Support NeoGAF

[mango drank]

I was thinking about Vagrant Story recently. Although I liked it back in the day, it always felt too big for its britches, constrained by the original PSX. The characters were too low-poly to represent the original character designs. Same for the epic gothic environments. The textures were too low-res across the board, for both characters and enviros. In gameplay, the framerate often dropped to single digits. The menus felt laggy. Loading and saving took forever. All in all, it felt like the devs ignored the limitations of the PSX hardware, and just barreled through, hoping their vision would come across intact. The result is a great effort and impressive in its own way, but too ambitious for the PSX, I say. It feels like it would've been a great candidate to have development move over to the PS2.

Years later, Matsuno and co would get a chance to execute on their lush, detailed aesthetic with much more fidelity in FFXII. Can you imagine how good VS would've looked, and how much smoother it would've played?

What other PSX games do you think tried to do too much, and would've worked better if the devs had moved over to PS2?

Bonus: Ico famously got its start as a PSX game, before Ueda decided the PSX was too limiting:

 

[trikster40]

Whoa, I never knew Ico started as a PS1 game. Crazy!

 

[cireza]

I love these games that push hardware to the limit. I actually prefer having them on the more limited hardware, than the following one, so I can fully appreciate the effort and optimization.

We had Virtua Fighter 3 on Dreamcast, but the game is unremarkable on the system. The Saturn version however would have been something unbelievable, without a doubt.

 

[Ikutachi]

Let's not forget the stellar FMVs that helped mitigate characters' low-poly representations in important moments.

 

[mango drank]

I love these games that push hardware to the limit. I actually prefer having them on the more limited hardware, than the following one, so I can fully appreciate the effort and optimization.

I thought about whether Vagrant Story was an example of a late-stage game that pushed the hardware to the limit, vs. one that tried to do too much, and I think it sits in a gray area. The artistic vision behind it is immense, and I think too outsized for the PSX. Square's art direction in general was amazing around this time. The Final Fantasy devs got around the limitations of the PSX hardware by using lots of pre-rendered backgrounds. Vagrant Story tried to go all-in on 3D, but ... I personally think it was too much for the PSX to handle faithfully and do the art direction justice.

VS feels like a downgraded port of a non-existent "main" version of a game on PS2. Like a gimped Wii port of a PS3 / 360 game, that YouTubers do side-by-side comparisons of and laugh at. I guess that's the question this thread is asking--what PSX games felt like they were meant to be designed for better hardware, but were downgraded and forced to fit on PSX, and the result feels compromised?

 

[93xfan]

Personally I would've loved to see jumping flash 2! on a PS2 as well. Playing that at 60 FPS would've been amazing!

 

[jshackles]

Opened up this thread to talk about Vagrant Story but it looks like OP already has that covered.

Koudelka is another that comes to mind - it was a pseudo-prequel to Shadow Hearts which looked great on the PS2. This game looks and runs pretty badly on the PS1.

 

[ReBurn]

I love these games that push hardware to the limit. I actually prefer having them on the more limited hardware, than the following one, so I can fully appreciate the effort and optimization.

We had Virtua Fighter 3 on Dreamcast, but the game is unremarkable on the system. The Saturn version however would have been something unbelievable, without a doubt.

It also could have sucked, vis a vis Virtua Fighter 2 on Mega Drive/Genesis vs. Virtua Fighter 2 Saturn. It would be nice if devs always kicked it up a notch on limited hardware but they don't always make the effort. Sometimes the vision is bigger than the capability and the newer platform is the right way to go.

 

[Kagoshima_Luke]

Driver

 

[Unknown?]

Driver

Was going to say Driver 2. It was fun but the system just couldn't handle it. Pop in was atrocious.

 

[ghairat]

The first Shadow Hearts game was originally developed for ps1 until they shifted gears towards ps2. And you can really see it when playing through the game. Legendary rpg series tho and the music is on another level

 

[mango drank]

Driver

Was going to say Driver 2. It was fun but the system just couldn't handle it. Pop in was atrocious.

Damn, the Driver games are great examples. They look like downgraded ports of GTA 3 I'm impressed they tried to make 3D open-world stuff like this work on the PSX, though.

 

[cireza]

Virtua Fighter 2 on Mega Drive/Genesis

Virtua Fighter 2 is actually very impressive for the MegaDrive. Porting a 3D game to the MegaDrive was going to disappoint whatever the result.

 

[The Hamburglar]

FF7. It wasn't until remake I finally realised what noruma was trying to do.

 

[Holammer]

Personally I would've loved to see jumping flash 2! on a PS2 as well. Playing that at 60 FPS would've been amazing!

