Wobbly Polygons

One of the FMV cutscenes that sporadically play using old footage of Apache gunships banking over a coastline forest

The title screen for Gunship that uses the PlayStation's hi-res mode (as do most of its menus) that are a little bit painful to look at on crt tvs.

A gameplay snap showing the cockpit view and green texture-mapped landcape

A snap of the waypoint map with primary and secondary objectives to complete.

Apache helicopters on the wobbly polygon horizon - GUNSHIP!

An earlier release for PSX, Gunship is a solid and full-featured port of Gunship 2000 for Amiga and DOS (with a bit of the CD32 version thrown in) that swaps filled polygon battlefields for texture-mapped ones.

A snap of Starblade Alpha's title screen, with its starfield background and logo. Copyrights and rights below, plus the Namco logo. 1991/1994.

A snap showing the streamed FMV-ey rendered background and the first-person on-rails shooting gameplay.

More spacey shooting with a rendered enemy ship in the crosshairs over a blue world

OA snap of one of the big battleships in chrome and grey plating in orbit of the cresting blue planet

Where did you go for some space combat action on the early PlayStation? You went to Starblade Alpha, a March '95 remake of the 1991 Namco arcade game.

Strap yourself in as a gunner FX-01 Geosword and save the galaxy!

A CRT screenie of a 3D polygonal F4 Phantom in jungle camo livery with various stats and a buy price.

A CRT screenie of a 3D polygonal F-117A stealth fighter in blue-black livery with yellow markings.

A CRT screenie of a 3D polygonal Su-35 in greyish blue-white camo livery with its own stats displayed.

The Wobbly Polyon Airforce on Parade ✈️

📺: Ace Combat 2, Nanco, 1997

What a cute little welcoming bit of CRT+PS2 pixel art <3

The landing page for a Neocities site I've just been having a poke around in.

cosmic-kiko.neocities.org

A snap of a GAME brochure with FF7 for £44.99 and describing it as "The ultimate role-playing adventure with hundreds of levels and hours of gameplay."

"Final Fantasy VII is hundreds of levels long." - GAME, 1997.

It's quite cute to see them still describing games like this to emphasise just how big it is.

Happy 25th birthday, Final Fantasy IX <3

Still my favourite of the PS1 Final Fantasy games.

A CRT TV screenie of a third-person cyberpunk racing game with a sci-fi metropolis beneath a red sky and with a chequered section of track ahead and spotlight gantries on either side.

Blistering speed and Y2K cyber-vibes in an early racing game for PS2 and third in its series.

📺: Extreme-G3/XGIII: Extreme G Racing, Acclaim Studios Cheltenham, 2001

The fanciful cover for Elemental Gearbolt, a shooting game with cool fantasy mecha ala Escafowne

One of the most gorgeous PSX covers: Elemental Gearbolt.

Exploring the 1995 PlayStation Developer’s Demo Disc While Europe and Japan focused on gameplay with its first demo discs for the Sony PlayStation, North America charted a different course.

An exploration of what was on the first PlayStation demo disc to hit the USA. Music to capture the vibe as you waited for the consoles release and some tech demo eye candy once it did.

Ahh, awesome! And yeah, it's been on my finally-get-around-to-picking-up list for the longest time too xD

A photo of the 3-game compilation with a mosiac style cover of all three game loogos

The back of the case shows screenies of the game and some review blurb.

Charitable PSX games! The Help Charity compilation, released in 1998 with proceeds going to children's charities, bundled together a few disparate games from 1996.

These days, it's a cheap way of picking up Myst and Broken Sword for PS1 - the first versions of them I played.

The cover of Official US PlayStation magazine with its Kingdom Hearts artwork and headline. Also, GTA Vice City revealed!

The key to the magic kingdom. Even though I haven't followed Kingdom Hearts past the second game, the first game is such powerful nostalgia. <3

Yeah! It's rare you get a demo disc that's entirely packed with bangers.

14 seconds of pure awesomeness and anticipation with the Konami logo that has the most nostalgic punch to it for me. <3

xD Yes please

A close-up of the Medievil logo in all its goodness! Plus a good look at those gorgeous neon pads!

A close up of the gameplay preview with one of the arctic dudes with white balaclavas posing in frame

A photo of the title screren with cool neon dual shock wireframe pads in the background and game logos around the central game preview window. Plus some Pizza Hut blurb at the bottom and the names of their hottest pizzas.

I'll get some 1998 PIZZA-POWERED PlayStation demo disc action in for this week's #ScanlineSunday!

Metal Gear Solid, Crash Bandicoot: Warped, Tomb Raider III, MediEvil? You're gonna be in for a great pizza night.

