PS1 PS1 Weird Games

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's icon TamagotchiTamaHero24 TamagotchiTamaHero24]

This goes for Saturn too.

What do you think made these systems get so many crazy, new, and weird games?

Me personally, I think it was CD’s. The fact that print costs were so low meant devs didn’t need to sell so many copies to make a profit. This generation may have been the peak of WEIRD because of it.


And thank god for that.

 

[Stingy Perry Stingy Perry]

Production costs has been lessen that gives the game devs enough budget to experiment and explore new mechanics and ideas.

 

[Glimbo]

The ability to create full 3D worlds was new and people wanted to experiment with the new possibilities. Production being cheap also helped since losses wouldn't be too great.

 

[MasterEn]

This goes for Saturn too.

What do you think made these systems get so many crazy, new, and weird games?

Me personally, I think it was CD’s. The fact that print costs were so low meant devs didn’t need to sell so many copies to make a profit. This generation may have been the peak of WEIRD because of it.


And thank god for that.

in addition to cds being cheaper, they also had vastly more storage space. 650 mbs to up to 800 mbs depending on the specific type in question.

 

[sun0wl]

Not an expert by any means, and my game history lore is rusty, but:
I agree and would add that in general, it just cost a lot less in terms of money and man hours to produce the average game back then.

Particularly for the PlayStation, I think it also saw a lot of these risky/out-there ventures due to the relative ease of development for the PS1 via the dev kit that allowed development on a PC (compared to the reportedly hellish programming difficulties the Saturn's architecture presented, and the difficulty of just getting a just getting green light from Nintendo for N64 development lol). According to wikipedia, people even made commercial games with Net Yaroze, which was substantially cheaper than the $15k dev kit console.

Indeed, along with the largest library, the PS1 may well have had had the widest variety of weird games of the generation for these reasons. (See: this ongoing thread lol) Perhaps some devs were more inclined to take risks with small investments. And companies flush with cash like Square seem to have just went nuts (much to the benefit of my childhood in gaming).

 

[DeusLatom]

i really think it was just a matter of its time, back when game development was new and fresh and not a corporate scheme, i mean you had game developers like Kazunari Yonemitsu wanting to make the most depressing and scary stuff just cuz they were sick of making happy SRPG games lmfao
Wish we could go back when they actually had the freedom to just make whatever they wanted

 

[jon2]

The times

The dawn of 32 bit was a few years after the end of the Cold War, optimism was at a high, production costs were being lessened by new technologies, ideas were blooming and most importantly, tropes weren't widely exposed and overused

There wasn't a 'been there, done that, got the t-shirt' cuz the t-shirt wasn't even made yet; you had to make it

It's the same with the '50s and '60s: war's over, let's make new ideas, the sky's the limit

Now give the gamers and devs that situation and carte blanche to make games, especially Japanese devs who had the culture for weird stuff (that kind of culture was already in place in the 1800s) and "pushing the envelope" was mild stuff...

 

[stealthRUSH stealthRUSH]

I'd throw 3DO Interactive Multiplayer. The future was uncertain, were full-polygonal games the next thing? Or full-motion video interactive movies? Edutainment software?

 

[Mago]

I mean before the PS1 there were already a lot of weird PC games being made. I think the weird Saturn and PS1 games were an extension of what was already being done on pc. Like LSD is considered the poster child for weird PS1 games but the guy who made it was already making pc games that were just as weird.

 

[Evaccaneer Doom]

This goes for Saturn too.

What do you think made these systems get so many crazy, new, and weird games?

Me personally, I think it was CD’s. The fact that print costs were so low meant devs didn’t need to sell so many copies to make a profit. This generation may have been the peak of WEIRD because of it.


And thank god for that.

Probably because no one cared for high quality graphics and that the higher ups weren't catching trends (gaming WAS the trend)
Also because half the Saturn was never translated. I still think had a lot of these games come to the West, they would've been met with... well 90's press on anything from Japan that wasn't cutting edge or fast

(shoutouts to the xplay clip explaining Digital Devil Saga lmao)

 

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's icon TamagotchiTamaHero24 TamagotchiTamaHero24]

I mean before the PS1 there were already a lot of weird PC games being made. I think the weird Saturn and PS1 games were an extension of what was already being done on pc. Like LSD is considered the poster child for weird PS1 games but the guy who made it was already making pc games that were just as weird.

That’s what I was thinking too. It’s less “Fifth Gen was weird” and more “low barrier of entry platforms have always been weird”.

Don’t think I don’t know about the UK “bedroom coding” scene, where all you needed was a ZX Spectrum, a floppy, a permanent marker, and a dream to make your goofy game come to life.

PC gaming to this day is still like this. For every game that gets media attention for running at 30 on a 5090… there’s another game right across the street that nobody knows about that’s weird and cool and will give you a memorable time.

Post automatically merged: Mar 3, 2025

The times

The dawn of 32 bit was a few years after the end of the Cold War, optimism was at a high, production costs were being lessened by new technologies, ideas were blooming and most importantly, tropes weren't widely exposed and overused

There wasn't a 'been there, done that, got the t-shirt' cuz the t-shirt wasn't even made yet; you had to make it

It's the same with the '50s and '60s: war's over, let's make new ideas, the sky's the limit

Now give the gamers and devs that situation and carte blanche to make games, especially Japanese devs who had the culture for weird stuff (that kind of culture was already in place in the 1800s) and "pushing the envelope" was mild stuff...

I’d like to branch off of this too, by saying that the excitement around 3D was a huge part of the aesthetic I’m thinking of. Everybody was figuring out AT THE SAME TIME how to make a 3D world feel like a world and not like a collection of polygons strung together. This resulted in tons of uncanny spaces in games that end up being very bespoke and interesting all this time later because they feel so alien to current gaming sensibilities. But, like, in a cool way.


Sometimes I need a Namco Museum from PS1 to get me going in the morning, you feel me?

 

[hembruh]

I think in respect to the Playstation itself, it had a lot of factors feeding into how it ended up with the library itself. you had the relatively low cost to make the disc's, the developer friendly hardware, it was the wild west for 3D gaming, and I think Sony being the new kid on the block they were probably more open to anything and easier to work with to get your game published on their console if it was strange or you were a newer developer than Nintendo or Sega.

It probably has my favorite console library for all those reasons, it has an insane amount of variety. lots of platformers, shooters, arcade style games and ports, collections, PC ports, adventure games, horror games, RPGs, rhythm games, experimental games. If you can think of something different, it was on the PS1 and there probably are at least a couple or a small handful of similar titles.