There's a way to play it right now at 60fps, just emulate it under Retroarch with Beetle PSX and overclock the machine. Many games on the PS1 ran at unlocked framerates and that includes JF2 which runs at a buttery smooth locked 60. With higher resolution, perspective correct textures, maybe widescreen hacks; whatever your heart desires.

As for OPs point about Vagrant Story, it probably had a 2'ish year dev cycle, dumping most of the art assets and spending another 1-2 years on it would have been very costly. Releasing it on the PS1 when it had a mature install base was the right decision.

 

[Unknown?]

Damn, the Driver games are great examples. They look like downgraded ports of GTA 3 I'm impressed they tried to make 3D open-world stuff like this work on the PSX, though.

Kinda off topic but it's even more impressive they got it to run on GBA in 3D.

 

[alabtrosMyster]

I thought about whether Vagrant Story was an example of a late-stage game that pushed the hardware to the limit, vs. one that tried to do too much, and I think it sits in a gray area. The artistic vision behind it is immense, and I think too outsized for the PSX. Square's art direction in general was amazing around this time. The Final Fantasy devs got around the limitations of the PSX hardware by using lots of pre-rendered backgrounds. Vagrant Story tried to go all-in on 3D, but ... I personally think it was too much for the PSX to handle faithfully and do the art direction justice.

I think that if they made vagrant story on the PS2 it would have ended up being a completely different game--probably much worse for it--the camera would probably have moved closer to show us more of the amazing PS2 textures and texture filtering... or they would have moved the project to the PS2 as is and it would have felt lackluster to release a game limited like that on the new hardware.

 

[Lethal01]

Personally I absolutely loved how Vagrant Story looked on PS1 and I'm guessing if it waited for PS2 it would probably look way more dated and hard to go back to vs this.

FF7. It wasn't until remake I finally realised what noruma was trying to do.

What was he trying to do that you weren't able to see in the original?

 

[RoboFu]

I still LOVE the look of PlayStation 1 games. The dithered lighting and wavy textures.

 

[Alexios]

That's dumb, Vagrant Story is ace where it it as it is and the ps limitations added to it the way they tried to overcome them and convey what they wanted (so no they didn't ignore them as you say, lol, it was all they worked with). Decent tweet string about the techniques here (click on one to read more replies, just chose a few). FFXII has some of the character art style intent in some ways but little of the final charm. And you're overstating the flaws (ie it's primarily spell effects that bring the fps down, hardly affecting gameplay as it's paused at that point given the battle system, FF Tactics did similar but you don't set it as a game too big for the ps). They would not (have to) use these techniques on ps2 resulting in a very different game rather than your ideal exact same thing but fancier with snappier loading.

 

[mango drank]

That's dumb, Vagrant Story is ace where it it as it is and the ps limitations added to it the way they tried to overcome them and convey what they wanted (so no they didn't ignore them as you say, lol, it was all they worked with)

Bad choice of words on my part. I meant more that developers went in hoping their cinematic vision would come through intact in the end, but for me personally, the result is a mixed bag. The results are charming and surprisingly good, but they're clearly compromised, and strained. I appreciate the old refrain of hardware limitations being good for development, because it forces devs to be clever and efficient, but still--a little more hardware horsepower wouldn't have hurt. Re: FFXII, I think Matsuno leaving halfway through and the higher-ups at Square meddling with the creative process hurt that game's presentation. It could've been a lot tighter. For both games, it's hard to speculate, though. We got what we got--can't predict what would've happened under better conditions.

I ended up finding a good VS retrospective after I posted this thread, going over some of the making-of, so I already got some background on it, but those tweets are hella interesting too.

 

[Alexios]

Well the way you presented it it felt almost like faulting FF Tactics for not being on PS2 with "HD" hand drawn art like Odin Sphere or Muramasa instead of the chibi stuff, which would be nuts given what they did achieve with pixel art and the talented artists involved that were experts at it and such.

Also when I first played Vagrant Story it was like seeing the FF Tactics world up close in 3D (I mean, the maps were already 3D but yeah), with that same but darker and more mature art style and even the way the rooms were comprised of tiles and slopes with entrances and exits yet achieving an organic look.

I was actually just playing it recently and thought it'd be awesome if it got a Souls-like remake (as in the seamless gothic world and stuff like that, not copy mechanics exactly or anything) or sequel but only if they kept the art style/attention to detail exactly and found a way to make the combat unique, positional, etc.

