The BEST PS1 Game Facts on YouTube! (Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Metal Gear Solid + More)

[Music] did you know in crash bandicoot 2 the lab assistant enemies are referred to as ass in the game's data although this was clearly an abbreviation of assistant the humorous side effects of the shortening weren't lost on developers the file for one lab assistant was even named ass banger in its sequel crash bandicoot warped developers went one step farther naming the enemies things like and and these aren't the only lewd tidbits from the game's development when the developers at naughty dog started working on a 3d platformer they jokingly referred to it as the sonic's ass game this was due to how the camera would always follow the main character's backside the team worked around this problem in several ways by having the character start out facing the screen by including the 2d styled side-scrolling segments and by adding levels where the character runs toward the screen the game's villain neocortex was inspired by the brain from the cartoon series pinky and the brain for the game's hero naughty dog wanted to take a cute but lesser known species of animal and turn it into an iconic character like sega had done with sonic the hedgehog they narrowed their choices down to a wombat a potaroo or a bandicoot the game's working title was willy the wombat although they considered this too dorky they eventually came up with the name crash bandicoot based on the way the character crashed through boxes a marketing agent from the game's publisher universal wanted to change the name to wuzzle the wombat or ozzy the otsel to keep the name they came up with the entire naughty dog team went to the offices of universal interactive and threatened to abandon development of the game unless they agreed to call it crash bandicoot crash's design was largely determined by technical limitations of the playstation he was colored orange because it contrasted with the greens and browns in the environment which is also why there's no lava themed levels in the game he was given a light colored chest and spot so that players could easily tell which way he was facing black gloves so his hands would show up against his body when seen from the side and a large face so his expressions were easily read even at a low resolution in order to capture a cartoony vibe the programmers used a technique called vertex animation which could be used to create animations much more fluid than the rigid skeleton animations used by other games at the time while this allowed for characters to be easily squashed or stretched the technique itself seemed impossible to achieve on the original playstation until naughty dog invented a method of compressing the animations the game also used so many polygons that designers had to think of ways to hide them so the playstation didn't have to render them all at the same time this eventually led to the game's levels being designed as narrow and closed corridors when crash bandicoot was unveiled to the public its visuals and gameplay were deemed so impressive by industry members that false rumors spread that the demo was faked some developers even implied that sony concealed larger more powerful computers behind their booths to run the demo others believed that naughty dog received secret documents from sony that contained hidden technical information about the playstation while crash bandicoot took up all available space on the cd approximately two-thirds of the game's total size is taken up by a file with random numbers that serve no purpose by putting this file at the center of the disk the actual game data was pushed to the outside of the disk because the outer area of the disk spins faster than the inner area load times are reduced making the game's file size larger also helped deter people from pirating the game while working on the game's music the team's producer suggested foregoing a musical score in favor of what he called the urban chaotic symphony this would have consisted of sounds like grunts honks bird calls and fart noises being played at random the idea was rejected and the game received a traditional soundtrack during the process of localizing crash bandicoot for japan sony requested that several of the songs be changed according to the game's composer josh mansell they felt that the boss rounds needed to sound more video game-like the only reference they gave was music from the main street electrical parade at disneyland my favorite comment was about the original tana boss round music it roughly translated into the sound of the guitar mixed with the tree imagery is too nostalgic sounding i'm still scratching my head with that one this isn't the only odd change that's been made to the series in japan when the first game was being demonstrated to sony japan their executives reacted negatively to crash's design in response the presenters from naughty dog quickly redrew their artwork of crash they gave him black pac-man-shaped eyes made his spiky hair smaller and closed his mouth to make him look less aggressive altering content to suit a japanese audience was a regular occurrence throughout the series crash has a death animation when he gets crushed and flattened into his shoes naughty dog was asked to alter this animation for the japanese release as it was too reminiscent of an at-large japanese serial killer known for beheading his victims the japanese version of crash bandicoot warped also included several full motion video clips that were not present in other versions of the game several games in the series include a japan exclusive change where aku aku would provide the player with gameplay hints when they picked up a mask throughout the history of crash bandicoot there have been many games that never saw the light of day in 2004 magenta software pitched a title called crush bandicoot this game would have introduced the titular character crush an evil twin of crash as the main character while cortex would serve as the villain it would have featured an array of vehicles for crush to use in open world sci-fi themed environments but the publisher ultimately passed on the idea following the release of crash twinsanity traveler's tales put together a series of proposals for a game starring neocortex under the tentative titles of cortex chaos and the all-new cortex show the first iteration of the project revolved around the concept of having cortex command a group of miniature clones to perform tasks such as collecting items or forming a bridge similar to nintendo's pikmin games the second version of the pitch featured a story where cortex was kicked out of the evil scientists league due to working with crash and crash twinsanity and cortex would then have to defeat the league's other members the game's levels were based around evil scientists from past games in the series as well as introducing new characters such as a mummy named entombed a clown named entertain and a scientist with plants for hairs named entangled radical entertainment began work on a new game called crash landed on the heels of crash mind over mutant intended for release on ps3 xbox 360 wii and ds crash landed would have been a retelling of crash's origin story as he went on an adventure to rescue his fellow bandicoots it would have also introduced a new mechanic whereby the player could combine items they found to create new weapons and upgrades levels would have been semi-linear with optional areas to explore and would have featured a day night cycle in weather effects the game spent around two years in development and included plans for a cross-promotion with mcdonald's in the kart racing spin-off game however in 2010 radical entertainment suffered a series of layoffs and crash landed was canceled without ever being formally announced did you know crash team racing originally