some videos about Quake 2 in ny channel with quite success... But your channel sir, is something else. Great video!
Thanks for doing this! I've always wondered how they pulled this off. Very cool to pull back the curtain on it. One awesome thing about the original PSX, was any time somebody said "it can't do this or that," programmers would figure out a way to do it. It was a great time to be a console gamer.
It really does look better than Q2 in software mode. They used much more dynamic lighting and the colors are vibrant.
I really enjoy the incredible port episodes, thank you! Small correction on 7:10, what you describe is the Reverse Painter's Algorithm, which draws front-to-back. The Painter's Algorithm draws back-to-front.
That tesellation technique is very impressive.
Love these videos on impossible ports! If you can please talk also about the unreal homebrew on the saturn!
Got this on release day on PS1, absolutely loved it. Such a good game
I don't know if it would help you, but you can change the control scheme per game in RetroArch and what I do for FPS's is to map the analog sticks the way I used them with the XBox when playing Halo. I just remap based on the default controller scheme for the game. Playing Doom on the PS1 with Halo controls is the best way to play it.
So glad to see other people in the comments experienced the glory of 4-player split screen via the multi-tap accessory!
Always looking forward to a new video of this series :)
I owned the N64 version... And played it for hours with friend's as the multiplayer was slick, fast and fun. Couldn't put it down
Growing up on N64 and PS1 games i think this is the thing i miss compared to modern gaming. There isn't as much wow factor any more. Modern games are a technical marvel but Iv'e not played anything recently that stands out as being something special, nothing that makes me think how on earth did they get that to work. I remember the first time i played Rayman 2 on the N64 and was amazed at how good it looked compared to other N64 games or Abe's Oddysee and wondering how they made the backgrounds so detailed. I think the last game that had this effect was Halo on the OG Xbox.
Love these videos about ports. Tks
This is incredible. Great video!
Amazing optimisation - efficient and at the same time respectful to the original. The real clincher is the mouse input which just takes it to the next level. Love the look of the PS1 with it's super crispy textures and this looks fantastic. Cheers MVG 👍
I love the lens flares that they added to this version too. I remember reviewing Shadowmaster for a PC games mag back in the day and really being blown away by the graphics on that one too.
If you play this as one of the first FPS games in your life, the controls kinda grow on you :D
That's how I am with Turok Dinosaur Hunter, the learning and skill is still embedden in my brain 😊
I was totally fine playing this one a normal PS1 controller as a kid even though I played keyboard and more on my uncle's PC. It was just what I was mostly used too
Console gamer here 🙋♀️
I like the instant snap to position a mouse does, but I'm always re-adjusting it.
I like the left thumbstick controls too, WASD has nothing on directional input when it comes to movement. 🙂
Fascinating video. The PC magazines back then, and a lot the internet, generally seemed to focus just on John Carmack - not that he wasn't a smart developer, but there were others like you've just mentioned.
Jon Burton - of Travelle's Tales - does some TH-cam videos of old games he developed that are well worth a look of how they leveraged old hardware like sega megadrive.
The sudden increase in polygons is just crazy; it seems literally insane to do that. The goal is to draw as few polygons as possible, and they are dumping dozens to hundreds of them into the level geometry, that could have been far lower.
Hi MVG.
Thanks for the great video.
This game and Exhumed are great FPS games on the PS1 (even though Exhumed looks better on the Saturn).
I'm currently replaying Unreal on PC but will revisit this game afterwards. 👍
you should try the recently released Unreal port to the saturn, if you have one. :)
I never saw this game in action before on PSX. Was that engine used for any other PSX games because it's pretty impressive
It’s strange that Quake 1 never got a PS1 port, but thanks to Hammerhead Studios for making a PS1 port of Quake 2. They did a good job of doing this despite the limitations of the console.
Learned something interesting today. ty ♥
i thought you would be patching a iso and not a rom? am i confused on this point?
Probably the best graphics I've seen on the PS1.
Up there with Vagrant Story for sure.
