This PS1 Trick Resurfaces After Years Of Being Forgotten
An old PlayStation 1 feature has been brought to light, nearly two decades after the console's release in 1994. TikTok users are now rediscovering that PS1 games can actually be listened to like a CD. This has led to a handful of gaming fans being absolutely shocked that this was even a feature back in the 90s.
The TikTok video showing off this mechanic came from DKOldies, an account dedicated to a retro game store. In the video, the narrator explains that specific PS1 games can actually be placed into a CD player, allowing people to listen to a game's audio files and music. The man explaining the video demonstrates this by placing a PS1 copy of Tomb Raider into a laptop disc drive, and showing that audio files from the game can be played on the laptop.
The reaction to this fun bit of console trivia has blown the minds of users who grew up with the PS1. One user left a comment saying, "I never knew that! My life was a lie all this time!" Meanwhile, other users who claimed to have known about this feature chimed in about other games they've tried the trick with. Twisted Metal 3, X-Men: Mutant Academy 2, and Ridge Racer Revolution were just a few of the games that were mentioned that offered this functionality.
It turns out that the PS1 wasn't the only console that had this feature either. The Sega Saturn also had a handful of titles that could be listened to the same way. Commenters on the TikTok video mentioned listening to soundtracks of the Sega Saturn versions of games like Daytona USA and WWF In Your House.
According to Yahoo! Sports, this feature was purposefully added in by game developers when creating a title's soundtrack. Devs would format a title's audio files into CDDA format, which can be accessed by CD players, laptops, and other devices that can open such files. Therefore, game discs that contained CDDA files could easily be played like a normal CD. There's actually a complete list of every PS1 game that contains CDDA files, and it's actually quite extensive.
It's interesting to think that back in the 90s, when gaming was still in its early days, these kinds of features existed. It's always cool to learn something new about a classic console.