had nothing to do with crash bandicoot whatsoever the game's developer naughty dog had a three-game contract with universal interactive for the crash series and by the end of the deal their relationship wasn't as solid as it once was universal received more money for each crash game sold and naughty dog only received a fraction of the profits for all of their work management issues coupled with the fact that they told universal they wouldn't renew their contract after crash 3 charged universal to respond spitefully development of crash 3 literally took place in universal's hallways hardly adhering to the contract's required office space the team at naughty dog would often work 20 hour days with no weekends and universal refused to pay for the air conditioners after hours which led to servers shutting down in the la summer heat after finishing crash 3 the team parted ways with universal and soon begun work on a racing game that started out with generic block-headed characters the team took their game engine and presented it to sony who were keen on making the game a crash title the two companies reached an impasse with naughty dog only willing to make a crash game if sony obtained the rights from universal in the end sony managed to secure the rights with naughty dog co-founder jason rubin saying that it was a good move that benefited everyone the team then decided to have a final take that moment with their bosses at universal the naughty dog team got rube in a remote control car for his birthday and one weekend when it was just the team at the studio they took the car to universal's conference room and drove it around the table needless to say universal were furious when they came into work that week but the team found it pretty funny the team internally referred to the game as crash racing and crash cart sony's marketing team came up with the crash team racing name but naughty dog would simply refer to it as ctr after the name was chosen according to ruben the entire development process of the game was eight months and six days he also said it was one of the most fun games he'd ever tested but one of the toughest to develop we reached out to former naughty dog developer rob titus who gave us some details about the game's production for four-person multiplayer ctr's engine would downgrade the character models to achieve a playable frame rate the engine used for the game was only used for ctr and let the team create large looking textures that were actually made out of much smaller ones the sand on the beaches for example are made out of 32 by 32 pixel textures that are aligned to make what looks like 128 or 256 pixel textures this allows for more detail without eating up the system's two megabytes of memory a problem that plagued the game in several other ways much of what the team learned in this engine would later be used for jack and daxter which was in its early stages during ctr's production there were a number of ideas that didn't make it into the final product due to either system limitations or the tight schedule characters like polar and pura were intended to play in a single cart together but ended up being split into two races both komodo brothers were planned in the game as well but only komodo joe showed up in the final game the starting lines were originally unique for every track but it was decided to use just one design for all the tracks not only did the team not like how they looked but having varied starting lines was inconsistent and could impact gameplay titus having created the title's tracks also made a shorter ice track by reusing assets from the other snow levels in the game the unused track formed a figure eight and took roughly a day to put together according to titus the level was 98 finished but there wasn't enough time for the team to debug it and test it properly so it was shelved during ctr's early prototype stage the team also created a replica of crescent island from diddy kong racing to see if they could make a stage of that scope on the limited playstation hardware it was only ever meant to be used for testing but it's believed to still exist on one of the studio's servers since naughty dog knew ctr would be their last crash game they planned to kill the franchise using the main villain nitrous oxide by making something ridiculous like an alien as the antagonist they figured people wouldn't take the game seriously and move on from crash but to their surprise the plan backfired ruben said we actually tried to kill crash in ctr we said what won't anybody believe because this was our last game let's put aliens in we'll bring in an alien no one will like crash after that because there's an alien this will be the end we've jumped the shark the alien came into ctr everybody loved it for years rumors persisted that oxide could be unlocked in the game but he was actually never intended to be a playable character according to naughty dog president evan wells the team briefly considered the idea but it all came down to technical limitations of the playstation his racetrack oxide station is much bigger than the other tracks in the game to accommodate his size interestingly the stage itself was cut down to less than a third of its original length to fit in the game oxide can be made playable through the use of a cheat device though he plays extremely buggy and only works on certain stages after beating oxide's ghost on every track through time trial mode or by using a cheat code the player can access the scrapbook feature the scrapbook chronicles naughty dog's time with the crash series and includes pre-console conversion music for all four crash themes pre-console being the original high quality version of the track before being compressed and re-worked for the ps1 these tracks wouldn't be heard in their entirety until crash composer josh mansell uploaded them to his soundcloud years later the pal version of ctr shortens the scrapbook by a fair amount the ntsc version is 5 minutes long but the pal version is a mere 2 minutes this was done to fit all the text sounds and supported language across europe on the game's disk dutch was one of the languages supported though this decision was questioned by the dutch as english is widely spoken in the netherlands in the pal region when choosing a language it's possible to back out of the menu and choose no language at all which results in text showing up as hyphens and slashes even stranger this also makes the boss characters swap heads with each other with the exception of riparoo like with most crash games at the time the japanese version has several changes from its english counterpart the japanese version uses a completely different model for the title screen and the game itself goes by the name crash bandicoot racing riparou also speaks in actual sentences unlike the english version where he was intended to speak normally but instead just used his trademark laugh with subtitles interestingly rifaru's voice in japanese is provided by katsumi suzuki the current voice of nintendo's diddy kong other changes include difficulty revisions different character icons and like crash 3 a set of bonus videos the japanese scrapbook also has artwork not seen in any other version penta penguin was a character initially known to a select few as penta could only be unlocked via cheat codes penta was so well hidden in the fact that he was unknown to both sony and naughty dog testers and his initial code is unfinished he was planned to be tested in-house like the other races but apparently slipped by both parties and made it into the final release bugs and everything when penta grabs a mask power-up ooka ooka's icon is shown but when activated aku aku surrounds him instead penta also has different stats in different territories having the same stats as polar and pura in the ntsc version whereas in power regions in