For what it’s worth, Joe, I genuinely appreciate how much you’ve stuck to principles in creating a high-quality gaming show to your vision. I’ve never seen you follow algorithmic trends, clickbait titles, or any of the other bullshit that plagues this platform. I know that you *could* be simply chasing subscribers and clicks at the expense of your integrity, but you never do that. I really admire that, and I’m really thankful. You deserve all the success in the world and I hope you get it. Thank you for all the work you do!
Great video as always. And just to add, here in Europe, most of our wide-screen TVs had a 14:9 option back then. The standard settings typically had it along with 16:9 and ZOOM, which was a preset for the letterboxed stuff.
@After_Burnett I’ve done a little investigating. It seems it was some kind of compromise aspect ratio that some broadcasters used to allow widescreen broadcasts to not look too letterboxed on standard 4:3 televisions. Clearly some tv manufacturers baked it in
It seems pretty strange to me that companies even bothered with widescreen at the time. I didn't know anyone that had a widescreen TV in the late 90's/ early 2000's. I didn't even know that some games supported it back then, or if I did I ignored it because there really didn't seem to be a point.
Such a fantastic idea for an episode, and I love how you presented the 14:9 by stretching and squeezing an overlay with your own editing! If it interests you, I'd love to hear what you think of the widescreen hacks on emulators for SNES, PS1 etc. Seeing Super Mario World in ultrawide 21:9 is mental!
14:9 was a common aspect ratio option on TVs back in the day (at least in the UK) - to soften the transition from 4:3 to 16:9 many TV shows were shot in 14:9 as it was a good compromise: not too letterboxed on a 4:3 TV, not too pillarboxed on a 16:9 TV.
I know this is a stretch, but can you provide a reference for that? Wikipedia's 14:9 page says it's a shooting format only, and no 14:9 TVs were ever made. It would be good to correct it if there were such TVs.
@@Trispefear That makes no sense for a game tho right? 14:9 filming allows letter/pillar box or zoom to fill a real TV. Why would a game output a format which doesn't actually exist so the game always looks stretched and bad?
The 'Sack is king of retro gaming channels. I don't often find others who also have a daft sense of humour, so this channel's right up my street. So to speak.
If you watched the very end of the video, it seems like this could be the last episode of Game Sack ever... Joe's mom seemed pretty mad. It was a great run Game Sack, thanks for all the content over the years 😢
watching joe and his game sack feels like we are living in the mid to late 90s. Like watching an old video game show. This channel is definitely an inspiration!
I appreciate how you don't dumb down the technical explanations and the deep dives into options and features. When combined with your humor, your channel kicks ass. Although I DO miss the super cool stop motion console teardowns you used to do. They were awesome.
14:9 was a really common option on widescreen TVs here during the transition from 4:3 to 16:9. Many UK TV shows were broadcast in 14:9 (letterboxed, not anamorphic) as a compromise between both aspect ratios, so you’d have small horizontal bars on a 4:3 TV and small vertical bars on widescreen.
I'm curious, were shows that were originally broadcast in 14:9 framed for 14:9, or were 14:9 transmissions crops/open mattes of the intended aspect ratio?
Aww shoot - I just made this comment... 2 weeks after you! After all these years I still sometimes blurt out comments without reading what has already been posted!
At some point in the mid to late 90s 14:9 was considered a compromise broadcasting format in many cases, which allowed to show mixed 16:9 and 4:3 content without or with minimal change (basically stretching the picture horizontally or vertically a bit in each case). I think in a historical context it all made more sense than it does now. You know, today's standards were not as carved in stone back then as they are now. For starters, until early to mid 2000s there were probably less than 1% of the audience who had the right TVs to display wide screen picture properly in it's full wide screen glory. lol
Yeah, we also had a time where it seemed 16:10 would be the main aspect for widescreen, and we even have 21:9 and wider formats... 16:9 is a standard set on the HDTV era.
Funny thing about TOCA World Touring Cars/Jarrett & Labonte is that the US version actually added in-game music, tho I think it's disabled by default. As for Worms Armageddon, the reason it didn't stick is cuz it's one of those games where it saves options if you exit with the confirm button rather than backing out. Worms World Party has that exact same widescreen mode (which makes sense since WWP is pretty much an updated Armageddon) Awesome vid as usual, Joe!
Joe, I appreciate you putting in so much effort even after 10+ years of UA-cam. Game Sack became one of my favorite shows ever, and the feeling of comfort I get from watching (or falling asleep to) these videos is unmatched. You're the man, and I hope you'll keep doing this 'till the wheels fall off.
14:9 was a compromise between 4:3 and 16:9, the idea is that it'll look okay on both without having to chance the aspect ratio. You would film a show in 16:9, show it on tv as 14:9 and it would still be completely watchable on a 4:3 tv. I have no idea why they would use it in games though.
