When it comes to the Playstation I play, for lack of a better term, nothing but the hits: games that proved successful in America, Europe or Japan – with success being defined by membership in the Greatest Hits, Platinum or Playstation the Best lines of game re-releases. These games sold at least 150,000 copies – the number later grew and now, for the Playstation 3, the threshold for inclusion is 500,000 copies sold.
Initially this just seemed like a nice, gimmicky framework for a retro gaming series but as time went by I began to notice and think about why the games I play sold well in their day.
Obviously, different regions preferred different games: RPGs did well in Japan, high-profile action games in America, and Europeans enjoyed whatever the Americans liked, plus whimsical oddities. Of course this also reveals an odd trend where Americans will buy Japanese games in droves, but American games rarely do well in Japan: American consoles like the Xbox 360 will, in the future, also fail miserably in Japan. There are some notable exceptions to this trend we’ll see in the future.
All regions loved innovative games – and, as I expected, many of these games were innovative in one aspect but otherwise unremarkable or even outright awful.
It’s also interesting to consider who bought these games. It wasn’t just what we today would identify as “hardcore” gamers – absolutely no one in 1995 would have owned all the games I covered: it would be impossible, in fact, since not all of them came out worldwide.
Some were bought by people who got the Playstation on launch day, who read magazines and browsed the nascent internet presence of gaming news, who followed gaming eagerly. Yet other consumers were bored 12 year olds, or their relatives, who couldn’t tell apart a Playstation from a Nintendo; people who bought only Madden; those who could only afford a couple of new games a year and spent their money on high-profile releases they knew would last. It is harder to pigeonhole gaming’s past than I would have assumed.
Over the course of the Playstation’s first few months (all the games I wrote about thus far came out from September to December 1995) I’ve charted out a sketchy history of where it would go. We can already see a large variety of games; several games also created or redefined genres to work in three dimensions. We can see a sense of necessary invention that is characteristic of the period.
What we haven’t seen is any games with a focus placed on storytelling, and relatively few 3D action or platform games that didn’t take place in vehicles or in the first-person. These trends will arrive with the games of 1996.
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When a system has over a thousand games some notable titles slip through the cracks. Here I will go over the other games on the Playstation – ones that may not have been popular, but left an impact. And it should again be noted: I did not play the games mentioned below in this general history, so take my words with a grain of salt.
There were, in comparison to later years, relatively few games to cover here: of course, the Playstation was only around for four months in ’95. And unlike the Saturn or Nintendo’s system, most made their way to the United States.
Rapid Reload [dev. Media.Vision] was a shooter very similar to Treasure’s Gunstar Heroes; a Japanese-exclusive 2D platformer was Hermie Hopperhead: Scrap Panic [dev. Yuke’s], which featured 3D bonus stages. And speaking of platformers, in 1995 the 3DO’s mascot – Gex [dev. Crystal Dynamics; ported by Beam Software], a gecko who bounced through mediocre platform levels making not especially funny quips – made its way onto the Playstation, and I did play this one.
Why? No idea. As I’ve mentioned before I had a Playstation – but I got it around 1999, and quickly moved on to the Playstation 2. It’s part of why I chose to focus on this period: I have relatively few preexisting assumptions or nostalgic feelings towards these games.
In 1999-2000 I owned every Crash Bandicoot, Spyro and Final Fantasy; the typical games every Playstation owner played. Yet for some reason I also was obsessed with the exceptionally unremarkable Gex. I owned all of them, and I even went back and bought a copy of the original Gex, a game so old that it came in one of those strange longboxes Sony toyed with before jumping to standard jewel cases. Why? I couldn’t possibly say.
Another game I have played, yet one I can explain: first-person platformer Jumping Flash! [dev. Exact]. Jumping Flash! is the type of game whose faults you are willing to forgive because you know you will never see its like again: Jumping Flash! takes the player to dizzying heights yet manages to still be fun, providing creative twists on each level’s formula. Alas, certain levels remove the high jumping and replace it with tedious action that’s entirely indoors.
Anyway: 3D fighters failed to make an impression thanks to the hyped yet poorly received Criticom [dev. Kronos] and robot fighter Zero Divide [dev. Zoom]; Namco’s Cyber Sled, essentially a 32-bit Combat, let you pick between the original arcade mode and a slower “textured” mode; Geom Cube [dev. Technos] tried to bring Tetris into three dimensions; and strategy title X-COM: UFO Defense [dev. Microprose] was ported to consoles.
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And now 1995’s best Playstation games.