japan all his stats are maxed out which was the original intention penta also has placeholder dialogue that found its way into the game while he typically makes penguin noises you can occasionally hear penguin yay 1 and penguin yay 2 play in a monotone voice penguin a1 penguinier 2 these lines were done by programmer gavin james who had done placeholder dialogue for the rest of the cast the ctr team actually weren't aware of the mistake until they played the retail version and heard it for themselves rob titus told did you know gaming when we went gold i got a copy of the master to play on my playstation at home the first thing i did was unlock all the characters including the penguin i started one lap heard gavin's voice and said oh i called daniel ayrie immediately but it was too late the first batch of 500 000 discs were being burned this error was fixed on the pal and japanese releases but it's still present on the north american re-release on the playstation network store [Music] crash also had a history with the pizza hut chain through the ps1 era with brand tie-ins starting as early as the first crash game crash was typically paired up with their promotions for stuffed crust pizza with crash appearing in pizza hut commercials in 1999 a demo disc was given out to people who dined at pizza hut with one of the demos being ctr within the demo is an icon for an unused spring weapon which can be added back into the game via hacking it seems to have been removed late into the game's production and according to rob titus it was removed because it didn't really add anything to the game comparing it to the feather item from super mario kart there's also placeholder dialogue found on the disc for coco bandicoot and a single line of dialogue saying yeah which was likely a recording of gavin james yet again let's go yeah the female bandicoots themselves all get their names from women who had a hand in the crash franchise primarily in sony marketing and pr amy comes from amy matsumura blair liz from liz ashford isabella from isabel tomatis and megumi from megumi hasoya megumi hazoya in particular was responsible for creating the crash dance for crash one's japanese commercials which naughty dog then put in the games from crash 2 onwards ctr was a best seller in all regions selling over 4 million copies in total but it did surprisingly well in the state of utah sony had noticed a spike in sales from the region that holiday season and it said the sales spike was due to the state's mormon population the ctr initials are shared with several religious phrases like choose the right and christ the redeemer it seems as though mormon parents bought the games for their kids thinking they had some religious significance in the insane trilogy the trophy names for the gold time relics reference various lines from the original ctr commercials including is there a problem granny buckle up boys buckle up and booyah grandma booyah but the celebration of ctr wouldn't stop here on december 4th 2018 playstation access presenter holly bennett shared an image on twitter the picture showed a pair of furry orange dice that resembled a car ornament next to a card that read sliding into the game awards on 612. many fans put two and two together and took this as a tease for a ctr remake reveal at the game awards and sure enough a full-on ctr remake titled crash team racing nitro fueled was announced at the show slated for june 2019 [Music] did you know the japanese release of spyro the dragon was somewhat different to the western game for some reason the game runs significantly slower than the american version to the point that spyro's charge is about as fast as his regular walking speed in international versions a director's cut release gave japanese players the option to restore the game to full speed but this feature had to be unlocked by 100 completing the game another change to the japanese version is that spark spyro's dragonfly companion and health meter doesn't change color when spyro takes damage but glows less brightly with each hit this is because the japanese version was compatible with the japan exclusive pocket station a small device that could link with compatible games to unlock features similar to the sega dreamcast's vmu connecting a pocket station to a japanese copy of spyro makes 30 dragonfly eggs appear throughout the game collecting eggs and hatching them will unlock additional dragonflies for the player to equip some of which actually let spyro take more hits than with sparks this feature was also carried over into the japanese version of ripto's rage the third game in the series however spyro year of the dragon wouldn't see a release in japan until the spyro reignited trilogy spyro was influenced by insomniac games wanting a change from the dark themes of their debut game disruptor universal's mark cerny suggested insomniac create a family-friendly title for the playstation noting a gap in the console's lineup inspired by the movie dragon heart artist craig stitt brought up the idea of a game about dragons at the same time programmer al hastings was coding a playstation engine that could create large seamless worlds having a cute dragon gliding and running across large distances combined all three ideas and the concept for spyro the dragon was underway crash bandicoot artist charles zembilas was contacted to design the hero and completed the design in a day and a half the character was initially a full-grown dragon but was made younger to appeal to all ages this dragon was going to be called pete but universal's lawyers believed any similarity to disney's pete's dragon may lead to legal issues pete became pyro but this was deemed too mature and was ultimately changed to spyro spyro was green at first but he would blend into the mostly green backgrounds too much so he was ultimately made purple to stand out from the ground that he walked on designer kirsten van schreven is a self-described film nerd and was inspired by various movies while making the game in particular the beast makers hub world was inspired by kurtz's compound in apocalypse now and clifftown resembles tatooine from star wars spyro's levels were designed for open exploration however as the playstation was incapable of rendering an entire detailed level developers created two versions of each area the normal version and a low detail version that used fewer resources the low detail version was used for far away terrain and objects which were replaced by the highly detailed version as the player got closer this technique is common today but it was very innovative at the time spyro's ability to glide created some difficulties for the team as players could potentially glide across an entire level if they found a high enough place to jump from so then the designers began deliberately creating levels with high peaks expecting the player to climb them and spot far-off secrets to glide to and because of this the gems and sparkles were also made visible from long distances the team would play other games together such as mario kart 64 starcraft and in particular super mario 64 which became an influence for spyro chief creative officer brian hastings spent a long time dissecting mario 64's controls concluding that it was successful because it was just fun to move mario around insomniac knew that spyro was a success when they realized they could just have fun moving spyro around as well to ensure that spyro's controls were fluid insomniac bought in matt whiting a former rocket scientist from nasa to program the controls and the camera whiting used to work on flight control systems experience that translated easily to programming for a video game originally the camera was designed to rigidly follow spyro from behind but this was loosened up after playtesters experienced motion sickness spyro's voice started out very high