The more time goes by, the more developers learn to master consoles. Sometimes machine life cycles don’t last long enough for teams to take full advantage of their architectures. And in other cases, amateurs work on consoles long after their official deaths. Today we’re talking about some amazing statements from a developer who worked on the original PlayStation. According to him, the Sony console did not give all it had.
The very first PlayStation could have run games at 120 fps. This surprisingly surprising statement is the work of Chris Kirby. British programmer Chris Kirby developed several PSOne games in the 1990s, including the PlayStation version of the NBA Jam Tournament Edition.
A few months before the western release of Sony’s first console, Chris Kirby picked up a development kit. He had actually been hired by Iguana UK to port the arcade version of the game from Midway to PlayStation. And that’s what he did. Alone. During this time, another of his colleagues was planning the game’s Saturn port and the two men were constantly exchanging information about the two machines and the progress of their projects.
Is the PlayStation really capable of playing games at 120 fps?
That time he spent breaking down the PlayStation’s game code and guts has allowed him to learn a lot about it. Asked by the YouTube channel Pandemonium To create this port of NBA, Jam TE Chris Kirby made a surprising reveal. In his opinion, this launch game was far from pushing the PSOne to its limits:
The two machines (the PlayStation and the Saturn, note) weren’t pushed by NBA Jam. I know the PS1 could have run at 120 fps easily!
Obviously, not all games use the PlayStation’s capabilities in the same way. That said, if the NBA Jam Tournament Edition could have achieved 120 fps, it certainly wouldn’t have been the case for all games.
In addition, screens could not have displayed a game at 120 fps back then. Most of the screens that are currently in households cannot do this … It is still interesting to hear such a statement from a developer at the time.
For the record, Chris Kirby explains that the NBA Jam Tournament Edition is running at 60 fps on PlayStation. The movements of the camera and the movements of the players on the floor are in 60 fps. The individual animations of the players, on the other hand, take place in 12.5 frames per second.
Easier said than done ?
It would be interesting to see what a PlayStation version of the iconic basketball game would look like, optimized at 120 fps. What concessions would have had to be made to achieve such a result? Players will certainly never know.
Finally, note that Chris Kirby created several other PSOne games. In addition to NBA Jam TE, he has programmed titles such as Monster Trucks by Psygnosis or Test Drive 4X4 for Accolade.
What do you think of these statements? Do you believe it? Would you like 120 fps compatible versions of games from the first PlayStation to be re-released? If yes, which? If not, do you think the games should stay as they are? Let us know what you think in the comments below.