SONY PlayStation - 15 years old today

[Kubrick]

Japanese launch was December 3rd, 1994. Great console, probably doesn't get the recognition it deserves.

[Kongster]

Great console but for me, things only really got going in 1998 with the release of Resident Evil 2, Tekken 3, Metal Gear Solid and Gran Turismo. 1998 was some year indeed.

FFVII as an excluisve was a massive coup for Sony, particularly in Japan.

PS1 easily had the best third party support making it an essential purchase. Same with the PS2.

[Lorfarius]

Is there any companies stil releasing PS1 games today?

[analog dog]

Jesus that makes me feel old!
I remember plugging it up for the first time and putting on the demo disc...and freaking out at that manta ray thing.
And Wipeout..jesus I nearly wet myself the 1st time I played that.
Good times!

[Skull Commander]

I got one of those on Pal release. Had to work my ass off for it, but it was worth it. I got Battle Arena Toshinden with the machine and thought it was bloody amazing. Then Tekken came along, and I was blown away all over again.

[SuperDanX]

Ah, the dear old Playstation happy birthday old chum. First five games I got for my ps were

Metal gear solid
Tekken 3
Gran Turismo
Medal of honor
and Resident evil 2... Uber casual I know, but what a Christmas that was

[Brad]

Destruction Derby. I loved that game. That and the T-Rex demo sold me on the system.

[C']

Absolutely Kubrick! Would easily be in my all time top 5 consoles.

I gave the Sony console no hope at all in the months leading up to its release. Sega and Nintendo had the home console market pretty much sewn up between themselves and previous attempts to get a foothold had all met with failure. Sony had no pedigree in the games market at all (my overriding memory was **** like Cliffhanger and Last Action Hero) so fully expected they would get steamrolled and I was deadset on getting a Saturn (although not being an importer at the time, I was waiting for the PAL launch a year later). However, I just remember being disappointed in the Saturn's lineup of games in that first year and when I saw the state of the Daytona port, I decided there and then that I thought the PlayStation had the brighter future. I remember getting Maximum issue 2 in December of 1995 (about a month before I was hoping to get a next gen console before Christmas) and reading the articles on the fantastic job Sega had done on their three mega ports that year (Virtua Fighter 2, Sega Rally and Virtua Cop) and I did wonder if perhaps I had made a mistake. However, me and my brother got the console for Christmas 1995 along with Tekken, Ridge Racer and (lol) FIFA 96 and it still goes down one of the most amazing Christmases in memory, taking the console round to my Nana's house on Christmas evening with all family present and playing Tekken and Ridge long into the early hours against my cousins and friends.

I don't think it's any secret that the PlayStation succeeded because Sony were so effective at getting third party support, especially Namco producing exclusively for them. In my opinion Namco today are pretty poor for the most part, but back then they were almost Capcom-like in their consistency. Almost everything they released was a fantastic game and it really helped solidify the PS as a true competitor.

Yes, if you look back at it now, it's not quite as "ARCADE PERFECT!" as the hyperbole from reviewers at the time suggested, but the port of Ridge Racer was truly awe inspiring. There had genuinely been nothing like it on a home console before it. Allegedly ported in the space of a few months, it is staggering what Namco achieved in only 2 megs of RAM. Namco bettered themselves further with Ridge Racer Revolution on a technical level with the rear view mirror. Again, it's something we perhaps take for granted today but at the time no console racer had a mirror as technically impressive as that (even Sega Rally, incredible port as it was, had to remove that feature which was present in the arcade game). Whilst many developers (apart from Sega themselves) struggled to get the power out of the Saturn, it felt like devs were constantly pushing the PS to new limits.

The fact is that a lot of publishers put together great PSone libraries, but Namco were literally there from day one and released a near constant stream of classics like the Ridge and Tekken series, Ace Combat, Soul Blade, Time Crisis, Point Blank.

But other developers deserve their due too. Capcom's 2D fighter ports were (for the most part) inferior to the Saturn ones but in my opinion it was only the Marvel crossover titles that really suffered. But Capcom excelled in other areas, none moreso than the seminal Biohazard/Resident Evil series. Again, the concept wasn't totally new (Alone in the Dark had done it years before and had actually been released on the PlayStation) but it captured the public's attention in a way that Infogrames' game hadn't. It was a truly engrossing adventure game and felt like the true birth of the survival horror genre. A few excellent sequels and spinoffs later only solidified this.

Konami will obviously be best remembered for Metal Gear Solid but for me, their 2 best games on the system will forever be Castlevania: Symphony of the Night which is still regarded by many (myself included) as the pinnacle of the Metroidvania titles and International Track & Field which remains one of the greatest multiplayer games of all time.