pitched but was then changed to a deeper streetwise voice lines were recorded in this latter voice before it was decided he sounded too mean and a compromise between the two voices was used instead unfortunately though the final product didn't resonate with fans and many players felt spyro was cocky and entitled for subsequent games they changed spyro into a softer friendlier character and replaced voice actor carlos alasraki with tom kenny best known as the voice of spongebob squarepants composer stuart copeland former drummer of the band the police worked on a tight deadline for the original game he'd composed three songs a day then refined them for the next day copeland was given early builds of the game and immediately wanted to compose for it he had difficulty beating levels however so insomniac sent him cheat codes to do it even with invincibility though he had trouble doing the platforming sections while a dynamic soundtrack wasn't possible copeland felt the songs would often sync up with the actions on screen coincidentally he was extremely proud of the soundtrack and considered the songs some of the best tunes he ever wrote the song reign appeared on his compilation album the stuart copeland anthology and the music for wizard peak was reused as the credits theme for the amanda show which copeland also composed for copeland would also play the game with his children and his son went on to work at insomniac spyro 2 ripto's rage has three worlds themed after summer autumn and winter this led fans to speculate that a fourth spring-themed world had been cut from the game this theory was strengthened by an article for slidespin.tv in which al molloy noted that characters would sometimes reference levels not found in the game colossus springs and colossus valley most of the game's levels are grouped into pairs using similar settings and characters or opposing themes malloy provided spyro hacker lx shadow with a previously unknown demo for the game where it was discovered that these paired levels originally had similar names malloy emailed insomniac for more information and received a response from none other than insomniac ceo ted price who confirmed the team originally used different names for the game's levels sister levels originally had similar names but were changed to prevent confusion between areas in a 2018 stream insomniac staff confirmed that although names were changed there was never a spring world as far as they could recall the intro stage glimmer was intended to fill in for the spring season somewhat but insomniac had just picked the seasons they thought would look the coolest the character zoe has a strange oddity in her dialogue in spyro 2. most of her spoken lines sound normal but some of them in the colossus and ripto's arena areas are higher this is noticeable when comparing the game to the demo version which came with crash team racing where the same lines of dialogue aren't pitch shifted at all whatever the reason behind it the pitch shifting on zoe's dialogue appears to have been done late into the game's development but ultimately cut resulting in a few out of place lines another quirk can be found with the inventor droid at the end of the metropolis level the droid has a line where she tells spyro to come back after killing a few more enemies to receive a power-up however the only way to trigger this dialogue is to reach the end of the level without killing a single enemy this is normally impossible as several enemies along the way will self-destruct as soon as spyro gets close to them yet another secret is that developer oliver wade included his two children in the game as easter eggs the names brian and brenda can be seen as wall textures in summer forest and winter tundra within a week of its initial release the code for ripto's rage was cracked by software pirates and distributed online to prevent this from happening to the third game insomniac implemented an extensive list of anti-piracy measures in year of the dragon if the game detects foul play zoe will inform the player that their copy is illegal and warn them about the potential problems of that additional side effects include the game randomly booting the player back to the hub world music not playing properly the ability to pause being completely disabled and sparks not displaying spyro's health properly in european versions the language will also change at random if the player still somehow manages to reach the final boss on a pirated copy they will then immediately be sent back to the title screen and the game will erase their save data spyro year of the dragon was released in 2000 the year of the dragon in the chinese zodiac the game was developed in just 10 and a half months and had an emphasis on mini games to add variety to the gameplay many titles served as inspiration for these mini games such as tony hawk doom goldeneye mario kart crash bandicoot ready to rumble mario 64 rampage and many others the game also featured the active challenge tuning or act system which dynamically alters the game's difficulty depending on the player's performance this allowed the game to be accessible to newcomers while also challenging hardcore gamers year of the dragon even shares hidden data with spyro 1 and 2 within all three games are quotes from notable writers such as william shakespeare and edgar allan poe serving no other purpose than to pad out the game's files at the end of the list is a line that reads i always get the shem this is a reference to an in joke among the developers of insomniac where getting the shemp referred to being tasked with an unpleasant or difficult job this joke was also the inspiration for the name of the boss dr shemp in the original spyro following the success of crash bandicoot insane trilogy fans speculated that activision would remaster spyro as well speculations that were confirmed with the announcement of spyro reignited trilogy one of charles zembill's sketches from 2002 was actually used as reference for reignited's front cover zembilis wasn't aware of the project and only found out about it when the trailer was released then in an interview with gamebrain he said the remastered version of spyro was the most accurate representation of his vision for the hero he also expressed frustration that his contribution towards the series went largely unnoticed and felt regret that activision didn't contact him at any point but he acknowledged that that was the nature of the industry tom kenny re-recorded all of his lines for all three games in the trilogy and copeland provided a brand new soundtrack for the game he was also consulted about the remastered dynamic soundtrack many times by musician stephen vankov over the years the spyro series has had close association with the crash bandicoot series to the point that games in each series have included demos for the other crash bandicoot warped includes a demo of the original spyro which could be accessed by inputting a code on the main menu upon the release of the nsaint trilogy players who input the same code on the warped menu screen saw that the game recognized the code as the highlighted selection on the menu would disappear though nothing changed following the announcement of the reignited trilogy the insane trilogy received an update where input in the code would now play the announcement trailer for the reignited trilogy as a nod to the spyro demo in the original game [Music] did you know hideo kojima originally envisioned metal gear solid as a recreation of metal gear 2 solid snake metal gear 2 was originally released for the msx2 home computer system while the system was popular in asia they were rare elsewhere because of this metal gear 2 wasn't released outside of japan until 2006 where it was repackaged with metal gear solid 3 subsistence many of the gameplay components in metal gear solid were