ps1

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For some context, my hometown is a poor town where game consoles are a rarity  - the only PS2s were found in an arcade, complete with multi-tap and its only purpose in existence was to play Tekken Tag. This nation has always been Tekken crazy, it's what allowed a makeshift arcade that only housed Tekken Tag, 4 and 5 to thrive in a place where games were scoffed at and arcades were considered taboo. In cities it was different, PS2s were common and similarly later on Xbox 360s were the common console due to piracy.

So...the success of that arcade goes back to Tekken 3, a game that from late 90s to early 2000s was probably the most popular game here, and you can see that even today, we are still a Tekken crazed nation. In the later days of Tekken 3, computers were becoming more commonplace in every home, and with those came games, and of course, Tekken 3 was packaged as a PC game and sold for less than $0.5. When you put the disc in your computer it would boot Connectix Game Station, configured with keyboard controls for 2 players before hand and everything. We had a small game store in my town, they sold PlayStation games and a CD that had Virtual Game Station as well. Being in no position to afford a PS2 and wanting to play games I always bought PS1 games whenever I could, to play on our humble Pentium 2 PC that couldn't run most games of the time. So, I was essentially limited to PS1 games (and also GBA games, thank you Visual Boy Advance) and I bought almost every one of them I could. Then, many games had issues on that emulator (Dino Crisis 2, Resident Evil Director's Cut to name 2) and I ended up googling them - that is how I wandered down the emulation rabbit hole, learning about ePSXe, psxfin and many others, it's why I am a retro gamer today.

We weren't allowed to go out and play much being as that was the age of Taliban's retaliatory bombings versus our government, so they were dark and miserable times (and poverty packed its own punches too) but those pirated PS1 games were a happy place for many years.

At first I mainly played action titles like Dino Crisis 2 and Future Cop L.A.P.D, Warhawk, Colony Wars, Blaster Master, Covert Ops, Megaman games; racing games like NFS, Ridge Racer and some fighting games like Soul Blade, Tekken 3 and Street Fighter EX. Later with good internet I discovered the more Japanese side of the catalog and ended up playing that Yu Gi Oh game, Saga Frontier, Breath of Fire, Vandal Hearts, Vanguard Bandits, Lunar and one of my favorites - Ogre Battle. I also found some cool fighting games like Rival Schools and discovered fan translations due to a certain Tales of Phantasia ISO that was shared on the site I used (it ended in Orama, that's all I'll say)

That led me down the rabbit hole of untranslated games, and even today I try to play as many of them as I can, most recently it was Brightis made by Quintet of Illusion of Gaia/Soulblazer/Terranigma fame.

I will not drone on any more but the point I am trying to make is, without the PlayStation's catalogue of games there wouldn't be that emulator, or that market which got me into games and I might well have never played a game after GBA. Even today I find many amazing titles on PSX that blow my mind, thanks to fan translations. Stuff like Aconcagua, Germs: The Targeted City, Linda Again, various Goemon games and Blue: Legend of Water among others - all recent fan translations. It not only made me fall in love with games but it keeps the spark alive.