30 Years of PlayStation

[Hirst]

importaku I used to go into the Albion Street Cex loads, when I was in Uni I’d change trains in Leeds and it’s over from the station so if they were delayed or I fancied a walk into town I’d check Cex. Funnily enough my PAL Incredible Crisis is the one I bought from that very Cex back in the day. And a lot of my Japanese DC games are ones they were offloading cheap when they stopped doing imports (boo).

[wakka]

The DualShock is basically the model for all modern controllers, although it feels more by luck than judgement. The first PS pad was simply the SNES pad with handles (although they were an important inclusion), and the DualAnalogue/DualShock was just the same thing again with a version of the N64's analogue stick stuck on.

Although it was Nintendo who again and again throughout the history of gaming have been the chief innovators on controls, Sony's simpler design has been far more enduring.

I got one for my birthday, a transparent green one, which I first used to play Type 4. It probably wasn't the best game for it to be honest, and the later Cool Boarders 3 was a game that made better use of it. I remember there was much fuss in magazines about the fact that Ape Escape actually required the pad, although as I recall it was one of the few that did.

Ultimately in actual usage I think it was much less impactful than on the N64. Nintendo's games, especially Mario, were more often actually designed around analogue control, whereas in most cases compatibility on the PlayStation felt like more of an afterthought for developers. Often the stick simply duplicated the digital controls, without taking advantage of graduated inputs.

The dual sticks, indispensable today, were rarely deployed in tandem at the time of course - with the notable exception of Alien Resurrection, which innovated a novel system whereby the left stick moved your character and the right stick adjusted your perspective. Daring! Funny to think how mixed reviews were at the time on this then-strange control scheme. I never owned the game personally but remembers its controls being much talked about in magazines (often negatively).

[Lebowski]

As much as i loved the PS1 i came to the ps2 late having moved onto the Dreamcast from my PS1, I have a lot fonder memory of Sega's little box than I do the PS2/ I came to the PS2 a year after it came out as we had just moved into our first house and money was tight. Burnout I enjoyed, Guitar hero was also great fun, but a lot of the software in the early days of PS2 always felt brown and grey and the leap from PS1 to 2 wasn't as transformative as the leap from the 16 bit systems.

What was transformative for me was a little pack i picked up from the Sony shop, for £50 you got a network adapter that clipped on the back of the PS2 a wired Headset with Mic and a beta copy of a game called Socom. I was also invited to a hidden board on the Sony forums to give feedback on the Socom beta and report any issue we found. The Socom beta went so well for Sony that we got to try another game Twisted Metal Black which was OK if a bit one note.

It didn't stop there though we got to try new online PS2 games for years, getting regular disks through the post with stripped down online only builds of games, The forums and the really active community mods made me feel like i was part of something special for quite a few years, testing and shaping the early days of online console gaming as part of that community was a time I look back on fondly.

We got to try out all sorts of stuff, and I was introduced to games that I never would have played if it wasn't for the beta, some bad like Sony's This is Football game, but mostly good like the First Monster Hunter game. It also introduced me to clans and forums like this one, Finding like-minded people online to play with and having regular online game nights was where the PS2 came into its own for me.

[wakka]

Your story about being a part of Sony's early online implementation and the surrounding community is so cool! I love that. I'm sure the group's feedback must have been extremely valuable considering how long it persisted.

I remember in the earliest days of PS2 online, before even the official network adapter came out I think, it was possible to hack together online play with third party gear. I distinctly remember PSM2 magazine (which was a great mag) containing a feature where they combined a US copy of Tony Hawk's 3 with some kind of networking hardware designed for PCs to get online and play multiplayer HORSE with Americans (and probably loads of ping).

Going OT here but I'd be interested to know if anyone else remembers this.

[Neon Ignition]

-- 1998 --
The Nintendo 64 had fallen back too far to directly compete by this point and the Saturn was burning so very brightly on the software front but would see its life snuffed out as the PlayStation stared news and speculation about the arrival of a new competitor right in the eyes. Sega was on the verge of leaping forward two generations and introducing to Japan the online capable, powerful Dreamcast. How could the vastly inferior PlayStation hold it's own against an affordable and highly powered new system like that? Easily it would emerge.