introduced 8 years earlier in metal gear 2. players were given the task of rescuing a female contact holly white after her cover was blown a similar situation played out in metal gear solid with meryl silverberg the female contact in both games operates on radio frequency 140.15 and becomes romantically involved with snake grey fox was not the first ally turned enemy ninja in the metal gear series either after defeating the metal gear 2 boss black ninja he is revealed to be kyle schneider who helped snake in the original metal gear metal gear 2 also had a chase scene up a spiral staircase an ambush by four hidden attackers in an elevator and a battle with a hind d chopper using stinger missiles it even had a radio frequency on the game box needed to progress the game just like in metal gear solid while metal gear 2 solid snake provided a baseline for metal gear solid technological changes made it possible to present snake in 3d for the first time this meant he had to be a more physically fleshed out character kojima assigned concept artist yoji shinkawa to design the character kojima said i asked shinkawa to create an older hardboiled dandy character but he said it's better to have a younger character so solid snake became about 20 to 40. i asked him to make the character nimble and muscular but with the body like a van damme regarding the face of the character i wanted it to be something like christopher walken the result came out to be the one you will see in the game it's not like a schwarzenegger at all he has to perform espionage so i wanted the character to be like a cat but still have a strong presence another major influence on snake's character came from the 1981 john carpenter film escape from new york kojima has openly admitted that he drew inspiration from the film's protagonist snake pliskin when creating solid snake during an october 2015 interview with the hollywood reporter carpenter mentions that canal plus one of the rights holders of the film wanted to go after metal gear solid for copyright infringement carpenter as one of the other rights holders explained i told them not to do that i know the director of these games and he's a nice guy or at least he's nice to me before going into video games kojima admitted that he wanted to be a director in a special promotion carried out by japan's largest video retail chain tsutaya they created a list of 15 magnificent movies that influenced metal gear solid among these films are the guns of navarone the great escape goldfinger die hard full metal jacket and dawn of the dead kojima has said that planet of the apes gave him the courage to create a video game with a strong antinuclear stance which became a running theme in all of his games predator supplied the idea for the stealth camouflage suit worn by the cyborg ninja grey fox the true names of solid snake in ottacon david and hal originated from kojima's favorite film of all time stanley kubrick's 2001 a space odyssey if the player gets the otacon ending the two have an exchange that acknowledges the reference some fans have speculated that snake was named for his voice actor david hayder this is incorrect and purely coincidental unlike most games at the time metal gear solid used professional actors to portray characters unfortunately because of the blurred lines between games and the screen actors guild rules many of the voice actors used aliases the only exception was david hayder however under the credits for the european version of the game the voice of snake was listed as sean barker this was the alias hater created based on the character he played in the 1994 live-action movie guyver dark hero all of the real names were finally published in the game's 2004 gamecube remake metal gear solid the twin snakes the game also includes a re-recorded script using almost the exact same cast hater actually gave up half his salary so konami could afford to bring back the original cast for the twin snakes metal gear solid was revolutionary because of its use of 3d in-game cut scenes kojima has said that he aimed to create a game that was not only graphically superior but more importantly create a realistic experience in order to do this he created all of the cutscenes with polygons rendered in real time on the playstation's hardware the only pre-rendered cg used for the game was created for promotional purposes the word solid in the title had three meanings the first meaning was a reference to snake's name being solid snake another meaning was to emphasize the switch from 2d to a more solid world of 3d the third meaning was a jab at the video game company square kojima told the publication gamers today a square is a two dimension thing and i guess the president of konami wanted this game to surpass square they wanted to make it a cube you know like solid 3d so it's got that meaning too in order to create his solid world kojima used lego bricks to plan out each level the team would then position cameras over each structure in order to give them a real-time perspective of the layout and proportions allowing kojima to direct the entire scene this process took as long as it sounds and was very taxing on kojima's family life during a presentation at the university of southern california kojima explained that his son would see his work and report back to his mother that his dad plays with legos all day the game also has quite a few secrets and easter eggs while going through the caves if the player faces meryl and slaps her she whistles and the wolves will attack snake however if the player can immediately hide under a cardboard box after the slap a wolf will venture over lift its leg and urinate on the box using the p soaked box will allow the player to move through this area without being hassled by those wolves speaking of meryl metal gear solid was not the first time she's shown up in a kojima game her character originated in kojima's 1994 adventure game police knots references to police nuts can be found throughout metal gear solid in otakon's office there's a poster of the police knot's box art and during meryl's ending she laughs and calls snake dave even though snake's name is a reference to dave from 2001 a space odyssey this interaction possibly references merrell's interactions with her police not partner dave forrest kojima envisioned merrell's character in the original metal gear solid story as a pre-teen inspired by natalie portman's character in leon the professional interestingly merrell's age wasn't changed because of the inappropriate age difference to snake it was because the weapon she used a desert eagle couldn't be managed by a 12 year old girl in police knots meryl has a tattoo on her left arm which appears to be a blue colored version of the original foxhound logo from metal gear 2. in metal gear solid the same tattoo can be seen on her left arm the connection is more obvious in the gamecube version of the game thanks to its higher graphical fidelity hello and welcome to did you know gaming extra in this episode we'll be exploring trivia from a variety of games released for the original playstation this was sony's first true foray into the world of gaming consoles originally sony didn't intend to dive headfirst into the industry on their own and hoped that they'd be able to partner with already established game publisher nintendo sony planned on supplying a peripheral to nintendo's snes system which would expand its capability with the use of compact disc technology despite not receiving any help from the creators of mario though sony managed to build a massive gaming empire with a few mascots of their own one of these mascots was crash bandicoot who had 5 whole games on the ps1 selling over 23 million units combined possibly the most praised crash game crash 3 warped has an interesting easter egg hidden in plain sight in the egyptian themed levels