Okay, what the hell? Xenogears emulated on 3DS runs SO much better than through the official emulator on Vita. I guess probably because that’s actually an emulator within an emulator - though I would HOPE Sony could shunt around that and have the PSP emulator call a Vita-native PS1 emulator, but knowing Sony…

Anyway Xenogears runs BEAUTIFULLY on the 3DS; it’s so smooth and fast. I’m shocked. I thought battles were just supposed to be slow, but perhaps that was just the way it was on Vita. They’re not a slog anymore, they’re not boring anymore, though they aren’t particularly exciting when you’re in a mech.. and I put the game down two years ago just before a very mech-heavy battle section.. So I’ll probably keep Xenogears on hold for a bit.

I think it’s really fun that my 3DS has helped me get further than I’ve ever been in some games recently, games I’ve been trying to play for decades. It’s not just Final Fantasy 4 but now also Parasite Eve. I’m seeing parts of these games I never knew about!

I already gushed about FF4, so I wanna talk about Parasite Eve instead. I’ve always been intrigued by this game. A Squaresoft take on Resident Evil? It’s not a fantasy game like they usually did back then, but a modern day story set in New York City pre-9/11. It’s a bit more sci-fi than RE too, which always intrigues me. The battle system is kinda simple, but I’m still finding it engaging. I’ve played a little bit of Vagrant Story, so it’s really cool to see the first iteration of those systems. VS takes it a lot further, for better or worse, and it’s one I do want to dive into, but I do struggle with the fantasy setting and the political intrigue story. I just don’t really like those things :\

I also want to say there’s something that feels strangely appropriate about playing PS1 games on my 3DS. They play at native resolution (whatever that means for analog video games, but you know) without scaling because the 3DS has really quite low resolution screens. Whereas the Vita screen could achieve a perfect 2x scale of PS1 games, the 3DS doesn’t scale at all and even has some minor black bars on the top and bottom (depending on the game). And it looks better for it. And because they’re older LCD screens, they have a fair amount of blurring between frames, which smooths the image out a lot, much like a CRT would. Even pre-rendered backgrounds look really good on these screens, something that tends to get ruined on modern displays. I don’t feel like I need a CRT or a CRT filter to appreciate the art design because they just look great. I had been toying with softmodding my Switch 1 for PS1 games, but the much higher resolution would require some kind of (integer) scaling and that would actually make things worse.

In fact, I also loaded up Popful Mail for Sega CD (oh my god I swear the New 3DS can emulate all the old systems I’m interested in¹) and that actually ends up scaling down a smidge.. which somehow still looks REALLY GOOD on the 3DS screens!

Also, how come I’m only learning now that Final Fantasy Explorers is a Phantasy Star Online-alike?! I could have played it online when the servers were still up if I knew 😭

Actually, it’s a weird cross between PSO and Monster Hunter. The gameplay is a lot like PSO, whereas the mission structure and reliance on equipment for character progression come from MH. I’m not opposed to it, but I’m still just looking for that modern-ish portable PSO experience. I do have Phantasy Star Zero (yes, PSO and PS0 make for confusing acronyms, come on) on the DS and Phantasy Star Portable on the PlayStation Portable (read: Vita; also, they were sooo clever with that title). Where PSZ plays more like PSO, PSP plays more like Phantasy Star Universe. It’s interesting. I like a lot of what both branches of the series do, to be honest. So I’m surprised that I really bounced off of Phantasy Star Online 2 when it finally came west. It took a lot from everything that came after the first one, and then molded it into a kind of free to play MMO… So perhaps it’s that f2p MMO aspect that really killed it for me… I dunno. I should put more time into PSZ and PSP, but they’d be so much more enjoyable with friends or even online randos :\ I think PlayStation Network is still up for Vita games, but Pretendo on 3DS definitely doesn’t support FFEX yet or DS online games at all.

Anyway, back to PE and FF4! Or maybe I’ll work through more offline missions in FFEX? Or maybe I’ll continue playing Taiyaki Fabulous Museum of Fish (emulated, of course, on my 3DS) :)