The X-Files is an interesting TV series from the same time where they filmed it in high quality 16:9 planning for the future. Watching new HD/bluray remasters is kind of the most accurate way to just see a 90s aesthetic in video footage. The vast majority of the tv shows from that time just don't look great on modern displays but that one does.
I can't believe it took people 5 years to figure out anamorphic widescreen 5 years after I did. Well, at least someone's FINALLY covering it. But, that 720x480 example is kinda weird. You said 720x480 for CRTs when those screens were clearly 4:3 and not 3:2. It makes sense to make anamorphic widescreen out of the DVD standard but turning off or not having a widescreen mode just resorts to 4:3 640x480 or 320x240, except when the Genesis is 10:7 in most titles.
I got a lot of use out of the 14:9 mode on my wide CRT TV. As I'm in the UK the vertical was PAL 288 lines instead of NTSC 240. And most of my PS1 games letterboxed to accommodate this. So 14:9 would fill up more of the screen by zooming, without cutting off alot of the top or bottom.
If you guys went to all the algorithm bait content that's safe and bland, you could easily hit over 1M subs in 2 years at most. The fact you guys have stuck to just making the best content you can free from any of that filth at the cost of ad revenue and engagement says a lot about your commitment to your values and your audience. Thank you, based Joe.
Joe is like the older brother that shows me all the coolest games, yet remains totally indifferent to my opinions, time passing, and the world at large. Thanks for all these.
I like how this almost has the production of an actual show you'd see on TV. It's got the cool title sequence with music, and scene transitions and voice over. segments, and backing music. I could see this being on Tech TV or something back in the day.
The first Formula One game on PS1 was centered around the 1996 season and was made by Bizarre Creations, the guys who would go on to make Metropolis Street Racer and the Project Gotham Racing games. They also made its sequel, Formula 1 97, which was another pretty darn good F1 game. After that game, the series changed developers several times, with the first post-Bizarre title Formula 1 98 being an utter disaster. Things got back on track with Formula One 99, before the license was taken over by EA for the 2000 season.
We played Formula One 2001 on the PS1 a lot back then, I recently discovered Formula One Arcade, which was released in 2002 for the PS1 as well, great games and actually quite impressive for the hardware, specially 2001.
It was actually based on the 1995 season but didn't come out until '96. The attention to detail was really cool though as it accounted for all of the different driver changes during the season, and even simtek folding after monaco where there will only be 24 cars on the grid instead of 26.
i just want to say that you guys are a major part of the reason im going to be making content and streaming soon. Major inspiration. You guys are freakin awesome! been watchin for yrs
Thanks for all the work this must have taken, it’s always great to see different ways developers intended people to interact with their games. It would be an even bigger pill to swallow, but I’d love a video like this on OG Xbox.
If I had to guess, I'd say the "14:9" games are actually running at an internal resolution of 384x240 and the "16:9" games are running internally at 384x224 (which I think are both officially supported graphics modes for the PS1) and I think the coin-flip between them depended on which vertical resolution the game ran at in native 4:3 mode. But I could be totally wrong about that.
The resolution doesn't matter. All that matters in the amount of anamorphic squeeze applied to the polygonal shapes. I think that a lot of developers not having access to 16:9 monitors and just going by the specs they were given (by Sony presumably) is a big reason for it all.
@@GameSack You are a professional video editor, so I'm sure you know more about how that is all output than I do. And I absolutely agree that the extreme rarity of 16:9 gear at the time led to many terrible results from being forced to guess what *might* work based on bad assumptions. But I was just trying to think about this in terms of the graphics modes that the PS1 renders at internally, and the fact that two ratios came up the most led me to my guess. Edit: It also just strikes me as odd that Sony would issue poor design documents for widescreen when Japan, even in 1995, was probably the only place in the world where you could go into a regular electronics store and buy a real widescreen TV (due, among many things, to the MUSE system).
@@GameSack as others have said, 14:9 was a preset in many european (and certainly UK) Televisions - I wonder if most of the games with that option were UK/European developed? Like TOCA
Thanks for making this, will definitely be giving Tenka a go on the flatscreen. I agree with you on Wipeout being made for 16:9 too. Always wanted to play a game like that one in Hackers. Wipeout is a close as it gets.
Meh. I only play games in Taaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate Mooooooooooooooooooooooooooode! But seriously , thank you so much for your quality, your honesty, and your cynicism, it is what makes this one of my favorite channels in UA-cam
I love stuff like this. It's cool seeing devs push these systems by rendering a higher FOV or resolution instead of just with polycount or something else traditional. That's why Bloody Roar 2 is super impressive to me for PS1 (60FPS, 480i, widescreen) despite looking simple in many ways.
I tried teaching a class on this like you said we could but I had less people show up for it than a class taught by Arthur Schopenhauer. Yes, that's quite esoteric, but I'm going with it.
I'm going to guess the 14:9 aspect might be because they were thinking there was a NTSC safe mode as the HD CRT TVs at the time would crop the sizes of the signal like 4:3 CRT?