there are hieroglyphs of a black dog on the walls these markings are speculated to represent morgan the dog a pet at naughty dog at the time morgan was also featured in a behind the scenes skit for the making of crash 3 where the pupper infiltrates the studio the remake of crash bandicoot 1-3 the insane trilogy also kept this reference intact another massively popular franchise on the original playstation was the final fantasy series the most popular of the playstation entry is final fantasy vii managed to sell nearly 10 million copies on its own just on the ps1 this was no doubt due to word of mouth and a solid marketing campaign one of the advertisements for the game reads someone please get the guys who make cartridge games a cigarette and a blindfold and if it were available on cartridge it would retail for around 1 200 this was an obvious jab at nintendo in their cartridge-based system the nintendo 64 which was notoriously expensive to publish games for in fact part of the reason square switched to sony over nintendo was because of the ps1's use of the much cheaper cd format some games for the ps1 were censored when brought to the west one such game that was changed was breath of fire four most of its regional differences surrounding risque moments in the japanese game this includes a scene altered after the game's main protagonist ryu places his hand on ursula's chest rather than remove the scene the character's reactions are altered instead ursula would be involved in another altered scene during a moment where the player attempts to board a ship to prove the team's value as crew on the ship they are asked to spend the night on the ship to show their bravery they are also told that misbehaving at sea will result in spanking and that they'll have to show their backsides to prove their determination ursula then reveals a little more of her bold nature than the sailors had anticipated by dropping her pants in the international release the scene simply ends before this all takes place another scene that was cut entirely involves ryu patiently keeping guard while the female party members bathe though not holding back his temptation to snick a quick peek to which he has shot at and called a pervert though nothing explicit is shown the implication was likely considered too adult for a teen-rated title this isn't the only game to have a change due to it revealing a little more than what western audiences are used to during the opening cinematic for the playstation release of soul blade i'm really sorry i don't know how the hell to say this name so fischer sophitia how to pronounce is the bet oh they're all minus rated oh jesus christ sophia can be seen bathing in a large pool of water before being disturbed by a large statue emerging in front of her in the international release sophia is wearing a white bathing suit however in the game's original japanese release she is instead completely naked covering herself as she stands up a game with a different kind of revealing content is silent hill within the data of the game's demo found on the demo disc number 16 published by the official us playstation magazine are a number of unused placeholder images these include several pieces of unused artwork including the game's warning for grotesque imagery and early 3d renders for several of the game's characters however a few other curious images can also be found some with notes from the developers themselves examples include a quote from chaucer's canterbury tales or more humorously this image which reads i'm clueless when it comes to soft image just imagine there's an open book here with a picture of a hunter and a lizard with its mouth open wide however most surprising of all are two unused images for the game's menus firstly the game's save load screen which had a placeholder image of a fully nude woman lying on a hospital bed and second an image of six fully new japanese women which was used as a placeholder for the game's options menu unsurprisingly these went unused and cannot be found on the disk of the game's retail release one other title with hidden content which wasn't supposed to be seen by players particularly with its intended audience in this case was rocket power team rocket rescue within the game's data are a number of messages with some unsavory language particularly when you take into account that the game is based on a children's cartoon show these read too many vertices me break dre over the top what the are we doing here trying to load dude stuff these images were used by the team during development rather than anything that would have been displayed to the user during gameplay the action game 007 tomorrow never dies also contains hidden content initially the opportunity to develop the title was offered to game studio rare who had famously created the nintendo 64 adaptation of goldeneye although being given the chance to make a game on the next big bond movie was tempting the studio declined the offer instead the opportunity was given to black ops entertainment interestingly hidden within the game's data is a photograph of a few members of the development team also within the data are several images making reference to a multiplayer mode a very popular element of golden eye despite not appearing in the final release of tomorrow never dies another licensed game released on the original playstation was star wars masters of terrace cassie the game's name or more specifically terrace cassie is actually finnish for steelhand the term had never been used within the star wars films at the time but instead first appeared in the star wars novel shadow of the empire written by steve perry part of the extended universe prior to disney's acquisition perry came up with the name after looking for a certain kind of sound that he had in mind norse language having the kind of rhythm that he desired terrace cassie is a form of hand-to-hand combat which would be adopted into the new canon lore of the films with the release of solo a star wars story sith lord darth maul the leader of the crimson dawn was an adept practitioner of the combat style teaching it to dryden vos who in turn trained his lieutenant kira an interesting piece of law that wasn't recognized in its first appearance on the ps1 can be found within tekken 2. while fighting on hihachimoshima's stage the pagoda temple it's possible to see a carving on the ground this carving is actually the names of both heihachi and kazumi though it's hard to see this during regular gameplay kazumi heihachi's wife was only ever alluded to once more after this in tekken the motion picture a two-part anime ova adaptation of the series released in 1998. the film which is considered to be non-canon has a brief mention of kazumi kazumi would finally be revealed in the official canon in tekken 7 released in 2015 to japanese arcades this means that her inclusion in the tekken universe was first alluded to in 1995 20 years before her official debut the strategy rpg game kagiro deception 2 has a character who makes a fairly hidden cameo deception 2 has a total of 4 different endings and if a player has a save file with all 4 endings having been achieved which is no small task mind you a secret trap can be unlocked the trap is actually a sweezo from the monster rancher series when activated the monster will fall from above and slam into adversaries another game with many secrets on the ps1 was castlevania's symphony of the [Music] night the game considered to be one of the best within the series actually had several early ideas which never came to fruition one of this was the consideration that since the game takes place in dracula's castle and alucard would have once lived there he would have his own room the idea was to have the player be able to find alucard's room at the top of the tower located to the right of the map a character