The original PlayStation was my first console, and I've got a big soft spot for it. Here's a bunch of games for it I've tried out over the years, either ones I've known for a long time or ones I just found, all of which I think are worth sharing with you.

[#] Arcade Party Pak (Midway, 1999)

A high-resolution success!

These PS1 Digital Eclipse arcade comps don't get nearly enough credit. For game selection, accuracy, and slickness of presentation, they just about outdo most editions of Namco Museum, and Arcade Party Pak is another sterling example. You get six games here, all from slightly later in Midway's run: 720°, Klax, Rampage, Smash TV, Super Sprint, and Toobin', all presented properly emulated, some even in 640x480. If you're used to pixels the size of dinner plates with the PlayStation, get a load of some of these, they're nuts to look at.

For me, 720° (an early isometric free-roam skateboarding game) and Rampage (the classic city destroying monster game) are the duds here, but I know they have their fans, so that's not a knock on them. Smash TV is Robotron's steroidal competitive cousin, throwing bosses and waves of wigged out murderers at you to gun down. Supposedly, the DualShock is supported, but I couldn't get it to work, but if it works for you (or you map your emulator properly), you have the best twin-stick shooter on the console here. Klax is always a mind-bending good time, even if this version sadly seems to have control issues in DuckStation, which is what I played it on.

That brings me to Toobin' and Super Sprint. These games are featured in the Midway Arcade Treasures pack on the PS2 I reviewed a while back, but I admittedly never gave them their due, and that was a mistake! I became especially hopelessly addicted to Super Sprint, effectively an arcade take on Micro Machines, trying for perfect laps around these twisty, overlapping single-screen race tracks. Add in some fascinating interview clips, autosaving high scores, and a ton of settings to tweak, and you've got a hell of a collection on your hands. Get this.

(This game is known to have issues running on all models of PS2. The excellent Midway Arcade Treasures features all six of these games and should fill the Super Sprint-shaped hole in your life just fine instead. Ironically, running in PCSX2, Klax seems to control just fine, despite these games not working properly on the console it's emulating.)

[#] Arcade's Greatest Hits - The Atari Collection 1 (Midway, 1996)

Better than Namco Museum?

It's unfortunate that for a lot of people, PS1 arcade comps begin and end at Namco Museum. Great as they are, they aren't perfect, between the close-but-not-exact game recreations and each volume's scattershot selection of games both good and rightfully forgotten. We can do better—and dare I say, I have found better. Arcade's Greatest Hits - The Atari Collection 1 is an ugly name for a highly attractive compilation, stacked with properly emulated cracking classics, their settings all customizable, their menus lovingly animated and a full documentary about Atari's golden age in tow. Yeah, it's glorious.

Asteroids, Battlezone, Centipede, Missile Command, Super Breakout, and Tempest are on offer, and that's just a killer lineup. As far as I've had experience with the the cabinet originals, these are dead on. While trackball and spinner games on a digital pad might seem at first like an issue, Digital Eclipse wisely decided to support the ever-underrated PlayStation Mouse, letting you click away at missiles or ease or whiz your paddle into just the right spot, and it makes all the difference. (Battlezone's QWOP-like literal tank controls where both the D-pad and face buttons are used to move are on the opposite end of the control sensibility spectrum, but that's not the comp's fault and actually map nicely to the PlayStation controller.)

Yeah, this one became an obsession for a bit for me. Being so used to the easier 2600 versions of these games, I spent many, many games on high alert a few rounds into Tempest or Missile Command or just trying to crest 200 on a game of progressive Super Breakout. These games are no joke in difficulty, which is part of why they continue to be so addictive. The documentary is surprisingly informative too, as these former Atari game designers go through stories of meeting spouses through Asteroids, high-paying bugs in Tempest, and nightmares of nuclear armageddon working on Missile Command. The fact that this comp isn't mentioned next to the Namco Museum sets is a travesty, because it outdoes about half the series in a single package.

[#] Atlantis: The Lost Empire (Sony, 2001)

It's no treasure, but a pleasant enough adventure.

