I apologize for the lack of posting on retrozoid.net. I have been busy with work and i have also started a new PSOne Wordpress Blog that i will unveil when ive finished the layouts and posts so until then i will try and get a few posts gathered to last

In 1998 Codemasters released Colin McRae Rally for the PSOne and i will be honest here, alongside Formula One, Rally driving was the ‘in’ sport at the time. As Colin McRae was the icon for Rally driving why not give him his own racing game?

When you first load the game up you are treated with a nice opening montage of the game, in 1998 it was safe to say that Colin McRae Rally had the great graphics that the PSOne had until Gran Tourismo had shown its face. On the Menu Screen, there are 4 types of event, these being Championship, Rally, Time Trial and Rally School. Most people would have gone straight into the action by choosing the Championship mode. I tried that and i struggled finishing 6th!

The Rally School is a great way to learn the trade of being a rally driver, from learning the drift style of the car to getting the right turning angle given to you by your co-driver shouting “3 left- tightens.”

Once that was out of the way, there is nothing better than to go straight into the Championship where you can choose one of the following 8 cars: Subaru Impreza, Mitsubishi Lancer, Ford Escort WRC, Toyota Corolla, Renault Maxi Megane, Seat Ibiza Evo2, VW Golf or the Skoda Felica. All of these are great cars but i struggled to find much to tell them apart performance wise.

Then we have the 8 different courses that range from New Zealand to Sweeden to United Kingdom. Graphically being honest as it is a retrospective look back to 1998 it serves the game well and the mechanics used for this truly give a great feel to the game! However, if gamers want to go and play this game be prepared for some old school textures! Come on people this was a great game back in the day!

The addition of variable weather to the game is a nice touch. You could be racing in complete sunshine or worse yet, snow! All this plus driving at different times in the day give you a tough drive through the game. Compared to Colin McRae Dirt, i personally think that this game is a arcade gamers heaven and you are rewarded well if you put the craft in learning the corners and techinques involved in each race.

For me the Multiplayer is one of the key selling points of this game. Compared to games now where you can play people over Live or the PSN you had your mates next to you going at it split screen fighting in either Time Trial or Rally getting the quickest times. Pure thrills all the way with this one.

In closing of this article Colin McRae Rally is a good investment as you can get this on ebay for around the £2 mark for a game that is fun and addictive to play providing a great multiplayer to boot.

This maybe a sensitive issue in regards to whether people had their PSOne’s “Chipped” or not, if I remember correctly it was the fashion back in 1999 onwards and although it is illegal quite a lot of gamers decided to go down this track.

The PSOne games at that time were around the price mark of £35-£50 so is it an issue of affording to buy them?

I do remember that they cost £5 to buy one of these games and as the copying technology at the time is no where near what it is today and I have family members who only played “WWF Smackdown” in black and white as the copyright made it difficult to have the full data from the game.

Unlike today, The PlayStation did not have the online capabilities and firmware updates were not available so the people who chipped games could work around the system. Publishers tried to make the games difficult to copy but to no avail. I suppose as the technology is better now, those people who still have their PlayStations chipped can get these games off FTP’s and other formats at full quality.

For an experiment I scouted Ebay and my local friends to get a PSOne that is chipped and bundled with 60 games I got it for an exchange of some Xbox 360 games. I want to point out that any articles I make in the future regarding PSOne games will NOT be from the “Chipped” games.

Now then to my surprise the quality of these games is no different than the originals. The legality of them however is the key point.

What are your experiences with them?

I have been given a great job role at a great british PS3 blog “TheSixthAxis” as a retro PSOne writer.

Here is a picture of my first blog and i have many more to come

According to TheSixthAxis, the follwing screenshot looks to us like when the new 2.40 Firmware update rolls out you’ll be graded on how many Trophies you can obtain per game on the PS3, rather than just a flat out points system an the Xbox360, and we’d imagine anyone going for Platinum on the PS3 games then get practising

As i own both consoles, if this rumor and screenshot is anything to go by then it is a fresh way to approach the Achievement/trophy system.