Thank you, Joe for your impeccable work ethic. When Jared and Dylan shut down "Now In The 90's" last week, I don't think they considered how many people find that nostalgic, MtV-style coverage of our past very comforting. Especially the production value and delivery consistency. I know that is just the Millennial work ethic. If it feels like work instead of play, they put it down. It makes them "anxious" to actually labor or have a schedule to keep. I noticed that Jared went back to just playing games on stream for hours rather than editing, writing, making a small set, writing a short sketch. Sheesh, that's work brother! Anyway, thanks for all that hard work and consistency :)
Btw. about "JLeague Winning Eleven", the series didn't stay japan exclusive in it's entirety, many of the games would see a release in western territories as well, just under the name "Pro Evolution Soccer", back then a pretty big competitor to the FIFA franchise.
This video is excellent, thank you. I had never thought that back in the Playstation era, developers had already thought of widescreen. One thing about horizontal resolution: CRTs are analog, so it is fair to refer to bandwidth instead of resolution. While a CRT has a certain number of horizontal "pixels", this is only due to having three discrete colors. The NTSC standard does not : it only defines 525 lines, of which 480 are visible as you mentioned, Consoles are digital and work with pixels, but the signal they send is composite, thus inherently analog. What this means is that widescreen monitors do not just stretch the image, instead, they typically have enough bandwidth to display finer details. An analog signal generator could produce a finer gradient on the average widescreen for instance, and a VHS (analog technology) played or recorded on a high-end VCR would render more detail on the horizontal domain. A monochrome display for instance has no "pixels" on an horizontal line. It is only limited by the quality of the electronics and the bandwidth of the signal it receives. The consoles of that era did not have widescreen frame buffers and so the pixels themselves look stretched; single pixels are rectangular instead of square. It is not a limitation of the monitor. In fact, when LCD panels started appearing, the scaling was horrendous because it meant converting an image between two frame buffers (console and LCD panel) of different pixel aspect ratios, resulting in a lot of aliasing. Even today, while most TVs are a lot better at scaling than their ancestors, dedicated scaling hardware usually does it better, as I'm sure you will know. All of this is obviously obsolete nowadays, with the ubiquity of HDMI digital picture formats!
Fun fact: There were a few widescreen standard-definition CRTs released in North America. Notably, the Philips 26 and 30PW6341 have an option for a 14:9 aspect ratio in the menu!
Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed is notorious because that was when EA made a long term deal with Porsche that prevented other game companies from acquiring the Porsche license for their games. Sega Super GT was the last game to feature Porsche before NFS Porsche. The restrictions cooled down a bit in the mid-2010s, where the license can now be used, but companies have to pay EA a large royalty fee in order to include Porsches in their games, hence why lots of games at the time feature Porsche as Paid DLC. It may seem average to you, but it is substantial to Simulation Racing Enthusiasts in regards to licensed cars.
As others might have told you, Moto Racer was actually an entire franchise by Delphine. Moto Racer 1 and 2 are also on PlayStation and are definitely worth playing.
These dev knew their widescreen mode is useless and pointless. They just wanted to be mentioned in your future episode about games with widescreens. Love the end skit! Awkward Joe is my favorite 😂
As someone who’s studied the technological progress of different countries The whole 14:9 thing is probably down to Asian countries where nonstandard wide aspect ratios are more common. Idea being to make it look not so squeezed in on 4:3 displays. The two (american developed) pac man games were probably the result of wrong documentation with Sony telling them what works more in their native Japan than anywhere else in the world. As fro the black bar on top of the racing game. It’s probably a poor PAL to NTSC conversion (european PAL has more vertical resolution than NTSC)
Great video! Widescreen gaming was huge for me, so I find this fascinating. I would love to see Dreamcast and OG Xbox videos in the same vein as this one.
Widescreen support during the first 3 3D home consoles has always been an odd subject to me. A paltry few 5th generation games supported it, a paltry few 6th generation games supported it, and then the 7th gen rolled around and suddenly everything’s widescreen, hell you could probably make a video dedicated to 7th gen games with proper 4:3 support.
Oh man, hearing you talk about doing a video with the Dreamcast gets me excited. That system was SO ahead of its time and offers so many untapped topics to cover.
Hey, Joe, another fun topic, man! I had a thought about something you might dig: retro games that went above and beyond in sound, be it music or digitized voice. I know you've done similar videos in the past, but I'm not sure if for all generations or singular systems.
great channel only disappointed i have not discovered you guys sooner, keep up the great work, love the style and design of the show, you guys are awesome!!! 😎😎💎💎
WipEout 3 is the perfect widescreen game on PS1, because it runs in 512 pixel wide resolution so you don't loose horizontal resolution compared to 4:3 games, despite the anamorphic squeeze. It even supports horizontal split screen! Such an impressive game.
