A PS1 that takes USB-C

I imported a Japanese PS1, the original fat one. The Crash Bandicoot games came from a different listing and got here first, which is on me: I am extremely impatient, and once I found the bundle I had to have it. All five of them, too: 1, 2, 3, Racing and Carnival (CTR and Crash Bash everywhere else). They’re NTSC-J, so they run at 60Hz, and not at the 50 the PAL discs are stuck with.

I knew the Japanese releases differed from the NTSC ones I grew up on. I did not know how much of that was the artwork. Japanese Crash is a different character design: brown eyes instead of green, thinner eyebrows, fur that went from bristly to glossy. Shuhei Yoshida has said the marketing team redesigned him for the PS1 ads because the market found the original one ugly. I don’t think the original is ugly, but I do think the Japanese one is superior. I laugh my ass off every time I look at these covers. They’re so cute I can’t explain it.

The console came with a Retro GEM Shiny already installed, which is most of why I wanted this particular one: the GEM gets soldered in, and I’m only just getting decent at soldering.¹

Somewhere along the way I had decided that because it’s Sony, the power supply would be universal. It is not. A Japanese PS1 wants 100V, and Chile runs at 220.

Thankfully, a company (I think?) called robot_retro makes a full replacement power board for the fat PS1 that drives the console off USB-C PD. It’s a drop-in: six screws out of the bottom of the console, two off the old power board, a 3D-printed spacer, and back together. No soldering. It asks for 15V or 20V, so most 30W bricks will do it, and it fits 5-pin and 7-pin consoles, PAL, NTSC or Japanese. £39.

It arrived sooner than I expected, and today I finally got to play some Crash Bandicoot. Neat. Give it a go!