Driver was ace as it was too and came long before ps2, might as well say every old game would be better with more power regardless of the year of release or something. Like hey we see how Tomb Raider or MGS can look now, shit on Tomb Raider and MGS as it was back then as inadequate? I guess I just don't get this deal...

 

[DonMigs85]

The Driver games were a bit too ambitious for PS1 as well. Perfect Dark was also a bit much for the N64

 

[Quasicat]

Yep, you said Vagrant Story. That's the first thing that came to mind for me as well. I remember picking it up and while playing on PS3, I kept changing the setting which smoothed the graphics out. It is a big difference, perhaps even more so than any other title.
Otherwise, there are parts of Majora's Mask and the original Shadow of the Colossus that runs so poorly on original hardware that I felt It was going to lock up at any time. Graphically they look fine, but the frame rate seems like it's in the single digits.

 

[mango drank]

Driver was ace as it was too and came long before ps2, might as well say every old game would be better with more power regardless of the year of release or something. Like hey we see how Tomb Raider or MGS can look now, shit on Tomb Raider and MGS as it was back then as inadequate? I guess I just don't get this deal...

Think of it like this: imagine Ken Levine had his vision for Bioshock very early on: the gameplay mechanics, the rich world and visuals, the water flooding everything, the water physics and interactivity, lots of bloom and lighting effects and particles, multiple enemies on screen, the voice acting, etc etc. Everything that he and his team managed to implement on the PS3 / 360 back in the late 2000s. But instead of releasing in 2007, imagine instead that he tried to implement all that stuff on the PS2, late-gen, 2 years earlier. Would it have been a playable game, decent-looking? Would the devs have employed clever hacks to wring the most performance out of the PS2? Would the result have gotten the gist of his idea across? Yeah, maybe. It'd be interesting to see. But I think many players of that time would've gotten the impression that Levine was trying to force the PS2 hardware to do more than it was capable, and that Levine had a bigger vision in mind at the start than what the PS2 was capable of, and that the result was definitely straining the PS2 hardware and was not an ideal fit.

Now, imagine that instead of making Bioshock for the PS2, he made it for the PSX instead, even earlier. Would the result seem more strained than the PS2 version? Would it seem more compromised? I'd say definitely. A fully-3D PSX Bioshock that tried to implement all the ideas of the PS3 version, but in a very gimped way, would very obviously be a bad fit for the PSX. I think the vast majority of people playing it would be able to get the sense that Levine's original vision far outstripped the PSX's capability. Contrast that to the hypothetical PS2 version, which would be in more of a gray area--some people would think it was fine, some people would see it as compromised.

PSX Bioshock is an extreme example to illustrate my point. I think that, at best, PSX Vagrant Story sits in a gray area. The same for some of the other examples that people have brought up in this thread: Driver etc. For VS, the optimizations and cheats the devs did to try to implement Matsuno's vision are admirable, but again, I think the game is compromised as result of trying to cram his original vision onto the PSX hardware.

Contrast that to something like MGS1, which you brought up: the enviros feels blockier than VS's, more simple and less lush. The character models feel less detailed. The cinematography isn't as skilled as VS's. In general, MGS1's execution doesn't suggest a grander vision on Kojima's part, that's crying out for more hardware horsepower. It's blocky and quaint, and the jankiness doesn't detract much from it--it feels right at home on the PSX. Meanwhile, the greater attention to detail and skill and vision that went into VS, all those things ironically make it seem burdened by the PSX's shortcomings: the wavy textures, the jankiness as the camera moves around in cutscenes, the giant texels, the low polycount. VS seems to cry out for more horsepower to realize its original vision. Is the final PSX result charming and skilled? Yes. Did the devs wring every ounce of power from the PSX? Yes. Does it have amazing pixel art? Yes. Is it a good game? Yes. Do I think it's compromised? Yes.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

You've got to be kidding me

 

[CamHostage]

Whoa, I never knew Ico started as a PS1 game. Crazy!

And it always amazes me how many sequences and technical features were in the PS1 prototype. The chandelier sequence is so much the same, and they're playing with lighting in so many interesting ways that PS1 didn't usually let developers dream about (it was enough work to just get gameplay and pleasing textures running; throw in a few lens flares and usually you were done.)

I thought about whether Vagrant Story was an example of a late-stage game that pushed the hardware to the limit, vs. one that tried to do too much, and I think it sits in a gray area. The artistic vision behind it is immense, and I think too outsized for the PSX.

Grey area for sure, and I appreciate the idea of the thread, but I actually thought the execution of the artistic vision was what makes Vagrant Story memorable, then and now. No game looks like that, with the PlayStation artifacts yet that incredibly clear graphic design and masterful technical work and the integration of flaws into the design aesthetic.