Not sure where you get that 720 wide number from. DVDs are often 720 wide in the file itself but that's because they're anamorphic and meant to be squished to widescreen or have black bars added for "full screen".
Knowing how the gaming industry works these days, I bet that some companies would have you to pay DLC for widescreen options. At this point, they'll do anything to gain some extra cash.
Who wants to bet that it wasn't that the information wasn't available, but rather that the developer fudged the math. I know I do, half the time. Edit: 14:9 is almost suspiciously close to 1.5:1, AKA 720x480. Throw in some confusion about who 720x480 is used, and mistakes can happen.
Been a fan for a long time, love this channel. Recently though, you have been really doing well. For a little over a month I have been really looking forward to Sunday. Thanks, Joe!
A couple of others mentioned this, but it's worth repeating. The Jarrett and Labonte license for that TOCA game is even worse than it seems. In a cynical marketing move, they licensed Jason Jarrett and Justin Labonte, sons of two drivers who were very successful at the time the game was developed. I suspect they had reason to think the rebrand was worth trying as TOCA probably didn't carry much weight then, but this was bad. To put it in perspective, Jason's father Dale Jarrett was the 1999 series champion. Justin's father is Terry Labonte, the 1996 and 1984 series champion, and his uncle Bobby was the then-current 2000 series champ. Luckily, the game seems better than the marketing. Kudos to the developers for getting so much out of the system. A hear ago I heard about a development tool that was created in 1998 or so, a system performance analyzer that helped developers get a lot more out of the system and I'd be shocked if this game didn't use it. Regarding the V-Rally 2 Dreamcast motion sickness, in looking at the clips, the DC version seems to move a lot faster, perhaps too fast. That means the camera movement is faster and more twitchy, and that sort if thing messes with me.
For what it’s worth, Joe, I genuinely appreciate how much you’ve stuck to principles in creating a high-quality gaming show to your vision. I’ve never seen you follow algorithmic trends, clickbait titles, or any of the other bullshit that plagues this platform. I know that you *could* be simply chasing subscribers and clicks at the expense of your integrity, but you never do that. I really admire that, and I’m really thankful. You deserve all the success in the world and I hope you get it. Thank you for all the work you do!
Completely agree!
Did you just say TlTS?
Agree. Better than that MJR guy
Are you serious? His production values are terrible. He didn't even cut out his mom yelling.
His mom should be very proud.
Can we all just stop for a second and appreciate that he keeps making these kick ass videos after all these years????
maybe
As do you Jared!
Methodist God bless him.
He's really pushing it with this video. A total nonsense video.
A-MEN
Great video as always. And just to add, here in Europe, most of our wide-screen TVs had a 14:9 option back then. The standard settings typically had it along with 16:9 and ZOOM, which was a preset for the letterboxed stuff.
i was going to say the same, in fact I still have a tv with the 14:9 mode
@After_Burnett I’ve done a little investigating. It seems it was some kind of compromise aspect ratio that some broadcasters used to allow widescreen broadcasts to not look too letterboxed on standard 4:3 televisions. Clearly some tv manufacturers baked it in
It seems pretty strange to me that companies even bothered with widescreen at the time. I didn't know anyone that had a widescreen TV in the late 90's/ early 2000's. I didn't even know that some games supported it back then, or if I did I ignored it because there really didn't seem to be a point.
Thanks Joe for all the work that you do. I hope you never change. ❤
Wow, thanks Amber! :) :)
Don’t you dare give that 20 bucks to your mom
I’m always impressed by how good the PlayStation looks. Going from a Genesis/SNES to this was crazy.
It's hard to overstate what a shift it was. I remember being blown away by Battle Arena Toshinden, of all things.
Such a fantastic idea for an episode, and I love how you presented the 14:9 by stretching and squeezing an overlay with your own editing!
If it interests you, I'd love to hear what you think of the widescreen hacks on emulators for SNES, PS1 etc. Seeing Super Mario World in ultrawide 21:9 is mental!
14:9 was a common aspect ratio option on TVs back in the day (at least in the UK) - to soften the transition from 4:3 to 16:9 many TV shows were shot in 14:9 as it was a good compromise: not too letterboxed on a 4:3 TV, not too pillarboxed on a 16:9 TV.
I know this is a stretch, but can you provide a reference for that? Wikipedia's 14:9 page says it's a shooting format only, and no 14:9 TVs were ever made. It would be good to correct it if there were such TVs.
@@JamieBainbridgethere were never 14:9. It just made the transition during production easier between the two
@@Trispefear That makes no sense for a game tho right? 14:9 filming allows letter/pillar box or zoom to fill a real TV. Why would a game output a format which doesn't actually exist so the game always looks stretched and bad?
The 'Sack is king of retro gaming channels. I don't often find others who also have a daft sense of humour, so this channel's right up my street. So to speak.
Nothing beats a fresh Sack!
