X-COM on PSX

[Fox]

I know a few of you play X-COM on PSX. Do any of you notice the game plays EXTREMELY laggy? Maybe it is just my playstation? I don't know.

[Neorapsta]

Might be a scratched/dirty disk, cos that can cause slow down on CD games. Also might just be the CD then, cos rubbishy CDs will also lead to major slowdown.

[FullAuto]

UFO plays great on my Playstation, it's TFTD that goes into slo-mo for me. Every single mission that isn't a bloody USO recovery turns into a marathon in treacle.

[Zombie]

Fox : I play the Playstation version regularily so I feel your pain. I put up with long game loading times as well as frequent hang-ups for quite a while. Recently, I added a 8 Mb digital memory card to my arsenal and wouldn't you know, it burnt out my memory card slot as well as the controller port! So I went on ebay and bought a used playstation (in much wose condition than mine). Now, the game speed is up siginificantly from my old PSX and it has far fewer hang-ups.

 

I really doubt the disc is giving you the headache. I cleaned my disc often and kept it in pristine condition - even using a resurfacer if the cleaning marks became intolerable to me. At least in my case, the PSX machine is to blame.

 

Bumping or jarring the playstation is detrimental to long term use. The laser carriage is extremely susceptible to rough handling, and will eventually move out of alignment causing slow game play and hang-ups. Case in point: I was running my old PSX upside down to get the carriage (and lens) closer to the disc to improve readability, as I was afraid to realign the mechanism and make it worse. A scratched laser lens will also cause slow game play and the PSX lens is known to be exceptionally vulnerable to scratches.

 

A scratched disc is easily whipped into shape by a light cleaning and possibly a resurfacing if the scratch is on the deeper side. If you think the problem is with the lens, and you are handy with electronics, you could buy a replacement lens and swap out your old one without much cost or trouble. (Only do this if other games are also laggy and slow)! The carriage unit is tough to realign properly, so if you think this is the culprit a used (but working) PSX might be in order - should cost you around $20-$25!

[Fox]

Interesting... has anyone ever tried using it on PS2?

[MildCat]

I didn't know that UFO was out for the Playstation... I've only ever managed to find TFTD.

 

It's slow for me as well, but I never knew how slow it was untill I played UFO on the PC. Like it was said before, I doubt it has anything to do with the CD, it's just naturally slow.

 

I think my freind played it on his PS2 but it wasn't any better. But it was a while ago so I could be wrong.

[Psy Guy]

I use to play UFO on the PSX back in the day and i usally meet lag when there was a lot of fire, night, and/or terror missions (saving is super slow).

Also i played a game called C&C Red Alert Retaliation. On skirmishes it ran at 2 frames per second, no joke. But when i played it on the PS2 it ran nicely. If the lag your getting is from the psx being pushed too far then the PS2 would greatly help you there. But if its from disk scratches then i don't think it will be of much use.

[Zombie]

X-COM seems to be running good on my (used) playstation - and a lot better than my old one. Running X-COM on the PS2 would probably gain you only minor improvements over PS1. Why? To play a PS1 game, the PS2 runs in what Sony calls a PS1 emulator mode. The processor speed is stepped down from the full 128-bit to 32-bit mode and available memory is downgraded from 32MB to roughly 2MB. So you may see some improvements, but not as much if you were somehow able to run X-COM in full PS2 glory!

 

X-COM is slower on your PSX than your PC for a couple of reasons. First, the playstation 1 only has around 16Mbit of RAM memory I think. My notebook computer has 256MB of SDRAM and X-COM really flies on it! The less time the machine needs to go back to the game disc for information, the faster the game play. No game disc is needed for the computer version so the speed is unreal.

 

Second, the processor speed of the PS1 is roughly equal to a high 386 or low 486 running with a clock speed of 33 MHZ - in reality it is a 32Bit RISC processor. My notebook is a Pentium 4 running with a clock speed of 2.0 GHZ! So just a little bit of difference here. I always wanted to add more memory to a normal playstation to see how it would work. I am guessing pretty well, even with a 33MHZ processor!

 

Psy Guy : Yeah, I also noticed a severe lag with lots o' fire. Try this: blast away with plenty of incendiary rounds (rockets, clips, whatever) on a farm mission. The more fires you have going at the same time puts an increasing strain on the processor to keep up. Eventually, when plenty of fires are raging, the game will refuse to create any more fires until some have burnt out. I am unsure if the incendiary rounds you shoot off after the limit is met actually do damage to a target or just explode as duds. Night or terror missions seem to work fine for me with no real slow downs.

 

I have been looking for a playstation version of TFTD for the longest time. Unfortunately, I live in the United States and the only PSX games that will work with it are NTSC. You guys overseas have the PAL format and I believe that TFTD was only made in PAL. Does anyone know if TFTD is in NTSC? Thanks!