Top 10 PS1 / Playstation Games

[IainGrimm]

For me my favorites have to be :

 

Medievil 1 & 2

Resident Evil 1,2 & 3

Silent Hill

Driver

FF8 & 9

Spyro Trilogy

Wild 9

Martian Gothic

Tenchu

 

I mainly use my PS3 for PS1 games now, have 10 boxed games but quite a few more digital though on PSN

[cimerians]

Some more I enjoyed and finished back in the day:

 

Blood Omen

Treasures of the Deep

Pac-Man World 20th anniv.

Ape Escape

 

My favorite Fighters:

Soul Blade

Tekken 3

X-Men Mutant Academy

SF Alpha 3

 

The SF II collection had horrible boot times if I remember. Also the arcade collections from Midway were pretty good. Konami had a good compilation that included some rarities.

[ComputerSpaceFan]

The SF II collection had horrible boot times if I remember.

Heck yes it does! I just got a copy at the Vancouver Retro Show and SF II and SF II Turbo are super slow to load level after level. I just throw on SF Special Champ Edition on the Genesis instead.

 

SF Alpha Gold is nice to have though.

[BassGuitari]

My Top 10 would have to include:

Resident Evil / Resident Evil 2
Twisted Metal 2
Tekken 2 / Tekken 3
Alien Trilogy
Tenchu: Stealth Assassins
Syphon Filter
Metal Gear Solid
Fear Effect
Jet Moto 2
Need For Speed
Die Hard Trilogy

[xDragonWarrior]

Oh and did I mention that Brittany is smoking HOT?

[cimerians]

Vandal Hearts!

 

 

(Could not find a Diego pic!)

Edited May 22, 2014 by cimerians

[+FujiSkunk]

The first PlayStation was around the time I stopped trying to keep up with modern gaming. I didn't get my first PlayStation until 1999(-ish), and even then my love was still for more classic games. I've since gone back and picked some of the more well known and critically acclaimed PlayStation games, but at least for now this is my top 10, in no particular order:

 

1. Ridge Racer. Sony and Namco were wise to make this one of the system's launch titles. The game was still hot in the arcades, thanks to one of the best music soundtracks in all of video games, and one of the first examples of "photo-realistic" 3D rendering in arcade games (as much as early '90s technology could render something photo-realistically, anyway). Naturally a lot of that "photo-realism" was lost in the translation, but the game still survived largely intact, and so did the awesome soundtrack. And if you have the InterAct Ultraracer analog controller for the PS1, the game is even better.

 

2. Williams Arcade's Greatest Hits. This collection of Williams's six biggest arcade games has since been bested by more recent emulator collections on more recent consoles, but this one still deserves its place in history. The collection effectively demonstrated how far technology had advanced in 15 years, put Digital Eclipse on the map, and it showed a new generation just how much fun games like Joust and Defender are to play.

 

3. Destruction Derby 2. Before there was Burnout, there was Destruction Derby. I still haven't played the original, but DD2 had it all, from free-for-all races to complete demolition-derby arena mayhem.

 

4. The Raiden Project. The best home version of Raiden and the only home version of Raiden II are on this disc, making it my favorite PS1 SHMUP.

 

5. Croc. Sure, it's not much more than a Sonic knock-off, but it's a fun Sonic knock-off with cute characters and a catchy soundtrack. If you're going to do formula, do it right!

 

6. DarkStalkers. I think the Saturn port of Night Warriors: DarkStalkers' Revenge is better, thanks to an Easter Egg that lets you play the original game as well, but I would still have to call this my favorite fighter on the PS1.

 

7. Descent Maximum. About the only first-person shooter series I really enjoyed got its own PS1 exclusive. Actually this is pretty much just Descent II with different maps, but to anyone who absolutely loved D1 and D2 and were looking for more, this was a good place to start.

 

8. Konami Arcade Classics. Konami has a curiously spotty record when it comes to collections of older arcade games. Where companies like Atari and Midway made bigger and better compilations with each new generation of consoles, Konami went backwards, churning out smaller and smaller collections, until their XBox 360 discs had just three games each and the same price tag as other discs boasting dozens of titles. At least Konami got it right the first time. This PS1 release has just about every early '80s Konami game you could want, including my personal favorite, Road Fighter. Curiously enough, Frogger is missing, but maybe that's okay, because...

 

9. Frogger. For a few years in the late '90s and early '00s, just about every game studio scrambled to dust off an old arcade game and give it the 3D treatment. This game is why. One of the first and arguably the best 3D update to an old arcade game, the new Frogger succeeds because it keeps the whimsy of the original, and doesn't overload it with too many new controls or an undercooked "plot."

 

10. Bust-a-Move 2: Arcade Edition. My favorite puzzler for the PS1, at least for this week.

[onmode-ky]

Vandal Hearts!

 

 

(Could not find a Diego pic!)

Man. That's a lot of hearts spewing out of that vandal. Way more than 14.

 

onmode-ky

[+thegoldenband]

9. Frogger. For a few years in the late '90s and early '00s, just about every game studio scrambled to dust off an old arcade game and give it the 3D treatment. This game is why. One of the first and arguably the best 3D update to an old arcade game, the new Frogger succeeds because it keeps the whimsy of the original, and doesn't overload it with too many new controls or an undercooked "plot."

 

Considering how Frogger seems to be almost universally panned, this is a bold selection indeed! But I actually did get some enjoyment from the game, though it was also very aggravating at times (mostly due to bad/unhelpful camera placement) and I did a lot of swearing in the course of beating it. The sequel was a bit more polished and less frustrating.

[+FujiSkunk]

Considering how Frogger seems to be almost universally panned, this is a bold selection indeed!