Especially when you pair it with Hard for Games
Love some Sack on a Sunday morning
If you watched the very end of the video, it seems like this could be the last episode of Game Sack ever... Joe's mom seemed pretty mad. It was a great run Game Sack, thanks for all the content over the years 😢
😂😂😂
Also, sup DGR. Glad you’re here watchin the Sack.
Joe says that he is going to do widescreen games from the Saturn and N64, Game Sack is not going away anytime.
@@benitosierrajr3958 It is a joke
The end skit killed me! 😂
I always look forward to the end skits. They're so random. You can never predict what's going to be next.
I kinda want a whole episode of Joe yelling at his mom to leave him alone so he can play and review his games
He has a channel that is only skits. it's called Game Sack skits.
@@Subfightr Yep! My favorites are the "radio buddy" skits.
You're welcome @@ALTDOK667
watching joe and his game sack feels like we are living in the mid to late 90s. Like watching an old video game show. This channel is definitely an inspiration!
Man it's SO COOL seeing this era of games in widescreen like a TRUE CHAMPION!!!
I love it when Joe covers racing games. The Jarrett & Labonte / Toca game looks incredible.
This video definitely deserves more videos because it's heck of a good idea
I appreciate how you don't dumb down the technical explanations and the deep dives into options and features. When combined with your humor, your channel kicks ass. Although I DO miss the super cool stop motion console teardowns you used to do. They were awesome.
I still do those. Had some just two weeks ago in the Polymega episode.
@@GameSack right.....I knew that....
14:9 was a really common option on widescreen TVs here during the transition from 4:3 to 16:9. Many UK TV shows were broadcast in 14:9 (letterboxed, not anamorphic) as a compromise between both aspect ratios, so you’d have small horizontal bars on a 4:3 TV and small vertical bars on widescreen.
I'm curious, were shows that were originally broadcast in 14:9 framed for 14:9, or were 14:9 transmissions crops/open mattes of the intended aspect ratio?
Aww shoot - I just made this comment... 2 weeks after you!
After all these years I still sometimes blurt out comments without reading what has already been posted!
Man with all the subjects you cover, the amount of research you do is wild. Thanks for all the hard work, always great stuff.
At some point in the mid to late 90s 14:9 was considered a compromise broadcasting format in many cases, which allowed to show mixed 16:9 and 4:3 content without or with minimal change (basically stretching the picture horizontally or vertically a bit in each case). I think in a historical context it all made more sense than it does now. You know, today's standards were not as carved in stone back then as they are now. For starters, until early to mid 2000s there were probably less than 1% of the audience who had the right TVs to display wide screen picture properly in it's full wide screen glory. lol
Yeah, we also had a time where it seemed 16:10 would be the main aspect for widescreen, and we even have 21:9 and wider formats... 16:9 is a standard set on the HDTV era.
It’s still done today in countries like Malaysia where they haven’t shut off analog broadcasts yet
@@GeomancerHT a lot of pc monitors were 16:10
To add onto this, the initial widescreen standards in Japan actually called for a 15:9 TV until the 16:9 standard actually got settled upon.
Joe is the king of “topic I never thought about and didn’t think I’d care about but now love” when watching
Funny thing about TOCA World Touring Cars/Jarrett & Labonte is that the US version actually added in-game music, tho I think it's disabled by default.
As for Worms Armageddon, the reason it didn't stick is cuz it's one of those games where it saves options if you exit with the confirm button rather than backing out. Worms World Party has that exact same widescreen mode (which makes sense since WWP is pretty much an updated Armageddon)
Awesome vid as usual, Joe!
I just finished watching the video and had to load up Jarrett & Labonte because I swore it had music and had to make sure I wasn't imagining it.
Joe, I appreciate you putting in so much effort even after 10+ years of UA-cam. Game Sack became one of my favorite shows ever, and the feeling of comfort I get from watching (or falling asleep to) these videos is unmatched. You're the man, and I hope you'll keep doing this 'till the wheels fall off.
Amen
That's insane. Probably my favorite/most played console of all time, and I didn't know ANY games had widescreen.
It's always fun to see how widescreen was presented back in the day.
14:9 was a compromise between 4:3 and 16:9, the idea is that it'll look okay on both without having to chance the aspect ratio. You would film a show in 16:9, show it on tv as 14:9 and it would still be completely watchable on a 4:3 tv. I have no idea why they would use it in games though.
The X-Files is an interesting TV series from the same time where they filmed it in high quality 16:9 planning for the future. Watching new HD/bluray remasters is kind of the most accurate way to just see a 90s aesthetic in video footage. The vast majority of the tv shows from that time just don't look great on modern displays but that one does.
This channel got me through Covid, and now it helps me find games to play. Thanks much!
through what? no one knows what you are talking about
I can’t believe I didn’t hear a single ‘what a load of crop’ joke!