would have been found in this room known as the skeleton carpenter and as the game progressed the room would be built up with new furniture there were thoughts of also including items and decorations throughout the game that the player could pick up and use to decorate the room to their liking this feature was actually included in the game early on but was ultimately cut another early idea for the game was to feature skeletons that would replace candles which the player breaks considered more as a joke the staff thought that if they included these skeletons killing them before they had a chance to run away would result in the candles never reappearing after they were destroyed japan has a large quantity of platformers that never left the region but typically these games were made during the 8 and 16 bit eras 2d platformers became less common after the playstation's release as games tried making use of the console's 3d capabilities one 2d platformer america never received was jupo k ralph no dai balkan otherwise known as the adventure of little ralph the adventure of little ralph was released for the playstation in 1999 and was developed by new corporation a team with few projects to its name the title's gameplay and style are reminiscent of the arcade era of platformers and people often think that the game is an arcade port however little ralph was created exclusively for the playstation the game follows ralph an 18 year old orphan when his village is attacked by a demon army known as the lost clan ralph tries to defend it however he comes up against the leader of the clan the powerful valgo a demon obsessed with his muscles valgo casts a spell that strips ralph of his gear and turns him into a child before valgo manages to throw the finishing blow ralph's childhood friend luticia shows up to protect him unleashing a powerful magical ability that she's kept hidden for all those years leticia saves ralph but is instead kidnapped by valgo naked and helpless ralph finds a magical holy sword on the battlefield that guides him to save his friends and defeat the lost clan the game works like a typical action platformer with ralph being able to run jump and swing his sword ralph can also pick up a shield that grants him one additional hit before he dies he can also find power-ups for his sword which widen his range or cause fireballs to shoot from his sword when he swings along the way ralph can find a small animal friend fierio that helps him by throwing small explosives the game uses a score system and points are gained by collecting fruit or killing enemies points can also be multiplied by charging ralph's sword attack ralph will then use it like a bat knocking enemies in a straight line into one another and multiplying the points earned initially the game's boss battles must be beaten as young ralph about halfway through the game however ralph gains the power to temporarily turn back into an adult during boss battles when he does this the boss battle switch genre and becomes similar to a fighting game specifically the gameplay is close to a classic street fighter title with less concentration on combos and more on performing special attacks it isn't particularly complex compared to most standalone fighting games but it offers an interesting twist on the game as it progresses after completing the game a new versus mode is unlocked this allows you to play as ralph or the bosses against a friend other elements expand the replayability too for example the player can't get the full ending on the easy difficulty which features only five levels compared to the normal modes eight we'll refrain from showing you the true ending for those who wish to play through the game themselves the adventure of little ralph received a widely positive response with reviewers finding the 2d graphics and flow admirable for the time of release many also felt that it was fairly hard even on the easiest setting the game's seamless transition between levels were highly praised it cleverly hid loading screens by showing an animation of ralph entering the next stage [Music] the adventure of little ralph began life as a sharp x-68 000 home computer title the game only moved to the playstation after the x 68000 became redundant and this is likely why the game has a very retro feel in 1999 video games were moving away from the simplistic 2d platformers instead opting for flashy 3d graphics and new styles of gameplay in contrast ralph's origins are apparent with its points and live system games released in the late 90s normally forgo a score system entirely and use a save system instead of lives and continues one interesting feature is found in the game's option menu where the game's sound mode can be set to psg reminiscent of older audio chips instead of the higher quality audio found in playstation games [Applause] [Music] there are a few reasons why little ralph never came to the west when it was first published that being said there's no official response for which reason is most accurate as explained before this game wasn't intended to push the playstation's hardware at all and was instead a throwback to the days of platforming gaming when sony was designing the original playstation they were convinced 3d was the future after seeing sega's virtua fighter in action this belief shaped not only the playstation's hardware but which games appeared on the platform in the west many people wanted to see the latest and greatest in gaming technology which usually meant the most cutting-edge 3d graphics sony shared this mentality at least in the west and limited the amount of 2d games that appeared on its platforms this made it difficult for developers who wanted to localize their 2d games for the western market one of these developers is snk's yoshihito koyama who was the director of the japan u.s relations on many of the 2d snk titles in 2004 koyama told sponge.com sony just isn't interested in 2d games anymore whatever it might be and yet many games as long as they are in 3d trickle through all the time it's a crazy situation and we don't believe it reflects the needs of the game consumers little ralph was released in 1999 not too long before koyama made this statement it wouldn't be hard to imagine how this mentality would stop a 2d playstation game coming to western shores at the turn of the millennium to add fuel to the fire the companies involved in developing and publishing little ralph were both very small and to this date haven't ever had an international release they would have lacked the power and experience necessary to deal with sony stance on 2d another reason for the game's lack of localization could be that in 1999 people were eagerly awaiting sony's next big console the playstation 2. they might have thought that bringing a game from an unknown brand to a dying platform wasn't worth the risk curiously while researching little ralph we discovered its official website is not only presented in japanese but also english this could suggest that the game was intended at one point to be brought to the west perhaps at the same time as it was distributed online in japan as a digital download for the japanese playstation store in 2007 survival games are a dime a dozen these days how they play however hasn't always remained the same in more recent times one could argue that the survival sub-genre has relied mostly on crafting items and utilizing limited resources in order to overcome a hazardous environment however before the genre's popularization one playstation title released exclusively in japan decided to include this gameplay style in a genre that it's often not applied to point and click so today we will be looking at aconcagua aconcagua was developed and published as a sony computer entertainment first party title exclusive to japan in the year 2000. the game takes place in the fictional country