Playstation One 20th Anniversary Community Retrospective

[Bades]

So with it being Playstation's 20th anniversary I thought it'd be fun to share a few memories of games or experiences that you had with the original Playstation. It popularized disc based media and gave us a wide variety of RPGs as well as platformers. I guess I'll start and unfortunately my experience with the original Playstation is quite limited.

I owned a Nintendo 64 at the time, which was great, but I was always jealous of the kids in my town that had both. Whenever I would go over to visit the first thing we'd pop-in was Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage which I absolutely loved. One of my friends was sort of a prick and would only let me play on the tutorial level, so I never really realized that there was much more to the game than just flame-broiling sheep until I played it at another friend's house. We also played quite a bit of Crash Bandicoot and Rayman (which I recall being extremely difficult back then). I also always preferred playing Crash Team Racing over Mario Kart 64 but that may have been a case of "grass is always greener..." because both racers hold a special place in my gaming library. Most of the RPGs were never really my thing but I have quite a few friends that grew up on those and still look back on them fondly. It wasn't until I picked up a PSP that I really started to comb through the library via PSN and revisit quite a few classic games that I had missed out on.

I was young so I never really took into account the hardware or what the industry talking points were back then but I've always been curious as to how the Playstation (and even Nintendo 64) was received by the rest of the public

Interested to see what everyone's else's experiences and perspectives were on the Playstation One!

[VictorViper]

The PlayStation was the first game system I bought with my own money. It was heartbreaking in a way, because I had already been ogling the Saturn for a couple of years and by the time I was able to afford a new system (late '96), the writing was on the wall. I knew I was passing up a handful of absolutely essential games, and honestly I wasn't all that interested by what Sony's new system had to offer at the time. Five hundred bucks was an absolutely absurd amount of money for me though, and I convinced my 17-year-old, SEGA loving brain to think long-term.

As you can probably expect, I didn't regret my decision. Along with the system, I walked home with WipEout XL (a series I've kept up with ever since), tore into the box, called up the boys and promptly set out to Blockbuster to rent a bunch of games. I think we got Tekken and hockey or something, I don't know, but my friend Paul and I were at WipEout all night and the whole following day. I don't think I could have picked a better game to showcase what this new generation had in store.

Sony's systems have always been home to a ton of Japanese RPGs, but I need to mention for posterity the kind of impact Final Fantasy VII had when it released. It's true that it doesn't hold up to it's near-mythic status nowadays, but I think it's also a bit of a case of needing to have been there to really understand that status. I remember staring slack-jawed at my TV when commercials started to air for it, not only because of the CGI, but because I had never seen a video game presented like a blockbuster movie before. The game sold tons of systems, started opening non-gamers' eyes to how far games had come, and while I don't really have any way to back this up, I suspect played an enormous role in attracting females to the pastime—it's certainly true of my female gamer friends.

I think that's really the PlayStation's true legacy; more than any other system of that generation, Sony had successfully shown the world that video games weren't just for kids. The disc medium allowed for more expansive and cinematic gameplay experiences. Narratives were becoming more comprehensive, with some using full voice-overs (sometimes with known screen actors), real bands were contributing to soundtracks, and we started to see a focus on realism and atmosphere in games. There hadn't been as successful an ambassador for the gaming hobby since the NES hit Western shores.

I've owned every major Sony platform since, though I'd never consider myself a fan boy as I do with SEGA. Where my love for that company is fueled by the games they made, Sony's systems have always been more about the platform for me. They remain a Westerner's best (domestic) source of Japanese games, at least by volume, and typically showcase the greatest breadth of experiences among the other consoles. It's a legacy they've kept up with and expanded upon over the years. It's not hard to understand why Sony would be putting such a wonderful limited edition PS4 together to celebrate 20 years of PlayStation.

Great thread, Bades. You can probably tell I like to reminisce.

[Sharecrow]

My perspective on this is a bit odd if only because I wasn't playing at all during this time. There was a few year window (5-ish) that I wasn't and so I was never there at least not while it was contemporary. Hilariously, a good friend of mine who knew how crazy I was about Dragon Warrior bought me DWVII for my birthday. He knew that'd compel me to buy a PS2, which, at that time, was out. To this day, that's still one of my favorite games of all time. I just love how the stories of all of the different realms piece together. And I love unlocking a map for the first time, knowing that what's going on in that world's past is a complete mystery. You have to go and find out. It's also got a robust job system and some crazy difficult optional dungeons if you can manage to find the shards to unlock them. It was all I played on my PS2 for months after I got it even though I had PS2 games. I never did complete it, but I have a good 250 hours in it (multiple play throughs).

Other than that and Einhänder, my PS1 experience has been limited. There's been a few games I started but never finished...FFVI and FFVIII, Crash Bandicoot, etc. And there are others that are still on my to-play list but that I haven't gotten to yet, including Silent Hill and revisits to FFVI, FFVII, and FFVIII, Suikoden, Jade Cocoon, and FFIX...oh and R-Type Delta and the Wild Arms games. I've got a lot to do! I know I'll like or love all of them, but I'm old and distracted...haven't gotten to them yet.

[Kong Wen]

I didn't actually get my PlayStation until my birthday in 1997, which was right around the time Final Fantasy VII came out. I was still playing Super Nintendo games right up until that time, but I knew my next-gen system was going to be a PS instead of an N64. Part of it was because Nintendo's baffling choice to stick with cartridges made them appear to be slipping behind the times. Sony had captured the technological "moment" so to speak. Another part of it was the promise of Final Fantasy games, which I had been loyally following since the first entry.

