• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

PS one titles now on North American PS Store

Chris_C

Member
OokieSpookie said:
Tekken is not a fricken Sony game either, either is Resident fricken evil.
It fricken doesnt matter who makes them if they were on the PS.
(Though some games I am sure are past their license and would have to be renewed by Sony)

I'm fricken' eeeevil!
4d4uvxx.jpg
 
GreekWolf said:
I'm slowly beginning to notice a pattern emerging here. Each online service caters to a completely different demographic.

XBLA is for 30+ year old geezers. (primarily retro arcade titles from the 1980's and early 90's)
Yeah especially the current casual PC game ports and newly developed titles from the past year.

Virtual Console is strictly for Nintendo diehards, who cherish their 1st party titles above all other series and franchises.
Yeah it's great being able to play classics from the Nintendo TurboGrafx-16 and Nintendo Genesis.
 

hyp

Member
Chris Remo said:
Yeah especially the current casual PC game ports and newly developed titles from the past year.


Yeah it's great being able to play classics from the Nintendo TurboGrafx-16 and Nintendo Genesis.

GreekWolf's generalizations FTL.
 

Chris_C

Member
Chris Remo said:
Yeah especially the current casual PC game ports and newly developed titles from the past year.


Yeah it's great being able to play classics from the Nintendo TurboGrafx-16 and Nintendo Genesis.

I wonder how many XBLA titles have been released over the services 1 year lifespan. Personally I'm disappointed in it, the only title I've purchased has been Geometry Wars. I gave a lot of thought to Small Arms and might purchase the Micro Machines-y racer coming to it soon, but I really feel there should be a lot more content up there.

In a way I feel like MS was waiting for Sony and Ninty to hit the market with their services so they could "go head to head" which is a little odd seeing as how they should have taken advantage of the year head start. Sure that's not the case, but that's what it feels like.
 

Bebpo

Banned
After messing around with Crash 1 for a bit I have to say I am very impressed. These games look great, control great, have no load times because they are running from stick, and are quality games for six dollars or less. The day the PS point cards come out I'm all over Jumping Flash, Silent Bombers, and RE.

The only thing I wish they would add is the ability to create a quicksave at anytime. Sleep mode is nice, but what about if you want to get out of the game to do something else like connect to your PS3? Some of these old PS1 games didn't have save points all that often. ^^;
 

Ginko

Member
Hey Bebpo, why don't you try moving Crash to the PC and reloading it on the PSP memory stick, just to check if it's possible.
 

jiggle

Member
Bebpo said:
have no load times because they are running from stick,


That's the one aspect I look forward to the most, and well worth the price of rebuying many of the games i still own on disc.

HDLoader for PS1 :D
 

Chris_C

Member
Bebpo said:
After messing around with Crash 1 for a bit I have to say I am very impressed. These games look great, control great, have no load times because they are running from stick, and are quality games for six dollars or less. The day the PS point cards come out I'm all over Jumping Flash, Silent Bombers, and RE.

The only thing I wish they would add is the ability to create a quicksave at anytime. Sleep mode is nice, but what about if you want to get out of the game to do something else like connect to your PS3? Some of these old PS1 games didn't have save points all that often. ^^;

I was really hoping they'd added a quicksave feature. Would you say the games look better on the PSP's smaller screen? (I'm guessing yes).
 

Flo_Evans

Member
interesting. My PSP was 3.0, I don't think it copied over the game data. I still have too much space on there. Have to wait for the PSP to charge to update :(
 

Bebpo

Banned
Ginko said:
Hey Bebpo, why don't you try moving Crash to the PC and reloading it on the PSP memory stick, just to check if it's possible.

Just tried and everything works fine :)

Chris_C said:
I was really hoping they'd added a quicksave feature. Would you say the games look better on the PSP's smaller screen? (I'm guessing yes).

They look better, but the ghosting can really be an issue at times. Crash has a lot of black in the backgrounds and it can be annoying. Not a game killer though. Still lots of fun ^_^
 

kaching

"GAF's biggest wanker"
Downloaded Crash as well. Download speed was great today (500 Meg in 10 mins) which made the length of the install process to the PSP all the more laughable (15 mins).

But having it downloaded now, it works great. No noticeable performance issues with the emulation yet or audiovisual glitches. Stretching the video to fit the screen works well with CB. Load times are still there contrary to what Bebpo is saying, but they're just a few seconds (any idea how long it took to load CB on a PS1?).

