Comparing Every Version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone Game PC/PS1/PS2/XBOX/NGC/GBA/CGB 

Thanks so much for the input, Ben. It's fascinating. Did you have any communication with the PS1 team at Argonaut Games? Or were you lets to make the game completely independently? Also, did you do any work on Chamber of Secrets or the later HP games, or just HP1? Thanks again

@@Flandrew We talked to each other fairly often, and frequently sent builds of the game back and forth. But the designs were done completely independent of each other. The one exception being the Voldemort fight at the end, which I copied (with permission) from an older version of the PS1 game. They changed theirs before release otherwise they would have been completely identical. I only worked on the first title directly, though some of my work from the first game was reused in the second.

omg dude, you were part of the sorcerers stone PC team those first 3 pc HP games were a huge part of my childhood thanks for making a part of my childhood

Oh my gosh, the PC games were the best! They were the only video games apart from a Sabrina the Teenage Witch one we had so my wee sis and I played them to death lol. Our favourite one was Prisoner of Azkaban, did you work on that one too?

Oh I just saw your other reply! Well done, your levels live fondly in the memories of 00 kids

That was indeed scary back then.

I still have nightmares that contain avoiding Mr. Filch in libraries as ptsd from back then 🤣

@@flapjaxattack exactly. Yay yay yay caught you Mr. Potter 😂😂😂

@@flapjaxattack Same here, but I was able to cure it with a hilarious incident at the start of the second half of that level: when you come back down from the astronomy tower, you can break the vases with Flippendo and Filch will run back across the bridge, and if you time it right you can get caught by him as you jump into the abyss, so I ended up with him saying "Well, well, well, we ARE in trouble now, aren't we?" as Harry literally plummets to his death.

"Uh-huh, eh-heh? What's thaaaaaaaaaat???"

I replayed it last year. The atmosphere and music are indeed incredible. But the gameplay was remarkably bad lol don’t understand why I played it so much as a kid

tell me your secrets on how to play it i crave this game so much!

@@frempy4426 I wouldn't call it bad. Just simple. Clearly aimed at those unfamiliar with computer games. You've got a bit of everything, some of the secrets are actually well hidden and if you hadn't been playing games for the past 2 decades you'd probably not blast through all the platforming in an afternoon.

@@dopaminecloud You make a good point! I suppose that was my experience as a kid lol

would't agree more it's surly my fave game

YES, i loved the gbc version of chamber of secrets, such a fun rpg game

was probably my favorite harry potter game growing up

u r not the only one

Yey! I'm one of the few who actually owned the GBC version. It was one of the very first GBC games I've ever played. My father let me choose two games when he bought me my GBC, and I picked the GBC Harry Potter 1 and Pokemon Yellow. I loved the RPG interpretation of the game mechanics, and up to this day, the Harry Potter 1 GBC game still holds a special place in my heart.

to a modern audience it will feel a bit repetitive/grindy, and also heavy on fetch quests, but to younger players, in 2001, it probably felt like a slam dunk.

I could never get past Flitwick's class. -_-' CoS on the GBC was the shit though.

Peeves's curse was so annoying and even as a kid, I noticed that Voldy himself can easily be defeated by the Locomotor Mortis + Mucus ad Nauseam combo. Yes, it was amazing.

one of the systems best

Oh good. I found that game in a bargain bin in my local retro shop for a few dollars.

I really hope he does. There is not video like this for either of those or this game and that’s just insane to me.

Hope so too

on the third game its still pc and ps/gc versions being different but they are both great with the PS2 HP3 being one of the best licensed games ever

Looking forward to that.

@@cheddargt he just uploaded the one for CoS

Interesting. I think they started using some of the English actors for the later games

Fun fact, the composer of the soundtrack is the same guy that did Skyrim! And yes, I wholeheartedly agree, the game (at least the PC version for me) feels so much closer to the book's mood!

oh my god i was stuck at the quidditch part for months!

I always got stuck at the Fluffy part then two or three years later I played it and was able to beat and then about year after I first I beat I was able to beat it 100% finding all 25 wizard cards. Two years ago, I discovered PS1 port of Philosopher's Stone via emulation and it was basically felt the PC version except even better and playing the PS1 version made me realise how I would have loved playing the PS1 as a teenager especially since I loved playing the PC game but wished it was more challenging. Back then emulation was virtually unknown.

Well they couldn't really adapt from the movie since it wasn't out yet.

Are there any particular games you’d like to see a comparison video for?

