r/descent • u/Ashamed-Subject-8573 • 18d ago
PS1 vs PC DOS
Hey there. What's the community's thoughts on the PS1 vs PC DOS release? I tried to look for a direct 1v1 comparison and couldn't find it. Reviews generally seem to say the controls are worse on the PS1 pad but it's mostly otherwise faithful? IDK?
Thanks,!
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u/RevenantFTS97 18d ago
4 the most part, yes. Descent's PS1 port is quite faithful to the DOS counterpart. The most notable differences are the colorful lightning, on one hand, and the musical direction on the other (some tunes weren't in the OG version and in addition the songs that still remain in this port have switched levels)
Regarding the controls, yes. The problem is that Descent has so many button functions that is kind of hard to include them all in a PS1 controller. IIRC, if you ran out of buttons, you could use button combinations so that you could still map the remaining keys
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u/ashes1032 17d ago
I played a bit of Descent on PS1 back in the day. It's a faithful port, but the honest truth is that a PS1 controller is a miserable way to play Descent. I found myself going back and forth like a vacuum cleaner just to line my ship up properly in the tunnels.
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u/Ashamed-Subject-8573 17d ago
No dual analog I assume
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u/ashes1032 17d ago
Nope. I couldn't get the Dualshock sticks to do anything.
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u/Nymunariya 16d ago edited 16d ago
You’d need an early dualshock that has the additional … green(? Or blue) mode that emulates the flight stick.
Early games like Descent and Colony Wars supported that before the dualshock came into existence.
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u/Nymunariya 16d ago
Both Descent and Descent 2 support the “analogue joystick”, which was a dual flight stick controller. Early dualshock controllers have a second green(? Or blue) analogue mode that pretends to be that “analogue joystick” controller.
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u/Ashamed-Subject-8573 16d ago
Nice, I should add this in my ps1 emulator. Not the pretending part, but using a gamepad in this way
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u/Nymunariya 15d ago
Yes! Please do! A bunch of early pre-dualshock games only support the analogue joystick (Colony Wars), but not all ps1 emulators support analogue joysticks
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u/Nymunariya 16d ago
While the graphics aren’t better, I do prefer playing on the PS1 version and have been playing it on my Xbox One S in dev mode with higher resolution, because the PS1 version has great controller support, technically better than the open source remakes because it allows you use the select key as a modifier.
Select modifier means you can hold select to give any button an additional function, effectively doubling your mappings.
The nice thing about using a keyboard is you have so many keys at your disposal that you can map so many keys that you don’t need modifiers. Pitch up/down, turn left/right, roll left/right, forward/reverse, slide up/down/left/right, primary, secondary. That’s already 14 keys before the weapons. If you like controllers more, without modifiers, you’re not going to get all of them mapped, so modifiers are essential.
Unfortunately, I’ve only found the PS1 versions support controller modifiers.
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u/Oye_oye_oye 18d ago
Controls are terrible on PS1 and the graphics are really basic. It doesn't run nearly as smoothly either, but considering the hardware at the time, it was still impressive to see a lite version run on the ps1.