Back to the past

PS1 games come to modern consoles, but how’s the emulation?

“Trying to run old 50Hz games is always going to result in extra blurring.”

Thanks to PS Plus’ classic catalogue, PS5 and PS4 can now play home to generations of games stretching all the way back to PS1. If you’ve been keeping up with this RetroStation section, you’ll know this is very much within the PLAY wheelhouse. The idea of dipping into the past to catch up on missed classics, replay old favourites, or for a quick bit of local multiplayer is fantastic, as PlayStation has a unique legacy that makes it stand out as a gaming platform.

PS3 was the last home console to run PS1 games. This was achieved using emulation, just like it is on the new PS Plus. This time around, though, you can’t insert a disc – it’s digital only – but previous purchases of classics made through the likes of PS3, PSP, and PS Vita should work for any games that have been given the thumbs–up by Sony.

PS Plus’ new emulator for PS1 is quite different from the one used on PS3. There are some nice quality-of-life changes that have become standard for emulated rereleases these days, namely the option to create save states you can quickly load from in addition to your standard memory card saves, and the ability to rewind. The rewind here isn’t particularly precise, and has to be controlled from within a pause menu, but it can be a useful tool to get around having to replay sections of a game should you fall off a vertical platforming section or die to a particularly annoying boss.

GAMING HERTZ

But there are also some oddities that could use some work. For starters, the available PS1 games are a mix of US 60Hz NTSC versions and European 50Hz PAL ones. At first glance, using the PAL version for us over here makes sense – that’s what was released here originally and the PAL versions tend to have more language options as well. But not only do the 50Hz versions run slower, they were made for a TV format that doesn’t exist any more. These days, everything’s standardised, and trying to run old 50Hz games is always going to result in extra blurring.

Shortly after the new service’s launch, PlayStation stated that it’s looking to implement an option allowing you to pick which version you prefer from game to game, but considering we got PS Plus almost a month after its initial rollout in Asia, you’d have hoped this would have already been the plan for the big day.

Finally, on the emulator side, you’ve got some visual options that are similarly bare-bones. The default look is pretty great – the image is upscaled into a boxy 4:3 within your widescreen to reflect TVs from the PS1 era, though your mileage may vary on how much you like that smoothed-out look. You can also put on a Retro filter, complete with poorly implemented scan lines that don’t look either good or how you remember, or go for the Modern filter, where the colours look blown-out. The aspect ratio settings likewise try to offer the best of both worlds and manage neither, either horribly stretching the image to make it widescreen, or seeming to squish pixels too closely together to give a weird, narrow look. These kinds of options can be great to have, but they’re so basic here, they’re almost pointless – ticked checkboxes for

2 Tekken 3 may be more beloved, but King’s Tekken 2 outfit remains king. 2

1 1 The menus are visually pleasing but can be tough to sort through as things like filtering by platform don’t work as you might expect (‘show all’ for a category doesn’t always show all, either).