Thanks for this, while many people were playing Goldeneye 4 player, my friends were playing PS1 Quake II 4 player split screen. the control scheme took some getting used to but we had a blast playing it
Great vid there mate, great vid indeed 👍.
It's incredible when you realize the PS1 specs are a 33.86 MHz cpu, 2 MB EDO DRAM for system ram & 1 MB VRAM.
Now days, a quad core with 8 threads running at 3ghz, 16gb system ram & 8gb video card is considered very low end for gaming.
There are actually a few games on the PS1 that I favor for that very reason. The fact that they could squeeze so much out of that cpu is great. I prefer Rayman 2 on the PS1 for instance, because of the voice acting, but also.. 33mhz and 2mb and it plays great! Same with Toy Story 2.
Thats why optimization would always surprass a more powerful hardware.
This kind of thing shows that if you say something is impossible, there always will be someone taking that as a challenge and show that nothing is impossible.
Great video. I loved the original Quake on my SEGA Saturn. Could you do a video about that?
This looks like a ps2 game
PSX IS NOT A PLAYSTATION 1.
I absolutely love these sorts of videos, discussing how certain games were ported to systems they (on the surface) had no business running on.
Me and my buddies spent so much time with this game, I even bought SABA VT 2927 big screen CRT TV so four of us could play a game via MULTITAP and four controllers at a time. Too bad it didn't support link cable for two PSX that we tried also. I've never stopped hoping that Quake 1 will also be ported...oh boy! ;-)
This looks amazing on the PSX! Thanks for sharing how they accomplished it: it’s fascinating how much performance and quality they got out of culling. It must have been very technically challenging because very few developers did that. The texture warping and especially popping on the PSX made so many games difficult to visually parse and understand what exactly was going on. This game is totally clear.
Awww man, the music at the end from the soundtrack was 👌
Could be interesting to take a look at some of the recent homebrew developments on the Nintendo 64, some pretty impressive optimizations there.
the Homebrew port of portal is especially noteworthy.
remember playing this game before and after getting a Voodoo 2. it was mind-blowing. The moving light source from rockets... 🤯
I remember being very impressed by this when it came out, especially at that framerate, looked smoother than anything else on the PS1.
Quake 2 was my first real PC game as a kid. Christmas day, I got a Canopus Pure3D 3dfx Voodoo card and Quake 2 (back then they came in big boxes the size of a textbook). I had no issues getting it all to work, and I was blown away seeing the bilinear filtering and colored lighting. Before that, I had played a lot of Monster Truck Madness (came with the PC) with the software renderer. Pentium 5 CPU, if I recall correctly. A Compaq Presario. Good times. I knew Quake 2 inside and out. I spent so much time tweaking it that I still remember most of the console commands and cvars. Had a dialup modem with a 200-300 ms ping in multiplayer. People couldn't call because the phone was always busy (my Dad liked that no one could call and bother him while I was playing, hah!). Gamespy server browser. The golden years.
I absolutely love your impressive port series.
This was me and my friends co-op game of choice. The multi-tap got a big workput with this game. I remember the multiplayer being so much fun.
The half controller setup with the mouse is why the Nintendo Wii Nunchuck worked so well for things like Mario Kart. It just offered a controller split in two that both hands could grab and use easily. It's very similar to how Kid Icarus: Uprising is played on the Nintendo 3DS.
Ah yes, Hammerhead Studios port of Quake 2, the version I played the most as a kid good times, everything about this version was awesome, and I mean the game even had PS Mouse support too, not to mention but the multiplayer mode was great fun if you had the players, which I could only play with my brother at the time, dope to see you finally talk about this port, Uncle Derek will be proud.
I actually, honest to god, didn't even notice the textures weren't flapping around like usual on the PSX, I just didn't even notice until you said.
That is insane, I don't remember ever seeing a playstation game manage that this well.
Agree
The only other one that i can think of is the first four Crash games made by Naughty Dog.
Great video 🎉 I too had a ps1 so this really appealed to me 👍
It's interesting to see how much they tessellated surfaces. That's a lot more triangles being drawn than I previously thought
Still got my ps quake 2 game to this day. One of my fav games on the ps. Amazing port!