Then there was Squaresoft who not only released a number of fantastic RPGs but also a couple of often overlooked classics of other genres (notably the Tobal games and Einhander), Psygnosis/Studio Liverpool with WipEout 2097, Wip3out and Formula One/97 (again Bizarre Creations seemed to be performing miracles with these), Polyphony Digital with the groundbreaking Gran Turismo games, it really feels like the list goes on.

I think sometimes there's a lot of forgotten classics on the PlayStation that often get drowned out by many of the big name titles that hit the system. Lobotomy got (rightly) applauded for the awesome conversion work in their ports of Duke Nukem 3D and Quake for the Saturn but it's often forgotten that Hammerhead did a similar quality job with Quake 2 on the PS.

And whilst, not it's strong point, the system could pump out impressive 2D visuals and had some genuine 2D classics. Gunner's Heaven was an early example and I still attest that the port of DoDonPachi on the PS was the superior home version (a more accurate conversion).

Despite Sony's current US tagline for the PS3, it really feels like Sony actually had the console that "only does everything" 15 years ago.

[JP]

I wasn't particularly interested in the console at first but my nephew got one and I saw him playing Tomb Raider on it.

Don't laugh! At the time Tomb Raider was just so different, so new in comparison to everything I'd played before and it just changed gaming for me. It's probably difficult to imagine just how impressive it was at the time particularly when you think about some of the drivel that has carried the Tomb Raider title since then.

I think far more of the PS1 thinking back about it than I did at the time, there was a stupid amount of really games available during it's life time and along with the SNES it has some really special gaming memories.

It the first console that made me serious about import gaming too, me and a couple of mates used to spend a fortune importing when we could. There was a couple of import shops a few miles away which still define what I want when I go into a games shop, people who understood & cared about gaming rather than just wanting to sell you random games.

They both went out of business years ago so it obviously didn't make for good business practice which I suppose explains why so many (Not all) people in the current chains seem to be sales people rather than gamers and seemingly try to sell you any pap they're currently getting bonuses for

I think looking back it was a horribly underrated console and until it arrived I really felt that gaming was really on it's last legs and had no way of surviving.

I also thought the PSOne was a lovely bit of design when it was released too. Having said that, I was a big fan of the way the Gamecube looked so what the hell do I know.

[fallenangle]

I bought my first PS (my first games console) in late 1997 and it's still going strong. Came bundled with Tekken 3 (I still play it regularly), Riven, Colony Wars: Vengeance and Command & Conquer.

It was late night TV ads for Colony Wars: Vengeance and Riven that persuaded me to buy a PS. The last time I'd played a video game before then was Space Invaders in a Welsh pub whilst on a college field trip in 1980. I had no idea that things had progressed so far and the PS introduced me to a whole new world.

[Darwock]

Got a playstation as a student spending my own cash for the first time, after not being into games since I was a kid. My first two games were Exhumed and Formula One (the psygnosis original). At the time I was only really interested in playing F1, but maybe a year later along came Parappa the Rapper and Soul Blade - then FF7/ MGS... and that was it, I'm a gamer for life lol

[nakamura]

Great post C'.
I too am a huge PS1 fan. For me the console holds so many spectaular moments, MGS, Wipeout, Ridge Racer and Destruction Derby 2 to name a few.
For me the machine gets overlooked by many people due to the sheer popularity of the machine but it deserved it all.

Some of the games now look dated for sure but whack them on the PSP and they come alive again. Having completed the Finfal Fantasy games, Grandia, Chrono Cross, Rage Racer, Wipeout to name a few on my PSP this year it shows still how great these titles still are.

[kernow]

Saw a friends running Ridge Racer, bought one very shortly afterwards. awesomes

[VR46]

My brother imported one at launch, cost about £700 with Ridge Racer, but was money well spent

[saturn-gamer]

My first 'game' was Demo One. The demo with Tenka, Overboard, Abe, Porsche, the T-Rex and more. I was psyched when I saw the Soul Blade video and heard the music. All I knew is that I wanted that game. Strangely enough, the game was hard to find at that time. It was months later that I found a used copy. The same went for Tekken 2 earlier on, not many stores had it left. I bought an overpriced Tekken 2 (dual disc box version) at some crappy Dixons. That was my 1st game for the system.

From what I remember, Soul Blade PAL was actually really fast while Tekken 2 was slow.

Damn, that demo disc is on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ5FEWJtwfk

There should also be an older one with Tekken 2 etc, I got that one through the mail after filling in some forms.