Brittney helps me with our Top 10 PS1 Games & we discuss our first Playstation memories + Honorable Mentions! This list isn’t like most Top 10 lists, but that’s ok.
Games shown:
1. Final Fantasy IX
2. XenoGears
3. Breath of Fire III
4. Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped
5. Twisted Metal 2
6. Einhander
7. Resident Evil II
8. Chrono Cross
9. Tetris PLUS!
10. Fear Effect 1&2
Video Transcription:
METAL JESUS: Blah blah blah blah blah blah.
BRITTNEY: Blah blah blah butt sex!
METAL JESUS: Blah blah blah blah blah blah.
BRITTNEY: Butt sex in the anus!
METAL JESUS: Vaginal… what was it?
BRITTNEY: Canals.
METAL JESUS: Vaginal canals.
BRITTNEY: Vaginal canals, everybody! That’s what we love to talk about on this show.
[intro music]
METAL JESUS: Alright, so we’re here with Brittney to talk about PlayStation 1.
BRITTNEY: ‘Allo!
METAL JESUS: This is gonna be our Top 10 PlayStation 1 games. And, you helped me come up with this list. Actually we both came up with five and we sort of merged it together.
BRITTNEY: We melded. We meshed.
METAL JESUS: That’s right, that’s right. And… Now the thing is that… Don’t get upset, because we didn’t include Final Fantasy VII.
BRITTNEY: Yeah, that was something when I was reviewing our list I was like, “There’s no Final Fantasy VII here.”
METAL JESUS: People are gonna hate us.
BRITTNEY: People are gonna hate us!
METAL JESUS: You know what? We’re strong enough to take ’em on!
BRITTNEY: Bring it.
METAL JESUS: That’s right.
BRITTNEY: That’s right.
METAL JESUS: But, so it’s our Top 10 list, but we are going to have an honourable mentions. You know, just so we don’t get tons of hate mail.
BRITTNEY: Final Fantasy VII will not be on there…
[whoosh]
METAL JESUS: Number ten is my pick, and I picked Fear Effect 1 and 2. Have you played these games?
BRITTNEY: I have not. I have to say I have not played those.
METAL JESUS: So… You know what these are gonna be a little bit controversial because the games are kind of controversial. They’re sort of survival horror games kind of similar to the Resident Evils.
BRITTNEY: I love Resident Evil.
METAL JESUS: But, these are better.
BRITTNEY: Oh…!
METAL JESUS: Well, I think…
BRITTNEY: Oh…!
METAL JESUS: I think that they’re actually better. Only because I think they’re more interesting because: They have really cool female characters – they kick ass.
BRITTNEY: Okay, okay.
METAL JESUS: It’s in the future, it’s kind of cyberpunk sort of like Blade Runner.
BRITTNEY: Okay.
METAL JESUS: And they’re crazy Japanese. Like, they start off in sort of ‘reality’ and then they go to hell, literally, and it’s just like nutty. It’s totally out of control.
BRITTNEY: Okay! Who developed it, do you know?
METAL JESUS: Eidos? I don’t know who the actual developer is so don’t…
BRITTNEY: It’s all good.
METAL JESUS: I don’t know, man!
BRITTNEY: When you’re saying totally Japanese I’m thinking like Capcom as a company – they made Resident Evil. So I’m thinking, “Well, those aren’t really Japanesey,” but…
METAL JESUS: These are actually pretty cool. They were kind of popular when they came out. But, for whatever reason, they never caught on. So, I don’t know. For me they are definitely one of my favourite PlayStation 1 games.
BRITTNEY: Awesome.
METAL JESUS: How about you?
BRITTNEY: I picked Tetris Plus. Now, there’s not a lot to say about Tetris – I mean it is what is is. But what I loved about Tetris Plus is it had, you know, a side panel of co-op. So my parents and I would play all the time when I was growing up. And there’s a fun little twist to it – So this little guy right here, he’s constantly running across your blocks. And every fifteen seconds or so the additional pile of blocks will just pop out of nowhere and so your guy’s propelled up, and at the top of the panel is a saw. And so if you can’t get your guy down to the very bottom of the panel by playing Tetris how you’re supposed to, and clearing out all the blocks, your man, your poor little dude here, will suffer a terrible fate. So for that reason it was really fun to play with my parents growing up and it just holds a special place in my heart.
