Koji Sugimoto, a veteran in the gaming industry, has expressed his bewilderment regarding the nostalgia for graphics from the PlayStation 1 era. In a social media post, he reminisced about how his team worked diligently to mitigate various visual flaws associated with the PS1 that many gamers now seem to overlook.

Sugimoto, who has 20 development credits including roles in Final Fantasy 10 and Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7, reflected on the significant challenges developers faced due to the console’s limitations. He noted, “Back then, we spent so much futile effort trying to avoid distortion, and nowadays people call it ‘charming.’”

The original PS1 had considerable hardware restrictions that impacted graphic rendering capabilities, including the absence of a depth buffer, forcing developers to manually determine the rendering order for polygons. His statements have sparked a discussion about the value and perception of graphics within gaming nostalgia.