When we think about the video game industry of today, there are three major players: Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony. Back in the late '80s to early 90's, however, it was much different. Nintendo was king, Sega was giving the king a run for their money, Atari was becoming a zombie, Microsoft stuck to PC's, Tiger was the guy who you hoped didn't show up to the party but came anyway, and brought fruit cake for some reason, and some young company decided, "Hey, we should get in on this video game thing".
Of course, that company was Sony. It seemed like a logical step for a company that specialized in audio and video equipment. They even had a great plan of attack: join forces with the giants and ease into the industry.
In 1986, Nintendo was looking for a new way of doing disc-based games. The Famicom Disc system used the equivalent of floppy discs that could easily have their content erased. Meanwhile, Sony and Philips were simultaneously working on CD-ROM based technology which took away that risk. This caught Nintendo's attention. Some strings were pulled and Ken Kutaragi, working for Sony, sold the idea to Nintendo, thus beginning a partnership between the two companies to produce the then-titled SNES-CD.
Problem, though: Kutaragi was employed by Sony, working with Nintendo, but (OOPS) didn't tell Sony. He almost lost his job, but, luckily for him, was able to convince the suits at Sony that this would be a good idea. The project carried on.
On top of the SNES-CD, Sony was working on their own standalone console that would play CD's and also have ports to play SNES tapes on. This was dubbed the "Play Station". This was to be announced at CES 1991, but all the shit decided to hit the fan. Let's sum it up like this: Contractual differences regarding who would get what money ended up torpedoing both the SNES-CD and the "Play Station". Back and forth would continue, Sony would even try talking to SEGA about a collaboration. Around 1992, there was the thought of bringing back the "Play Station" with SNES game ports, but with all money going to Nintendo. In 1993, Sony had had enough of the run around and decided to rework the system and break out on their own. In a sign of distancing themselves from Nintendo, the space was dropped and the system was named the Playstation.
The Sony Playstation was launched in Japan first (December 3rd, 1994), North America 2nd (September 9th, 1995), then Europe (9/29/95) and finally the Oceanic Region (11/15/95).
My personal history with the original Playstation began in 1996. To that point, I mainly played the NES, Game Boy, and SEGA Genesis. I was 11 at the time. I got 5 games early on for my new system:
2Xtreme,
Crash Bandicoot,
Street Fighter: The Movie,
Battle Arena Toshinden, and
Space Jam. Yeah, looking back now, it may not have been the best line-up of games to start my collection with, but I remember being blown away! This was a generational advancement in the graphics and audio departments.
This also introduced two new concepts to me as a gamer: load times, and memory cards.
I was used to cartridges up until that point, where all you did was insert the game, hit power, hit start a couple times and BOOM, you're playing the game. When I first booted up
Street Fighter: The Movie and I saw the words "Now Loading", it led me to question everything; What is it loading? How long will this be? How often will it load? What are these sounds coming out of my system? What is this sorcery? Of course, this is commonplace in games of today, but it was quite the novelty in the mid 90's.
Then there was the idea of memory cards. The cartridges of old would save your progress on the actual cart. Since discs couldn't do that, memory cards were needed. I guarantee anybody who has owned a Playstation in their lives still has a stray card somewhere at their house. Hell, I was digging through my parent's basement just the other day and found 2 of them. This would become the preferred way to save games for the Playstation 2, SEGA Dreamcast, and Nintendo Gamecube. The original Xbox had the ability to use memory cards, but came with an internal hard drive, which paved the way for how we save games today.
(Side Note: The SEGA Saturn even had some internal memory, with the ability to expand that via memory carts.
The Playstation also had the ability to play audio CD's in the system, allowing those who may not have had a CD stereo to have their TV's become a makeshift stereo. Sony would add the SoundScope visualizer in later models. Later consoles, such as the Xbox and Dreamcast, would also have the ability to play CD's. Can you tell how important this console was?
