Suits wrote: ↑May 20th, 2020, 7:20 pm Today I bought a PC-Engine CD ROM2 and interface unit.

I'm very pleased with myself.

That's awesome. Nothing more exciting than having an entire console's library suddenly opened up to you. Looking forward to seeing more!

BaileyBoy wrote: ↑May 20th, 2020, 9:18 pm Nothing more exciting than having an entire console's library suddenly opened up to you.

Yeah man, so much to learn, research about and play, I love it.

Yeah, there is more to the library than Rondo of Blood alone. I think you're bound to discover some new favourites.

Excellent score!

Pomping World, huh? I thought I remember that name from an import section of an old magazine... yet another name for Pang, besides Buster Bros.

Michiel K wrote: ↑May 20th, 2020, 10:26 pm Yeah, there is more to the library than Rondo of Blood alone.

I’ve purposely not mentioned that game , even though I’d be lying if I said the majority of my interest in the console wasn’t based around my current infatuation with that game .

But yeah, clearly there’s way more to it than just one game, so let the journey begin.

Once it’s back from being serviced .

Spoiler: show

Original PlayStation advise wanted!

After tracking the project for years, and following much deliberation, I’ve pre-ordered a Polymega.

Quick bit of context - for those unfamiliar, Polymega is basically a high-end, region-free, modular retro console that plays the original physical games of a variety of disc-based systems out of the box, and cart-based systems using plug & play add-ons. There’s no firm release date yet although based on recent updates it’s not far away and probably looking like late Q1 2020.

They have missed projected dates already of course, and I had previously been pretty sceptical about the whole thing. However, at E3 this year John Linneman of this parish got his hands on pre-release hardware and came away very impressed (https://youtu.be/6p5UXKLniRQ). I’ve been hovering over the pre-order button ever since!

My primary motivation is to have my 50-strong Saturn collection easily accessible, all in one place, and guard against the eventual demise of my native hardware.

The secondary motivation however is to start small and sensible collections (initially at least!) for the other systems the Polymega supports out of the box, including PS1, Mega/Sega CD, TurboGrafx CD, and Neo Geo CD.

As a devoted Saturn kid there was so much that I missed on the PS1 that this is where I’m going to start, and I’d love some advise on reasonably priced (£50 max!) titles that are worth picking up.

I’ve crawled lots of ‘best ever’ and ‘hidden gems’ lists of course, but recommendations from the ever-knowledgeable forum crew would be greatly appreciated!

Back in January I asked everyone for their PS1 recommendations (see hidden post above!) as it was a system I planned to start exploring having pre-ordered a Polymega, and having missed out on much of its library as a Saturn owner back in the day.

Many of you kindly obliged, and with my Polymega now about 6 weeks away (6th July - very excited!) I’ve recently been all over ebay trying to build up a small PS1 library ready to start having some fun with when it arrives (along with my rather less small Saturn library of course!).

When I get in an ebay mood I can go off the deep-end a bit, and the below have all been purchased over the last 3-4 weeks. With the count now at 15 games I have turned off all my ebay notifications and have had a word with myself - no more! For now…



It’s been really interesting exploring the world of PS1 collecting actually, and by & large it’s a pretty cheap system to collect for. It was obviously hugely popular with many games having massive print runs, plus if you can shop for copies from any region then something that may be rare and expensive in one may not be in another. I picked up the vast majority of what you see here for between £5-£15, with only a few between £20-£30, and my one extravagance being Xenogears at £60.

I also never realised just how many PS1 games, including many RPGs, never actually made it over to PAL territories. Xenogears, Chrono Cross (I’ve had to pick up US NTSC copies of both), Final Fantasy Tactics, Parasite Eve (although we got PE2!), Valkyrie Profile, Brave Fencer Mushashi, Tactics Ogre….the list goes on!

I’m sure it’s to do with the complexity/cost of localisation vs expected sales in each European country, but it’s a shame that with an English translation done for the US market that they didn’t at least see releases in the UK and Australia. Seems like the PAL market really got stiffed back then!

Nice, I just finished RR4 (NTSC-J like the one you have there) with the NAMCO JogCon controller and had a blast with it over a few nights.

Great little adventure you’re on there dude .

Love this. Man, to play some of those games for the first time, you're going to have an absolute blast. Would love to hear about your impressions as you go. Keep us posted!

Suits wrote: ↑May 21st, 2020, 2:42 pm Nice, I just finished RR4 (NTSC-J like the one you have there) with the NAMCO JogCon controller and had a blast with it over a few nights.

Great little adventure you’re on there dude .

Yeah I saw your JogCon posts Suits - it's a beautiful thing! I was very tempted to pick one up, and may still do it if I really fall in love with RR4. One of the games I'm most excited about certainly.

BaileyBoy wrote: ↑May 21st, 2020, 2:52 pmLove this. Man, to play some of those games for the first time, you're going to have an absolute blast. Would love to hear about your impressions as you go. Keep us posted!

I'm really looking forward to it, and will definitely post some updates and opinions!

With a couple of exceptions I've never played any of these, so it's going to be fun exploring them. The only ones I've actually played quite a bit already are Wipeout 2097 and Heart of Darkness. My Wipeout 2097 experience was the Saturn version which is a good port but acknowledged to be inferior to the PS1 original and lacks the licensed soundtrack. Heart of Darkness I had on PC at release, and it's got some lovely animation and a great orchestral score, so just looking forward to another play-through of that (and only cost £6!).