@@Flandrew doing another similar video for Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban would be awesome.

@@Flandrew absolutely agreeing with aenema, Chamber of secrets and azkaban please :D subscribed :)

@@Flandrew Prisoner of Azkaban pls, but if my memory serves me right, there was a java mobile game of PoA. If you can find the game or gameplay vids of the game pls include it

Well, I guess, her original title was 'philosopher's stone' because she was taking the alchemical line of thinking quite literally with 'stone'. I also believe that 'philosophers' stone' is an old mythological item itself (and this is the proper spelling). I also think elixir was different to the so-called stone. In theory, both titles work -- but 'sorcerer's stone' is actually completely invented just to sell the 'magic' part of the book, I'd guess? I think the UK title is best, but I guess, 'sorcerer' does sound better than 'philosopher' for a children's fantasy story, and maybe to market it better in the US? Nonetheless, the UK title is actually the correct one.

It actually reminds me how even as an eight-year old or however the hell old I was when I first read the book, I thought to myself, "wait, how does a _stone_ do all this?" I mean, I know it's magic but it's just counterintuitive, Rowling should have simply come up with some wizarding cup instead.

@@TheClassicWorld Yeah, and as I'd never heard either term in my entire life up until that point, if they had just used philosopher I never would have known the difference and people would be less confused about there being two titles because there wouldn't be.

A bit like PoA GBA then

@@InhabitantOfOddworld wouldn't that make PoA GBA a bit like this one instead?

@@alucardian101 Splitting hairs

@@InhabitantOfOddworld yep, I just couldn't help myself. Sorry haha 😄

I never thought I'm gonna get hit with dose of wholesome,

Play the 2003 version version as it's the BEST version of the game, Gamecube/Ps2 are CLEARLY the best versions of the game visually and gameplay as they increased and boasted the graphics considerably so the graphics makes the aesthetics come to live beautifully to capture the perfect dark halloween vibe of the rest of the Harry Potter series!

@@Gadget-Walkmen Thanks I've already beaten the Game cube one recently, had so much fun =D

@@baguete02 that’s fantastic to hear! Glad you liked it as it’s one of my favorite Harry Potter games as I grew up with it alongside the Prisoner of Azkaban game which is my favorite! Can’t wait for Hogwarts Legacy! It’s going to be phenomenal!

Oblivion type shit

Me and my sister quote the italian ps1 dub every time ✔️

The library levels: where boys became men

I’m glad I’m not alone with my mild PTSD from Filch and Mrs Norris

Same Vietnam flashback but its the Gringotts Bank mine cart level that still makes me sweat bullets

@@buuam7555 that was the PS1 version

I find myself humming the Hogwarts main theme from time to time... such a tune!

You're saying that mainly because you grew up with that, right? Don't get me wrong, I also LOVE the way how the PS1 Harry Potter looks from the graphics, boxart, and all the promotional material to it all as it all has that "classic" early 2000s look which was perfectly amazing for the Playstation at the time and still gives me nostalgia feels when looking at it, But the Gamecube/Ps2 are CLEARLY the best versions of the game "Harry Potter 1" visually as they increased and boasted the graphics considerably so the graphics makes the aesthetics come to live beautifully to capture the perfect dark halloween vibe of the rest of the series!

@@Gadget-Walkmen Sure there's nostalgia but you have to remember two things a. The PS2 game came out in 2003, well after the original games came. b. It was not all that common. Even now, the PS2 Happy Potter 1 is one of the more valuable games in the PS2 market in PAL. By the time it hit shelves, it kind of just disappeared. c. At no point did I say HP1 on PSX was the best game. I simply said it was what I imagined when I thought HP1 video games.

@@YukeWeiss fair enough, that’s a good enough take. Not about the Ps2 Harry Potter 1 being that valuable tho, I had the GameCube and it was fairly common.

