PlayStation Classic Announced (3rd Dec 2018)

[Hero-of-Time]

Most of these complaints seem to be the same across various outlets. Half hearted and not a patch on the NES or SNES Classic systems. 

It will be interesting to see just how this sells over the Christmas period. There's a lot of negativity around the product, and quite rightly so, but will these views effect the sales when it comes to the mass market purchasing the console?

[Dcubed]

4 minutes ago, Ike said:

They are using the PAL versions in the American release as well, I though it was just the European version?

Yup.  Both Europe and the US get the same mixture of PAL and NTSC versions of the games (for some inexplicable reason!!)

Edited November 27, 2018 by Dcubed

[Ronnie]

15 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

There's a lot of negativity around the product, and quite rightly so, but will these views effect the sales when it comes to the mass market purchasing the console?

Probably not I suspect. It'll sell on the name alone, and presumably that's what Sony are banking on.

[killthenet]

I don't know, it doesn't seem like it's going to sell as well as Sony would hope. The high cost will put off a lot of casual players and the poor emulation/selection of games and use of 50hz for a handful of games has already put off a lot of seasoned gamers.

[Goafer]

6 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

I love the hyperbole in that tweet. I must have been playing a different PAL version of Tekken 3 when I was younger because mine copy was very much playable.

To this day I still don't understand the fascination with 60hz, especially when it's from gamers over here in Europe who more often than not actually grew up playing the 50hz versions without any complaints.

You have been on the internet before, right? That's pretty much how it works around here.

[bob]

What even is the difference these days, assuming you have a TV made during the last 15 years that can display either?

[S.C.G]

23 minutes ago, bob said:

What even is the difference these days, assuming you have a TV made during the last 15 years that can display either?

These days, there is no difference... in regard to what you can display, your TV should be able to handle both 50Hz and 60Hz games, no problem.

Back in the Eighties/Nineties, especially during the 16-bit era, TV's were mostly all CRT based (as you'll already be aware) but not only that, there were different standards...

PAL - Phase Alternating Line (PAL) is a colour encoding system for analogue television used in broadcast television systems in most countries broadcasting at 625-line / 50 field (25 frame) per second (576i).

SECAM - SECAM, also written SÉCAM (French pronunciation: [sekam], Séquentiel couleur à mémoire, French for "Sequential colour with memory"), is an analogue color television system first used in France. It was one of three major colour television standards, the others being the European PAL and North American NTSC.

NTSC - NTSC, named after the National Television System Committee, is the analog television color system that was used in North America from 1954 and until digital conversion, was used in most of the Americas. NTSC was the first widely adopted broadcast color system and remained dominant until the 2000s, when it started to be replaced with different digital standards such as ATSC and others.

That's just a bit of info nabbed from the default source but essentially, PAL & SECAM = 50Hz while NTSC = 60Hz

So over here, we got for example... Sonic the Hedgehog at 50Hz while over in America and Japan they got Sonic running at 60Hz which makes a huge difference.

These days when emulating old games, like with the Sega Ages range on the Switch, you'll at least be given the option to choose either region.

But here in the case of the Playstation Classic, it seems that some games are 50Hz while the rest are 60Hz... in all regions as well.

This means that no matter which version you buy, chances are that not all of the games will be the ones you remember as they'll be running at a different speed.

I've no problem with anyone wanting to play the original 50Hz versions they grew up with, for some games I probably wouldn't have it any other way.

With other games though, it makes a difference... I'd find it hard to go back to the original Wave Race 64 for example after playing the Virtual Console version at full speed.

[bob]

These days, there is no difference... in regard to what you can display, your TV should be able to handle both 50Hz and 60Hz games, no problem.
Back in the Eighties/Nineties, especially during the 16-bit era, TV's were mostly all CRT based (as you'll already be aware) but not only that, there were different standards...
PAL - Phase Alternating Line (PAL) is a colour encoding system for analogue television used in broadcast television systems in most countries broadcasting at 625-line / 50 field (25 frame) per second (576i).
SECAM - SECAM, also written SÉCAM (French pronunciation: [sekam], Séquentiel couleur à mémoire, French for "Sequential colour with memory"), is an analogue color television system first used in France. It was one of three major colour television standards, the others being the European PAL and North American NTSC.
NTSC - NTSC, named after the National Television System Committee, is the analog television color system that was used in North America from 1954 and until digital conversion, was used in most of the Americas. NTSC was the first widely adopted broadcast color system and remained dominant until the 2000s, when it started to be replaced with different digital standards such as ATSC and others.
That's just a bit of info nabbed from the default source but essentially, PAL & SECAM = 50Hz while NTSC = 60Hz
So over here, we got for example... Sonic the Hedgehog at 50Hz while over in America and Japan they got Sonic running at 60Hz which makes a huge difference.
These days when emulating old games, like with the Sega Ages range on the Switch, you'll at least be given the option to choose either region.
But here in the case of the Playstation Classic, it seems that some games are 50Hz while the rest are 60Hz... in all regions as well.
This means that no matter which version you buy, chances are that not all of the games will be the ones you remember as they'll be running at a different speed.
I've no problem with anyone wanting to play the original 50Hz versions they grew up with, for some games I probably wouldn't have it any other way.
With other games though, it makes a difference... I'd find it hard to go back to the original Wave Race 64 for example after playing the Virtual Console version at full speed.