If it had switched from PS1 to PS2, maybe they would have further stylized the visuals to differ it from the FFs (if they were developing them concurrently), but transplanting that planned artwork for Vagrant Story onto PS2 would I believe make for a game that looked like, well, Final Fantasy XII, as you mentioned earlier. Some things would look nice, but it'd also be a little blurry and flat and pre-baked and just PS2-like, which still wouldn't completely do that Vagrant art justice. FF XII is a great-looking game (particularly the character models), but it looks like a good PS2 game, whereas Vagrant Story shows all its PS1 limitations but the sum looks like no game on any platform. Even when you throw modern filters and patches over Vagrant Story to smooth out the rough edges that are not so nostalgically pleasing (the framerate troubles aren't part of those rose-colored memories fans hold of it...), it's still a game you can pick out of a line-up as being distinct and captivating.

If there were ever a Vagrant Story 2, I think I wouldn't necessarily want it to look like the Vagrant Story artwork finally realized, in perfect next-generation detail and richness (though that might be cool too...)

...instead, I would like it to look like Vagrant Story.

(Sorry, I took so long to type that people piled onto Vagrant Story...)

 

[CamHostage]

Playing along with the OP's original concept...

This one is a bit off the beat, because it'd be a different game, but I always treasured the Walt Disney: World Quest Magical Racing Tour game as something to share with nephews or even just casual-gamer Disney fans who came over the house. For Disney collectors, it had the music, it had a lot of characters and park areas, it had tracks themed after the rides (with some iconic landmarks added in as track features, like a big drop down to the finish for Splash Mountain,) and it was just a nice Disney collectible that reminded you of a day at the theme park...

...BUT, it did take a lot of squinting and pretending to imagine these tracks as being something similar to the rides (the Dreamcast version really didn't help either.) If this was developed later for PS2, I would bet the tracks would be a lot more detailed and fun to recognize, with more defined iconography and bigger set pieces. Plus, maybe there would be an open-world version of the park to explore (like Kinect: Disneyland Adventures eventually did on 360.) Not a game that had to be made, on PS1 or PS2 or whatever, but for those who collect Disney or like having some Disney games around to loan and play at gatherings, Disney World Magical Racing Tour was a good disc to have on hand, and could have been more valuable as a PS2 game instead.

 

[mcjmetroid]

I would say Ape Escape would be my one. Another fairly ambitious PS1 game.
It was already way ahead of its time by being the first game to use Dual Analog control or at least be the first game that's built entirely around it.
that was a slight barrier of entry to some people.

Always a shame to me that Ape escape was never held up to the standard of Crash and Spyro. I think it's better than both. Had they waited and launched it with the PS2. I think it would be a mainstream hit today.

I never liked the art style of the sequels though.

 

[CamHostage]

Also, while I think it was a perfect game for PS1 (partly because it needed no graphic help, partly because you could so easily pop discs in and out,) for me Vib Ribbon would have been a perfecter-perfect game later on, but not on PS2, instead on PS3.

In the times of PS1, I did have a lot of CDs on hand to play and enjoy Vib Ribbon with (once I could get a copy, since it only release in Japan and Europe,) but by the time of PS2 I was obsessed with "l33t graphics" and playing DVD movies and just not that into music (also, I don't know if PS2 let you eject discs without booting to the menu?) By the time PS3 came along, though, not only were smaller games cool again thanks to digital distribution, but also I had stacked a ton of random music onto my PS3 HDD for custom soundtracks. So, I was ready for Vibri. Sadly, while Vib Ribbon did eventually release on PS3/PSP (and worldwide, at last!), it was a straight PS1 classic ROM and so it couldn't play MP3s. So close...

 

[mango drank]

This is why I like this place. You learn new things, your ideas get challenged, you're exposed to opposing viewpoints, and you get to think over things you'd never considered. (You bastards.) I'm seeing VS in a new light. Cheers, ladies and germs.

 

[mango drank]

I was actually just playing it recently and thought it'd be awesome if it got a Souls-like remake (as in the seamless gothic world and stuff like that, not copy mechanics exactly or anything) or sequel but only if they kept the art style/attention to detail exactly and found a way to make the combat unique, positional, etc.

Meant to reply to this earlier too: Bloodborne has always reminded me of Vagrant Story, for obvious reasons. I don't think anybody would complain if a VS sequel came out looking something like BB.

 

[ProgenitorCastle]

Whoa, I never knew Ico started as a PS1 game. Crazy!

You learn something new every day!