2097 is a fantastic game. Make sure you check out Wipeout 3 SE at some point too. Best game in the series in my opinion, they never quite got the physics right in future entries.

BaileyBoy wrote: ↑May 21st, 2020, 4:35 pm 2097 is a fantastic game. Make sure you check out Wipeout 3 SE at some point too. Best game in the series in my opinion, they never quite got the physics right in future entries.

Ok, interesting! I'd not heard of the special edition actually. Have just done some reading and it sounds like something I should be picking up, as I'm a fan of the series (just when I think I'm done I get sucked back in!).

Having a quick look on ebay it's obviously a relatively rare version of the game, with sold prices between £25 - £50. I paid £10 for a good condition copy of 2097. There's actually a double pack bundle of Wipeout 3 SE and Destruction Derby 2 that seems to go for cheaper than Wipeout 3 SE on its own, probably because the artwork and disc aren't as nice and some people place a lot of value on that. I've noticed that original 'black bar' releases of PS1 games go for more money than the platinum re-releases for example.

Crazy collectors (of which I am one )

Obviously value is completely relative but it's well worth the money. It looks astonishingly good for a PS1 game and they'd perfected the gameplay by this point. One of my favourites on the system.

Sinclair Gregstrum wrote: ↑May 21st, 2020, 4:01 pm Yeah I saw your JogCon posts Suits - it's a beautiful thing! I was very tempted to pick one up, and may still do it if I really fall in love with RR4. One of the games I'm most excited about.

I’d be more than happy to drop in a box and post it to you if you wanted to try it - like I said, it really elevated my enjoyment of the game.

Just let me know if you fancy it .

Sony Europe had a policy where you couldn’t publish on the platform in Europe if you didn’t provide minimum French and German alongside the English IIRC. Something like that anyway.

Very few Japanese developers had the resources to do anything other than (a usually quite weak) English translation, so no PAL release.

These days you’d be hard pushed to find a publisher that doesn’t do at least EFIGS alongside the Japanese, but there are a lot more companies out there that specialise in localisation now than there was in 98. (And even in NTSC land I think by the time the PS2 came along Sony US insisted on French for the Canadian market)

Wonderfully insightful post.

If you're going back to PS1 games, Gregstrum, please give Silent Bomber a look. It was one of the greatest action games on the console. Woefully overlooked when it's come to re-releases or remasters. Not even available on PSN other than in Japan. It's really a fantastic game, almost like an early Platinum game. There are some chancers having a laugh putting it up for £100+ on Amazon marketplace but it's easily available for under a tenner.

https://www.cultureofgaming.com/hidden- ... omber/amp/

Alex79uk wrote: ↑May 22nd, 2020, 9:46 am If you're going back to PS1 games, Gregstrum, please give Silent Bomber a look. It was one of the greatest action games on the console. Woefully overlooked when it's come to re-releases or remasters. Not even available on PSN other than in Japan. It's really a fantastic game, almost like an early Platinum game. There are some chancers having a laugh putting it up for £100+ on Amazon marketplace but it's easily available for under a tenner.

https://www.cultureofgaming.com/hidden- ... omber/amp/

Seconded. I've not returned to it since release but I loved this game at the time, it's very good.

I've been playing it on Vita a bit, it's still really fun

Alex79uk wrote: ↑May 22nd, 2020, 10:43 am I've been playing it on Vita a bit, it's still really fun

It's a shame we haven't seen further iteration on it's indirect attack style of gameplay, it was such a satisfying system. I'm sure there must have been something since, probably in the indie space but I'm struggling to call anything to mind

Alex79uk wrote: ↑May 22nd, 2020, 9:46 am If you're going back to PS1 games, Gregstrum, please give Silent Bomber a look. It was one of the greatest action games on the console. Woefully overlooked when it's come to re-releases or remasters. Not even available on PSN other than in Japan. It's really a fantastic game, almost like an early Platinum game. There are some chancers having a laugh putting it up for £100+ on Amazon marketplace but it's easily available for under a tenner.

https://www.cultureofgaming.com/hidden- ... omber/amp/

I actually very nearly picked up a copy of Silent Bomber as I'd heard it was excellent, but then I read about a game-breaking bug in the PAL release and it put me off! Apparently at the end of level 11 the game black-screens and you can't progress. It's a PAL-only problem and it's not every copy with the issue apparently, but it is pretty common - one guy bought the game fours time and it happened every time!

I'm keeping an eye out for an NTSC-U copy though as the game looks fantastic! If one doesn't appear I may just roll the dice and pick up a PAL version, as like you say it's not expensive at all.

Flabyo wrote: ↑May 21st, 2020, 9:56 pm Sony Europe had a policy where you couldn’t publish on the platform in Europe if you didn’t provide minimum French and German alongside the English IIRC. Something like that anyway.

Very few Japanese developers had the resources to do anything other than (a usually quite weak) English translation, so no PAL release.

These days you’d be hard pushed to find a publisher that doesn’t do at least EFIGS alongside the Japanese, but there are a lot more companies out there that specialise in localisation now than there was in 98. (And even in NTSC land I think by the time the PS2 came along Sony US insisted on French for the Canadian market)

That's really interesting, and a big shame as Europe seemed to miss out on a lot of great games thanks to that policy! Its effects are also still being felt today in fact. You can buy Xenogears on the US PSN for $10, but it's never been released on any PSN store in Europe because no PAL version exists. There are lots of other examples of this too. Not sure why they couldn't just put up the US versions of these games at this point, but for whatever reason they're not doing it!

Thanks for the insight Flabyo!