I just saw the PSX up close and personal for the first time running Toh 
Shin Den.

It's definitely all it's cracked up to be.

I'll make an admission.  I hate fighter games.  I am not, by nature, a 
violent person.  I like abstract shooters alright, but I have no inner 
desire to beat up on people in hand to hand combat.  This being the case, 
of all the fighters I've ever seen, Toh Shin Den has got to be the only 
one that I think I could fall in love with.

Now, let's get the obvious out of the way: how it looks.

The resolution, as best I can tell, is either 320x220 or 750x220.  It is
not interlaced (interlaced would be 480) and this seems to be a trend with
PSX games versus their arcade cousins.  However, the game still looks high
resolution.  The 24-bit color yeilds very smooth pixel gradations which
make the resulotion appear even better than it is everywhere but on edges. 
Some goraud shading is probably being used as well as the texturing.  I
don't think any realtime anti-aliasing is being applied.  If other
consoles have builtin anti-aliasing this may be an edge for them, if you
like that look. 

On the waves I saw, the backgrounds demonstrated tranlucency (waterfall 
effect), and transparency (wooden slats above water below).  On the slat 
wave, the only unrealistic component was that the shadows of the fighters 
cross the openings in the slats as if the slats were in fact solid all 
the way across rather than having physical slices in them.  Just a 
nit-pick there...

On one wave, there is a simulated video monitor in the background which
represents the game's viewpoint.  I first thought it was a mirror, but it
isn't.  At certain points, the monitor enters the infinity effect where
you see more monitors inside of monitors.  It is an amazing piece of
dynamic texture mapping code.  On that same wave, the platform displays
transparency as well as reflective properties.  It's going beyond texture
mapped polygons and into true raytracing effects. 

The framerate appears to be 30fps for most of it.  When special moves 
result in lots of sparkles, the framerate sometimes drops down a bit to 
20-25 but this is only a barely noticable slowdown and in no way detracts 
from the game.

The players are wonderfully detailed and articulated.  None of the 
blockiness of Virtua Fighter.  Limbs are more rounded and realistic, etc..

Now, gamewise, this is the important thing.  There is a plethora of moves
you can perform, and each character has his/her own unique bag of tricks. 
Ever character seems to use a weapon of some kind rather than hand-to-hand
combat.  A staff, a club, a sword, etc...  This is a really good way to
set up a fighter because there are a lot of tricks that can be performed
with these weapons.  The guy with the staff/spear, for instance, can twist
it really fast like a helicopter and FLY up and then shoot a fireball. 
Each character doesn't really have analogous special attacks, they have
unique special attacks that aren't necessarily duplicated in look/feel.  I
mean, a club attack is very different from a spear or a wolverine-claw
attack.  I doubt another character can fly up that way, at least not that
high and can't stay up there that long.  It's a real kick.  Another
special attack with the spear guy is you can hook a guy with the spear and
swing him up in the air and play with him then slam him down.  Really fun
and innovative stuff.  Not the usual boring punch and kick bullshit! 

Breaking out of the railed 2D-ness of games such as Tekken or VF1 and 2
are where Toh Shin Den is TRULY revolutionary.  Tekken for PSX may be
smoother (which is really overkill once you hit 30fps), but I doubt it's a
better GAME than this.  You can twist around your opponent, run away from
him at that new angle, etc...  I was just watching others play so I don't
know QUITE how free the movement is, but it's pretty damn free of rails. 

So I think it would take someone quite a while to get bored of Toh Shin
Den (although I am never amazed by the lack of attention-span of today's
gamers) because each character has to have dozens of unique combinations
and can run around more in the 3D space which opens up limitless combat
techniques.  With the 3D space it no longer is a matter of the 2 fighters
meeting and you simply anticipating hits, you have to worry about where
the player is going to move to, around you, to your side, etc...  I did
notice that the computer opponent didn't seem to exploit the 3D aspect
that much.  1 on 1 human matches would be far more interesting. 

Those who commented that RR and Toh Shin Den have glitches, I think I saw 
some of that.  Let me explain what they are.

The polygons in the players are all merged together and are sliding back 
and forth.  Beyond a threshold, certain edges of polygons will take 
priority over others depending on whether they are behind or in front of 
the other polygons.  The "glitches" if you can call them that, are when a 
joint polygon suddenly becomes visible from underneath the other half of 
the joint.  This tends to happen not gradually, but is more of an on or 
off state.  Sometimes it flips back and forth when it perhaps shouldn't.  
But I think this is just a byproduct of polygon animation and it's not 
very distracting.  They probably could have made it a bit smoother if 
they debugged the code some more, but it's really nothing major.

The Playstation is a beautiful piece of industrial engineering.  It is a
nice white unit with 2 SNES-like horizontal 9-pin connectors on front. 
Directly above those are 2 (I thought there were 1 but there are two which
is cool) save-game card slots.  The hardware design seems absolutely right
on the mark and generous to the consumer on every level with nary a
compromise to be seen.  Game loads, for instance, for Toh Shin Den, were
only about 3 seconds!  The main game when booted I think took more like 5. 
It was pretty damn fast.  That's all due to the dedicated CD I/O hardware. 
CD-lag shouldn't be a major problem with this unit (knock on wood). 

I saw some more screenshots of upcoming games or games already in Japan
like Kileak The Blood and after seeing Toh Shin Den, you can easily become
a believer that the screenshots aren't probably just pretty pictures with
framerate compromises the way, say, AvP for the Jaguar was.  The PSX 
looks like it's going to deliver the goods (ultra realistic 3D 
environments) without any major compromises.

So, I advise any americans out there to go wander around and see if there 
is a PSX kiosk in any of your videogame places.  Go find one and check it 
out for yourself.

I never bought a 16-bit console.  I have an Amiga 1200 which kinda serves
that role...  I'm more of an 8-bit gamer.  If I want 2D, the oldies tend
to do that well enough.  If I want 3D, everything seems to be a
work-in-progress from Star Raiders on up to Wing Commander.  When you see
the PSX output next to some game on the SNES you really are convinced that
it is the next level.  It's so far above the capabilities of 3D0 and
Jaguar that I can't see any 16-bit user deciding on those 2 over PSX--even
if the PSX is sold for $400.. 

Despite the huge catalog of the Genesis and SNES, there is no way I'll get
one now, and I will not mourn that because the new vistas that the PSX
opens up will make me forget the other stuff.  And rather than merely
doing the same old stale formula for 3D games, Toh Shin Den is definitely
a trendsetter, an improvement on the old genre.  A successful console
can't just deliver good arcade ports or simple clones of popular ideas,
they have to have unique games with unique takes on a genre, not just
following the others, and the Playstation seems to be headed in that
direction. 

Well, I'm sure I'm telling a lot of you what you already know, right?  So
I guess you can just chalk up one more to the list of the converted. 

The PSX is not just hype.