Interesting. But can one really discern the difference between the speed of a 50hz game compared to a 60hz? Presumably if you played one after the other, but compared to a game you played 20 years ago?

[S.C.G]

1 hour ago, bob said:

Interesting. But can one really discern the difference between the speed of a 50hz game compared to a 60hz? Presumably if you played one after the other, but compared to a game you played 20 years ago?

Well, it depends on the individual but, if it really has been twenty years since you last played a certain game, then... possibly not.

But, if it's a game that you're really familiar with, I think there's a good chance that you'd notice.

The average consumer possibly won't care but it's still good to make people aware of the differences if they do notice something isn't quite as it should be.

[Goafer]

A good comparison:

I've noticed 50hz when going back to Sonic after listening to the soundtrack for a while. 

It all depends on the game really. I don't think it's a huge deal, but then I was never going to buy the PS Classic anyway.

Also, from what I saw on the Giant Bomb quick look, it looks like they might have sharpened up the games a bit, but that may just be because they're displaying in HD. I swear they're not as jagged as I remember though.

Edited November 28, 2018 by Goafer

[Sheikah]

Interesting. But can one really discern the difference between the speed of a 50hz game compared to a 60hz? Presumably if you played one after the other, but compared to a game you played 20 years ago?

Yeah, you easily can. 50Hz games run about 17% slower than 60Hz games, so the difference is pretty remarkable.

[Goafer]

So Revelations: Persona sells for about the same price as the PS Classic (More if you want a boxed version). Certainly good value if you want to play that. I don't though, so meh.

[Hero-of-Time]

The Sonic the Hedgehog example is a good one. I always use this as to why I dislike the 60hz versions of games that I played as a kid. The music is far too fast compared to what I remember. The Starlight Zone music is ruined in the 60hz version.

[bob]

A good comparison:
I've noticed 50hz when going back to Sonic after listening to the soundtrack for a while. 
It all depends on the game really. I don't think it's a huge deal, but then I was never going to buy the PS Classic anyway.
Also, from what I saw on the Giant Bomb quick look, it looks like they might have sharpened up the games a bit, but that may just be because they're displaying in HD. I swear they're not as jagged as I remember though.

Ok that is pretty noticeable, fair enough. Weird that they ended up at 50hz if most of the rest of the world was at 60hz originally then.

[Hero-of-Time]

14 minutes ago, bob said:

Ok that is pretty noticeable, fair enough. Weird that they ended up at 50hz if most of the rest of the world was at 60hz originally then.

Going by this map it seems the differences in video output signal across the world was quite an even split. 

You'll find most who are kicking off about this issue are gamers in the US or those who were rich enough to import their consoles as a kid. For the vast majority of European gamers this really shouldn't be an issue as this is exactly how they played these games back in the day.

 

[Glen-i]

12 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Going by this map it seems the differences in video output signal across the world was quite an even split. 

You'll find most who are kicking off about this issue are gamers in the US or those who were rich enough to import their consoles as a kid. For the vast majority of European gamers this really shouldn't be an issue as this is exactly how they played these games back in the day.

 

That's all well and good, but what about people who played some of these games through the PS3 first? Wouldn't they notice if a game they enjoyed was 60Hz only to be slowed down to 50Hz.

And keep in mind that the majority of the PlayStation lineup was made in Japan, which has NTSC. So 60Hz is what the games were designed to run in. No matter how we experienced it, it's not the intended way of playing it.

You can really tell when a game was just shoddily slowed down to work with 50Hz though. The Sonic example above as well as games like Wave Race 64.

Meanwhile, the likes of Rare's titles back then are not quite as glaring in the differences. The Donkey Kong Country games are good examples of when 50Hz was taken into account. The difference between those is much more negligible.

[Hero-of-Time]

1 hour ago, Glen-i said:

 

And keep in mind that the majority of the PlayStation lineup was made in Japan, which has NTSC. So 60Hz is what the games were designed to run in. No matter how we experienced it, it's not the intended way of playing it.