METAL JESUS: Tetris is one of those games where… I mean, I still love playing it. Like any time I take out a Game Boy or anything like that ñ even my iPad ñ I have a version of Tetris on it. I love the game so much.
BRITTNEY: It never gets old. And it’s so funny because it’s one of the original games you think of, right, when you think of video games. But it just doesn’t get old!
METAL JESUS: Huh. Cool. So number eight is a role-playing game I absolutely love. It is Chrono Cross.
BRITTNEY: Ah!
METAL JESUS: Yes. You know, Chrono Cross is kind of the unofficial sequel to Chrono Trigger ñ have you played that?
BRITTNEY: I have played Chrono Trigger but I’ve never played Chrono Cross.
METAL JESUS: Chrono Cross is pretty cool. It’s not as good, but I still love it ñ I mean when I first played it, oh my God, it was amazing at the time. And it has one of my favourite combat engines in it, actually ñ it’s not too complex, it’s still turn-based. It has an amazing Squaresoft combat engine, I love it. The characters still go through different dimensions. It has forty collectible characters in it so there’s plenty of replay value.
BRITTNEY: Damn.
METAL JESUS: Yeah. Actually I have a friend of mine who has played this, I don’t know, like four hundred hours?
BRITTNEY: Holy shit! Alright!
METAL JESUS: Yeah. So, it’s a crazy game I love. And it has an amazing soundtrack ñ one of my favourites.
BRITTNEY: You know I listen to a lot of video game music while I work and Chrono Cross is one of the top soundtracks that are always coming up and I love it. I know the music; I don’t know the game though.
METAL JESUS: Yeah, it has this world music, it’s got a little bit of Middle Eastern music in there, it’s got a little bit of Asian music, it’s brilliant.
BRITTNEY: Awesome.
METAL JESUS: How about you?
BRITTNEY: I have Resident Evil 2 – are you familiar with this franchise?
METAL JESUS: I am! Ah… you know it’s…
BRITTNEY: You’re hesitating!
METAL JESUS: No I am, actually. I haven’t played that one though.
BRITTNEY: Okay. So, fun little story with Resident Evil 2 is I lied to my dad ñ my friend was over, his name was Tucker ñ and I was like, ìDad, Tucker and I wanna go to the store and get…î Like, I made it seem Resident Evil 2 was a ‘pony, happy game’, like you know, something G-rated.
METAL JESUS: How did you…? Okay.
BRITTNEY: And my dad, bless his heart, was totally ‘bleurgh’, you know. Anyway so I rented this game and I didn’t get through the first cut scene before I had nightmares for literally two months. I’m serious, it took me ten years before I could play this game again.
METAL JESUS: Huh.
BRITTNEY: But anyway what I really loved about it is you know the first Resident Evil game you’re going through the mansion, and you’re seeing underground labs, and it’s awesome and cool ñ but in this you actually get to see Raccoon City and kind of the aftermath of the T-virus outbreak. And you’re introduced to Claire and Leon for the first time and those are some of my favourite Resident Evil characters. And you know the pre-rendered backgrounds are really cool, and so for me I was just nerding out, you know? I don’t wanna say ‘mainstream’, but I feel like this came out before zombies were like the ‘mainstream’ thing – you know of course Romero was out way before this shit, but.
METAL JESUS: So is this your favourite Resident Evil game?
BRITTNEY: I would have to say Code Veronica is my favourite game.
METAL JESUS: Oh really? Okay.
BRITTNEY: Yes. But this is my second favourite, easily. I love looking through Raccoon City Police Department, the city, you know just…ah! Ah!
[whoosh]
METAL JESUS: So next up for me is one of my favourite shoot ’em ups of all time. Shoot ’em up ñ it’s Einh‰nder.
BRITTNEY: Einh‰nder.
METAL JESUS: Now, this is kind of an amazing game because it’s by Squaresoft. So you would think well Final Fantasy, role-playing games, I mean what are they doing making a shoot ’em up? But this is an amazing shoot ’em up.
