/ Brandon Boyer / 9:38 am Thu Dec 3, 2009

The PlayStation Turns 15: What did it mean for you?

PS15.jpg December 3rd marks the 15th anniversary of Sony's entrance into the console arena, with the 1994 launch of the PlayStation in Japan. This had me thinking all morning about the impact it had, both personally and for the wider gaming landscape. There's a lot can and has been said on how the PlayStation changed the latter: how it helped standardize optical media over custom-built and more expensive cartridges, along with all the audio/visual upgrades that brought, (slightly overblown) sentiments on how it 'brought the Japanese RPG to the American mainstream' with Final Fantasy VII (a trend that hasn't necessarily carried through with nearly as much fervor), or how it helped ease gaming out of the shameful basement and into the living room as a lifestyle accessory. More directly, it was also responsible for creating or evolving a laundry list of names that remain some of the industry's biggest franchises -- Metal Gear, Tomb Raider, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, Resident Evil, Wipeout, Castlevania and Final Fantasy. But my vote for the console's top achievement? It gave birth to the music game. NanaOn-Sha and Rodney Greenblat's Parappa the Rapper might not have been the smash success of any of the names above, certainly in the West (where in Japan Sony would adopt the dog as the official face of its gaming wing), but it managed to make its strongest impact right where it counted.
Previous experimental flirtations aside (primarily Electroplankton creator Toshio Iwai's Famicom Disk System game Otocky and Maxis-published SimTunes), you can trace a clear line (as UK journo Simon Parkin has done) between Parappa's controller-button-Simon interactions to Konami's Beatmania/DDR beat-matching, to -- most importantly -- the creative turning-point at then-still-young developer Harmonix, who openly credit Parappa as leading them from a focus on simulation and instrument instruction to games proper, starting with Frequency, Amplitude and then, of course, the original Guitar Hero through to Rock Band. It's a startling thought to realize that the tie that ultimately binds gaming to a cultural icon as big as The Beatles is an innocent stocking-capped rapping dog, and it follows that even that game couldn't have existed (at least in as captivating a way) without the music that the disc it lived on afforded, on the only console with the magic-formula of entertainment industry clout to attract that 'outsider' talent. And on a personal level, too, Parappa was solely responsible for drawing me back into gaming itself, having skipped out on most of the 16-bit era to turn my teen-rebellion attention instead to music. It wasn't until I realized the two could play so happily together that I knew I wanted back in, and without that I wouldn't be writing this here today. Which leads me to ask: a decade and a half on, did the PlayStation have as meaningful an impact on you? What's your view on its role in games history? Let us know via the comments below.

73

  1. To me, the Dreamcast was much more important. I still play it. I still think it was the best system I ever owned.

  2. Reading the headline first, I immediately thought, “Parappa”. Scrolled down, and lo and behold.

    And believe it or not, I’m actually wearing my Parappa stocking cap right now.

  3. What did the Playstation mean to me? It was the game system owned by that guy who was hitting on my girlfriend.

    That may have some bearing on why I hadn’t actually played a game on an original Playstation until just a couple months ago. ;)

  4. Didn’t Nintendo bring the Japanese RPG to the American mainstream? Dragon Warrior/Quest anyone?

    I really need to replay that one. I don’t think I ever actually beat it.

  5. How could they put the rubber duckies in there and leave out the most revolutionary gaming peripheral of our time: the Rez Trance vibrator? Truly shocking.

  6. To me, it meant the end of the plethora of personal computer platforms. Commodore, Atari, et. al., died, leaving only the Mac and PC.

  8. I love so many things about the playstation; mostly I love that it had so many awesome games at a time when I still had time to play a lot of games.

    A couple years after the playstation came out, sony released the Net Yaroze for home development. . . when I was in university, I wanted a yaroze so bad. Not badly enough to pay nearly 1000 canadian for it, but pretty badly. I finally ended up buying one on ebay. I loved it, but sweet fancy jesus was it ever a pain in the ass to write code for. I never got anywhere remotely close to writing even the most basic game for it.

  10. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiidge Racerrrrrrrrrr!!!!!

    I played it until I could complete laps by muscle memory, and unlocked the black car.

    1. I didn’t notice how important Ridge Racer was to me for some time. The fact that Ridge Racer 7 was on PS3 was actually a big, admittedly lame, reason for me to get the PS3.

