VideoGame_Discussion

Symphony of the Night for really cementing the genre for what it is

Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil and Gran Turismo were also the start of enormous franchises.

Symphony of the Night is definitely a good pick, and how could I forget Gran Turismo?

This is going to be a library event, so I'm not sure M rated games like RE and Metal Gear Solid available to play would fly (although 1990s M is MUCH tamer than 2020s M). They can and should still be in the history part though!

Will probably try to stick to more of the quicker playing games for what I bring. Don't want someone sitting down for the entire 3-4 hour event taking up a system and just playing FF7!

Parappa The Rapper would be an interesting one, it's so unique and I bet it will be new to most of the people there.

Spyro is right up there with Crash. Ape Escape was a big deal since it ushered in the dualshock line of controllers.

Tony Hawk Pro Skater is another good option, as is Twisted Metal.

Soul Blade was pretty darn good...tons of endings and one of the best intros of the time. Not sure of historical value, though.

Xenogears- deep and philosophical themes, engaging gameplay, and solid sales

It’s up there for best RPG of all time.

I remember hearing someone call Parappa the first rhythm game. If that’s true, then creating a genre is pretty significant.

Everything mentioned so far is great. I'll add Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, Final Fantasy Tactics, Tomb Raider, and Resident Evil 2

Mega Man Legends. Brave Fencer Musashi. Tomba!!

edit: Medeival

Tomba, Sports games oddly enough are okay, Gran Turismo, Spiderman is actually good, Ape Escape. Tomb Raider. Syphon Filter, CTR or Crash Team Racing kind of like Mario Kart, Legend of Dragoon, Medal of Honor, Chrono Cross, Soul Reaver, Klonoa is good for kids, Time Crisis is classic, Parasite Eve, Twisted Metal, Einhander is like Gradius, Galerians is a bit of a niche title but a decent survival horror game, Tenchu, Dino Crisis one of my top games, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy, Worms, Xenogears, Ace Combat

If you want quick games Worms, Time Crisis, Ace Combat, Einhander, Tekken Crash Team Racing, Twisted Metal not E I think T, Sports games that are E rated. Tomba, Spiderman, Klonoa, Ape Escape are E but take a while to really get into.

ued222 wrote:


Funnily enough I have the Gradius PS1 game but not Einhänder.

FF7, MGS, Parappa (Sarna is more or less correct about it creating a genre), Resident Evil, Gran Turismo, Symphony of the Night. In terms of sheer importance these are near the top and are all very iconic.

FF7 and MGS while not necessarily good games definitely have console history significance.
Does Crash though? Like, aside from it being Sony's mascot (barely) and only temporarily?
Gran Turismo and Parappa receive credit for creating or at least revitalizing their respective genres.

Tekken 3 was certainly a sensation. One could probably make the case for Wipeout and Twisted Metal as well.

Symphony of the Night might be the weakest suggestion bc metroidvanias basically do not matter outside of a handful of indies, and even then, many of them only loosely qualify as metroidvanias. Hell, Metroid was technically the IP that started it, not SotN. And it wasn't even a situation like with Wolfenstein/Doom, or Dune/C&C/Starcraft, or Halo vs all previous FPS, where the later game became massively more influential despite it not being the first, bc it's well established that SotN sales were dismal.

On that note, I just remembered that Twisted Metal started car combat and Wipeout was the first Sci fi racer. (well at least in 3D) Didn't even take that into account. But it's funny, neither of those genres matter anymore, like, at all.

There’s a lot of great games on the PlayStation, but it’s real historical significance is that it is how Nintendo was dethroned. Explaining how that happened, how arrogant Nintendo was at that time and how Sony just completely blindsided them, seems like a better history lesson than presenting an arbitrarily decided list of games.

I'm not just presenting an arbitrary list of games. That's kind of the least important part of it. More of a footnote at the end of the history of the system.

I got into the Playstation well after it's prime (I was a Saturn loyalist to the end), so while I have a pretty decent knowledge of the consoles history, I didn't pay attention to the games as much until later, so it's tough for me to reminisce about the important releases.

I remember at the time being thoroughly unimpressed with how simplistic Parappa was, being convinced how Crash would be a fad that dissipated as soon as Sega released the obviously going to be amazing 3D Sonic game on the Saturn, laughing at how the PS1 got Darkstalkers but we Saturn owners got the improved sequel Night Warriors, getting angry at FF7 commercials for being all FMV and no gameplay...

You know, the things you do as a die hard fan.

Honestly, the PS1 hurt Sega (and put the writing on the wall for pure arcade games) far more than it hurt Nintendo.

I could always pull up a list of the top selling games or the highest rated, but I think that's less interesting than the ones that made an impact on the industry in general (there is overlap in those lists of course).

PS1 is only part of the overall picture, just the system I have the least firsthand knowledge of the games at the time the system was active.