Unlike the Saturn, I’m including some games I didn’t review. This won’t happen in future years; I just had a relatively thin slate to choose from. I have played Jumping Flash; however, I didn’t play one of the games up for a graphical award – but since it’s a cosmetic award, I don’t really need to play it. And, again: thin slate of games to choose from, and these awards are meaningless anyway.
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
The nominees are…
- Arc the Lad
- Jumping Flash (no review)
- Twisted Metal
The epic RPG score of Arc the Lad; the zany sounds of Jumping Flash; the ominous, Christmas-tinged themes of Twisted Metal.
And the winner is…Twisted Metal.
BEST LEVEL DESIGN
The nominees are…
Elegant 2D platforming; gravity-defying worlds in the sky; and the evolving worlds of Warhawk.
And the winner is…Warhawk.
Warhawk’s levels aren’t consistent, yet when they work, the twists they take are inventive.
BEST 3D GRAPHICS (TECHNICAL)
The nominees are…
- Ridge Racer
- Warhawk
- Wipeout
And the winner is…Wipeout.
No, I didn’t really care for Wipeout. Yet it’s the Playstation game from 1995 whose visuals have best withstood the test of time: the strongest technical achievement of its day.
BEST 2D GRAPHICS (TECHNICAL)
The nominees are…
- Arc the Lad
- Hermie Hopperhead: Scrap Panic (no review)
- Rayman
And the winner is…Rayman.
Was there any competition? The large, colorful sprites of Rayman looked fantastic then, and still look fantastic today.
BEST ART DIRECTION
The nominees are…
- Jumping Flash
- King’s Field
- Rayman
A collection of quirky platformer levels; a foreboding maze; a fanciful 2D world.
And the winner is…Rayman.
The world of Rayman displays more thematic consistency than that the toybox feeling of Jumping Flash! And while King’s Field does fun things with its island maze…it’s still a maze and gets old fast.
BEST STORYTELLING/NARRATIVE
No Award.
Like with the Saturn, no Playstation game told a particularly memorable story this year. Besides the RPG Arc the Lad relatively few games told a story at all. This will change next year when more strongly narrative-focused games arrive.
PLAYSTATION GAME OF THE YEAR – 1995
And the nominees are…
- King’s Field
- Rayman
- Tekken
- Warhawk
A gorgeous 2D platformer; a new style of fighting game; a difficult dungeon-crawler; and an inventive flight game with a hilariously silly story.
And the winner is…Rayman.
FIFTH GENERATION GAME OF THE YEAR – 1995
- Astal – Saturn Game of the Year
- Rayman – Playstation Game of the Year
The overall best game of 1995 was…well, Chrono Trigger. But the best game from the then-newest console generation was Rayman.
At the dawn of 3D, the year’s two best next-generation games…were 2D platformers.
Astal is less traditional than Rayman and just as beautiful, yet Rayman is the more perfectly tuned experience. Difficulty may be inconsistent, but Rayman feels like a coherent whole.
Unsurprising, really: it takes time for developers to become skilled with any new system. But a system that completely revolutionizes the way they have to design games? Developers of 2D games could lend all their expertise to their projects, instead of being forced to both develop a game and relearn everything they know about game design.
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So that’s it for 1995: it took me way longer than I anticipated, but I’m already ready to proceed with the games of 1996.
Once I play them, of course. I need to leave time to play games before I can review them.
I can’t give a definite date for this series’ return but this blog will remain active in the interim. The first review when 32 Bits does resume will be of Hideo Kojima’s visual novel Policenauts and the simulator A-Train; both part of the Playstation the Best line of Japanese best-sellers. So is Warp’s real-time experiment D, which I’ll be playing alongside first-person shooter Alien Trilogy, popular in America and Europe.
And then the first truly high-profile game I’ll be playing for this series: Capcom’s Resident Evil, a massive hit basically everywhere.
That takes us through March 1996. What’s next? My exploration of the rest of 1996 will feature Crash Bandicoot and Tomb Raider, Suikoden and Persona, Cool Boarders and Jet Moto – plus unknown games, popular in their day but forgotten completely by modern audiences.
In the first season of 32 Bits I played unknown games that turned out to be masterpieces – such as Astal – and unknowns that turned out to be unbearably awful – like Loaded. And yet others that proved justifiably forgotten.
What categories will the unknown games of 1996 fall into? There’s only one way to find out – and until then, enjoy this Namco promotional video where some guy gets far too excited about Ridge Racer:
Cultural Fragments 