  11. Parappa was a deeply unappreciated game in America. I loved it – what I especially loved was that it was genuinely funny, and the lyrics were great. While I love the Guitar Hero/Rock Band games, it’s a shame more developers haven’t taken Parappa’s lead to make music games with original music and storylines.

    Another artgame that I spent a lot of time with was Abe’s Oddysee, which is still around though I think the franchise lost something when they abandoned the side-scroller format.

  13. Well, for one it meant a job! I worked @ Sony in Foster City doing Playstation support, when I started there were but 40 titles available. I ended up working on the tip team, one of the guys that would walk you through games on a 900# for a couple dollars a minute and still have several of the walkthrough scripts.

    Jumping Flash was an awesome game, but the best of the lot was probably Worms.

  15. I remember my dad going out to Circuit City and buying us a PlayStation and Resident Evil. The system had been out for a year or two, but nobody I knew had one and it was still very expensive for the time. The system seemed so foreign to me at first; everything from the actual name “playstation” to the matte gray color of the system, the analog controller,and memory cards all seemed so new and different. I vividly remember my friend and I being blown away at the “amazing graphics” of Resident Evil (“It looks so realistic!!”) and the completely horrifying immersive qualities of the game. The cut scenes and open environment were such a break from the other games we had played (even the PC games at the time) and we were blown away by how creepy and challenging the game was. We played it through together, he was my navigator (we later bought a strategy guide) and we were hooked.

    After that came so many classics, but the one that still stands out the most is Final Fantasy VII. I’m not big on RPG’s, but that game was just incredible.

    I don’t really play video games anymore aside from the occasional PS2 game, but I have so many fantastic memories of my original Playstation and my Playstation 2. Buying my PS2 was also a great experience.10th grade, parents let us skip school and camp out at Target to buy the PS2. Was blown away by SSX and Madden 2000. Later had to go get a physical which put a damper on the day but later that night ended up losing my virginity; not to my Ps2 but a real life woman. October 26, 2000, a day I will never forget.

  16. “10th grade, parents let us skip school and camp out at Target to buy the PS2. Was blown away by SSX and Madden 2000. Later had to go get a physical which put a damper on the day but later that night ended up losing my virginity; not to my Ps2 but a real life woman. October 26, 2000, a day I will never forget.”

    I can see why. Thanks for … um … sharing.

  18. I think it was in 1996/97 when I got the PlayStation for Christmas, so, sort of a late bloomer. Up until then we had to make do with a Nintendo and Atari 2600.

    Tomb Raider was what got me hooked, the first game I got. Our game setup was in the basement, on an old, barely 20″ cabinet style TV. I remember playing TR for the first time late one night while my sister watched, waiting her turn. In the 2nd level, the City of Villicabambbaba (?), I went walking down a hallway and through a doorway when a wolf (in all its cubically 3D rendered awesome) leaped out of the corner attacking Lara. It startled my sister and I so much that I literally dropped the controller. We laughed for a good fifteen minutes straight at the mind-bending thought that “Did we just get scared by a video game?” Keep in mind our most frightening video game experience prior to this was the air-bike level of Battletoads. Ever since then I’ve been a big fan of the Tomb Raider series (even suffered through Angel of Darkness and the two “films”, if you can call them that) and always quietly root for the PlayStation to get back on top of the console wars.

    Other favorites of mine were Destruction Derby 2 and Star Wars: Masters of Teräs Käsi. Oh, memories.

  19. I am happy to report that due to age, temperament, and possibly gender, it meant not one single thing to me.

  23. for me, the Playstation was the first time I really appreciated how game developing companies would gladly fuck-over their users by region-locking their games. Japanese-only games were far better known in my circle of friends than Europe-only DVDs were. Next came the modchips, next came rampant piracy.. ahh, how innocent we all were back then. ;)

  24. Silent Hill.

    Survival horror is one thing, but they made it mean something. Resident Evil and games of the like thrust you into these situations as highly trained operatives with weapons, backup, and an organization that knows you’re there.

    Silent Hill drops you, a normal guy, in the middle of a hellish mindfuck nightmare with no weapons and no idea of what is going on. All you know is that your daughter is missing, the town is functionally empty, there’s fog everywhere, it’s snowing in the summer, there are bloody corpses and gore, and hellish creatures are trying to eat your face.

