PSX: The Guide to the Sony Playstation IS RELEASED!

[PS1Expert]

BTW, this book was no small feat for Kevincure. He did a stupendous job that literally took years (he contacted me over a year ago for help). He and everyone who contributed put their heart into it and I'm proud to be a small part of it. Now I'm torn about ordering it or printing it out at work (on a color laser printer). My work might even be able to print it and bind it at cost. (but I'm sure it'll cost similar to what lulu is offering it)

The interviews are great reading. The variant information is great as well (I assume Dangerboy helped there...great job!). If there is a version 2 in the future, I will be there to help with more import games, gadgets, and prototypes.

[roushimsx]

The screenshots are what gets me -- for a full-color book of that price, I'd expect screenshots that didn't just look like someone played a game for five minutes in an emulator and took shots of the first level. Look at Symphony of the Night for example: three of the five shots are from the first Dracula fight! Nearly every game has this problem, and it takes a lot away from the book's overall quality.

Damn, good point, man. I had noticed that some of the shots weren't properly stretched, but I didn't notice that damn near all of the shots for those games were from the first few minutes of gameplay.

I really like pretty much everything else, but that is a pretty noticable sore thumb now that it's been pointed out.

[Spartacus]

Just bought the book. Thank goodness for the free super saver shipping!

I can see this book is aimed squarely at collectors and provides the kind of information they would most be interested in and even though I'm merely a fan of PlayStation games, I'm sure it will, none the less, come in very handy to me. I didn't think I would ever have any use for SLUS/SCUS numbers, but just by reading the pdf version I began to understand that those numbers correlate to the order in which games were released. I never realized that before, so I guess I'm learning things I didn't know already and I haven't even got the book yet!

Groupings by publishers and genre were very nice to see, but it would have been REALLY nice to see groupings by developers too. I think many of us have a fondness for certain developers more than we do for publishers and I would have enjoyed a section noting some of the more significant ones.

I'd like to thank Kevin and all those who contributed! I'm sure I'll enjoy having it. I noted that Steve Wilcox was also a contributor. I feel personally indebted to him for opening my eye's to so many imports and considering the expense this has begun to incur, I'd always hoped I'd be able to thank him someday in a dark alley somewhere.

P.S. It must be a Sisyphean task for writer's to avoid the temptation of using words like... Sisyphean.

[Qixmaster]

great book! i will be ordering one shortly.

and people.... be nice to kevin. this is a ginormous feat and i stand in awe of all those who helped make it possible. not only that, this is FREE! so stop your bitchin' about errors and what is right and wrong for "playstation". Thanks for making this availble to everyone kevin!
-Josh

[graboid9]

Great job guys...now you can start on the complete Sega guide for us segacd/32x/saturn/dreamcast lovin collectors

[PapaStu]

The variant information is great as well (I assume Dangerboy helped there...great job!). If there is a version 2 in the future, I will be there to help with more import games, gadgets, and prototypes.

Heh.... DB brought me to this board purely for that reason. My first posts were all about PS variants. I was the one that got DB into the variants

Great job guys...now you can start on the complete Sega guide for us segacd/32x/saturn/dreamcast lovin collectors

I'm workin on the DC and most of the other ones have already been broken down pretty well.

[Push Upstairs]

Still have a ways to go on the Sega one?

[AtariBuff]

Kevin - GREAT work

I came home yesterday from a short vacation only to find your work ready for download for all of us - you're my personal hero!

Many thanks for mentioning my name in the contributors list but you should have put Raymond on top of mine

As I will have more time at hand in the next months I can provide you with info about limited and/or special editions of PAL PS1 games and other info you may need maybe for the next printing of the book.

Again, great work - please keep it up

[pixelsnpolygons]

Wow fantastic work. I've been hunting down PlayStation games for my website for about as many years and my project is only just starting to see the light of day, so I know what a mammoth undertaking this book must have been and what a relief and joy it must be to be able to display your efforts to the masses.

I'll definitely be interested in picking up a copy. I haven't regretted the two DP books I own and it looks like a must own, too.

Again awesome job to everyone involved!