LOFL I'll have to remember that one
No that's what she said either
I can't believe it took people 5 years to figure out anamorphic widescreen 5 years after I did. Well, at least someone's FINALLY covering it. But, that 720x480 example is kinda weird. You said 720x480 for CRTs when those screens were clearly 4:3 and not 3:2. It makes sense to make anamorphic widescreen out of the DVD standard but turning off or not having a widescreen mode just resorts to 4:3 640x480 or 320x240, except when the Genesis is 10:7 in most titles.
That skit !!!! Not my mom . At 50 years old , that is my wife every damn time I try to make a UA-cam video !!!! 😂😅
Well they say guys always end up marrying their mum 🤣
New Game Sack the week of my birthday. Thanks Joe.
Happy birthday! I hope it will be a good year for you.
The ending skit was genuinely unnerving. More, please.
maybe next time Joe's mom can talk about her favorite game!
I got a lot of use out of the 14:9 mode on my wide CRT TV. As I'm in the UK the vertical was PAL 288 lines instead of NTSC 240. And most of my PS1 games letterboxed to accommodate this. So 14:9 would fill up more of the screen by zooming, without cutting off alot of the top or bottom.
Thanks for everything you do with this channel. Your videos have been a comfort to me for many years.
If you guys went to all the algorithm bait content that's safe and bland, you could easily hit over 1M subs in 2 years at most. The fact you guys have stuck to just making the best content you can free from any of that filth at the cost of ad revenue and engagement says a lot about your commitment to your values and your audience. Thank you, based Joe.
Agreed with everything you said.
Still one of the best retro gaming shows on UA-cam.
Joe is like the older brother that shows me all the coolest games, yet remains totally indifferent to my opinions, time passing, and the world at large. Thanks for all these.
I like how this almost has the production of an actual show you'd see on TV. It's got the cool title sequence with music, and scene transitions and voice over. segments, and backing music. I could see this being on Tech TV or something back in the day.
The first Formula One game on PS1 was centered around the 1996 season and was made by Bizarre Creations, the guys who would go on to make Metropolis Street Racer and the Project Gotham Racing games. They also made its sequel, Formula 1 97, which was another pretty darn good F1 game. After that game, the series changed developers several times, with the first post-Bizarre title Formula 1 98 being an utter disaster. Things got back on track with Formula One 99, before the license was taken over by EA for the 2000 season.
We played Formula One 2001 on the PS1 a lot back then, I recently discovered Formula One Arcade, which was released in 2002 for the PS1 as well, great games and actually quite impressive for the hardware, specially 2001.
It was actually based on the 1995 season but didn't come out until '96. The attention to detail was really cool though as it accounted for all of the different driver changes during the season, and even simtek folding after monaco where there will only be 24 cars on the grid instead of 26.
i just want to say that you guys are a major part of the reason im going to be making content and streaming soon. Major inspiration. You guys are freakin awesome! been watchin for yrs
Lol I love the skit. 😂 Game Sack is always a top tier production.
11:50 The US version of TOCA World Touring Cars did indeed add in-race music 🙂
I like that you always speak a couple words about gameplay.
there simply are no bad episodes of this show
Thanks for all the work this must have taken, it’s always great to see different ways developers intended people to interact with their games. It would be an even bigger pill to swallow, but I’d love a video like this on OG Xbox.
Thanks once again, Joe, for your efforts in keeping this channel going as it is much appreciated.
Joe, it might be fun to do this type of video with all the link cable compatible games on PlayStation.
The sketch made me laugh hard. Very on point. 😂
If I had to guess, I'd say the "14:9" games are actually running at an internal resolution of 384x240 and the "16:9" games are running internally at 384x224 (which I think are both officially supported graphics modes for the PS1) and I think the coin-flip between them depended on which vertical resolution the game ran at in native 4:3 mode. But I could be totally wrong about that.
The resolution doesn't matter. All that matters in the amount of anamorphic squeeze applied to the polygonal shapes. I think that a lot of developers not having access to 16:9 monitors and just going by the specs they were given (by Sony presumably) is a big reason for it all.
@@GameSack You are a professional video editor, so I'm sure you know more about how that is all output than I do. And I absolutely agree that the extreme rarity of 16:9 gear at the time led to many terrible results from being forced to guess what *might* work based on bad assumptions. But I was just trying to think about this in terms of the graphics modes that the PS1 renders at internally, and the fact that two ratios came up the most led me to my guess.
Edit: It also just strikes me as odd that Sony would issue poor design documents for widescreen when Japan, even in 1995, was probably the only place in the world where you could go into a regular electronics store and buy a real widescreen TV (due, among many things, to the MUSE system).
@@GameSack as others have said, 14:9 was a preset in many european (and certainly UK) Televisions - I wonder if most of the games with that option were UK/European developed? Like TOCA
@@stephenpalmer9375Some of the games mentioned were Japanese developed and 14:9 was (and in some developing countries still is!) common over there too
Any game worth its salt that came out in 2000 should have a widescreen optuon called "Wide 2K" mode! 😅
Impressive that this show has kept its quality for over a decade! Congrats Mr. Red!