    People often have trouble getting past the graphics, but the story is amazing. I’ll never forget the way my heart raced and my throat knotted the first time I heard the air raid siren. “Oh God… what now?”

  25. I didn’t own a single game console between Pong (which I won in the mid-seventies for new subscriptions on my paper route) and my PS2. Having a separate gadget for games when you could play them on your computer seemed wasteful, until I found games like Guitar Hero and fitness programs that I wanted a full-size TV for. (And even then, I waited until the slim version of PS2 was out and there were plenty of used games available for it.)

  26. To me the PS represents the death of large arcades. Which is fine for me, I never had enough quarters to keep playing those old arcade games anyhow. Viva PSOne.

  27. I didn’t get a PS of my own for a while, but I was in a band with a guy who had one, and I used to play Need for Speed on that thing like it was religion. The fact that you could do burnouts and donuts with the cars was just, magic. Then later on Gran Turismo came out and it had like 87,000 cars in it. My roomate’s Taurus was in there, my friend’s ’93 Civic Si was in there, etc. It was great. Driver and Driver 2 helped pave the way for the GTA series, after the top-down versions of course.

  28. Ah, Parappa… I was obsessed with that game too. Piggybacking on #11’s comments, its interesting to see where Rock Band and Guitar Hero fall down in encouraging genuine freestyling in the context of a given song, in comparison with Parappa. Sure, you can get points with the occasional drum fill for example, but there is little to no requirement that it actual fit the music, in fact you are encouraged to go for number of beats rather than anything approaching the song’s rhythm.

    The PS1 was the first console I ever owned, having made do by going over to friend’s houses to play Atari, Commodore, Nintendo etc. My reasons for buying the console were fairly prosaic: Gran Tourismo…

  29. The Playstation for me was the first time I felt I may have made a wrong decision going with Nintendo when I saw the sheer number of games coming out for it whenever I picked up a gaming magazine, and I didn’t go from the SNES to the N64 until ’97. Nintendo 64 games were often 10 dollars more than PS1 games due in part to cartridges being more expensive to make than CD-ROMs. The other advantages of CDs weren’t lost on me, either, though when I heard stories of loading times I felt a bit more secure in my chosen identity. Still, the lack of games from Capcom and anything from Konami on par with Metal Gear Solid or Silent Hill (though this year I finally played Castlevania: Curse of Darkness, which is pretty good,) and the continuation of a lot of series that I’d known from the SNES and NES onto the PS1 and not the Nintendo 64….. all those things hurt a bit. Thankfully, there were plenty of great games on the 64 that the PS1 never saw, even if the overall selection was slimmer- I never ended up like some poor theoretical child who gambled on the Jaguar and lost miserably.

    Going beyond the Genesis the Playstation helped fully flesh out the definition of the term console war.

  30. I didn’t trust PSX, even waited and bought a N64!

    Then I jumped ship because they kept on delaying TLoZ: Orarina of Time and had no plans for a 3D Metroid.

    I bought a PSX because I kept seeing ads for FFVII in comics. Playing the game I thought I had it all sussed seeing 8 reactors in Midgar I thought I knew the score and that like Zelda I would travel to each Reactor and then to the final castle(Scyscraper).

    When I left Midgar it totally blew my mind that I was walking around a WORLD map!

    Actually the game I played the most and am still playing (recently bought another copy from eBay because the dick was so scratchedwas Bust-A-Move 2 Arcade Edition(Puzzle Bubble anyone?), sooooooooooooooooooo addictive!!!

    Resident Evil 2 and 3.
    Silent Hill
    Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX.
    Parasite Eve 1 and 2.
    Castlevania: SOtN
    the list goes on…

  31. It’s just a shame all of Sony are now batshit loco. SOE completely destroyed Star Wars Galaxies, Sony BMG put rootkits on music disks (if it has copy protection on it, it can’t legally be called a CD), SCE made a console (the PS3) that by all accounts is the worst to program for, and Sony Pictures destroyed the far superior HD-DVD format.

  32. what? I was ten years old when the PS came out?
    dang…
    I remember watching my brothers play Raiden and telling me I couldnt play with them until my birthday. Cruel brothers.

  33. The PS1, or Playstation, was crap.

    It was technologically inferior, and prone to hardware defect. How many PS1s had to be run sitting upside down so the disks would read? How many flat out died? (insert XBOX 360 RROD stories here)

    What it meant to all of us was yet another example of inferior technology winning a format war due to hype or corporate bullying.