Manual comes up instantly, easy to navigate, though I can imagine some manuals ultimately being tough to read on the PSP screen since they're just scanning them as jpegs and there is some artifacts.

Movement controls are mapped to d-pad by default, but can be reassigned to the analog nub, which I prefer. There's 4 or so types of control scheme to select from, which all involve preserving the face buttons but shuffling around the function of nub, d-pad and shoulder buttons.

PSP Sleep mode - perfectly supported.
 

Varshes

Member
Good news about being able to copy them to PC and reload, I grabbed Tekken 2 and now I'm getting Syphon Filter. :)
 

Bebpo

Banned
I don't think the load times are "there". I mean the game had load sceens between stuff and so it still has them but I never feel like it's loading. Just pop to the screen for 1 sec and pop to the level. I don't see it as an issue really.

One thing is that Crash, while holding up quite well (I think the Crash series is just as important as Mario 64 in the birth of the 3d platforming era), is UNFORGIVING in it's toughness. Sure you get tons of lives, but man I got to the last level of the first island and lost all my lives and I had to restart from the mid-boss like 5 levels back. Arghhh!

Also with the controls I switch back and forth. I use d-pad for 2.5D jumping and analogue for up and down 3D jumping or vehicle stages.
 

Lyte Edge

All I got for the Vernal Equinox was this stupid tag
I want pointcards. :(

I'd be all over Jumping Flash and even Biohazard (despite the DS version), but Sony just doesn't want my money, I guess. I hate how they don't have support for AMEX on the Japanese store, and the U.S. store won't take a Japanese AMEX card. SUX 2 B MII
 

Flo_Evans

Member
yeah its not on the stick :(

I get the classic PS splash then it locks up. It seems to have copied the bootloader but not the game data. Hmm and I see no optioon to re-install from the PS3. Have to download agian :(

Backing this shit up to my PC might be a good idea...
 

theBishop

Banned
Even though this system works surprisingly well, I fully expect the stories and news commentary to be all about complications during the download/install process.

The too-long PSP install time is sure to be hammered ("it took longer to install than it did to download!"), as will the license download ("WTF, why doesn't it do this automatically"). And of course, the crown-jewel in the hating will be the hefty requirement of the Playstation3 ("I'd love to buy theses games... too bad i can't find a PS3!!!").

I'm not saying these criticisms aren't completely valid, but when you go to message boards next week, it'll be all about the bad stuff, and nothing about how cool the actual feature is.
 
LOL WHAT

i just died on that shitty boss and got sent back to the beginning of the entire world?

and that was the last time he ever played crash bandicoot
 

Bebpo

Banned
Kobun Heat said:
LOL WHAT

i just died on that shitty boss and got sent back to the beginning of the entire world?

and that was the last time he ever played crash bandicoot

:lol

Yeah, old games that are unforgiving are sorta annoying these days to us modern weak-sauce gamers. I doubt I'll be playing Crash again at home, but if I do take it on a trip I can see myself giving it another shot.

PS. You died on the mini-boss!? :lol
 
consoul said:
FF7 was three discs, so a 2GB stick would handle it no problem.

I guess FF8 is going to sell some 4GB sticks then.

Okay, I guess this thread is as good a place to put this.

Disclaimer: This is basically a lot of guesswork which I'm sure is quite faulty. It would be nice to get somebody who knows more about Final Fantasy VIII from a software engineering perspective to comment.

No matter how cheap large-capacity pro-duo sticks are getting, it's a good idea to save space if you can. Obviously, from the size of these initial downloads, the state of the Playstation emulator for PSP is that it reads straight disc images straight from the original discs. However, I think it would be a good idea in a future emulator update to allow for some PSP media engine-specific processing to come into play to enable AVC, AAC, and image compression formats within the emulation.

To that end, I decided to try a little armchair detective work to see how small FF8 could theoretically get with modern compression schemes that the PSP is capable of decoding.

After a bit of futzing around with MEGui and commandline avs scripts, I concatenated together the ending FMV of FF8 (on the CD it's split into three video files) and compressed it into an MPEG-4 AVC video with AAC audio (which the PSP natively supports)

I had good quality results on the sixteen minute file (keeping in mind a certain chunk of it is scrolling credits for better or worse) at a filesize of 36 megs (the three original MDEC codec FMV files total 320MB).

If you'd like to check this video out on your psp I uploaded it. It should work find on a PSP--it did the last time I checked, with recent firmware, but it has some odd header information which might futz it up for desktop playback. Hit this link, unzip the files and put them within the appropriate AVC video folder structure on your PSP.

