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You know, I bet that boomerang controller WOULD have been very comfortable. I used to have a 3rd party controller made by "Alps" for my PlayStation that looked very similar and it was probably the most comfortable and well made gamepad I've ever used. I wish I still had it.

The only game I know of that used it was X-Com.

There were lots more, though it wasn't as widely supported as the standard pad, for obvious reasons.

Playstation Mouse Games http://www.vidgames.com/ps/software/mouse.html

Yeah, I know the feeling. A roommate of mine in the late nineties had a playstation and I used to play Wipeout for hours. It was a very (very!) fast paced racing game, and you have to do some tricky stunts to win some levels; sliding up walls while in a turn or while overtaking opponents is basically standard procedure.

Boy was I worried when driving to work after playing for hours; I realized that traffic around me was so slow that I started losing my patience (faster! faster! clock's ticking!) and I'm basically trying not to slide up the railings while doing a turn, just out of habit and because it's such a f'ing elegant thing to do.

For screenshots see http://www.vidgames.com/ps/software/wipeoutxl.html

Ah, memories. The two launch titles for the PS1 (yes, there were only two!) were Toshiden and Ridge Racer. Toshiden was a graphical masterpiece that played like Street Fighter, and also, um, sucked

IIRC Street fighter the movie was released at launch with the PS one also. You might have blocked it out since the game sucked.

Actually, I looked it up because I thought I recalled more games being available at launch. I was right... ESPN Extreme Games, Kileak - The DNA Imperative, Raiden Project, Ridge Racer, Battle Arena Tohshinden, Total Eclipse Turbo, NBA JAM Tournament Edition and Street Fighter: The Movie were all available when PS1 launched in North America. Mortal Kombat 3 came out 1 month after launch.

Time-Warner bought Atari before their death and renamed them Time Warner Interactive...

Time Warner Interactive was probably best remembered for Rise of the Robots Rise2: Resurection (the sequel of the former) and Primal Rage...

Of course all of these were fighting games, but they did a few that weren't fighting games...however, their games were infamous for their suckitude...even those games that had fans (like ROTR) were nothing more than eye candy (no real playability)...however, this was honestly close to the end for the origonal Atari...

Time-Warner bought Atari before their death and renamed them Time Warner Interactive...

Time Warner Interactive was probably best remembered for Rise of the Robots Rise2: Resurection (the sequel of the former) and Primal Rage...

Of course all of these were fighting games, but they did a few that weren't fighting games...however, their games were infamous for their suckitude...even those games that had fans (like ROTR) were nothing more than eye candy (no real playability)...however, this was honestly close to the end for the origonal Atari...

I don't think you have played enough PSX games. All three of the 2D series you mention are very poor at showing a console's true 2D capabilities, as they are generally slow-paced with very few onscreen sprites. There is NO WAY the SNES could pull off a (completely 2D) game like DoDonPachi, for example. Play the MAME version sometime if you haven't (the game is a classic), and then understand the PSX version has less slowdown. It looks better than a SNES game, it has less slowdown than similar SNES games (even though it has tons more going on), it sounds better than a SNES game, etc. Plenty of other PSX games demonstrate this as well (Darius Gaiden, several of the still-flawed Capcom fighters, later Parodius games, Salamander/Lifeforce II, Layer Section, Gradius Gaiden, Gunbird, various NeoGeo ports like Metal Slug and KOF, etc.).

Your bit claims are pretty meaningless. Ex: the Genesis was far better than the SNES at some 2D stuff (lots of sprites, less slowdown), due to its much faster processor. However, the SNES had better special effects (transparency, rotation of backgrounds, etc.). Both of them excelled at different 2D visual aspects, and both certainly qualify as 16-bit, seeing as how they literally are. Bit measurements do a really bad job at comparing real world performance.

The only area I think the SNES really beat the PSX in is maybe certain music. PSX's compressed digital and Redbook audio would beat the SNES, certainly, but I think a lot of SNES games put out better sound than the 'MIDI' the PSX generated for games like FFVII.

I would agree that for some reason most 2D PSX games did a very poor job with the graphics (poor libraries, maybe?). But several games for PSX certainly demonstrated that it can do amazing 2D, far beyond the slow SNES processor could do. And its 3D capabilities smash the SNES too, even with the SuperFX chip considered.

Don't get me wrong, I certainly love the SNES. But it just doesn't remotely compare in hardware to any of the big 32-bit gen consoles.

For reference:
PSX CPU
R3000A from MIPS(SGI) and LSI Logic Technologies
32 bit RISC processor
Clock 33.8688MHz
Operating performance 30 MIPS
Instruction Cache 4 KB
Data Cache 1 KB
BUS 132 MB/sec.
2 Megs RAM

SNES CPU
WDC 65C816 16 bit processor running at 1.79, 2.68 MHz, or 3.58 MHz (Changeable), with 128 KiB of RAM

(neither of the RAM amounts include sound/video RAM, etc.)

I won't bother putting stats for the graphics coprocessors, but the PSX whips the SNES one in capabilities. No sprite limit, functionally unlimited sprite size, no sprites-per-line limit (the SNES can only have 32 sprites per resolution line), and plenty of impressive special '3D' effects (ex: rotate any sprite, not just backgrounds like SNES can).

Really, Google their specs sometime. (Warning though - that PSX specs author is ignorant of the Saturn's actual hardware. It has more RAM than the PSX, for example. Their numbers are solid, though.) I think you will be surprised.

Quake never had it, but UT allowed you to adjust the game speed between 50% and 200%. It seems as if Doom 3 might give you some control over this, even if it's just a variable in the game you have to adjust.

Why is adjusting the game speed a good idea? Well.. I used to play UT all the time, and then moved to Quake 3. Quake 3 was a far faster game (in gameplay terms) and I got to love it, and my 'skills' improved. When I went back to UT, the levels felt too big, the moving about felt slow and nasty, and I yearned for more speed.. so I just put it to 110% gamespeed, and it was more like playing Q3!

Adjusting game speed is quite important and I wish more games would allow you to do it. One of the first was Maxis's 'way ahead of its time' 1993 sim A-Train.