    The Sega Saturn was the better platform, and Nintendo made far better games.

    The PS1 strategy was to approve and release just about any game that was developed, thus enforcing the “quantity” over “quality” marketing and design strategy.

    Sony didn’t “evolve” gems like Castelvania and Final Fantasy, Sony just made them flashier and better advertised while ruining the gameplay. So many franchises turned to crap on the PS1, and only were seriously improved recently due to competition.
    The flood of terrible games on the playstation lowered everyones standards for video games, and caused so many games during that era with zero replay value…

    Sony’s complete lack of quality control in that era was notorious.

    I went two several E3s during that period and all Sony had to offer was eye candy marketing campaigns hiding crappy games. But hey, their booths were awesome an their models were hot! (off topic, but Eidos had Rhona Mitra playing the role of Lara Croft and she was way cool).

    Not until the PS2 did Sony and PS games start to improve but by then the damage had been done and we now have a million crappy games for every 5 good ones. No matter what the platform…

    It makes me wonder, though, now that I can get an 8GB USB memory stick for $15 if maybe cartridge games were “retired” prematurely? Zero loading time and no scratched up disks would be really nice. Although the future is digital downloads and content anyway…

  36. Amplitude and Frequency were HUGE, huge hits with me and all of my friends throughout high school. one of the best Multiplayer experiences of the generation, imo.

  37. The Playstation marked the point at which I, a Pong kid and denizen of many a darkened ’80s arcade, began to lose interest in videogames. The horrific smudgy graphics of the early 3D era were an aesthetic catastrophe from which gaming has only recently recovered, and the third dimension destroyed certain genres wholesale without really improving on them.

    I had one and have some fond memories of it, but it never captured my interest the way its forebears did. An important machine to be sure, just not the one for me.

    (my PS spent most of its life playing audio CDs, for what that’s worth)

    1. I grew up with Trash-80s, C64s and ‘IBM-compatibles’…

      When the PS came along I was more interested in my PC than in a PS for the first few years… but then the killer app came along.

      The Dual-Shock controller had to happen first (a masterpiece of interface ergonomics IMO), as did the Analyser 2700 (I think that’s what it was called; failed to dig up a link) which in an interview I read some Sony dude said made it like they’d launched a whole new console. Apparently it allowed the developers to optimise their code to wring the most out of the little PS… and when I saw Gran Turismo, the first game to benefit from the new development tool IIRC, I lost my shit, like I lost it when I first saw DOOM. A PS1 was an instant must-have to quell the gibbering want.

      The Playstation marked the point at which I, a Pong kid and denizen of many a darkened ’80s arcade, began to lose interest in videogames. The horrific smudgy graphics of the early 3D era were an aesthetic catastrophe from which gaming has only recently recovered, and the third dimension destroyed certain genres wholesale without really improving on them.
      I had one and have some fond memories of it, but it never captured my interest the way its forebears did. An important machine to be sure, just not the one for me.

      To me, the quality of the 3D was regrettably lame next to hardcore PCs of the day, but I am still yet to come across a driving game that holds a candle to Gran Turismo. As many things as I wish I could change about it, the fundamental perfection of its basic design shines through. As a matter of fact, I’m currently playing GT2 with ePSXe… it’s nice to finally be able to bump up that horrible resolution : )

      Can’t get enough of that race GT40 at Midfield : D

      …But although I prised the sticks and rumble motors from a busted Dual-Shock and grafted em into a cheap USB clone and thought I was golden according to my driver calibration dialog, I still suffer a massive deadspot I never copped on the original system… must be ePSXe’s fault D :

      As for 3D destroying some genres, I think it was mostly a matter of whether it was employed for marketing or artistic reasons, and the level of experience of the developer… I was immensely impressed by the overall slickness of Spyro the Dragon, an extremely cute 3D platformer that made wonderful use of the extra dimension.

      (my PS spent most of its life playing audio CDs, for what that’s worth)

      Interestingly enough, PS1s are now regarded as an excellent budget audiophile CD player… and the later 7000 series models had a really groovy music visualiser with a circular ‘scope, too… with the colour-cycle and afterimage effects going, it looks like a psychedelic flower that’s totally related to the sound : )

  38. Tomb raider first game I bought for it and my mother didn’t put the controller down for almost a week. :) Got her into gaming and I’ve never had to worry about what present to buy here since.