Tekken 3 would release on the system this year drawing a lot of attention, whilst out of the blue another titan would emerge in the form of Metal Gear Solid. It's brand of cinematic gaming experience defining just how far on we'd come in such a short time from the emergence of 3D gaming in the home a handful of years earlier. Sequels continued to roll out with Ridge Racer: Type 4 and Crash Bandicoot 3 launching as well as the likes of Resident Evil 2 resulting in sales further increasing of the system.




By this point was PlayStation your world or did other systems still pull your attention away?

[hudson]

PlayStation was and still is my world. Next question...

[Neon Ignition]

-- 1999 --
Another year and another twelve months for Sony to tear ahead of its two rivals. The full launch of the Dreamcast was now complete and it was alreayd clear that despite a reasonable rate of sales the system wasn't going to compete with the PS1. January saw the launch of the ill-fated PocketStation, a small hint that not everything with the brand would sell, but it would be drowned out by high profile titles like Gran Turismo 2 and the launch of the Tony Hawks Pro Skater franchise along with the anticipated Final Fantasy VIII. Um Jammer Lammy and Resident Evil 3 were also notable sequels though neither hit the heights of their predecessors. Medal of Honor also made an impact as did Driver though with the other more powerful consoles existing we started to see the first hints of questions being asked about how long Sony would continue to rely on a 32-Bit console in a 128-Bit age even though sales remained consistently stratespheric.




How long was it before you started to feel the age of the PS1 was weighing against it?

[wakka]

I remember gaming on PS1 in '99 well and for me as a kid at the time, it didn't feel at all like the PS1's age was a problem. It really still felt in full swing at this point. I did want a Dreamcast but there was no chance of that when I had a perfectly good PS1 sitting there ('We have Dreamcast at home' - PS1 was the Dreamcast at home).

Driver was a game I absolutely loved. It was kind of GTA 3 before GTA 3 in many ways. Although it was radically simpler in terms of its gameplay - and far too reliant on ramming everything to death as the solution to everything, a trend which would continue into later entries - just being able to freely explore a 3D city in a car felt incredible at the time, and totally different to anything I've played before. As an adult I can now appreciate the 70s cop film influence too, which is an extremely cool choice that went over my head at the time.

I absolutely hated that 'tutorial' level though. What a ****ty piece of design. I have no idea how I eventually got past it but I think it nearly drove my 9 year old self literally insane. Almost all of the rest of the game, as everyone knows, is strangely considerably easier!

Tony Hawk's was another gem of this time, quickly ripped off by Dave Mirra's Freestyle BMX which I also loved. These simple, dial-a-combo extreme sports games were great fun and are kind of one of those lost genres that I miss today.

Checking on Google, I can see that WipEout 3 was also released this year. That was a wonderful game with an incredible vibe. Now that I think, it's kind of a Type 4 feel.

[Asura]

I absolutely hated that 'tutorial' level though. What a ****ty piece of design. I have no idea how I eventually got past it but I think it nearly drove my 9 year old self literally insane. Almost all of the rest of the game, as everyone knows, is strangely considerably easier!

From what I understand, the reason for the tutorial level madness was that Reflections wanted people to either buy the game, or rent it twice. They were pretty sure they had something special and the magazines/word-of-mouth would talk it up as this fantastic game; so people would rent it, spend nearly the entire evening doing that bit, and then either have to rent it again or go buy it to play the actual game.

Could never do that these days. But back then, I guess people were much more limited in their entertainment choices.

