Love the original PlayStation? So do we! Here are five PS1 games that we can all agree the world wasn’t ready for.
Jumping Flash!:
Why?: It was a first-person platformer that played like a FPS, but had characters that felt like a Ubisoft game. It was amazing.
Dev Thoughts: “It was one of those ‘quirky’ Japanese games,” Rodgers said. “They always had appeal in the office and with gamers. It definitely paved the way for games in that vein, like Katamari Damacy and plenty of others.”
Apocalypse:
Why?: An action game that used Bruce Willis as the main character, but changed drastically during development and was ultimately the engine the powered the Tony Hawk series. It’s still fun- you should try it.
Dev Thoughts: “If it wasn’t for Apocalypse, there never would have been a Tony Hawk series,” creator Jason Weesner said, alluding to the fact that the code for classes of skaters in the Tony Hawk games is named ‘CBruce,’ an ode to Apocalypse). “That’s the best way to think about it. It was a catalyst for better things. I always wished I’d worked on the Neversoft version of the game so I could’ve worked on the Tony Hawk series!”
Driver:
Why?: Combining the feel of a GTA game, but the driving of Destruction Derby, Driver on the PS1 is a blast.
Dev Thoughts: “I like to think of it as a perfect three-way balance of something unique in that it was the first open-world driving game, a raw technical achievement (pushing the PS hardware to its absolute limit) together with a genuinely fun experience with mass appeal that freed players to do something they had always yearned to do,” creator Martin Edmondson said. “I mean who doesn’t like movie car chases!”
Disruptor:
Why?: It’s a frenetic FPS that just works great on the PS1.
Dev Thoughts: “My favorite review for Disruptor (I can’t remember who it was from) was, ‘The best little game you’ve never heard of,’” developer Craig Stitt said. “For a game that few people have ever heard of, much less played, I think that is a really nice way for it to be remembered.”
Bloody Roar:
Why?: A fighting game where your character transforms into an animal? This was amazing, but we were all playing Tekken back then.
Dev Thoughts: I think the switching of characters from human to “beast” was the biggest creative twist of the game and those of us old enough to remember, will remember this feature as the dominant aspect of the game,” Localization Manager Grady Hunt said. “During that period of time, fighting games were the dominant games in the market, FPS did not exist on the console, this was a very good game for it’s time.
