I Replayed These PS1 Classics, And They Are Still Perfect

The PS1 was the very first home console I ever owned. Alongside my Game Boy Color, resplendent in its bright purple, it was the system that really kick-started my lifelong love of gaming. Needless to say, then, I still have incredibly fond memories of the games I loved on it, over two decades later. While nostalgia inevitably plays a part in that, it’s also true that the system had a wide selection of bangers.

There are plenty of titles that, PS1 classics though they are, are all but unplayable today. On the other hand, I regularly replay my favorites from the system, and some of them are as much of a joy to play as they ever were. Your experience with each of these titles will vary, of course, but here are the PS1 classics that are still amazing to play for me.

Introducing Tactical Espionage Action To The Masses

When Metal Gear Solid arrived in 1998, many had never experienced the earlier Metal Gear titles. Fortunately, this new entry’s thorough contextualization, via lengthy cutscenes and a mission dossier, meant that it wasn’t really necessary to. If you wished, you could completely understand who Solid Snake was (context-wise, that is, as he’s an enigma by trade), where he was going and what the Shadow Moses mission was all about before ever selecting the New Game option on the menu.

The series’ stealth and CQC mechanics have come a long way since 1998, and there’s no denying how clunky and limited this title will feel if returning to it from the later entries. On its own merits, though, it tells a gripping and mature story, and is rife with legendary boss battles and setpieces. On my first playthrough all those years ago, I was confused by certain elements and it took a lot of trial and error to complete the game, but I know every area inside out now. It’s a wild ride that touches on so many themes still tragically relevant today, such as the dangers of nuclear weaponry.

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Crash Team Racing

Mario Kart’s Greatest Competition

The Mario Kart series may be beloved, but it has an awful lot to answer for. The trauma induced by a backwards-thrown green shell striking you on the last straight and sending you crashing back six places, for one thing. Spawning a great swathe of largely woeful kart racers, for another (South Park Rally being one of the most egregious offenders). One character who really took brilliantly to the genre, though, was Crash Bandicoot. Yes, Crash Team Racing was remade in 2019 as Crash Team Racing- Nitro-Fuelled, and I appreciated the great wealth of new characters, the Crash Nitro Kart content, and the fact that the game was even remade in the first place. For me, though, there’s a certain charm about the PS1 original that didn’t quite make it across to the remake.

This was the title that I fell in love with back in 1999. It has an imaginative array of courses that are themed well to fit the style of the series, and some of them have some quite fiendish twists and turns (Cortex Castle is one of the longest and probably my favorite). Items can have effects as devastating as those in Mario Kart, for the most part, but there is still considerable racing skill at the forefront. The power-sliding system, which requires holding one button to slide and timing presses of another to increase the ‘level’ of the boost when you release, is incredibly satisfying too. It’s a very well-balanced game, and with its adventure mode, has something relatively substantial to offer the lone player beyond CPU cups and time trials. When I returned to the game, I — yet again — nabbed every collectible from the adventure mode and challenged Nitrus Oxide to the rematch race. It’s still a blast, over 25 years after I first did so.

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Final Fantasy 9

Melodies Of Love, Melodies I Love

A lot of gamers have a good idea of their top ten favorite games ever, but have a difficult time selecting that number one slot. For me, there’s no contest: It’s Final Fantasy 9. When I started my very first playthrough, it took a little while to grow on me, but now, somehow, it seems to feel a little more magical with each new playthrough. It’s a tale of tremendous heart, from grandest tragedy (Bahamut’s attack on Alexandria) to the smaller, more personal moments (Zidane telling Garnet the story in the Black Mage Village’s inn).

Each time I return to it, I make sure to do so using a different strategy or party setup, and in my last run I wanted to focus on a character I rarely make use of: Quina. I know all about their utility, but they’re just never a party priority. This was why I made sure to collect every Blue Magic spell and have fun experimenting with as many of them as possible in battle. I even committed to learning more of the ins and outs of Tetra Master, which I’ve historically ignored because it’s so far from my beloved Triple Triad from Final Fantasy 8. With a fantastic soundtrack, great visuals for its time and a whimsical style that’s at odds with its sometimes very heavy subject matter, the charm of this game, its world, and its characters (dedicated hero Zidane Tribal central among them) seems timeless to me.

4

Resident Evil

Memorizing Every Room Of The Spencer Mansion

Resident Evil is another classic PS1 title that I wasn’t entirely on board with at first, but soon grew to adore. A lot of my reluctance was due to the simple fact that I’m just not very good with obtuse puzzles. An inventory full of odd things like an arrowhead, bag of herbicide and a broken shotgun (not necessarily all at once) leaves me wracking my brains, trying to remember which room I was in three quarters of an hour ago when I saw that thing that’s surely connected to this item. Then I finally do find the room, and it wasn’t. Nonetheless, my younger self muddled through, and I completed the game.