[Neon Ignition]

-- 2000 --
A major year arrived for Sony as it attempted to do something that it had never done before - a console generation transition. In March they finally launched the successor to their hit console. With its towering black monolith design it was the opposite of its grey and low lying predecessor, this year brought us the PlayStation 2.Following very closely behind it Sony attempted to maintain momentum of the existing system by launching the revised design PlayStation One as the system continued to see major titles launch such as Final Fantasy IX, Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2 and Vagrant Story. The PS2 meanwhile followed a similar pattern to its older sibling, launching with Ridge Racer V and some other shorter titles like The Bouncer and SSX, also recieving Tekken Tag Tournament. PS1 sales dramatically fell due to the PS2's launch but both kept rival companies easily at bay and with Sega about to dramatically crash out of the hardware market a consolidation of power was assured.






What were your thoughts of the PS1's redesign and how into the hype of the PS2 launch were you?

[wakka]

From what I understand, the reason for the tutorial level madness was that Reflections wanted people to either buy the game, or rent it twice. They were pretty sure they had something special and the magazines/word-of-mouth would talk it up as this fantastic game; so people would rent it, spend nearly the entire evening doing that bit, and then either have to rent it again or go buy it to play the actual game.

Could never do that these days. But back then, I guess people were much more limited in their entertainment choices.

That is fascinating and yet, **** those guys for that decision for a kid it was so unbelievably mean to gate such a cool looking game behind such a difficult level.

RE: PSone, I wanted one with the screen so badly! I remember adapters to plug it into car cigarette lighters and I used to daydream about playing PlayStation while sat in the back of my mum and dad's car.

[Lebowski]

I remember the PS2 feeling a bit of a non-starter in its first few months, no real system sellers coming with it at launch and its big exclusives like the bouncer looking really poor. Tekken had kind of had it's day and Tekken Tag wasn't something I was really that bothered about playing, as it didnt feel as good to play as Tekken 3, it took a fair bit to get started and is one of the reason why I skipped it on launch.

[Neon Ignition]

Unlike the original I was there on Day 1 with the PS2 even though its software line up was tripe. I liked the system and was weirdly fond of the tone of the blue light from the power LED. The controller is here nor there given the advances the PS1 had seen so overall my first impressions were very much reliant on the system rather than the games.

I'm warmer to it now but for most of its life I didn't like the toyification of the PSOne.

[wakka]

I didn't get a PS2 at launch but I was lucky enough to have one pretty early on. The hype was definitely intense in the magazines in the lead up to release. I switched from the range of PS1 and multiformat mags that I used to get randomly to PSM2 at this point, which I think was probably the earliest PS2 magazine (deffo pre-dated the official mag switching over, but I never liked the official mag that much anyway. It was comparatively very expensive and in the PS1 days it wasn't the only mag that had demo discs).

PSM2 was a great magazine. It seemed a bit more 'grown up' to me at the time versus what I had been reading, and it had lots of reportage on the Japanese PS2 and its launch games in the earliest issues. Reflecting on it, it might actually have been my first proper exposure to import gaming.

After they'd done the expected blowouts on Ridge 5 and Tekken Tag, I think they got a bit short on material, so devoted plenty of page space to oddball interactive movies on import like Scandal and Story of O, which I remember finding intriguing.

They were also the reason that I got SSX as one of my first PS2 games when the machine was out in the UK, which they went absolutely bonkers for. They really hit the nail on the head with that one for me as it remains one of my favourite games (in its Tricky guise, originally referred to as SSX DVD).

Does anyone remember the Ridge 5 anti-aliase-gate? People were not happy about those jaggies!

[Neon Ignition]

-- 2001 --
This year saw the GameCube launch along with the entry of Microsoft into the market with their Xbox. Both systems touted more power than Sony's system. Despite this the brand power of the console was too strong for its rivals to muscle in. Mega-hits Gran Turismo 3 and Metal Gear Solid 2 dominated the charts with Square recapturing attention for its franchise as Final Fantasy X began its rollout. Onimusha and Tony Hawks Pro Skater 3 also made an impact whilst Silent Hill 2 visually blew people away. The system couldn't possibly command more attention... until something happened that even caught Sony off guard. The launch of Grand Theft Auto III. As Sega completed its exit from the race, Sony found itself propelled even further forward.



Where you distracted by the new consoles or was this year the ultimate PS2 year for you?