  39. PS1 was the console that finally coaxed me into parting ways with my much-abused Atari 2600.

    “Hello.” “Hello.” “Follow me.” “OK.” “Ppppfffhhhht!” “Hehehe.”

  40. I was in Japan when it came out. I remember the ads were “ichi – ni – san” = 1 – 2 – 3 or 12/3 (December 3)leading up to its release. That is pretty good advertising that I still remember 15 years on. Ridge Racer was a big selling point as it was almost the same as in the arcarde but Battle Arena Toshinden was the demo that sold me. A 3D fighting game to compete with Virtua Fighter in the arcade and the upcoming Sega Saturn. I even sold and shipped a couple of them over the internet (remember 1994 was Pine for email and Lynx for web – no eBay or Paypal) to some really trusting people in the US.

  41. as the person who wrote “robot rockerz” used in the FreQuency clip above, I’m honored to know that music games, especially ones on the ps1/2 have been so influential on people over the last decade or so!

  42. I was in the Navy on deployment to the Middle East when I first encountered the Playstation. I was stationed aboard the USS Nimitz (aircraft carrier), and the PS was small enough to fit into one of the lockers in our berthing. A group of about 1 of us shared the console, each takin gturns playing it while the others were working different shifts. That poor console probably traveled more miles and played longer than any other of its vintage. It was a lifeline back to our normal lives back in the day before, email, cell phones, and other social technology was common. The playstation was a touchstone of normality and fun in a theatre of war.

  43. Tekken. The most awesome series of games of all time and they have the most amazing plot.

    Tekken 1, Kazuya throws his father, Heihachi, off a cliff.

    Tekken 2, Heihachi throws Kazuya into a volcano and the devil tries to possess Jin.

    Tekken 3, Jin defeats the God of Fight, gets gunned down by Heihachi. Jin survives. Heihachi and Jin fight, and Jin throws himself and his grandfather off the top of a temple into a valley. Jin sprouts wings and flies away.

    Tekken 4, Kazuya returns while Heihachi tries to clone the God of Fight. Kazuya is almost consumed by the devil, but then decides to kill his son, Jin, instead. Kazuya defeats Heihachi, Jin defeats Kazuya, Heihachi defeats Jin, Jin defeats Heihachi, and then flies away.

    Tekken 5, right after Jin flies away, giant cyborg robots come and try to kill Heihachi and Kazuya. Kazuya throws Heihachi at the robots and turns into the devil and flies away. Jin also turns into the devil. Jin defeats Kazuya. Jin discovers that his great grandfather is also the devil and defeats and kills his great grandfather (first character to actually die).

    Tekken 6, Jin is now the Emperor of the world, and Kazuya is his very powerful enemy. Heihachi’s Swedish bastard son, Lars, starts a rebellion. Lars and a robot girl team up with Heihachi and defeat Kazuya. Jin reboots the girl and turns her on Lars who defeats her. Jin defeats Azazel who is a devil trying to destroy the world (so Jin is actually a good guy). I get confused about the rest of it. But the cinematics show Jin, Kazuya, and Heihachi killed by an exploding golf ball, Heihachi throwing Jin and Kazuya out of a spaceship and then falling to his death himself, and a bear doing the same thing. Also, there is a girl who rides a panda bear.

    Most excellent piece of literature. :)

  44. To me, it means Wipeout 3 and Final Fantasy IX. I know they’re pretty disparate, but I was mesmerised for years.

  45. Silent Hill and Metal Gear Solid. Improved my English.
    However, I never owned one, I played on video parlors.

  46. I had this game that I used to call Ghetto Tank. I forget the actual name. Basically, you drove around in a tank with some thugged-out dudes in baggy pants who talked like N.W.A. and you could jump out of the tank and spraypaint stuff. When you blew up another tank, someone would yell “EAT THAT SUCKA!!!!” – every time.

    Then there was Irritating Stick. Yes, that was the actual name of the video game. I bought it for $1.99 on Amazon, brand new. It was based on a “hit Japanese game show”; I think the premise of the show was that the contestant had to move a metal pole between two wires that were really close together. If the pole touched the wire, you got electrocuted. In the game, this translated to moving a dot between two lines. In the Party Mode, when someone died you could spin The Wheel and which would dole out a punishment such as “make a noise like an animal”.

    Good times.