I’ve done so at least two dozen times since, between the remake and the original version (and even Nintendo DS port Resident Evil: Deadly Silence). Crude as it is visually, as woefully dated as its controls and delightfully awful voice acting are, the original version just got that formula so right the first time. What an atmosphere. This was the beginning of an iconic cast of characters that the series still can’t quite let go of, and as I replayed it once more, I remembered exactly why that is. There’s no danger of me getting lost anymore (I know this mansion and its surrounds like my own home at this point), but collecting those documents and slowly working my way through its shadowy depths is one of those annual essential replays for me. Whether another remake of the game is necessary, though, is one that fans will surely continue to ponder.

3

Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back

Pure Platforming Fun

I’m not always a 100%-er of the games I play. That’s mostly because there are just so many of them, and my backlog would be completely unassailable if I didn’t just complete a main story and move on a lot of the time. With platformers in particular, though, the physics can be so satisfying and the stage and challenge design so fun that I can’t resist. This kept me hunting every single Banandium Gem and Fossil in Donkey Kong Bananza, and whenever I return to Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, I just need all of those shiny gems. Again. There are some 3D platforming classics that are still very much worth playing, and Crash has been at the center of some in his time.

This is another title with which I prefer the original PS1 version over the later re-releases (the N. Sane Trilogy in this case). In its original guise, the game didn’t have Relics to collect, making 100% far more manageable and just plain fun. Of the original trilogy, this title has my favorite level design, with each one being just the right length and with many devious secrets hidden away for players to find. Crash’s moveset is simple but tested in lots of clever ways, with some of the secret routes in particular being a major challenge.

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MediEvil 2

Tangling With A Victorian Villain In This Classic Sequel

Sometimes, developers take a less-than-inspired approach to creating a sequel. Often, a game that has performed well enough to warrant one has a solid formula that fans are fond of, and changing it too much would be quite a risk. MediEvil 2 is a great example of a safe sequel. It’s set half a century after Sir Daniel Fortesque defeated Zarok and saved Gallowmere, but despite the huge change of setting to Victorian London, it’ll be very familiar to all who have played the first game. There’s an entirely different villain to defeat in the shape of Lord Palethorn. We don’t know how he procured Zarok’s staff, but he’s seen in the opening cutscene invoking a serious sense of deja vu by using its evil magic to reawaken the dead. Unfortunately for him, this meant that Sir Dan was revived alongside his zombified army.

The result is another action adventure with an eerie yet lovable vibe (think The Nightmare Before Christmas). The sequel often doesn’t get the same appreciation as the original, but I love the implementation of Jack the Ripper and time travel (to prevent his heinous deeds) via a time machine constructed by a mysterious professor who recruits Dan. Horror tropes from vampires in a spooky hall to Ancient Egyptian mummies and the dark, foggy streets of Whitechapel are embraced, and though the combat’s rather simplistic and essentially unchanged mechanically, it’s a silly and atmospheric hack and slash experience that I continue to adore.

1

Ape Escape

Monkey-Collecting Mayhem

Ape Escape‘s premise is the perfect launching pad for a madcap 3D platformer. The plot involves an eccentric old professor and two of his inventions: An intelligence-boosting helmet and a time machine. Local amusement park monkey Specter gets his hands on a Peak Point helmet, and it drives him to try and take over the past, present, and future with his fellow apes using the time machine. To prevent this, protagonist Spike uses the machine himself to pursue them. The goal of a stage is generally to catch a certain number of monkeys there using the Time Net.

I love the game’s sense of humor and the amount of character the monkeys display, and as a lifelong history buff, working my way from levels featuring dinosaurs all the way to those set in futuristic space stations is a joy. A lot of the stages are very large, like big platforming playgrounds, and as many times as I’ve played this title, collecting every monkey (in true Pokemon fashion) is irresistible. Some are out in the open and are easy to capture, while others serve as little puzzles. One might be behind a wall, for instance, accessible only via a tiny space, and you’ll need to steer your little RC car into the gap. Chasing them with it will spook them and flush them out. Some of the monkeys in a stage will be inaccessible at first, because different gadgets like the RC car and Sky Flyer (a propeller that allows for higher, longer jumps) are unlocked as you progress through stages. They’re all so fun to use, because the game’s control scheme was an innovative twin-stick affair (necessitating the then-still-novel DualShock controller). Utilizing them in clever ways to nab every monkey in the game is a blast, and a pleasure I’ve had so many times since the game’s original release in 1999. Later series entries would refine the formula, but somehow they never quite brought back the same magic for me.