Thanks for another great video Joe!
FYI my 2008 Sony LCD and 2010 Panasonic plasma both had 14:9 aspect ratio support
Thanks for making this, will definitely be giving Tenka a go on the flatscreen. I agree with you on Wipeout being made for 16:9 too. Always wanted to play a game like that one in Hackers. Wipeout is a close as it gets.
I wish this included some sports and race games!
Meh. I only play games in Taaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate
Mooooooooooooooooooooooooooode!
But seriously , thank you so much for your quality, your honesty, and your cynicism, it is what makes this one of my favorite channels in UA-cam
Was really glad to see you in DF Retro PS1 video 😄
I love stuff like this. It's cool seeing devs push these systems by rendering a higher FOV or resolution instead of just with polycount or something else traditional. That's why Bloody Roar 2 is super impressive to me for PS1 (60FPS, 480i, widescreen) despite looking simple in many ways.
I tried teaching a class on this like you said we could but I had less people show up for it than a class taught by Arthur Schopenhauer. Yes, that's quite esoteric, but I'm going with it.
With the amount of post-credit skits about weird basement version of Game Sack I'm starting to feel like this is the show Joe actually wants to make.
This is the true Joe
He should call it Basement Sack
I'm going to guess the 14:9 aspect might be because they were thinking there was a NTSC safe mode as the HD CRT TVs at the time would crop the sizes of the signal like 4:3 CRT?
Thank you, Joe for your impeccable work ethic. When Jared and Dylan shut down "Now In The 90's" last week, I don't think they considered how many people find that nostalgic, MtV-style coverage of our past very comforting. Especially the production value and delivery consistency. I know that is just the Millennial work ethic. If it feels like work instead of play, they put it down. It makes them "anxious" to actually labor or have a schedule to keep. I noticed that Jared went back to just playing games on stream for hours rather than editing, writing, making a small set, writing a short sketch. Sheesh, that's work brother! Anyway, thanks for all that hard work and consistency :)
Btw. about "JLeague Winning Eleven", the series didn't stay japan exclusive in it's entirety, many of the games would see a release in western territories as well, just under the name "Pro Evolution Soccer", back then a pretty big competitor to the FIFA franchise.
This video is excellent, thank you. I had never thought that back in the Playstation era, developers had already thought of widescreen.
One thing about horizontal resolution: CRTs are analog, so it is fair to refer to bandwidth instead of resolution. While a CRT has a certain number of horizontal "pixels", this is only due to having three discrete colors. The NTSC standard does not : it only defines 525 lines, of which 480 are visible as you mentioned, Consoles are digital and work with pixels, but the signal they send is composite, thus inherently analog. What this means is that widescreen monitors do not just stretch the image, instead, they typically have enough bandwidth to display finer details. An analog signal generator could produce a finer gradient on the average widescreen for instance, and a VHS (analog technology) played or recorded on a high-end VCR would render more detail on the horizontal domain.
A monochrome display for instance has no "pixels" on an horizontal line. It is only limited by the quality of the electronics and the bandwidth of the signal it receives.
The consoles of that era did not have widescreen frame buffers and so the pixels themselves look stretched; single pixels are rectangular instead of square. It is not a limitation of the monitor. In fact, when LCD panels started appearing, the scaling was horrendous because it meant converting an image between two frame buffers (console and LCD panel) of different pixel aspect ratios, resulting in a lot of aliasing. Even today, while most TVs are a lot better at scaling than their ancestors, dedicated scaling hardware usually does it better, as I'm sure you will know.
All of this is obviously obsolete nowadays, with the ubiquity of HDMI digital picture formats!
Fun fact: There were a few widescreen standard-definition CRTs released in North America. Notably, the Philips 26 and 30PW6341 have an option for a 14:9 aspect ratio in the menu!
I loved this video. I never knew why the HUD was so distorted but the gameplay looked good in widescreen.
Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed is notorious because that was when EA made a long term deal with Porsche that prevented other game companies from acquiring the Porsche license for their games. Sega Super GT was the last game to feature Porsche before NFS Porsche.
The restrictions cooled down a bit in the mid-2010s, where the license can now be used, but companies have to pay EA a large royalty fee in order to include Porsches in their games, hence why lots of games at the time feature Porsche as Paid DLC.
It may seem average to you, but it is substantial to Simulation Racing Enthusiasts in regards to licensed cars.
As others might have told you, Moto Racer was actually an entire franchise by Delphine. Moto Racer 1 and 2 are also on PlayStation and are definitely worth playing.
These dev knew their widescreen mode is useless and pointless.
They just wanted to be mentioned in your future episode about games with widescreens.
Love the end skit! Awkward Joe is my favorite 😂
Nice video. Interestingly, my copy of Jarrett & Labonte Stock Car Racing has in-race music.
