So that project I vaguely alluded to recently – it’s a doozy and a half!

Before I go on – follow my Twitch channel, where this will all go down – https://www.twitch.tv/galarian_gaming

Heavily inspired by TheMexicanRunner‘s NES Mania (completing every officially released US/PAL NES game), PSX Mania aims to bring that kind of energy and ambition to Sony’s debut console. I made some early concessions however, due to keeping my sanity, due to goal ambiguity, and due to lack of proper peripherals.

The overarching goal of PSX Mania will always be to “beat each game at any %, any difficulty”. So if beating a game on the default difficulty produces a message challenging me to up the difficulty and try again, that won’t be necessary. Other notable rules:

• *UPDATED 5/19/21* Simulation sports games are being removed from the list, as well as a few other sports titles that are not simulation. These mostly consist of games from MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, soccer, boxing, F1 and NASCAR. For the list of what was removed, click here: https://tinyurl.com/removed-sports-games
• Light gun and dance pad games are omitted (for now, like any omissions) until I can get a proper at home set up. I know you can use a d-pad for many light gun games (and a PS1 mouse), but I’m not sure if I want to take that route
• Most compilations are omitted (again, just for now) outside the Street Fighter and Square EA compilations (so something like Final Fantasy Anthology from Square EA, or Street Fighter Collection 2 from Capcom will be in play from the start, but something like Namco Museum Vol. 1-5 will be held off for the time being)

Certain games that I know well enough, I may add a win condition or two to it, like Street Fighter Alpha 3‘s win condition will be not only beating arcade mode, but also losing to M. Bison instead of winning (the bad ending), as well as play through World Tour mode from start to finish. Something like Marvel Superheroes, I’ll beat the game with three different fighters. Final Fantasy VII I may try and get all the summons and kill the two secret bosses. With the number of games on the console though, I’m not going to go crazy with bonus win conditions, as truncating the sports games was due in part to the number of RPG’s I’ll have to go through, and other elongated titles I may run across. I’m already salivating at how many RPG’s I have not played yet and have wanted to for years, as well as RPG’s I haven’t played perhaps since their release!

In terms of the order I am playing these games in, it’s a bit multifaceted. First, I have a list of well over 100 games right now. Just as a small tease, the aforementioned Capcom brawlers are included, as well as the EA Sports titles of 2000 (minus golf and boxing, and baseball is 2001), Chrono Cross, Alien Trilogy, Diablo, Road Rash 3D, Jumping Flash!, Metal Gear Solid, and many more. For the most part, I may just select games and put them in an order, while having channel points earned at a certain level (affectionately called Uber Boobers) being able to request the next game from the list of games that are not down on reserves/restrictions. It’s at 60k right now, and I want to be sure it’s at a level that rewards prolonged viewing, while not overly high.

In addition (and channel point purchased requests will go after these mentions), every 20th and 25th game is going to be known as a “milestone” game. These games are going to be curated from a list of reserved games. These games are either major heavy hitters on the console (Xenogears, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Syphon Filter, etc), or games that might not always be a terrible game, bit one I am absolutely dreading to play for one reason or another (Bubsy 3D, Gran Turismo 2, Driver, etc). I tried to take as many big named hits that folks want to see, and kind of spread them out as best as I could, so that I don’t blow my load all at once. There are still a myriad of heavy hitters that I have not reserved however, such as the likes of the Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon games, most of the Resident Evil titles, various Squaresoft/Square EA games, most Mega Man installments, all the Twisted Metal games minus 2, and much, much more.

Here’s something that most of you will be wondering – real hardware or emulation? The answer is….both? I’m going to put a heavy bias and favor towards real hardware, however, PS1 consoles are about as reliable as an Xbox 360 fatty. I currently have two PS1’s and a newly arrived PSOne (always wanted one of these). One of the two PS1’s is more or less dead, and the other stutters the music played. I do want to invest in a modded PS1 that basically removes the optical drive in favor of an SD/Micro loading unit, though those are quite pricey, as well as not easy to find. For situations where I am either unable to use real hardware (I don’t have the disc handy, the consoles break down), I’ll be using a mixture of a PS Classic with games loaded on a thumb drive, or under extreme circumstances, PC emulation. I’ll likely leave a note in the stream title (real hardware, PS Classic, PC) on what I use for said game. In the end, I do want to purchase an Xstation for this project, maybe even a PSIO unit, but not for these expensive prices (when they are even available). If things really start to take off here though, I may bite that bullet sooner and not later. For now, my PSOne will carry me forward (until that dies out, even if it’s the One). I went ahead and purchased an Xstation console for this project. Definitely well worth the investment price!

I also want to shout out someone who has been working on this long before I have – he goes by Re_LodeR on Twitch. At nearly 60 games in, Re_LodeR has quite a bit of mileage ahead of me. If you would like to follow my journey through PSX Mania, then I wholeheartedly recommend you follow Re_LodeR as well. It’s a chill stream, and always a fun watch. I am not framing my project as a competitor against him; I am doing my own thing at my own pace, as is he. Sometimes he may get to a game faster that’s more widely anticipated, or vice versa. Nonetheless, I highly recommend you all follow along with Re_LodeR as well. There’s also a whole cast of streamers doing a myriad of challengers. I highly recommend checking this Google Doc for more info!

For more information about this project, I have a handy dandy Google Doc filling in most of what I have said here, as well as other miscellaneous information. As with The Galarian Chronicles, this has been a long planned project (though no where as long as the 15 years or so of TGC), and I’m excited to kick this thing off finally, and see how far I can take this (all the way I hope, though we’ll see). Within that document, you’ll see tabs on the bottom that will lead you to what games are still available, what games are restricted and why, and random miscellaneous information, like longest/shortest game, etc.

The likely launch time of this project is sometime in the first week of February, if not, sometime in February.

Saturday January 30th I’ll be streaming some PS1 betas, prototypes, English patched and unreleased games. Some are the more obvious choices, a few others are some neat curiosities I’ve stumbled upon, including a couple of E3 demos. Most of these I’ve only made sure they work so it’ll be a blind playthrough, a few of them are ones I’ve had for almost 20 years now but haven’t touched in about half that time.

I hope you folks are able to check the streams out! There’s still work slowly being done with The Galarian Chronicles, and I’ll get an update for that relatively soon. Until then, stay tuned my my Twitter feed, as well as posts here on the site, for updates, when I’ll be streaming, and so on!