PlayStation Afterwards

Just over a week ago now Sony held a PS5 showcase which showed us games such as Final Fantasy XVI and many more including Spider-Man Miles Morales and SackBoy Big Adventure which we later found out after the showcase those two and Horizons sequel Forbidden West will be coming to the PS4 as well as the PS5.

 

This is a bit of a back track of the previous statements of new generation new games, with PlayStation head honcho Jim Ryan talking about how they've supported previous consoles in the past after the new one had released and that is what they're going to do again. 

I was curious, so I did some research on what did Sony bring to the PS1 for instance after the PS2 had launched and so on, as I could only think of a few games but not many.

Going through what I could find that Sony had published on the old console after releasing a new console is a tad interesting as we do see some big hitters that could easily be compared to Spider-Man Miles Morales at the time.

I'm in the UK but I used the North American dates as those seemed the simplest as PlayStation's have moved round in other regions for launch dates.

This might not be a hundred percent accurate and you may think of something I've missed.

 

Anyway the PS2 released in late 2000 and after that date from what I can find Sony published 34 games for the PS1. Looking at what was published out of the 34 games it does include four NBA ShootOut, five NFL GameDay games and oddly a bunch of Disney games such as Monsters, Inc. Scream Team.

You might be thinking those aren't very big games well Crash Bash, Spyro: Year of the Dragon and    Syphon Filter 3 are all rather decent.

Similar story for the PS2 after the PS3 launched in late 2006, the PS2 had 38 games published from Sony which again included nine Buzz, five EyeToy, five MLB The Show games. I can certainly see a pattern of sports and more family friendly games still coming out for the older console for those not moved on to the next gen.

 

This still doesn't mean the PS2 didn't get some big hitters, even though the PS3 was out the most famous and the first game I thought of when doing this was God of War II which came out four months after the PS3 did in North America and it doesn't stop there as the PS2 got things like SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Combined Assault, Wild Arms 5 along with a few games shared with the PSP such as Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier.

At the moment Sony are averaging 36 games on the previous console when the new one is out, well that's not the case with the PS3 even though it was getting a 10-year life cycle. Now I don't know if this is down to the PS3 being less popular than the PS1 and PS2 (PS3 still sold 89m) or the PS4 took off so fast that the PS3 didn't get many Sony published games as I can only find 11 with two being MLB The Show and Wonderbook games.

 

I feel there might be more than 11 games due to games on PSN that Sony published, yet out of the ones I can find there was still a rather big one and due to the PS4 not being backwards compatible, I know I didn't play it and that's Gran Turismo 6.

So yeah Sony have in the past supported the older console rather well even with the new system on the market with some big titles such as Spyro, God of War and Gran Turismo.

Panasonic 3DO in 2020 - My First Impressions

 

Yesterday afternoon I picked up a Panasonic 3DO from my local independent game shop. This is the first time I've owned a 3DO and one of a few relatively decent consoles I've never owned as well. 

That I was really curious to get my hands on this and I have some thoughts with my first day with the machine along with games I managed to get as well so far.

First the console, I like the look of it personally and nice to see the different connection options to connect to a TV that I had mine running via a Scart to HDMI adapter, decent in terms of picture quality all told.

The OS is basically a screen saver over and over, which is a tad annoying as to get to the saved data for games you have to use certain games or the sampler disc which I do have.

On the sampler disc is just a chap narrating going on about enjoying your new 3DO and what it can do like play Music CD's and VCD's with an adapter which only came out in Japan in the end. Does have 5mins of Batman the animated series which is good but overall this will be only used if I need to delete stuff of the memory. 

Controller has a super long cable, which was handy how I set it up as the power supply is attached to the console I had to put it close to an outlet. Controller is like a big SNES pad, which is fine part from the tiny d-pad.

Now on to the most imported part the games as this is a games console at the end of the day. First up is Starblade which has the honour of being the first 3DO game I've ever finished, Starblade is a port of the arcade game which has two modes on 3DO. First is Arcade Mode which looks like Star Fox with the graphical style of the low 3D polygons but really impressive for something from 1991, this is the mode I finished which takes about 30mins that I may have been annoyed if I bought this new for my 3DO being that short.
 

The other mode is the 3DO mode which adds textures to those low poly graphics. Which in practice looks impressive especially in 1994 yet everything now is grey and boring & harder to see that I prefer the low poly mode instead. The game itself is fun to play it's an on rail's shooter like a Star Fox but in First Person, just be nice if more than two levels unless you really want to chase high scores.

 

Next game I took a look at was Blade Force this has awful poppin and the box mentions how it runs in film like 24fps which I find hilarious as selling point where in 2020 people moan if a game 30fps, will say though the cutscenes with the characters are like the early Fallout games.

PO'ed, I did the first level and seems an okay FPS but the second level due to everything being purple I had no idea where I was going but gives me hope for Wolfenstein 3D which is a near perfect port.

Then the big'un which may have been a system seller back in the day Wing Commander III, I didn't play much but the FMV stuff is fantastic with Mark Hamill so far and the game bit wasn't bad either, can see me coming back to this one soon'ish.

First impressions are mixed as nothing part from Wing Commander III really stood out on why you maybe want one of these but with what I know about the 3DO if I can get my hands on the likes of D, Street Fighter II (like the best console version), FIFA, Road Rash, Gex, Night Trap from the 300+ games then it be a good time.

I can see why at one point this was deemed the best place for games especially for sports titles compared to the Mega Drive and SNES but it's in the same gen as the Saturn, PS1, N64 which will all blow it out of the water.

Feels it either came too late or to early depending on what you compare it to.

Phoenix Down used on Final Fantasy for Xbox One (and this blog)

Hi guys, I've not posted for a while as I was, unfortunately, doing a lot of lates and weekends at work along with going away on holiday that I've not posted much on here even the most basic of news such as what's coming out this week. 

I plan to get back into the swing of things starting with this exciting news from last week, thanks to a Nintendo Direct, where a bunch of Final Fantasy games were announced for the Nintendo Switch, not long after the Final Fantasy twitter account sent out a tweet about the upcoming games and announcing that a few of the games shown will also be coming to Xbox One and join Final Fantasy XV already on the console. 

The games coming include the now released Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition HD, World of Final Fantasy Maxima an enhanced version of the previously released title elsewhere, which will come to Xbox One on November 6th.

Then in 2019 four (or five depending on your view) games will arrive which includes Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy IX (the best one), Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster and Final Fantasy XII The Zodiac Age.

No word yet if the likes of Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster will get a physical release like it has on other consoles or will be digital only much like other Square Enix title NieR: Automata.

Get your Xbox codes and more here