Playstation 1 Games of My Teenage Years

EDIT: This article is part of a trilogy read the first part here, and the second one here. This was written in 2017, it was re-formatted in 2022.

Salam (Peace)

I talked a lot about my childhood games in the previous posts. My PlayStation broke down gradually and by the time I was 15 we stopped using it for gaming. My cousins had a PS2 at the time. We visited them a lot. but that's another story...

The games I played when I was aged between 15-18 have my favorite memories on the PS1. Some of these I played on PC with an Emulator. Maybe I have more memories with those because my English at the time was fairly good compared to before.

The PS1 image is public domain taken from Wikipedia, all covers are taken from Gamefaqs.com and they're owned by their respective companies.

Resident Evil 2

I choose Resident Evil 2 for this list over the first game and RE3, (the latter is better gameplay-wise.) I have more memories with RE2 than both of them.

By the time I first wrote this. RE2 was my favorite Resident Evil game. It's the one I spent most of time on.

Resident Evil 2 comes in 2 disks. Depending on the one you play first, the campaigns are different. It's the first Resident Evil that I paid attention to the story while playing. Leon and Clair are very likable. The zombies have convincing reasons to be there, and the disaster have been contained. It's a story about survival and not about apocylpse.

My brother, my cousins, and me, spent around 2 weeks trying to get all the games secrets. We heard that if you completed the game with Rank S you unlock a new character. For that, we had to complete the game in 3 hours without saving. We did it once, but and didn't unlock the character. I still don't know if the rumors we got were wrong or if we were the ones who did something wrong!

I don't remember much from the actual story of the game, but I'm sure I'll remember everything about a place as soon as I see screenshots!! because we repeated playing the game more than 20 times... a record for me.

If you like Resident Evil series you might enjoy Resident Evil: Triple Pack on Nintendo Switch!

Chrono Cross

See part 1 for Chrono Trigger.

I first heard about Chrono Cross from my cousins. They said "there's this game where you play different character every time you start a new game." They told me they're are stuck about 2 hours into that game.

I played it in one of my visits to their house. We learned that we were s essentially stuck in the tutorial. The game was in English, and they couldn't translate what they have to do.

I used to pronounce the main character name "Serge" as "Seraj" and was happy because they used an Arabic name. I didn't notice that Serge is a western name.

Chrono Cross was amazing for its time. The story was so ambitious, it's deep and confusing. (Yeah, every time I played it I understood it differently. There's a whole website that explains the story and answers plot holes.) Many of its characters have their mini-stories, which makes the world feel alive.

There are about 45 playable characters, but you can only get around 35 of them in one play-through. Adding to the replayabilty. The battle system was very good and different from anything I played before. We got stuck in this game multiple times due to being an old RPG. It wasn't clear about the next objective. It was worse than many PS1 games in that regard. With the help of a walkthrough we played the game. Reached 2 of its endings. (and 3 more in "New Game +" mode.)

At one point in the game, you play parts of the story in the villains body. Your old friends become your enemies, and with your new friends, you have to find a way to turn back. I found that part amazing!

A Remaster for Chrono Cross was released in 2022!

Final Fantasy VIII

I didn't choose the famous FFVII for this list. When I first wrote it, I loved that story more, but until this day, Final Fantasy VII is more personal for me, and its setting is closer to our modern day world. (If you're inrerested in both games, there's a FFVII and FVIII Twin Pack on Nintendo Switch.)

The hero of FFVII is Squall. He's messed up emotionally, and I felt related to him for some reason. He overthinks. He doesn't know what to say when speaking. He's awkward. He hides all of that by wearing strong mask and being a lone wolf, but deep down, he desires friends.

The gameplay is unique but is based a traditional turn-based system. The GF/Junction system is broken. (GF = Guardian Force.) It has a strange learning curve and not explained correctly. If understood, though, the game becomes fun.

There's a part of FFVIII you play as someone named Laguna for few chapters. He's someone from the past whose story is related to Squall in an intriguing way.

When I heard about Spectrum Crunch (a real-life theory that suggests the wireless connections will be full one day) I remembered this game for some reason.

When I first wrote this article, I did so after buying the Steam version of FFVIII. Since then, I finished this game and wrote my review.

Driver 2

My first GTA experience...!

I played Driver 2 in my childhood, (I should've posted in in part 1 or 2,) but I replayed again in my final PlayStation days where I completed it. This game is good and made me love Car games for a little while.

At first I didn't play the game as I was supposed to. I always get a Car, break it, go out of it and look for another car. Yeah, the normal GTA play. It was fun for a while...

Don't have much else to say about Driver 2.

Monster Rancher 2

I played Monster Rancher 2 in my early teens. It was great.

I watched the anime series, (it's called أدغال الديجيتال in Arabic,) before that, so I thought I knew what was going on.... Nope, I didn't. The game was different from the anime. It took a while to get used to.

The game uses a system that generates monsters by putting disks inside the Playstation. The idea felt amazing! I couldn't believe the console can do that until I tried it!

Putting the same disk always gave you the same monster. I tried to put PC disks in it but those didn't give me monsters so maybe it had to be a PS1 game that should be put in?... I don't know how they do it, but they're good!

I never completed the game, not the main story. I was close more than once. (It's not a long game, but it takes a lot of time to learn it without a guide.) I only got a low percentage of all monsters (I think it has +300) or cards. I spent +100 hours on this game, and I'm happy for the enjoyment I had of it.

Monster Rancher series is a lot different from the competition: Pokemon and Digimon. I don't think it should have competed with them, because it had its charm points. I wish they revive this series!!

This series was revived somehow! It was released on Nintendo Switch as Monster Rancher 1 & 2 DX in 2021

Spider-Man

Spider-man	Spider-man 2: Enter Electro

I liked the two Spider-man games on PS1. They are the 2nd and 3rd best spiderman games I played in my life. The first one on PC was #1! (At least by, the time of my first publishing of this article in 2017.) I admit, I haven't play many of the true best spiderman games.

For me Spiderman 1 was the better of the two, maybe because it had Venom?! I loved Venom at the time... There was a period of my life I was a Spiderman fanboy...I grew out of it eventuallly, though...

I wanted to complete the two games with every secret possible. It took me and my brother a long time. We might've completed %80 of them before giving up. Some collectibles were insane to find!

In case of Spiderman 2 you get a poster for each boss you fight for each difficulty. Because of that, we played the game on every difficulty, even the very hard one. Winning that was a real challenge.

Metal Gear Solid

This was one of the latest games I ever played on PS1. I'm happy for the experience. This game is one of the best in both story and cinematics.

I remember a lot of good parts and some things I still quotes till day "I live in the moment" ...I got emotional in that Sniper Wolf part.

MGS is the first stealth game I played. I couldn't believe how fun (yet how punishing) it was. I think Assassin Creed did the stealth part better, but there was a sense of artificial stupidity in Metal Gear Solid that made it charming. 'Enemy is coming! Hide in that Box!!'

I played Metal Gear Solid 2 shortly after this game. It was even better!

That's it.

There are some games I played but never mentioned, but I think I had enough variety for this post trilogy.

I loved the PS1. I still think it's the console that got the most of its capabilities explored by games made for it.

Thanks for sticking with me in this series of posts... I loved writing it so I hope you enjoyed it.

If you haven't yet, check the previous part where I talked about lots of games, Spyro, Tekken 3, Pepsi Man, Disney games, and one of my favorites: Dragon Valor!

Please tell me what you think in comments below, and lets meet again with another topic.
All covers are taken from Gamefaqs.com and they're owned by their respective companies.
EDIT: This article is on Publish0x now.