[Spartacus]

Kevin, now that I have your book in my hands I thought you might like to know that I think both you and your publisher have done a very nice job indeed! The abundant use of color make's for a very pleasant experience simply thumbing through it. I really like the layout with a picture and summary of a game at the bottom of each page, then with a full page dedicated to a notable PlayStation game coming up every few pages. That really worked well and the experience is a thousand times better than using the pdf version. The colors in the screen shots are sharp and vivid and you can't help but want to go play the game just looking at them! About the only picture I didn't understand was the one of the slightly blurred yellow and red PlayStation console. Am I just ignorant about something here? What is the significance of that picture?

[ManciGames]

Sure it matters. Can you imagine a biography in which the author misspells the subject's name on the cover? You'd be immediately and justifiably skeptical about the accuracy of everything in the book.

I bear no ill will toward Kevin or anyone else who worked on PSX, but "Playstation" is an egregious mistake.

(Which reminds me that the third edition of Phoenix is filled with misspellings of console names--not just "Playstation," but also "Playstation2," "Gameboy," and "X-Box." Ugh.)

-- Z.

Ah, just ignore it. "PSX..." and "Phoenix" are labors of love written, published, and distributed by those who love the hobby. Until Ziff, Del Rey, or some other major publisher wants to help us out by publishing and distributing works such as these, I think we can live with the occasional editing error, especially if it's something as simple as one letter not being capitalized. At least they didn't name it "The Guide to the Nintendo PSX" or some such nonsense.

[ManciGames]

Damn, good point, man. I had noticed that some of the shots weren't properly stretched, but I didn't notice that damn near all of the shots for those games were from the first few minutes of gameplay.

I really like pretty much everything else, but that is a pretty noticable sore thumb now that it's been pointed out.

Why does it matter? If you are into the game that much, you probably don't even need a screenshot. I think they are there to give people who have never played that particular game an idea of what the game was like.

You guys are really asking for a lot from a project like this. I'm sure the guys didn't have the time available that would allow them to play 10 hours into each game just so they could get screenshots.

[ManciGames]

Great job guys...now you can start on the complete Sega guide for us segacd/32x/saturn/dreamcast lovin collectors

I will be ordering the PSX book, but I'll tell you what: If you put out the Sega book, I'll pre-order 2.

[roushimsx]

Why does it matter? If you are into the game that much, you probably don't even need a screenshot. I think they are there to give people who have never played that particular game an idea of what the game was like.

You guys are really asking for a lot from a project like this. I'm sure the guys didn't have the time available that would allow them to play 10 hours into each game just so they could get screenshots.

It matters because the screenshots don't really do an accurate job of representing the full quality of the games. While I agree it's silly to expect them to spend 10 hours playing a game just to snap a dozen or so screenshots to sift through, it doesn't mean they couldn't ask other people to help out with a predefined configuration / standard (such as, only use P.E.Op.S. GPU plugin, no filtering, keep aspect ratio, etc) for the handful of titles.

Afterall, they did work 3 years on it. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a little more attention to detail in the screenshot area (especially since there's so few of the games that use multiple shots). Also, you can download savestates and savegames from the internet, further negating the need to play extended periods of time for the money shot.

But hey, I do agree that the Playstation vs PLayStation vs PlayStation argument is fucking retarded, though. You know damn well even if it was spelled PlayStation, someone would bitch because it's not in the exact same font as it was on the Playstation box.

Screenshots, ment to offer a fair representation of the gameplay, are another beast entirely. Symphony of the Night really could have used a better variety of screenshots, in particular.

[SamuraiSmurfette]

Pink Panther had an NTSC release? I thought it was a PAL exclusive...

[Dangerboy]

Yup, Pink Panther is out. I have it, had to acquire it off of ebay because I never saw it in stores.

[PapaStu]

Pink Panther had an NTSC release? I thought it was a PAL exclusive...

Yeap. I got mine in a store, and new at that for 10 bucks. I've only seen it a few times though.

[kevincure]

AFAIK, tons of them were sold through Costco.

Dangerboy & Papastu, I'm still of the opinion that Easter Bunny is the rarest (regular) U-C release. Now that it's been quite a bit since the last games have come out, what do you guys think?

[Dangerboy]

Same as the Panther...I don't ever recall it being in a store...at least a real store (I don't shop at Costco... )

Kevin, how's the book selling / downloading?

[Lothars]

that's awesome

I definitly want to pick it up,

Thanks alot for the book it looks amazing from what I can see

I am really glad to see that they support paypal