This works out to 2.25 megabytes per minute of FF8 FMV, although I did compress the audio at a high quality (around 130kbps VBR because I thought the ending music should have the bitrate to shine properly) so it could be even less than that. But let's assume that as a worse case. I estimate FF8's FMV to clock in at about 60 minutes total which gives us a total filesize of all the AVC-encoded FMV in the game at 135MB.

Furthermore, if FF8 is like FF7--and there's no reason to think otherwise. Audio and Video aside, the data contents are identical on each disc. That is to say, that all the assets and scenario sans FMV and "Eyes on Me" resides within each disc.

The fmv files on disc 4 take up exactly 373.63 MB. Let's round that down to 373.

The total size of the disc 4 cdrom is 576 MB.

Subtracting 373 from 576 gives us 203MB.

Add 203 to 135 and you have a downloadable game clocking in at 337MB. Big, but not outside reasonable memory stick capacity.

Further experiments.

A prerendered backdrop in FF8 is at 240p resolution and uses only 64 colours (doing a comparison A/B test in Photoshop) The image I used was a 320x240 still of a prerendered backdrop. The 2D image file format, TIM, on the Playstation is, by all indications, lossless and uncompressed, so I assumed file sizes would be analogous to a palleted BMP image.

Saved out to a 64 colour BMP file gives a size of: 172k

Now, let's try some lossless compression formats. The backdrop was of an organic, complex image without many like-colour areas for image compression formats, such as PNG, to save bits.

Saved out to a 64 colour GIF file gives us a size of: 41.7k (24% of original size)
Saved out to a 64 colour PNG file gives us a size of 39.3k (22.9% of original size)

If a system was implemented to store backdrops as PNG files, we could decrease the field image data to 22.9% its original size, which is considerable.

How much of the game data is prerendered backdrop? Now we get into conjecture, but here's a few clues:

A backdrop is not going to be a 320x240 image most of the time. It's going to be larger (say a long corridor that the camera pans down when you run from right to left) so let's say the average backdrop is 30% larger than the area onscreen at any time, so 172k * 1.3 = 223.6k per backdrop

A backdrop may have some small "foredrop" elements that are composited in front of the 3D models of your characters (tables, lampposts, etc) so let's make it 40% larger to include these images and their transparency masks. 172k * 1.4 = 240k per backdrop. I consider this fairly conservative.

But how many backdrops are there in FF8? Well there are exactly 579 prerendered backdrops. I know this because the Final Fantasy VIII: Ultimania book lists each and every one of them with an accompanying thumbnail in the best chronological order possible.

579 * 240k / 1024 = 135.7MB of backdrop image data on the disc.

Subtract 135.7 from 203 and you have 67MB for 3D models, worldmap, BGM, 3D battle sets, animation, textures, and scenario. This may sound too small, but keep in mind that the Ocarina of Time is only 32MB.

So, let's take that 135.7MB of 2D backdrop data, and apply the PNG compression to it.

22.9% of 135.7MB = 31.1MB.

So, to sum up.

AVC-encoded FMV = 135MB
PNG-compressed backdrops = 31.1MB
Other data = 67MB

This gives us a total of 233MB.

What are your thoughts?
 

Y2Kev

TLG Fan Caretaker Est. 2009
Bebpo said:
:lol

Yeah, old games that are unforgiving are sorta annoying these days to us modern weak-sauce gamers. I doubt I'll be playing Crash again at home, but if I do take it on a trip I can see myself giving it another shot.

PS. You died on the mini-boss!? :lol

:( I'm gonna wait till they are playable on PS3. It'll only be a couple of months...if like FF7 comes out on PSP, I'll have to splurge.

But I will have to contain the urge to play Crash and spend 100+ getting a 4gb memory stick.
 

DCharlie

And even i am moderately surprised
(I think the Crash series is just as important as Mario 64 in the birth of the 3d platforming era),

i said that on the gafcast too!
but i was taking the piss!
 
Started Crash Bandicoot about 45 minutes ago... at 11%. Why is this taking so long?

I honestly wouldn't mind if I could watch the Last Samurai on blu-ray while this is downloading, but I can't. :(
 

goodcow

Member
Leidenfrost said:
What are your thoughts?

Why fool around with altering the original game data and possibly screwing up the emulation?

Just do straight CD dumps. Memory is cheap, and Sony wants to sell more memory sticks anyway.
 