The most important ps1 game for me is Brave Fencer Musashi - it literally was a system seller for me, and is still probably my favorite game on the system, and favorite action rpg of all time. But I know in the overall story of the system it didn't make much of an impact at all. It's biggest claim to fame was the FF8 demo disc that it came with.

egg wrote:

Crash absolutely was Playstation's mascot for a good while and associated with the system until 2001 when the series went multiplatform. With Sega not having a Sonic game, and nobody wanting Bug!, Crash was where teenage gamers had to go for their dose of 'tude.


And it's funny that both Twisted Metal and Wipeout borrow heavily from the Mario Kart template, just wash away the cartoon factor of it.

I think car combat games dissolved into the larger third person/first person shooter genres. Playing multiplayer death match in one of those is basically the same thing, just a whole lot easier to control than driving a car.

As for sci fi racers? Try the racing genre in general. With online multiplayer being an absolute must in the genre nowadays, if you aren't Mario Kart, Forza or Gran Turismo, the odds of having that staying power are so heavily stacked against you, it seems like most companies just don't bother anymore outside of annual sports license racing series like F1 and WRC.

Also a little sad that no one remembers 1989's Deathtrack for PC... might still not be the first Sci fi racer, but it definitely was before Wipeout.

egg wrote:

Well there it is. The worst thing I’ve ever read on this site.

What about the first-party Sony sports games? They were among the first serious sports games to be polygonal and compete with EA Sports. Good for quick plays as well.

Ridge Racer is a good one. Both it and Daytona launched as big name arcade ports to the PS and Saturn, respectively, but Ridge Racer pulled it off much better. That also kicked off the franchise's regular appearances as launch titles for practically every new console for nearly two decades.

Tomb Raider was a megaton for a thousand reasons. It was multiplatform, but it's most closely associated with Playstation.

Final Fantasy 7 is the big one. Though i do agree its a flawed title. To know that was squares slap in the face to nintendo following the post super mario rpg era over Nintendo's decision to go cartridge.

Nintendo responds with a huge hit and a massive flop in paper mario and quest 64.

What i like about the ps1 era is i feel sony really pushed the bar on what they were doing and how they were doing it at times. While nintendo for years has cared more to save face and protect the brand image to their narrative.

While i think the 64 is the better console library wise it's not even close. Yet both brands really stuck to doing what they did and did it well enough to emerge from the console wars.

Looking through post and deep diving i think an overlooked game that's actually held really well is yugioh forbidden memories. So much fun on that having the game shark and cheat codes. Did it define a console, no, but introduced NA markets into yugioh and that's become what it has now.

couple others for me include jet moto titles, gta 2 sure there's more, but most of the impactful launch titles have been mentioned.

benstylus wrote:

I never had a ps1, but I had a Dreamcast.
I loved my Dreamcast, but I got a ps2 after that and have stuck with PlayStation (3,4.5) ever since.

Rayman comes to mind, if only because I enjoyed the recent iterations of the franchise - I'm not really sure of its actual significance compared to the other iconic games that have been listed already.

What about that Soul Calibur precursor game? I forget what it was called, but it launched the franchise more-or-less.

Alaisiagae wrote:

Soul Blade, or Soul Edge, as it was called in arcades

synthetic1 wrote:
Maybe he wanted to say they aren't good games they are great games?

Alaisiagae wrote:

I don't really associate Rayman with PlayStation. It was also on saturn, pc and even Jaguar I believe.

benstylus wrote:

Rayman was a recent pick for @Renaissance2K's RTT GotM and he always does a great job of researching the selected game. I believe he noted that the version was the first release and in some ways was one of the better ones. It might have even been meant to be a console exclusive, but Ubi ported it elsewhere after the terrible sales figures of that console, not 100% sure on that though. I played the version for that month and watched a walkthrough from someone playing the version and noticed certain differences.
So, yeah I wouldn't call Rayman a key PS1 game, even though it highly likely sold the strongest on there vs. sadly the weaker (sales wise) Saturn and Jaguar.

I, like you benstylus, went to the Saturn for that generation and wanted it to do better, but that didn't happen. And surely Sony was a factor, but also the in-company fighting btwn Sega of Japan and the US didn't help. I read, or watched something about Sega from that time period and it covered how the Saturn was Japan's doing, while in the US, the 32X was from them and in some ways they competed with one another which hurt them in the eyes of consumers and with a lacking sole focus corporately. Since we all know that the 32X got really poor support, at least the Saturn did better, but that spat hurt Sega in the long run.

I was N64 all the way at the time so I can only really offer a retrospective look as well. My first experience with Sony systems was grabbing a PS2 well after release. My memory is hazy but I might have had a Gamecube before PS2 as well.

I remember being excited about Final Fantasy 7 without even knowing what the series was about. I don't remember that about any other game on the system. Nothing else seemed anywhere near as hyped as that one.

For me… Metal Gear Solid really showed the capabilities of the hardware. I loved that game. Another game that really caught my eye, in addition to most of the ones mentioned, was Tenchu. That game was amazing and showed where ninja games could go. I wish Tenchu was still around now and was better than it became, but it is what it is.