  48. I was an early (i.e. first week) adopter of the Sega Saturn after its “surprise” post-E3 US relase.

    I liked it enough to put off buying a Playstation for a couple of years. But once the price drop kicked in, I had to get Wipeout and something to play it on. Then Twisted Metal (sorely missing in the current generation!) Resident Evil, etc.

    Parappa showed just how little rhythm I had/have, but my roommates liked it. Grand Turismo utlimately took over, which is sad.

    The disks also led to the Namco, Midway, and Activision compilations, which were a good way to find the classics at the then-almost obsolete arcades.

  49. I loved the PS1 and still have mine.

    Personally, I have a tradition of “End of Market” purchasing. The old saying; “Buy no book under a year old”, well I apply that to video game systems, at least, usually 2-3 years.

    I often get the game system, controllers, piles of games, etc. for 1/2 the early entry price. And so it was with playstation. Pile of them at the pawn shop, with all the kids squandering what little they saved or college kids using those credit cards to buy DreamCasts… I got the Dreamcast years later, for $100 for the system, a bunch of those controllers and weird memory sticks and a pile of games.

    So, yeah, I loved PS1… Glad I didn’t get it when I was in college or I’d have flunked, versus getting “A”s. Think it did flunk a number of students…

  50. When I was younger my family would often visit my aunt’s house and sleep over. I still remember getting up really early to play Spyro the Dragon on my cousin’s Playstation. Good times.

  51. I worked in a computer game shop and at Christmas, everyone went MENTAL for the PlayStation. We had queues around the shop and there were never enough PSXs to go round! I have never seen so much money before – we were taking thousands a day, mainly on PSXs. Utter madness.

    I went on to write for a PlayStation magazine. For every one good game, there were 10 bad games. Sometimes I was horrified at the crap that was released. But the good stuff, ooh…it was good.

    And I *love* Parappa! Even though it still drives me mad! Crack crack the eggs into the bowl!

  52. My first console system was my Atari 2600 fresh out the gate. First and foremost though I was computer gamer starting with my Apple II Plus. My second console system was Sega Genesis. The first night I played in a long running 2nd edition D&D campaign at my friend Wes’s house I saw everyone hovering around the television playing a mind-blowing awesome game. What was it called? Soul Calibur. What game system is that on? Dreamcast. Next day I ran out and bought a Dreamcast and Soul Calibur. I was and still am a PC gamer. The Dreamcast was the last console system I ever bought.

    One of my best friends bought the X-Box when it first was released. We spent 18 straight hours playing HALO until my friend threw his controller across the room at 4am. That was the first and last time I played on his X-Box, Hah!

    None of my friends I played computer games with ever had a PlayStation. It was either Nintendo this, PC that, or X-Box there.

    Sorry PlayStation fans, no PS love here.

  53. I’m actually kind of surprised by all the PS1 love here. I’ve always kind of thought of it as the console that got the masses into video games. I assumed that this site’s readership would be sufficiently nerdy that they had already been playing video games when the PlayStation came out and would think it was as unremarkable as I did.

    I remember being angry at how I thought they had ruined Final Fantasy with FFVII. I really hated that game. I felt like they redeemed themselves somewhat with VIII, but the series has been on a downwards trajectory ever since, and I’ve thought of it as the developers catering to the people who liked VII.

    Anyway, the system had some good games, but it doesn’t touch NES/SNES nostalgia for me, and as for gameplay, it’s only been in the last couple of years that people have finally started to consistently make 3D games that work as well as the 2D ones used to. The Playstation was a necessary step, but I don’t miss it.

  54. “Itchy… tasty!” How can you forget reading that in a video game? I loved Parappa, but before him, Resident Evil blew my mind.

  55. The original Wipeout.

    No game had ever felt that absurdly fast whilst still being immensely playable. That and the burning of games. Oh so much burning of games, there was even a kid that used to ‘deal’ burnt software mainly in the form of Playstation games who lived on the route between school and my house. That was handy. Then the police raided his house. I think they thought he was dealing drugs due to the masses of people going in and then leaving 5 minutes later.

  57. 15 years…well for one thing it means that 90% of game developers that were in the industry back then have either burnt out or been pushed out. But that’s a different story.

    Sorry, woke up on the wrong side of crunch this morning.

