How Many Classic PS1 Games Do You Remember?
Let's wind back the years to look back on some of the best PS1 games from Sony's ground-breaking games console, the original PlayStation.
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00:00Ready to go back to the 90s, and yes, we mean even more than the current trend for bucket
00:17hats and crop tops. It's time to turn back the clock and travel back to the birth of
00:22PlayStation with Sony's original little grey box. How many of these classic PS1 games
00:28do you actually remember? And hey, remember how cool it was that the discs were black?
00:36Let's kick things off with a nostalgic heavy hitter. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 was a formative
00:41PS1 game. If you didn't have the muscle memory to get all of the goals in Hangar in
00:45under 2 minutes, were you even alive in the year 2000? Not only had we never seen anything
00:50like these levels, but the incredible mixtape of a soundtrack is what cemented Tony Hawk's
00:552 as a stone cold classic that no remake can truly recapture the magic of. Admittedly
01:00though, the new one does come pretty close.
01:10Yes our next game is a rabbit bouncing along a string in a minimalist black and white world,
01:14and hopefully you remember it. Incredibly, Vib Ribbon actually started life as part of
01:19a tie in promotion for a Mercedes car. The promotion was dropped, but Papa the Rapper
01:23lead Masaya Matsuura took over and the rhythm platformer was born regardless. Vib Ribbon
01:29epitomises the weird joy of the sudden potential of the PS1, and even better, you could play
01:36your own music CDs. The game was so small it loaded onto the PS1's RAM, so you could
01:40swap out the game's disc for your own albums and platform across your favourite tracks.
01:54Say it with me now, Cool Borders. It didn't quite do for snowboarding what Tony Hawk's
01:592 did for the wheeled variety, but Cool Borders was a chilly solid addition to many a demo
02:05disc back in 1996. Even if you never played the full game with its various tracks, chances
02:10are that you got a chance to hurtle down a polygonal slope and choose between a selection
02:14of colourful boards. It's probably borderline unplayable now, but games like Cool Borders
02:20and its sequels paved the way for many solid winter sports games we love today.
02:28Let's face it, whenever anyone talks about their first classic Silent Hill experience,
02:32it tends to be James' misty trip in Silent Hill 2. Some of us found our nightmares much
02:37earlier playing as Harry Mason when we headed to the infamous town in search of his daughter
02:42Cheryl. It's in much more pixelated form, but everything terrifying about the series
02:46was born here in the first game. Deformed creatures stumbling in the darkness, twisted
02:51screaming fire babies chasing you through dim basements, and a complete inability to
02:55run for any length of time. Survival horror in 1999 was truly scary, and that definitely
03:00isn't just because we were about 10. It's official, it's against the laws of the internet
03:17to make a list of best PS1 games and not mention Metal Gear Solid. It might sound like the
03:22start of it, but MGS was actually Hideo Kojima's third addition to the Metal Gear series, but
03:27was specifically designed to make the most of the fresh 3D tech inside of the PS1, hence
03:32the solid part of the title after two previous 2D games. Among many other gifts, it gave
03:38Kojima the ability to smash down the fourth wall with Psycho Mantis reading your memory
03:42card and forcing you to change controller ports to keep your mind free of invaders.
03:47Such was the impact Snake's stealth adventures on PlayStation are considered a historic achievement
03:51that changed the way the world perceived video games. If kick, punch, it's all in the mind
04:14has instantly appeared from nowhere in your brain, then you definitely remember Parappa
04:18the Rapper. This surprisingly tricky rhythm game, one of the earliest of the genre,
04:21follows young Parappa as he trains in the art of rhyme with none other than Chop Chop Master Onion.
04:27The game spawned a spin-off with Um Jamma Lammy and a sequel was released for PS2 in 2001, but
04:32we'll always remember the true frustration of thinking we were hitting the beat, and well,
04:36just not. As Parappa would say, we've just gotta believe.
04:39Another PS1 game, more revolutionary game design, and another astonishing soundtrack.
04:51No wonder we all have such good music taste. Wipeout 2097 was the second in a now legendary
04:56series and didn't just feel like the future because of the 21st century title. Whether you
05:00were Flying Vector, Venom, Rapier, or Phantom, the speed of these futuristic craft felt genuinely
05:06game-changing. Soaring through the air, risking boost zones, and carefully handling turns with
05:10air brakes meant Wipeout was a whole new level of racing games, and now we're off to listen to
05:15Firestarter. Truthfully, the PS1 was a golden era of brilliantly colourful platformers, and
05:28move over Rayman, Spyro, and Crash, because we want to talk about Toy Story 2, Buzz Lightyear
05:33to the rescue. Here was Traveller's Tales already showing off the skills that would become the
05:38lifeblood of the Lego adaptations, but in 1999 it meant taking on the role of everyone's favourite
05:43space ranger and diving through the technicolour world of Pixar to save the rest of Andy's toys.
05:51The result is a dizzying platformer that you can still play on a PlayStation
05:55store, if you want to go and play it now. Well, maybe wait until this video's over.
06:06Okay, this next game has a slightly different title depending on where you are in the world,
06:10but regardless of whether you know it as Twisted Metal 2 or Twisted Metal World Tour,
06:14we're sure you're in agreement that this demolition derby was absolutely the best in
06:18the series. Twisted Metal 2 was many people's first introduction to the terrifying Needles
06:22driver of an ultra deadly ice cream truck known as Sweet Tooth. Don't worry if you still get
06:27panicked when you hear one in real life, Single Player was brilliant carnage,
06:30but the local split screen offering meant things could get truly personal. Sorry not sorry.
06:38Let's end on a fiery curveball with Rosco McQueen Firefighter Extreme. If you're wondering why
06:44you're so at home playing Powerwash Simulator, it might be because in 1997 you were handling high
06:49pressure water and putting out fires in various towering infernos. The intrepid Rosco didn't
06:53review particularly well at the time, okay, badly actually, he reviewed very badly, but we have fond
06:58memories of battling robots with our fire axe and collecting water bottles to keep our house
07:03topped up. Hindsight is a dangerous thing, hey? So hopefully we've stirred up some PS1 nostalgia
07:10to send you into the cupboard looking for your original PlayStation, and wires that definitely
07:14don't have connection to modern TVs. Good luck with that!