I can't comment on if Atlantis as a movie is a lost classic, having only seen the clips of it interspersed throughout this game, but I can certainly say that Atlantis as a PS1 Disney game sticks out among them. A group of 1910s explorers from across the world set out to find the lost city of Atlantis (weird, that), discovering that both the harsh climate of the deep sea and some of their allies have it in for them. It's a 3D platformer with hints of a bunch of things, and y'know, it's not half bad. Light, quick, decently varied, it's maybe not a must-play, but I imagine fans of the genre and fans of the movie would find it as satisfying a swim as I did.

Each character has a unique ability that you'll need to progress in the often-fantastical locales of ice caves and Aztec-inspired ruins. Milo, your main man, can climb about, Audrey has her flare gun (which acts more like a revolver than anything), Vinny can plant explosives on walls, and so on. This game wears many hats aside from those, with bits of puzzle solving, underwater shooting sequences, car chases, and stealth on offer, but to its credit, it never feels disjointed, possibly due to none of it being too in-depth. That said, the stealth bits after you get into Atlantis are pretty laughable. You can run past guards without consequence, and even getting caught isn't much of a punishment.

The graphics remind me weirdly of Fear Effect—clean and crisp without being overly cartoony. You'll collect Atlantean crystals which you can combine with your other key items to give them special abilities, but it's unfortunately not all that well-utilized. Combining is necessary for the occasional key item, which is where the light puzzle solving comes into play. If there is a big flaw with Atlantis, it's that aiming your throwing projectiles kinda sucks and movement tends to be annoyingly slippery, especially as you're hopping lava rivers. I got used to it though. There's some cool unlocks for 100%ing the game as well—definitely consider it if you're out to find Atlantis for yourself.

[#] Doom (Williams, 1995)

Definitely the technical best of its kind, but the most playable?

Doom is perhaps the single most overrated shooter in existence, but it's hard to deny its simplicity and intuitiveness. If you're somehow not aware, Doom has you controlling a space marine as he blasts his way through an overrun base on Mars. Doom is fun no matter how you play it, and compared to the ports for the Saturn, Jaguar, and 32x, this one runs full-screen and at full speed, making it perhaps the go-to console port of its day. That said, the improvements it tries to make over the PC original can be hit and miss.

Adapting keyboard controls to a gamepad works pretty well, though even with the ability to remap, you're still stuck turning with the D-pad as opposed to strafing. You get used to it, but all the turning and pushing forward makes quick work of your thumb. There's no selectable episodes, nor intermission text; you just play straight through all 30 levels, and without a save function (early PS1 games did not use the memory card well), you have to note down the end stage password wherever you wanna stop. That's a little dumb.

For those improvements, PS1 Doom features colored lighting and a new ambient soundtrack and sound effects. The sound effects are definitely my favorite: the new shotgun sound is so meaty, it alone made me use it the entire run. The colored lights, meanwhile, range from fittingly menacing to garishly dark. I think the dark blue bits are supposed to make you feel tense and in danger, but mostly, they just suck to look at. It might be weird on the eyes and hard on the thumb, but PS1 Doom is still a damn good time and addition to any PlayStation collection.

[#] Gran Turismo (Sony, 1998)

Tokyo drift that thang.

The 1995 Mitsubishi GTO. I can divide my time with Gran Turismo into before and after I found this car. Before, I was lost. I could never seem to get an edge regardless of how much money I dumped into my cars. Races were hard. Physics were wonky. Even the computer drivers regularly seemed to eat shit on jumps and funny turns. I started skipping the "yes you do this before every single race" qualifying laps the second game mercifully dropped because I never did better than last place anyway. Afterwards? You can win most of the cups with this one car. Perhaps it's a bad thing to be able to cheese things with one car, but it wasn't free to get there!

There's a lot of First Game Syndrome in Gran Turismo. As tradition, you start with your license tests to unlock cups. The game challenged me to time trial Special Stage Route 11 (the most angular city course ever designed for a game) in a slippery-as-fuck TVR Griffith without crashing, the bronze time limit set one second below sane by the perverted sadists who came up with it. The game lets you change everything from camber angle to gear ratios before every single race, and I found myself toying with stabilizers and brake controllers like I knew what I was doing, but once I got that GTO just how I liked it? Huge leads and wild riches awaited.