BRITTNEY: Really?
METAL JESUS: It’s beautiful, it’s hard as hell, and I still love playing it actually. And you know what’s kind of funny is ñ I was thinking about this today ñ So many great games came from Squaresoft during the PlayStation 1 era. It’s amazing.
BRITTNEY: Oh yeah. Yeah, oh totally, totally. I was just telling you I had never heard of this, and you said, ìIt’s a shoot ’em up,î which I was, for when this game came out, probably ten years old so I was like, ìThat’s why I’ve probably never heard of it!î That wasn’t my genre.
METAL JESUS: Yeah. Pretty tough. But even today it’s very collectible and you know a must-have for shoot ’em up fans.
BRITTNEY: Awesome. I have Twisted Metal 2.
METAL JESUS: I love the Twisted Metal series.
BRITTNEY: Yay! Awesome.
METAL JESUS: Yes, yes.
BRITTNEY: Metal Jesus Rocks… Twisted Metal Jesus Rocks… No I ñ Usually when I play a game I need a good story, you know to keep me engrossed and everything, and this doesn’t really have that much of a story. But for whatever reason this game just hooked me more than any of the other Twisted Metals. I loved all of them but this one was just like ‘it’ for me. I loved all the stages, I feel like every time you played an arena area you know there’s always something new to find out ñ a new hideout, a new power-up location, or anything.
METAL JESUS: They’re so well-made games. I mean just the whole arena aspect, the level design, it’s so much fun to explore ñ you’re always finding new stuff, you know?
BRITTNEY: Yeah.
METAL JESUS: I know. I need to get the new Twisted Metal ñ have you played that yet?
BRITTNEY: No, I actually stopped after 4!
METAL JESUS: Yeah, well they made too many of them.
BRITTNEY: They did.
METAL JESUS: They really did. But I’ve heard good things about the PS3 version. I want to get it.
BRITTNEY: I’ve heard really good things too. Who was your character in Twisted Metal?
METAL JESUS: I don’t remember.
BRITTNEY: Oh, Minion! Minion! That was my character and I think [unintelligible] by falling off one of the rooftops in New York City, but…
METAL JESUS: Next up for me is one of my favourite games on the system ñ that is Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped.
BRITTNEY: Yes!
METAL JESUS: I love this game.
BRITTNEY: That one’s so fun.
METAL JESUS: I know. And actually they’re all really good but I think it’s the third one that got everything right. I mean… How do you describe this game? I mean it’s an amazing platformer, there’s a bunch of variety in it, I love the characters, I love the bad guy. It’s just amazing.
BRITTNEY: Fun times. I mean they couldn’t have taken the series and put it in a racing game any better, I think.
METAL JESUS: Yeah. Totally, totally. So, Crash Bandicoot 3 for me. What do you got?
BRITTNEY: Ah! I have one of my favey-fave faves: Breath of Fire III.
METAL JESUS: I’ve been looking for a copy of this for my collection for a while.
BRITTNEY: Really? I have four, we should talk.
METAL JESUS: What?!
BRITTNEY: Yeah, I’m a hoarder. Hah!
METAL JESUS: Ooh. So glad you came over.
BRITTNEY: [unintelligible] No, but seriously. I mean, on paper this game doesn’t offer anything extraordinary when it comes to JRPGs, but it has amazing characters, a really fun story, and it does something that I really appreciate which is there’s a lapse in time during the plot. Half the game you’re a child, second half you’re an adult, and you get to really see that world through your adult eyes. And that’s something I really loved about Ocarina of Time, that’s something I’ve always loved. So, why I love this game? Many reasons, but that’s one of the top reasons.
METAL JESUS: I’ve played Breath of Fire IV which I think is just an amazing game, I love that game.
BRITTNEY: See I’ve never played that game. I ordered it off eBay and then the game never worked.
METAL JESUS: Ah, that’s a bummer.
BRITTNEY: And now I haven’t played it since. But, this is just an awesome game: characters from all walks of life, it’s beautiful, the music is awesome, you’re a dragon ñ you’re Ryu, right? So, you get to find all these genes throughout the world and you get to splice them together and become a different dragon every time you do it. So you might be a whelp, or a behemoth. It’s just awesome. The story’s amazing, I could go on and on and on and on. So I won’t.