📺: Bush 14" inch VCR combi (RGB SCART)

Jan 1999's PSM cover with Chun Li, a Racoon Police zombie, Squal, and Raziel posed on the cover - plus Pocket Station, the first games!

Preview '99 - the upcoming stars of the last year of the old millennium, as drawn by Marvel and Dark Horse comics artist Art Adams for a banger PSM cover. 💜

An ad for the DTL-3000 Net Yaroze online starter kit with a photograph of the charcoal grey homebrew dev PS1 and two pads against a stark, classy white background.

"Let's Go Online!" - The Starter Kit!

Imagining a PC-98 and Net Yaroze next to one another makes me shiver. 🥵

A magazine ad with a skull skewered on a sword blade and game screenies and blurb below.

"If you don't lose your head, someone else might..."

A grisly ad for a game with, admittedly, copious amounts of gushing pixel blood - Vandal Hearts!

Yeah, same here!

Yeah! Very much so. I prefer the flat-shaded ones for something like this than textured.

The main menu page for Digitiser with its cool teletext artwork of a blue mohwaked dude with shades, and 6 categories of text. Playstation assessed, plus an old game - Colony for the Spectrum. Retro nostalgia in the mid 90s!

Violet Berlin's appraisal: "The battle lines are drawn in the same: two huge organisations, vying for world domination, each armed with the very latest in hardware. No quest will be given. But enough about Command & Conquer, I want to talk about the superconsoles, but mainly the PlayStation.

A bit talking about critique of a lack of game bundled with the PS1, only a demo disc, and that the price difference when you buy a mem card and game between the PS and Saturn diminishes.

The verdict! Sega, Nintendo, and 3DO have a fight on their hands.

September 30th, 1995. The PlayStation is out in the UK!
Across the country, bleary-eyed folks fresh out of bed tapped into Teletext and Digitiser the next morning, greeted by Violet Berlin and their appraisal of Sony's new wonderbox.

One of the coolest aspects of IS is the Chinese Zodiac animal-themed weapons. They morph your ship and all have different firing patterns and projectile types, and you'll need to switch between them on the fly depending on the attack waves.

The minimalisticc tutle scren with I S spelled out in rounded dots and a single a tube, with 1999 Square/positron at the bottom

Internal Sections hella cool stylized net-technical aesthetic UI with cyberpunk elements and the different stage types

A gameplay snap captured via GBS-C and our PS1 of the virtual reality-themed tube tunnels, all glowing circuitry and grid lines and splintered triangles with an abstract player ship that changes shape with the Chinese Zodiac named weapon you use (rat, dragon, monkey, etc)

Another gameplay snap showing polyonal letter banners circling around with OK >>> on them

Carpgs, tactical mechs, STGs, even Final Fantasy; what weren't late 90s Square turning their hand at? Well, chalk up one more genre they took under their wing via developer Positron: music tube shooters!

Internal Section runs at 640x480 at a silky smooth 60fps and comes highly recommended.

A crt tv screenie under RGB Scart of model railway-esque depiction of an isometric Yokohama with a road network, buildings, and trucks and other vehicles traveling around at night.

Looking up and across at an overpass an orange taxi cab drives by the lower road and a white truck can be seen on the overpass.

South Yokohama... A glittering city of polygons at night

Take me down to Racing Lagoon City, where the streets wobble and the polygons are pretty 🎶

The joy of driving around a wee isometric Yokohama as the millennium turns.

📺: Racing Lagoon, Square, 1999

Pleasse insert PlayStation format disc - white text on an ominous gradient red grid pattern background on a crt tv.

RSOD - though thankfully just a wipe of the disc needed.

Still spooky tho!

A CRT TV snap of one of the last levels in Ace Combat 2 with an F22 over a night time metropolis.

Come fly with me, let's fly away 🎶

Namco takes their nascent arcade flight series to new heights in '97.

A photo of the included mini art book for the Japanese release we have with illustrations of the main cast, this one being blonde-haired Toxa Classico.

A snap of the contents of Rebus's manuals, pamphlets, and and other goodies.

Another snap of the art book and Amano artwork

Rebus, aka Legend of Kartia, aka Kartia: Word of Fate, aka the non-Final Fantasy game from Atlus that Yoshitaka Amano did character artwork and illustrations for during a time when he was exclusively doing them for SquareSoft.

C'mon, get your body movin' to the beat 🎶

The arcade dancing sensation made its way to the PSX to get your dancing fingers and feet movin' and groovin'

📺: Dance Dance Revolution, Bemani/Konami, 1999