In fairness, the sequel has just as much early game tedium without a setup. The fun has always been in the freedom to experiment with tires and turbos, never the grind to afford them. Once you've got money and a good car, feeling the noticeable difference in handling in every tune and tweak is just as addictive as in its younger sibling. The music's great as always, the courses still attractive and challenging today, and unlocking the gorgeous 60FPS GT Hi-Fi mode is worth it all its own. I'd still give the nod to 2 for the better physics, progression, car and track selection, but this first one grew on me big time. After I bought the GTO.

(If you're looking for the fastest way to make money in the game, enter the Dodge Viper in the Normal Car Cup. Don't tune it, that disqualifies it. Just buy the RT/10 for 70,000 credits or so and watch as you can make 400,000 in a half hour. I can't drive for shit and I did it, so what's your excuse?)

[#] Gran Turismo 2 (Sony, 1999)

It's a classic for a reason!

I know what I said about the famous games here—I love Gran Turismo 2, and we're talking about it. This is a game that has captured me for five months on and off, beckoning me to the bedroom to finish it off (my save, of course), the perfect balance between in-depth car tuning just before it gets boring and arcade excitement just before it gets goofy. Throw in some 25 absolutely iconic courses, a killer soundtrack featuring The Cardigans, Garbage, Soul Coughing, and Stone Temple Pilots, and oh yeah—almost 650 cars from over 50 manufacturers—and this is the premier PS1 racer. Does it hold up? My God yes.

What strikes me about the heart of the GT2 simulation is how varied all the cars feel. Everything from drivetrain to car weight to tire softness to gear transmission ratios to turbo kits (the cheap and fun way to cake a race!) noticeably affect how your car handles. The courses requires you to practice, appealing to drive but each with their tricky spots, and when you do get good at navigating one, satisfying doesn't begin to cover it. (Of course, the lack of damage modeling means you can drive like an idiot, crash, and use other cars as bumpers, but this game would suck if I had to worry about totaling my car or dying mid-race, so that's a good thing.)

Gran Turismo 2 was legendarily rushed in development, and there are complaints I could raise with it (like how impenetrable it is in its early game unless you use a setup to get a nice car quickly), but it really doesn't detract from how enveloping yet approachable the experience is. Once you start unlocking cars and getting into the weeds of all the manufacturer races and rallies (and less pleasingly, two hour real-time endurance races), GT2 becomes less of a racing game and more a big car collecting playground you'll never quite find the other side of.

[#] Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Electronic Arts, 2002)

Pretty damn good late-arriving castle-em-up.

The first Harry Potter game on PS1 left a lot to be desired with its wonky controls, limited exploration, and linearity. The PS1 was still marginally relevant in 2002, so Argonaut were contracted to produce its follow-up using the same engine. That's the bad news. The models and gameplay are reused wholesale where applicable, and Harry still handles like he's on ice a lot of the time. The good news? There's a lot more to see here, with a much bigger castle of secrets and a wider breadth of minigames.

While the first one had a few minigames, this one expands the lot with gnome-throwing, flying car racing, first-person shooting galleries, and my personal favorite, wizard duels. These play like real-time Pokémon battles, Harry and another wizard casting spells at one another, trying to coax the other into shooting charmed objects to gain special jinxes. It's highly satisfying. I wish they gave us a duel gauntlet to play through instead of the Quidditch League, because these are over far too soon.

Aside from the rather irritatingly difficult slide segments, Argonaut mercifully built the environments to better suit the controls this time around, so you'll breeze through without much frustration. I'm especially glad they actually let us replay earlier parts of the game, something Sorcerer's Stone did not let you do, astoundingly. Secrets isn't perfect, but it's a pretty damn fun romp through a kids book and I think it's worth a reappraisal. Potter fans especially take notice.

[#] Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Electronic Arts, 2001)

Lighter than an hourglass under Wingardium Leviosa.

The early Harry Potter games have always made me quite curious. Each platform was contracted out to a different team and run on very different game engines—and yet they share a lot besides that. Pottermania's splashes on the PS1, courtesy of Croc developers Argonaut Games, are usually derided these days based on their oatmeal character models, but I think that's a bit undeserved. I grew up with these games, and they're, if nothing else and if you'll excuse the pun, charming.

Through the game, you'll run along to classes (Charms, Potions, and Defense Against the Dark Arts are featured with Simon sequences for learning each's spell), be the school's favorite Quidditch seeker, and wander about under an Invisibility Cloak in some clunky stealth stages. The school's atmosphere is really good, with lots of flickering lights, floating junk, and secret passages to some fun minigames. I just wish it was used to its fullest potential.

