The PlayStation version of the classic Blue Sky Productions (later Looking Glass Studios) first-person RPG is unfortunately only available in Japanese, so is not easy to play for English-speaking gamers. No one has yet translated the game into English even though fans have been crossing their fingers since the game was first released way back in 1997 (24 years ago).
Continue reading Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, PlayStation
Revelations: Persona is the first game in the Persona series, which is a spin-off from the Shin Megami Tensei series, and was first published by Atlus for the PlayStation in 1996. It was actually the first game in the entire Megami Tensei series to be officially released in the West.
Devil Dice is a unique dice-moving puzzle game for one to five players that was developed by Shift, Inc. and published by Sony and THQ on the PlayStation in 1998. It is considered by some to be one of the best puzzle games on the PS1.
Devil Dice was originally created for a Japanese developer competition and went on to sell more than a million copies worldwide.
Yippee! A Goemon game on the PlayStation! This one called Ganbare Goemon: Uchuu Kaizoku Akogingu (in English: “Ganbare Goemon: Space Pirate Akogingu“), and it’s apparently a direct sequel to Ganbare Goemon 3 although Sasuke and Yae are not playable characters in this game. This was the first Goemon game on the PlayStation and it was first published by Konami in 1996.
Thankfully this game was given an English fan translation in 2020 by Adventurous Translations, which makes it playable to non Japanese speakers. According to the readme file on the translation patch the game was not much fun to translate (mostly for technical reasons), and isn’t seen as being a very good game by the person who translated it. That said: I got the translation patch to work fine and am overjoyed that I can now play it in English, so a big thank you to Adventurous Translations for their efforts (they are much appreciated).
Continue reading Ganbare Goemon: Uchū Kaizoku Akogingu, PlayStation
No One Can Stop Mr. Domino! is a weird-but-interesting domino-toppling game for the PlayStation that was developed by Artdink and published by Acclaim in 1998.
Developed by Game Design Sweden AB, Kula World is an impressive ball-rolling puzzle game where you must roll around 3D mazes that are floating high above the ground and collect keys to unlock the exit.
Called Gunner’s Heaven in its native Japan, Rapid Reload is a run-and-gun scrolling shooter with amazing 2D graphics, massive amounts of destruction, and lots of tough boss battles. It was developed by Media.Vision and published by Sony.
Rapid Reload was first released for the PlayStation in 1995 and made an immediate impression with gamers, predominantly because of the action-packed gameplay and the sheer amount of on-screen carnage. Outside of arcades, little had been seen on this scale before – at least in terms of the amount of stuff going on on-screen. You only have to play the first level to know what you’ve got in store when you play Rapid Reload.
The Sony PlayStation was the first machine in the PlayStation series of video game consoles and it came out in Japan first, in 1994, and in 1995 everywhere else. It is widely seen as being the console that changed gaming forever; the console that marked the transition from cartridge-based console gaming to CD-ROM based games, and also the console that ushered in a new era of 3D gaming. It was also the console that made Sony a major player in the video game business.
Over its eleven-year lifespan 7,918 individual games were released for the PlayStation, accumulating just under a billion sales overall. The console itself became the first to sell over 100 million units.
This week I’m going to be featuring screenshots from a number of my favourite PlayStation games. Some you might have heard of (or even played), others you might never have seen before. One thing is for sure, though: interest in the original PlayStation is still going strong, some 27 years after its initial release. And that’s because these great games endure, and because emulation has breathed new life into the format.
Oh, and if you’re wondering what the blue PlayStation is: that is a development PlayStation – used by developers to create and test the games themselves. The photos are of my very own console, taken by myself, specifically for this blog.
Here’s a full list of what was published:
Rapid Reload
Kula World
No One Can Stop Mr. Domino!
Ganbare Goemon: Uchuu Kaizoku Akogingu
Devil Dice
Revelations: Persona
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss
Pepsiman
Metal Gear Solid
Ridge Racer
Croc: Legend of the Gobbos
Strider 2
Jumping Flash!
Vib-Ribbon
Enjoy,
The King of Grabs
More: Sony PlayStation on Wikipedia
Quarth is a brilliant mixture of Tetris and shoot ’em up and was first played in arcades in Japan in 1989. Outside of Japan it is known as “Block Hole“, which – let’s face it – is a stupid name, so I’m sticking with the original name, Quarth.
The Adventures of Batman & Robin is considered to be one of the most technically-impressive games on the Sega Megadrive. It was developed by Clockwork Tortoise, Inc. and published by Sega in 1995.
Continue reading The Adventures of Batman & Robin, Megadrive/Genesis
The King of Grabs 