As someone who’s studied the technological progress of different countries
The whole 14:9 thing is probably down to Asian countries where nonstandard wide aspect ratios are more common. Idea being to make it look not so squeezed in on 4:3 displays. The two (american developed) pac man games were probably the result of wrong documentation with Sony telling them what works more in their native Japan than anywhere else in the world.
As fro the black bar on top of the racing game. It’s probably a poor PAL to NTSC conversion (european PAL has more vertical resolution than NTSC)
Got so many memories with PSX, I really appreciate you continue making these videos
I love widescreen games in the 32 bit generation, and I love you Joe!
Great video! Widescreen gaming was huge for me, so I find this fascinating. I would love to see Dreamcast and OG Xbox videos in the same vein as this one.
Socom Combined Assault, not only did it have Widescreen at 16:9, but it also supported 16:9 at 1080i, which is impressive, in the ps2 era.
It's really great that you keep finding old footage of your early work, Joe. I do like that your Mum doesn't interrupt anymore though.
My absolute favorite endskit! Perfection, made my day or even my week!
Widescreen support during the first 3 3D home consoles has always been an odd subject to me. A paltry few 5th generation games supported it, a paltry few 6th generation games supported it, and then the 7th gen rolled around and suddenly everything’s widescreen, hell you could probably make a video dedicated to 7th gen games with proper 4:3 support.
18:47 I love it when the sack gets sassy on sunday, it's a comfortable feeling 🤣
First widescreen video game that I remember was Jet Force Gemini
Gamesack. The best reason to force yourself live to every other weekend since 2011
Thanks to everyone in the comments explaining the 14:9 thing. It's so cool how you can use the Retro Tink to make a custom AR.
Its always a great time when you upload a game sack video. Keep it up, Joe!!
Well, damn, this is such a good idea for an episode.
You really know your audience.
Oh man, hearing you talk about doing a video with the Dreamcast gets me excited. That system was SO ahead of its time and offers so many untapped topics to cover.
I was really hoping Joe's mom would be Dave in drag...
Nothing like Sunday breakfast with Game Sack to go with it, great way to start my day.
Beast machines into music when the F1 segment started.
Nothing beats the SACK. Great timing on this Joe, I'd love to see more with other consoles!
Hey, Joe, another fun topic, man! I had a thought about something you might dig: retro games that went above and beyond in sound, be it music or digitized voice. I know you've done similar videos in the past, but I'm not sure if for all generations or singular systems.
great channel only disappointed i have not discovered you guys sooner, keep up the great work, love the style and design of the show, you guys are awesome!!! 😎😎💎💎
The skit at the end made me laugh a little extra on this one.😂 Thanks Joe
WipEout 3 is the perfect widescreen game on PS1, because it runs in 512 pixel wide resolution so you don't loose horizontal resolution compared to 4:3 games, despite the anamorphic squeeze. It even supports horizontal split screen! Such an impressive game.
Not sure where you get that 720 wide number from. DVDs are often 720 wide in the file itself but that's because they're anamorphic and meant to be squished to widescreen or have black bars added for "full screen".
Knowing how the gaming industry works these days, I bet that some companies would have you to pay DLC for widescreen options. At this point, they'll do anything to gain some extra cash.
Another solid episode Joe. I love the newer animated intro style . It gives off those 80’s “Take on me” vibes .
Who wants to bet that it wasn't that the information wasn't available, but rather that the developer fudged the math.
I know I do, half the time.
Edit: 14:9 is almost suspiciously close to 1.5:1, AKA 720x480. Throw in some confusion about who 720x480 is used, and mistakes can happen.
Been a fan for a long time, love this channel.
Recently though, you have been really doing well.
For a little over a month I have been really looking forward to Sunday.
Thanks, Joe!
I get a little bit of a David Lynch vibe from the end skit. Great job as always!
A couple of others mentioned this, but it's worth repeating. The Jarrett and Labonte license for that TOCA game is even worse than it seems. In a cynical marketing move, they licensed Jason Jarrett and Justin Labonte, sons of two drivers who were very successful at the time the game was developed. I suspect they had reason to think the rebrand was worth trying as TOCA probably didn't carry much weight then, but this was bad. To put it in perspective, Jason's father Dale Jarrett was the 1999 series champion. Justin's father is Terry Labonte, the 1996 and 1984 series champion, and his uncle Bobby was the then-current 2000 series champ. Luckily, the game seems better than the marketing. Kudos to the developers for getting so much out of the system. A hear ago I heard about a development tool that was created in 1998 or so, a system performance analyzer that helped developers get a lot more out of the system and I'd be shocked if this game didn't use it.
Regarding the V-Rally 2 Dreamcast motion sickness, in looking at the clips, the DC version seems to move a lot faster, perhaps too fast. That means the camera movement is faster and more twitchy, and that sort if thing messes with me.