Flo_Evans

Member
well this is not too exciting yet. I could of visited most of the EBs in my city and found a used copy of tekken 2 (probably for cheaper!) by now.
 

rod

Banned
is there ANY word/rumour suggesting when we will be able to download ps1 games to psp without a ps3?
 
goodcow said:
Why fool around with altering the original game data and possibly screwing up the emulation?

This isn't ZSNES. It's developer-side emulation. They're going to be bug testing it anyway.
 

Fafalada

Fafracer forever
Leidenfrost said:
What are your thoughts?
You're completely right about data replication on multidisc titles - if you pack it all to a single storage unit, the size Will be reduced dramaticaly
It's less likely that Sony would go about converting video/audio formats - but regardless, people that believe FF download will span the size of 4 CDs are in for a surprise.

goodcow said:
Why fool around with altering the original game data and possibly screwing up the emulation?
Because reducing download sizes is beneficial for both parties, and to my knowledge emulation requires title specific modifications to work anyhow. PSP is a nice little machine, but full generic emulation of PS1 would be pushing things.
 

Surreal

Member
rod said:
is there ANY word/rumour suggesting when we will be able to download ps1 games to psp without a ps3?

Sony said around the new year for playing PS1 games on PS3. I imagine buying PS1 games through the PSP would be around that time. So... in Sony speak it's probably before March.
 

kaching

"GAF's biggest wanker"
Bebpo said:
I don't think the load times are "there". I mean the game had load sceens between stuff and so it still has them but I never feel like it's loading. Just pop to the screen for 1 sec and pop to the level. I don't see it as an issue really.
I'm getting load times of 3-5 seconds. Didn't say it was an issue personally but seeing as this crowd can be super-sensitive about load times, saying they're non-existent will just get you lynched later on. ;)

chinmonster said:
Are games taking a super long time to download for anyone else?
Like I said earlier, Crash took about 10 mins for 470 Meg to download, about 4 hrs ago. I wouldn't be surprised if the speed fluctuates though so my results aren't necessarily indicative of anything.
 
kaching said:
Like I said earlier, Crash took about 10 mins for 470 Meg to download, about 4 hrs ago. I wouldn't be surprised if the speed fluctuates though so my results aren't necessarily indicative of anything.

Heh. I think I might just quit for the night and try again tomorrow. I'm not so sure I want to leave the space heater that is the PS3 on all night...
 

Bebpo

Banned
I just had Crash umm... crash on me :( I jumped in a save point and nothing happened besides me disappearing. I could still bring down the overlay with lives/apples but I couldn't do anything. :\

I hope all the games don't suffer from random bugs and crashes :(
 

RuGalz

Member
Hmm I can't get it to work with emulated firmware. Oh well I'm just going to have to wait a bit longer.

On the other hand... Gotta love Sony allowing these games to be downloaded up to 5 PSPs. That means these games can cost a bit over 1 buck when shared...
 

kevm3

Member
$6 price for PS games is one of the best decisions I've heard in a while. Also, it really shows how absurd some of those Wii VC prices are. $5 for an nes game or $6 for a psx game. $6 for a psx game or $8 for a genesis/snes game? Hopefully this spurs Nintendo to lower their prices.

Can't wait until some titles I missed out buying on psx come back around...
jumping flash, suikoden 2, alundra... maybe thousand arms.
 

Bebpo

Banned
So I just beat the first island of the three in Crash (this game is ADDICTING) and I forgot how HARD it is. The final level on the island was harder than anything in NSMB and took me toooons of lives and continues :(

I don't know how I did it when I was young, but somehow I guess I was a much better gamer back in the day >_<

Besides the tough difficulty level, it's still one of the best platformers out there. As a huge fan of the genre having this on the PSP is a gem.
 

Wario64

works for Gamestop (lol)
You know, I never did play Crash Bandicoot...well I did but only at store kiosks.

Maybe I should grab this too


These PSOne downloads are so temping at $6 a piece...hopefully most games use this price point

RuGalz said:
Hmm I can't get it to work with emulated firmware. Oh well I'm just going to have to wait a bit longer.

Aww...I was assuming it'd work with the new Devhook
 

DarienA

The black man everyone at Activision can agree on
Flo_Evans said:
well this is not too exciting yet. I could of visited most of the EBs in my city and found a used copy of tekken 2 (probably for cheaper!) by now.

I bet you can't.
 

suikodan

Member
I have some questions.

Do you require firmware 3.0 to play PSOne games? (I guess yes)

And if so, anyone tried those games using Devhook5?

Syphon Filter was the best one (until the PSP version came out).

"WHAT ABOUT THE SERUM!?!?"
 
Top Bottom