 

I guess I never read the bad reviews. I just played it and liked it, and then read about how its success had "inspired" Hasbro to look into other old games they could remake. Some of the remakes we ended up with are pretty laughable, but I still like the new Frogger.

[+wood_jl]

Looking at all of the lists (mine included) shows you how futile coming up with "top 10" list is, for a console with so many games, and so many great games across so many genres, it's up to the individual's choice of genre.

 

My list is mostly racing and arcade fighting, because the PS1 really upped the quality off those genres. Prior to PS1, most of my racing was stuff like RC Pro Am on the NES and Mario Kart or Stunt Race FX on the Super Nintendo. How could Stunt Race FX compete with the original Need for Speed or Gran Turismo? While Mortal Kombat 2 was great fun on the Super Nintendo, it didn't offer the 3rd dimension like Tohshinden or Tekken 3 (dodge your opponent in the Z-direction), and the Tekken games were much closer to the arcade than was MK2 on the SNES.

 

Other people's lists include a lot of RPGs. But did the PS1 really advance RPGs, like it did racing and fighting? Is Final Fantasy 7 really that much better than Chrono Trigger?

[+wongojack]

Other people's lists include a lot of RPGs. But did the PS1 really advance RPGs, like it did racing and fighting? Is Final Fantasy 7 really that much better than Chrono Trigger?

 

I think the PS1 is known for bringing 3d environments to a console and showing gamers what could be done in those environments. Games like Tomb Raider, Madden, and the 3d platformers (Spyro) really showed us that we wanted to play in 3d. I know that the N64 did it first, but Playstation is where people really started to get into these games.

 

Secondarily, it is known for bringing adult story elements that basically birthed new game genres. The best example is probably the survival horror "genre" that boomed with games like Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Fear Effect, and Dino Crisis. I'd say the racing games are also an area where it pushed out the boundaries, but Gran Turismo stands way ahead of everything else in terms of redefining a genre.

 

Metal Gear does some nice things in 3d and with story, but I could never really appreciate it. I think there is a cross cultural problem I have that keeps me from enjoying that game. I still think MG is a quality game though. Luckily, Syphon Filter is also good and doesn't have chicks from the home office who flirt with you (poorly) on your communicator the entire game.

 

I was never impressed with the RPGs, I heard about how good they were and tried to play them, but the stories were childish, and the games themselves weren't really all that challenging. I think there was a similar "cultural" barrier for me here. I was in college at the time, and after being exposed to so much adult content on the system, I wasn't interested in "dumbing it down."

 

The Oddworld games are entirely in 2d (I think) and aren't particularly adult, but they tell an excellent story in a way that wouldn't really be done well again for quite some time. The puzzle solving platformer was something fresh for me, and I just really got into those games deeply.

[cimerians]

Other people's lists include a lot of RPGs. But did the PS1 really advance RPGs, like it did racing and fighting? Is Final Fantasy 7 really that much better than Chrono Trigger?

 

Yes, it did in a big way. Xenogears and Persona 2 broke the mold in my opinion not just FF7.

 

Also, hybrids like Parasite Eve and Vagrant Story expanded the genre in different ways.

 

Check a few of those out and you'll see. It's not really a case about being better than Chrono Trigger it's really a fact that none of this ever happened before on a console. Adult oriented RPG's? Check. Dating RPG's? Check. Fully animated cutscenes? Check.

 

Racing: I played Gran Turismo, Ridge Racer and the Wipeout series a whole lot. Really got addicted to Gran Turismo 2.

[Ninjabba]

Man, just thinking of all the awesomeness the PS1 gave me makes my head spin.. summing up the 10 games that gave me most joy back then:

 

MGS

Abe's Oddyssee

Wip3Out

C&C Red Alert

Tenchu 1

Silent Hill

Resident Evil 2

Tekken 3

Gran Turismo 2

Driver

 

Honorables:

Pretty much most of the rpg library, but never played them until the ps2 era. Was more action focused back then

[Xot]

The list begins and ends with Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

 

I also really enjoyed the SFAlpha games and Jumping Flash! has aged surprisingly well.

[Atariboy]

It's a game I'd of never considered for myself, but I really loved 'The Italian Job'. Got it along with a few other games for Christmas a decade or more ago when the PSOne was going for $50 new everywhere. It's a late release that's very impressive technically, offers a lot of variety in missions and locales, and was a fun arcade style driving game.

 

 

It's inspired I believe by the original movie. Never seen it or the remake, but it's definitely not based on the remake like the PS2/Xbox/GCN era release of the same name was. Own that one, but it's been a part of my large backlog for years and has never been played. Doubt it's anywhere as good judging by YouTube videos of it in action.

Edited June 4, 2014 by Atariboy

[The Eyeball Mural]

Not counting the emulations of golden age games (Midway Collection, Namco Museum, Intellivision Classic Games, etc.)

 

 

10. Tekken 3

 

9. Blast Radius

 

8. Asteroids

 

7. R-Type Delta

 

6. Rollcage

 

5. Roll Away

 

4. Space Invaders

 

3. Lode Runner: The Legend Returns

 

2. Devil Dice

 

1. MediEvil

[buddpaul]

So, I'm too tired to list 10......... but:

 

1) Metal Gear Solid

2) Tony Hawk's Pro Skater

3) Driver

 

 

......fer sure!

[Metal Jesus]

 

3) Driver

 

 

......fer sure!

 

That first training level of Driver... oh dear GOD that was brutal! I remember trying to do to that handbrake turn over...and over...and over... again. Once you get past that, the game rocked!

[+wongojack]

 

That first training level of Driver... oh dear GOD that was brutal! I remember trying to do to that handbrake turn over...and over...and over... again. Once you get past that, the game rocked!

 

I never got past it, and as a result, I never returned to the game.