I think I was about 10 when Abe's Oddysee came out and we bought it shortly after launch (it was one of our first Playstation games, along with Final Fantasy VII). My siblings and I generally played on the same file as a team effort to complete the game (we did this with most games)...with some help from our mother who also enjoyed it XD We played it all the time, even after beating it several times.
We did fairly well, even though we never got anything other than the bad ending. We played with a fairly big handicap, though, since our older-than-time TV was a hand-me-down of a hand-me-down and was half broken. For whatever reason, the screen was permanently aligned off-center, with about an inch on the left side of the screen being completely hidden. However, the image took up the whole screen (there was no blackness on the right side to give an indication it was off-center) and it wasn't for almost years that we realized it was off-center. In games, this caused a lot of problems as parts of the game were hidden - for example, in the Scrabanian Temple in one of the flintlock doors we were stuck for MONTHS trying to figure out how to pass it as there was an inactive well we couldn't activate. Eventually, I got fed up and went step by step over the entire level pressing square trying to activate the impossible puzzle. On the screen with the well, right off to the left on the hidden bit of screen I pressed square and pulled the lever and viola, level completed. On a normal TV, this lever is completely obvious and there's no way to miss it XP
The audio also processed incorrectly and background music/noises were layered over the foreground music/noises.
We eventually got rid of that TV when it quite literally exploded - one day it just started smoking, then sparking, then caught fire. That was the end of that...good times
AO