METAL JESUS: So number two for me is, I think, one of the greatest role-playing games of all time. That is Xenogears. This game is amazing. First of all, it has a great combat engine, which I love. You do hand-to-hand combat for half the time then you’re in the gears the other half the time.
BRITTNEY: Yes.
METAL JESUS: So it’s a lot of variety in the combat. The story is bat-shit crazy.
BRITTNEY: That is is!
METAL JESUS: It’s amazing because I looked at a plot summary once and it just goes on, and on, and on.
BRITTNEY: And you’re like, ìWhat’s going on right now?î
METAL JESUS: Yeah. There’s so many sub-plots, there’s so many… I mean, you go out in space, I believe at one point you take on God or something like that.
BRITTNEY: Hah!
METAL JESUS: It’s just… It’s nuts.
BRITTNEY: You know I haven’t finished this game, but one of my fondest memories ñ my grandma plays video games and she cannot get past a certain area where you have to leap over a gap in bridges or something. And so I would go over there and every summer hang out there and she was like, ìBritt, I can not get past this part.î And so I would finish that for her, all the parts she couldn’t get. And for that reason alone that game is just really special to me.
METAL JESUS: Yeah. Its only flaw is that the second disc is a little… I guess they didn’t have time or money to finish it quite the way they expected to. Also this is technically part five of a six-part series. So, it’s definitely massive in scope. But yeah it’s cool. Definitely is up there.
BRITTNEY: How do we… How do we get our hair like that?
METAL JESUS: With that little…?
BRITTNEY: With that… that’s pretty impressive. And I mean his ponytail’s like defying gravity. Outside-gravity ponytail.
METAL JESUS: We can work on that.
BRITTNEY: Let’s do it.
METAL JESUS: Okay. How about you?
BRITTNEY: I have… I don’t even know if I can properly explain myself when it comes to Final Fantasy IX.
METAL JESUS: It’s a Final Fantasy game, hello?
BRITTNEY: This game, just… It’s easily, well, probably my favourite game of all time. I spent countless hours with this game, I wrote a four-hundred page fanfiction about this game, I have posters, I have collectibles, I just… Ah! I don’t even know if I can properly… But anyway, so you know the characters ñ to me that’s what’s most important in a game. And the characters in this game are just so well-rounded, so dynamic: You have a freaking ‘Qu’ ñ I don’t even know what that is, it looks like a frog person ñ whose main goal in life is to eat food and catch frogs, and then you have Zidane who is a thief, you have Garnet who is a princess, you have her guard, you have a bounty hunter.
METAL JESUS: You remember a lot about this game. How much have you played it?
BRITTNEY: Well, over probably two hundred hours of this game.
METAL JESUS: Wow.
BRITTNEY: Which is maybe three year, full playthroughs. But it just made such an impact on my life and I… I can’t!
METAL JESUS: You’re gonna tear up, aren’t you?
BRITTNEY: I probably will actually. No, I probably will. But I can’t listen to the opening music without tearing up. But no the story is just really good. And it’s just… I can’t.
METAL JESUS: I really enjoyed it as well. I haven’t finished it though. It’s one of those games where I get to about the fifty-hour mark and, you know, I get distracted. I have no excuse, I’m not saying it’s right, I’m just saying…
BRITTNEY: I can’t be mad at you. I only hurt for you, for not finishing this. Please, if you learn anything from this video, play this!
[whoosh]
BRITTNEY: So that is our Top 10 PlayStation 1 games of all time. So long ago, but what was your first memory of the PlayStation?
METAL JESUS: I was late to the PlayStation. I had a roommate who had one though, and one of the most amazing things I saw was Gran Turismo 2.
BRITTNEY: Ah!
METAL JESUS: I was a PC guy and so I’d seen really awesome driving simulators and stuff like that, but I honestly didn’t think the PlayStation was powerful enough to do that kind of game.
BRITTNEY: Ah you had the PC mentality!