 

It doesn't matter if that's how they were designed to run, a fact that i'm not disputing, at the end of the day THAT was how the majority of PAL gamers did experience these games and were fine with it. The hyperbole that 50hz games are some how broken messes and are unplayable is ridiculous. 

[S.C.G]

A fantastic in-depth review of the Playstation Classic here by DF Retro.

I still think the mini console will serve a purpose, especially this holiday season, if it allows anyone who hasn't experienced any Playstation games to do so, then that's good...

...but the Playstation brand and fans of the original games definitely deserved better.

So maybe there will be a revision in the future? Who knows... but for now, it looks like the best way to play original Playstation games is on the original machine itself.

Or the PS2, PS3, PSP, PSV of course, depending on availability of titles.

Personally, I'll be sticking with my PS2 for most of the games, PSone for some titles and PS3 for a small selection of games.

[Goafer]

23 minutes ago, S.C.G said:

 ...but for now, it looks like the best way to play original Playstation games is on the original machine itself.

Or the PS2, PS3, PSP, PSV of course, depending on availability of titles.

*ahem*emulatorwithvisualenhancementoptions*ahem*

[killthenet]

Thanks for posting that @S.C.G, it's a shame that it runs games so poorly - it seems like the quality of emulation is partly down to the hardware and so it probably won't be a great option even if it gets hacked. It's a pity that it seems so poorly conceived, I don't have the nostalgia for the PS1 so wasn't ever likely to pick it up but I was hoping if it was well made that there would be a possibility for a PS2 Classic in the future but that seems unlikely now unless this sells like crazy.

[Goafer]

I think emulating 3d hardware reliably is just a bit too much of a stretch at this point, especially on budget systems such as this.

If the games were optimised for the system, then there may be more success, but trying to emulate the original console requires more grunt, which is clearly beyond the sort of hardware that gets put into these things.

[Hero-of-Time]

Those who want NTSC versions of the games now have their wish granted. 

 

[S.C.G]

And I suppose this is something which Sony couldn't really mention due to the open-source nature of the emulator being used on the PlayStation Classic.

Technically it comes under "reverse-engineering" or whatever, but then, that's moreorless what Sony have done with the emulator itself, I suppose?

(but they are the license holders to the games etc)

I think this is one instance where the community will make the machine "better", one thing you can say for the SNES Classic is that it's fantastic out of the box...

I mean, it had its emulation software developed by NERD who also made a lot of VC software and more besides, the games ran well, you were only limited by number of games.

Sony could release a new version next year but at this point... it's probably best to just leave it as a "gift" to the community at this point, for what it is.

I still wouldn't advise or endorse* anyone buying one of these mini consoles with anything other than what they originally shipped with but at least the 60Hz option is in there.

You just know that if it's easy to do though, that people will probably add stuff to their PS Classic systems.

*N-Europe doesn't endorse piracy of any kind, especially if the games are still being actively sold by the original license holders, as is the case with the SNES Mini Classic and Playstation Classic. (Game preservation is a whole other topic however)

Edited December 4, 2018 by S.C.G

[Hero-of-Time]

I've had mine sat in the house since Saturday but I never opened it due to me being back and forth as to whether I should keep it or not. I finally made the call today and have arranged for it to be returned to Shopto. Figured that £90 could be spent on something I would actually play on.

[S.C.G]

3 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

I've had mine sat in the house since Saturday but I never opened it due to me being back and forth as to whether I should keep it or not. I finally made the call today and have arranged for it to be returned to Shopto. Figured that £90 could be spent on something I would actually play on.

For what it's worth, the money I "saved" by not buying the PS Classic, went straight on a boxed SNES game which I know I'm definitely going to play and enjoy having in my collection.

I'm really trying to be selective about what I buy now, because over the last few years, I feel like I've just wasted money on certain modern titles that I haven't even played.

Of course, for some games that day 1 purchase has supported the developer/publisher... so there's that but I definitely can't keep up doing that with every game.

In addition to "just about keeping up" with modern gaming on some level, I think I'm veering more to the retro side of things with each passing day.

I'll continue to enjoy PS1 games but it will be just a select few physical games (with a few downloaded ones from the PS Store for PS3 etc) on mostly original hardware.

I'd also say, just buy what makes you happy, PAL/NTSC, Expensive Retro titles, or "free" PS Plus/Xbox Live Gold/Nintendo Online titles.

It's all fine so long as you're enjoying playing

Personally though... I plan to take a leaf out of your book and just make some more time for games! (because let's face it, I really do need to)