  58. My brothers and I PSOne is still truckin’ on after 12 years, and we’ve had both thick and thin PS2’s and a PS3, but the big PS2 and just last week the PS3 expired. Shame to think how cheap consoles have become, quality-wise.

  59. I always played the Genesis. Then, my brother brought home a PlayStation, and I was hooked on FFVII. I contribute one of my best friendships to that game. But, I would say that the PS2 really molded the gaming industry into what it is today.

    Of course, one must take tiny steps (down the hall, to the elevator, etc…–You can do it Bob!) to gain big strides. And, I think the PlayStation did both at different points in the height of its career.

  60. i hear many say that the PS1 was inferior and the games sucked. Maybe so but 99% of the people i know started gaming with a PS1. i never saw a Genesis and i only saw a couple of game cubes back at the time. Maybe that is because Sony is everywhere and neither Sega or Nintendo where so present in Greece or Italy. but regardless it was a de facto monopoly.

    the PS1 was a POS? i own 3 (not the slim ones the original grey boxes) and they still work perfectly.

    Also mod chips, WinMX and a CD Burner. Hello my perfect console goodbye everyone else.

  62. In my opinion, the game that was the standout on the original PS was Wip3out. The GUI was designed by Designers Republic, the soundtrack featured ‘proper’ tunes (and wicked ones at that) such as Prodigy, Chemical Brothers and Leftfield, the option to play 2 player using split screen or via linked consoles and a level of playability that saw us still playing right though the night on many an occasion.

    Funnily enough the follow ups (whilst great games), never clicked with me in the same way. Kind of makes me wish I still had my PS console.

  64. First off MGS 1, Front Mission 3, Vargrant Story, Silent Hill, and Ore No Ryouri are necesary to any good gaming library.

    But then there’s still Tobal 1, Parrappa the Rapper, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver,… (thinking) … Chrono Trigger(the snes re-issue), Spyro the Dragon 1+2, Ape Escape, Resident Evil:DC, MDK, Colony Wars 1+2, Super Puzzle Fighter, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Silent Bomber, Tekken 3, Bushido Blade 1+2, Soul Blade, FF tactics, Incredible Crisis …. hmmmm ….. FF VI (snes reissue), Wild Arms, BOF 4, and I wish I could play Snatcher!

    The PS1 gave me a joy for low poly graphics, and a love of pixelation. I still wish games we developed like these. Just imagine the potential of low-poly modeling on next-gen consoles. Instead of pushing unnecessary detail we push the amount of fun that can explode on screen. This aesthetic is best exemplified in Katamarii Damashii.

    I miss you Ps1…. :)

  65. To the sniveling, useless monster that broke into my house in 2005 and stole my PS1, you will go to the deepest pits of hell, reserved for child-molesters and people who talk in the theater.

    I remember, Christmas 1996. My mom won a $500 lotto ticket on Christmas Eve. I opened the big box under the tree. That was the morning that I became the gamer I am today.

    Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Parappa, Tekken 2, Skullmonkeys, So many more. Holy crap, thank you Sony. I wish I could celebrate this event on a PS3, alas, the value of an Xbox 360 won me over. Oh well, I shall game on what I have. It’s not like the 360 sucks. It just will never hold the same value for me that my good old 1996 PS1 did.

    That thief will know pain…

  66. The PS1 to have for best audio CD playback is the SCPH-1001 version. It has dual RCA line out jacks on the back. I have a box full and I have never played a game on any of them.

  67. FF7 was the only reason I bought a PS1. FF10 was the only reason I bought a PS2. Want to guess when I’m going to buy a PS3?

  68. PSOne was not my first console. I grew up with ALL the classics. NES, SNES, GENESIS, N64…But for me, the PSOne was by far the best! Xenogears, FFVII and VIII, 1000 Arms, Einhander, Ergheiz, Wild Arms. I mean the PSOne was the home of Atlus and Squaresoft’s (Pre ENIX merger)FINEST works!!! I celebrate the existance of what I consider the King of Consoles, at least as far as the nineties are concerned! All hail your PSOne OVERLORDS!!!!!!

  69. People in my generation (I’m 20) consider the Playstation (alongside its competition the Saturn and N64) the last of the “classic systems”, and that’s probably what it means most to me. I mean that it was the system that ended what many consider “classic” gaming and made it the modern, popular, 3D and casual experience it is today. Playstation is responsible for gaming become a serious medium and not just a kids today. The Playstation rocked.

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