METAL JESUS: I know I was a total PC snob, right? I still kind of am. But man, watching him play Gran Turismo 2 with the cars and the physics and the soundtrack ñ I was blown away. I was like, ìOh!î I was really jealous. How about your first memory?
BRITTNEY: Alright, my first memory of the PlayStation. My grandmother always got my cousin and I consoles. So she was the first to get us the Super Nintendo etc. etc. So PlayStation came around, and I remember watching – I think it was Jet Moto – and my cousin hook it up Christmas Eve. And he hooked this up and obviously I hadn’t been home yet so I hadn’t been able to play mine. So I’m watching him play his and there was real life footage of actual people doing shit, and I was like, ìOh my God! This can happen? We’re in the future!î To me that was like, ìHoly shit!î
METAL JESUS: Yeah.
BRITTNEY: ìThis is a TV… but not.î I don’t know.
METAL JESUS: Yeah, I agree. The PS1 was definitely the first console to do 3D very well, you know, even though looking back on it now it I think it definitely looks a little dated.
BRITTNEY: Blocky.
METAL JESUS: Blocky, and the textures aren’t great. But man at the time it was amazing. And it was so easy to pop in a game and play ñ again, unlike the PC, where you dealt with video cards, drivers, all that sort of stuff.
BRITTNEY: I miss those days. Those were the days of simplicity and just pure gaming and… Revolutionary. You know I feel like today you don’t get that any more. With the Xbox One and PS4 it’s like, ìOh these are really cool!î But it’s just kind of the stuff above what we had. But back then, remember that leap? It was like, ìHoly shit!î
METAL JESUS: The other thing too is that the amount of variety on the PS1 was out of control.
BRITTNEY: Oh yeah.
METAL JESUS: Because you had the 3D games, like a lot of them that we showed, but then also too you had amazing 2D games which were still coming out.
BRITTNEY: Right.
METAL JESUS: Platformers, racing games.
BRITTNEY: Croc, Gex. Yes!
METAL JESUS: But just so much variety, that frankly you just don’t have any more, you know?
BRITTNEY: I agree.
METAL JESUS: So I love collecting for the console, definitely.
BRITTNEY: Me too, it’s one of my favourites. That and PlayStation 2.
METAL JESUS: Absolutely. And now, also too I wanna talk about you and your website.
BRITTNEY: Yay!
METAL JESUS: You run a website that’s awesome, and also a YouTube channel.
BRITTNEY: Thank you. I do, yes. My website’s name is ‘blondenerd.com’ and it’s pretty much me, my ramblings. There’s no professionalism so please don’t expect that ñ I use every four-letter word that you can think of.
METAL JESUS: And you make up some, you know.
BRITTNEY: I do. I do make up a lot of words. Yeah and I’m also a collector – Like, this fine chap right here. So my YouTube videos are usually me showing off new finds, new hauls, or just my collection, or talking about random happen-stances.
METAL JESUS: You’re kind of a competitor, I’ll be honest.
BRITTNEY: Oh really?
METAL JESUS: Like actually I remember emailing you, and you were like, ìDo you go to garage sales?î And I was like, ìYes…? Where do you go?î But thankfully you were like…
BRITTNEY: We’re in different counties, so it’s okay. I mean I garage sale South, and he garage sales up here.
METAL JESUS: Okay, alright. Okay, we can hang out.
BRITTNEY: We’re cool. He says I’m a competitor after he asks me for a copy of Breath of Fire III… Just putting that out there.
METAL JESUS: I’m not saying there’s not benefits, I’m just saying, you know…
BRITTNEY: Competitors with benefits!
METAL JESUS: Too awesome. Well thanks very much for coming on!
BRITTNEY: Thank you!
METAL JESUS: This was so fun.
BRITTNEY: It was so fun.
METAL JESUS: Thank you guys for watching this video. I’d love to know what you guys think of our Top 10, and what games we missed because I know there are several.
BRITTNEY: Oh there’s many.
METAL JESUS: Final Fantasy VII…
BRITTNEY: Oh, Final Fantasy VII. Final Fantasy VII…
METAL JESUS: That’s alright, that’s alright. We can take it, we can take it.
BRITTNEY: No, diversity is good.
[outro music]
– Video Transcription by Luke Stokes