Now for the important stuff: the games! The Playstation had a hell of a game library, so let's just scratch the surface here:
Metal Gear Solid - September 3rd, 1998
One of the biggest gaming franchises of all time. Sure, the series may have its roots in a couple MSX/NES games that are best known for their laughable localizations, but the
Solid series took off on the original Playstation. I am very much looking forward to
MGS5 this September.
Final Fantasy Games
The
FF series is one of the most well-regarded games of all time. Yes, the older games, especially the SNES versions were ground breaking, but it really wasn't until the Playstation games, specifically
VII and
VIII, that
the wheels got to spinning and the franchise became a major success for those of us in North America. This was also one of the first instances, outside of PC games, where games would need multiple discs. You knew you were getting quite the adventure with 3 or more discs.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - March 20th, 1997
Holy shit, what a game!
Castlevania has it's roots with Nintendo, and with the exception of
Simon's Quest, the games that appeared on NES and SNES were really good. Along comes
SOTN and all bets are off. In comes a wide-open castle, along with RPG elements. When you hear the term "Metroidvania", it comes from
Super Metroid and
SOTN. This would be the style
Castlevania games would use for the subsequent Nintendo DS games and
SOTN is regarded as one of the best games ever made.
PaRappa the Rapper - December 6th, 1996
I will always have a special place in my heart for this game. A rhythm game with great music, loveable characters, and cartoony graphics that played great. This game would go on to spawn spin-offs such as
Umjammer Lammy and
Gitaroo Man. I REALLY hope to see a new
PaRappa game on the PS4. I guess "I Gotta Believe!".
Tekken series
Besides the fact that
Tekken games are great games anyway, the series on the Playstation did something that blew us all away as young gamers: an arcade game CAN get a console port AND actually be as good, if not better, than in the arcade. Many games had tried before, but
Tekken was one of the first ones to give us a true home arcade experience.
Crash Bandicoot series
Sony's answer to Mario and Sonic, Crash not only made an impact with it's unique gameplay, he also made his mark in some of the best old video game commercials. While it looks like Crash Bandicoot didn't have the staying power of characters like Mario and Sonic, he (and his games, especially the underrated
Crash Team Racing) does have a lot of fans.
Tony Hawk series
Man, I put so many hours into these games. This was the beginning of the franchise, and had a ton of spin-offs, involving BMX, Surfing, and even Razor scooters. The
Tony Hawk games played fantastic, had TONS of replay value, and some of the best music in gaming. Those of us who did play the hell out of these games are the ones that are so bummed that the more recent games in the series have been mediocre to downright awful
since.
(Side note: I did enjoy the THUG series and American Wasteland, and I thought Project 8 was interesting, but the rest after THPS 3 were kinda "meh" at best.)
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I could go on and rattle off game after game that made its mark with the Playstation; Games like
Spyro,
Syphon Filter, Tomb Raider, Twisted Metal, Gran Turismo, Resident Evil, I mean the games just kept coming.
Also, while we are talking about games, while most of the games came in the typical CD-size case, I remember having more than a few of those long box cases, I always thought those were bad ass, but I also remember those plastic ones being easy to crack.
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If we are going to talk legacy of the Playstation, we are still living in it. Out of that generation, (I'm considering it the PSOne/SEGA Saturn/Nintendo 64 era) Playsation was the best seller, putting Nintendo number two and putting SEGA on its heels. Sony would continue to impress with the 2nd, 3rd, and now 4th iterations of the Playstation. Sony has also tried its hands in the handheld market with the PSP and now the PS Vita. All of this success can be traced back to a big, silver box that almost was connected to a Super Nintendo System. Pretty incredible when you think about it. What would have happened if that original deal went through? Would SEGA still be making consoles? Would Microsoft even be in the console market? Would Nintendo continue to rule the world?
Interesting things to think about but, as it stands, the original Playstation was a hell of a system, and, on a personal note, while systems and technology strive to run quiet and use less energy, whenever I hear an old Playstation make its loud loading noise, I am full of pleasant nostalgia.