marouza based upon and named after a real province of argentina called mendoza marouza is in the midst of political disturbance after the results of an independence movement amongst its citizens marouza has been split in half politically as a result pachamama a 33 year old activist has taken a flight as part of a tour to promote the independence movement during which a terrorist organization detonates a bomb on the plane causing it to crash close to aconcagua's peak a large perilous mountain only five of the plains inhabitants survive the crash and they must all work together to survive the events that follow the player takes on the role of kato a japanese journalist who has been covering pachamama's story after the crash kato is tasked with guiding the flight survivors down the mountain with the help of pachamama as they work to escape the clutches of the harsh mountainous conditions the terrorists continue to try to eliminate the survivors after discovering their initial plan had failed carto and pachamama are joined by steve julia and lopez steve is an anxious engineer with a number of great skills for survival julia is also a journalist like kato though coming from the united states she is in pursuit of a story following the expected coup d'etat lopez is the last member to join the group a hench native with great strength capable of moving even some of the largest obstacles the team find in their way the game plays from a third-person perspective players must solve various problems and puzzles alongside survival much like any point-and-click game a mouse cursor is used to control the character's movements when hovering over a character it changes to a smiley face indicating you can talk to them and if the cursor changes to an exclamation mark the player can interact with the environment much of the game's situations requires the player to switch between the various survivors in order to accomplish certain tasks with each having their own particular set of special skills carto he has a passion for the mountains so his abilities tend to revolve around mountaineering specifically with the use of some gloves that he finds he is able to climb certain areas julia she has knowledge of some of the bases situated in the mountain she has a knife and a lighter so her skills involve being able to light up certain areas setting things alight and is the only character who can take out guards with said knife steve he finds a toolbox and though he may be riddled with self-doubt and paranoia he is capable of fixing most electrical devices that cause an obstacle patcha mama she can speak spanish and so she has the capability to interpret or trick guards with the language she also uses this skill to translate any spanish reading material found throughout the ordeal lopez the last person to join the team he is tall and strong this is pretty much his entire skill set rather than just relying on their abilities to solve problems the player must actively have characters communicate with each other to push through their struggle by talking amongst themselves characters can communicate more effectively providing their opinions and suggestions on how the group might proceed as well as discussing their current feelings in this nature while the player may know how they need to proceed it is pivotal that the characters in the game are aware as well as they will be unable to complete their tasks unless they have a logical reason to perform the action requested of them this includes the ability to exchange items between characters that specifically suit the skill set required to use them though the game is fundamentally a point and click the game does still have an element of linearity not requiring the player to backtrack or obtain items for later use players are required to search each area for objects that can be used within that same environment to help solve problems and advance to the next area the only items that are used throughout the entire adventure are the previously mentioned key items found near the beginning of the game the game has also been compared to survival titles that preceded it such as dino crisis parasite eve and resident evil but it also seems to encompass some elements of stealth gameplay requiring the player to sneak characters past enemies whilst they aren't looking each character has their own health bar and if they are spotted by an enemy they will be shot before returning to cover the only way to recover health is by finding medical kits though these are scarcely supplied if any one character loses all of their health it's game over and the player must resume from their last save point there are a number of variations on how a puzzle must be solved some having to be completed with steps being taken in a specific order sometimes under time constraints and at other times oddly requiring the player to lose health in order to proceed the only means of saving is by a prompt after every event in the narrative as quite a notable feat for an original playstation title the game has over 80 minutes of cinematic cutscenes despite the game being released exclusively in japan having a japanese main character and only containing japanese text the game's characters speak only in english and spanish this should be the government army communications facility ign claimed that the game was made as a way for sony to enter the argentinian video game market an area of the world that had been almost exclusively playing games on pc gamespot states that the game's release was timed with the advent of the playstation 2 launch in order to boost sales of the playstation 1 in its stead aconcagua's soundtrack stands out as a particularly strong element of the game's presentation having been composed by the renowned musician kazuhiko toyama famed for his work on productions such as crisis core final fantasy vii wild arms and new super android cutie honey while the country of merusa is fictitious a mountain by the name of acconcagua is not the real mountain is actually one of the highest mountains outside of asia being the highest in both southern and western hemispheres [Music] is straight out of the gate with its unique nature making its relative obscurity a mystery the game follows a plot uncommon with console titles of the time involving a logical and realistic political divide as the foundation for what would end up being an overall experience dealing with ideological differences survival instincts and group mentality because of the very harsh reality of these topics there is little in the way of comedy or light-hearted drama while there is to a certain extent typical action segments the game makes a constant push to bring a more serious tone to the medium aconcagua is an early example of a slightly different push for the survival sub-genre unlike its predecessors and more like disaster day of crisis much of the peril in the game's story revolving around real-world threats rather than typical supernatural horror antagonists the game was set for a western release sometime later the same year it was published in japan though ultimately this never came to fruition a possible reason for this lack of localization may have been the close ties the game's plot had with these same real world threats the video game medium had little in the way of discussing real world political issues before aconcagua and it may have been seen as a possible point of contention with the western market at the time video games were largely still considered to be an escapist form of entertainment often avoiding more realistic political discourse [Music] you

Channel: DYKG Clips

Views: 121,748

Keywords: ps1, ps1 games, playstation, playstation games, crash bandicoot, spyro, spyro the dragon, metal gear solid, mgs

Id: hwfbKRSVk8M

Length: 57min 59sec (3479 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 31 2020