In fact, that's kind of the issue with Sorcerer's Stone. It's very inconsequential. It doesn't control terribly great (though nothing a kid couldn't get on with), castle exploration is pretty shallow amounting to nothing more than a few extra rooms, and Quidditch matches amount to the same "fly through the rings" sequence every time. I'd really recommend the sequel over this one. This isn't bad, but there's also not a lot you can't get from watching someone else play it.

[#] Madden NFL 2002 (Electronic Arts, 2001)

Madden's rather confusing last hurrah on the PlayStation.

As the (functionally—later editions were mostly roster updates) final edition of Madden to grace the PS1, I was curious to see how the series had matured over its run. What followed was confusion. Why can't I see my receivers? Why do zone plays not work? Why is the kick meter touchy like a squirrel with a coke habit? Why are my cornerbacks running with the receiver and not tackling him? Why is the other half of the field wide open when I play defense? Why does every stadium have an airhorn that blows every 45 seconds? Why do I save my settings, season, and user profile in three different menus? Why does the game freeze sometimes returning to the menus, and why does turning the music off seem to fix it? (That one might just be my copy.)

Setting the camera to "Madden Classic" did a lot to make the game playable. While the bugs and bizarreness never fully go away, time and practice does reveal a fun, fluid football game to round out Madden's time on the console. How much shit you're in for depends on the team you're up against. Some teams, I found my running game absolutely useless, and my blockers wouldn't help much. Sometimes, passing was the challenge, and runs were the only way I could move downfield. I still try to pick more blitz and direct coverage plays on defense, since you cannot trust your CPU teammates to do anything with zones except stand there. Still, you find enough ways to exploit the computer and score (corner passes are great for shaking off defenders) to keep things unpredictably fun.

Graphically, it's angular, but solid. I love the goofy player animations, especially their dumb hops to deflect passes. (If you're a fan of strange unlock characters, check the teams you get through the Madden Cards—and some of the cheat cards, like the Motocross Madness force field sidelines one, are no less odd.) While the rap instrumental menu music is cool, Pat Summerall and John Madden's commentary is sparse and disappointingly repetitive. Most of the headliner features, like mulligans, you can pretty well ignore, but the Madden Classic mode is an adorable little extra. It's an emulated version of John Madden Football on the Genesis with all 32 teams present, and if you thought this game was antiquated, wait 'til you get a look at those passing windows.

(As said, Madden 2003, 2004, and 2005 on PS1 are basically identical to this game, mostly with roster updates and Al Michaels taking over for Pat Summerall on commentary. Like the end of its run on PS2 and Xbox 360, these versions of Madden were mostly meant as cheap releases to keep the lights on for players who hadn't upgraded consoles yet, a curious tactic to look back on.)

[#] Monsters, Inc. Scream Team (Sony, 2001)

Quick and lightweight Pixar platformer with lovely levels.

While hardly a commonly-remembered PS1 favorite, Monsters, Inc. Scream Team is a fond one from my childhood. It's a 3D platformer to tie into the Pixar-y misadventures of our favorite fluffy blue bear (not much of a monster, is it?) and a spindly walking green eyeball (that's more like it), complete with fairly decent quality clips from the movie! It's about as you'd expect, and you can 100% it in an afternoon, but it looks and sounds nice and I enjoyed my time revisiting it.

The premise is Sulley and Mike (you can choose to play as either) are tasked to traverse twelve training courses full of homicidal toys in search of eight "nerves". Nerves are robot child substitutes who bounce around, skip rope, and build snowmen, and your goal, naturally, is to reduce them to shivering wrecks (and subsequently piles of metallic rubble!). The courses are divided into urban, desert, and arctic-themed stages you gain access to as you scare the requisite numbers of nerves.

This game is lovely looking for the PS1. Colorful, imaginative locales, clean, noise-free texturework, and the arctic stages even have motion blur on the falling snow. The platforming's good, though Mike sucks to control, so play as Sulley if you like enjoying yourself. You got collectables, button puzzles, trampolines, speed boost arrows, and annoying-but-infrequent slide segments. There's nothing here you can't get from watching a playthrough online, but I've got a soft spot for it.