​@@YukeWeiss Jesus, no wonder I never knew there was a PS2 version of the game. Just looked it up and it's at least £50 for any platform for that version

Great details! Thanks for the info. Just out of interest, where did you find out that hp1 for ps2 was originally delayed and then reused for hp2. I always thought they wanted to wait for Xbox and GameCube to launch in Europe in 2002 to release the sixth gen games

​@@Flandrew A general rule in gaming is that speedrunning communities are some of the most knowledgeable people with the series they run, and that's precisely where I asked, as a speedrunner myself of another series. It seems HP2 6th gen contains unused stuff that would have been intended for HP1, but I can't recall what exactly. When comparing HP2 PS2 to GC/XBox, you're going to come accross way too many differences to list them in a video, but you can boil it down to this: PS2: Pros: Better lighting and ambient colors, whispers of the spells can be heard when assigned. Harry casts a real-time shadow. You can freeroam everywhere outside the castle, on foot and broom. Cons: framerate is halved to 30/25 depending on region, and skips when performing a spell ( vertex lighting calculations especially for Lumos ) Game is on CD, and as such is limited to 660MB of space. Only one language per disc, load times are very slow, at numerous places, and make the PS2 very noisy. Prefects are present in more areas and run quicker to Harry, making stealth significantly harder. GC/XBox: Pros: framerate is 60/50 fps constantly, spells don't lag at all on XBox ( but reduced particles ). Prefects guard far fewer places, and walk even when you're spotted. Load times are considerably faster on DVD/Mini-disc. Cons: Graphics are more washed out, desaturated. Outside the castle is divided into areas that Harry must fast-travel to on foot, with bushes/barriers blocking the way to open fields. You can only freeroam on broom and land on valid locations. And multiple other sound/graphic/cutscene differences are spread all across, making HP2 the most "same but different" multiplatform same-gen game I know of. If you emulate the PS2 game for recording, use Software renderer to show the superior graphics accurately. Or, if you want HD resolution with Hardware renderers, you need to have Frame Buffer Conversion on, Mipmaps on, and Blending Accuracy set on High-Very High. That gets rid of most graphical innacuracies. PCSX2 ver.1.7.2 nightly builds should perfectly support those features, whereas older stable releases are far glitchier. For the other version, Dolphin for GC is all you need with no particular settings, and it can represent XBox due to them being almost identical. That's all I have to say. Good luck in your HP2 researches!

I don't know how he moves with such style and grace, but you can tell by the way he uses his walk that he's a woman's man. He doesn't even have time to talk.

Thank you

Got to like level 94 lol

surprisingly decent RPG

Have you thought about using an emulator? Might be easier than tracking down a physical copy.

​@@dbs1013 Great suggestion, but I feel like I'd want the physical copy to play on my Gameboy again just to recreate that magic elementary school-aged me experienced

@@sisigpapi that's fair. Like me and the books, i don't care how fancy technology gets, I'll always treasure my originals 😅😆

That Escape Snape level. *Shudders*

I had something like this, but I think mine was an extra on the DVD of the movie. So it was a demo of a roughly six month old game at the time. I think the demo went up to the end of the flipendo spell challenge.

The PS2 game’s of philosopher’s stone doesn’t need any defense as it’s a great game all around and easily the best one out of all them from being fantastic but all the Harry Potter games for Philosopher’s stone are at most good games! And the Ps2 of philosopher’s stone isn’t “far superior” at all to that of Chamber of Secrets Ps2 game, their overall the same as a whole but with philosopher’s stone being a little bit better for Ps2/GameCube from the improvements that’s been made and could have been done which WAS. Their both great games of their respective source material, Entirely so!

Thanks and watch this space

I liked the Gameboy RPG for PoA as well, although it annoyed me that you couldn't walk around Hogwarts without being attacked in a corridor by some random creature. Chamber of Secrets for the GBA felt much more like a real place, despite having fewer NPCs, because it let me explore.

Thank you

You monster! It was like you stole food right from out of Rowling's mouth! How was she to survive with you pirating her games?! ;...;

Yeah, it seems like the xbox/ps2/gamecube version kind of slipped by a lot of people when it was first released

@@Flandrew yeah I chalked it up to the 03 release that you mentioned. By the time it came out I was already moving on to the Chamber of Secrets game and didn't even realize it existed until like 6 years ago LOL.

I’ve never heard about the reworded content version. What’s different about it?

@Flanadrew restored version is a mod that add some things to the game like the dursey house, diagon alley, walk around one car of the hogwarts express, add the grandstaircase hub from hp2, foribbiden forest at night and some duel during before the final part of the game with Mallory. There not actual spoken dialog during these sections.

Definitely will before the end of the year

Indeed, and who can forget the deathly hallows game which was Call of Duty with wands

@@Flandrew it is really apparent when shift happened as the first 3 games had Harry Potter on the cover. While from the Goblet of Fire on they had Daniel Radcliff as Harry Potter which started to greatly show as the Fourth game was just the movie and creative liberties. With the creative liberties steadily shrinking except to lengthen the game in spots and even then many were really short.