So, I got my PS for my birthday in January of Grade 10, and I cranked a lot of time into Final Fantasy VII throughout that year. The next year for my birthday, I got Final Fantasy Tactics, my favourite video game of all time. I played it over and over. Incidentally, it was the first game I ever played "professionally"—a friend of mine wagered real money that I couldn't finish the game under a set of restrictive rules he devised. That was my first experience with a "master" run, and I took his money.

Later in high school, I picked up a copy of Dynasty Warriors. The first game in the series was a 2.5D one-on-one fighting game. I bought it because I was a huge fan of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms games, though I hadn't read the book at the time. I remember randomly using footage from this game in a presentation for my Chemistry class on Baron Axel Fredrik Cronstedt. My brother and I sunk a lot of time into mastering that game (and destroying each other).

I started first year university in September 1999, and I took my PS with me, armed of course with Final Fantasy Tactics, Xenogears, Suikoden, Final Fantasy VIII, and some other games. When I first moved in, I remember walking for an hour to get to a local video game store, and then an hour back, just so I could pick up some cables to hook the PS up to my shitty little dorm TV.

The NES, SNES, and PS were really the defining game systems of my youth. I did have and play other systems at the time (Master System, Genesis, various PCs), but none of them had the same personal cultural impact as those three, and later systems are more a part of my adult life so they perform a slightly different nostalgic function.

[Claytone]

So the three or so posters above me have a solid decade (at least) on my age, so I've got a perspective a bit more like Bades's. I can't remember exactly when, but I'm fairly sure I got my PlayStation after my Game Boy Color and my Nintendo 64 at some point in the late 90s. This made it my third video game device. I was chuffed.

There is no question that I'll always hold a great deal more nostalgia for the Nintendo 64, though, and that's for a few reasons.

First, the PlayStation was the console at my dad's house. From ages ~4 to ~16, though, my mother was the primary custodian of me and my sister (after which that status was, to keep it short, reversed). This meant we only saw our dad Wednesdays and every other weekend. Of course, I lament the lost time with my father more, but this also meant minimal time with the PS1. Even when we were with him, he of course preferred to be doing something of value with us rather than just letting us sit around playing video games. Understandable and admirable, even if I pouted about it sometimes.

That wasn't the only problem, though. See, my dad has never been remarkably tech savvy, so when he brought home the PS1, he brought home no memory cards with it. Curse the cartridge based media of the N64 all you want, it was idiot friendly, and it let little me play Mario 64 and the like to completion. No such luck with the PS1 games my dad picked out for little me. Notable titles were Crash Bandicoot: Warped and Rayman. On the bright side, I never had to experience the bastard of difficulty that Rayman was. So, yes, I started such games over every time I played them. I was happy to just have something at the time. Years later when I finally had any appreciable money of my own, I managed to buy a memory card, but I'm pretty sure that was at least a year or two after the Cube/Xbox were already in my console library.

Most of all, though, my library on the PS1 was just not as impressive as my N64 selection. My stepmom did have a keen eye in picking out Rayman, and whichever one picked up Crash did well, but mostly, she and my dad didn't get me many games and the ones they did get were mediocre (including the infamous Bubsy 3D!). Left to my own devices, I was no better, picking up such stupid games as No One Can Stop Mr. Domino. I don't mean to sound ungrateful to my dear parents, they just didn't have a very discerning eye for video games! No grievance, just the facts.

Having said all that, the PS1 provided me with a some really special moments and memories and still has a lasting impact on me. As a youngling, I do recall having fun playing my dad in Space Jam, which was basically a less-good ripoff of NBA Jam based on the Warner Brothers film. If you're gonna rip something off, though, that's not a bad place to look. I was amazed that he could not only play, but actually beat me. One of the few games he really learned to play. The other was NFL Street, but that was, of course, on Xbox. Another fun time was had on a buddy's PS1. One day, we sauntered to Blockbuster and picked up a cheapo copy of Mortal Kombat Trilogy. Having previously played 2 on SNES, we knew what we were in for, but we had a particularly enjoyable night of gore and festivities with that one. I think we played that particular installment of MK only a single time together, but it was for hours and hours and delighted my elementary school mind with its gore and over-the-top nature. MK remains a favorite of mine to this day.

The absolute most important game the PS1 provided me with, though, was the seminal, amazing, perfect Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. Quite honestly, I don't remember if I played 2 or 3 first (I think they may have been highly coincident, but I probably played 2 first for obvious reasons), but suffice it to say the Tony Hawk series was very, very important to me as a kid. THPS2 was a game unhindered by my memory card deficiency. It was a game that could be beaten in a single sitting, and it had cheats to unlock everything anyway. It also inspired me to take up skateboarding as the chief outdoor hobby of my youth. It exposed me to skateboarding culture and pros, and above all, it was a hell of a lot of fun. Neversoft dissolved skateboarding into a ridiculous arcade game that also operated pretty well as a sandbox game, a must for someone with a small library. The game had an OST of bad tracks that I like only by association with the game. It had blood. It had the occasional suggestive joke. It had create-a-skater. It had Spider-Man. It had speed. It had crazy combos and bails. It was awesome. I justified my ownership of the PS1 with that game (and later caught myself up with THPS1). I've beaten 2 countless times, and I loved the remake the Xbox saw, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2x. And the amazing thing is the series kept getting better (at least for awhile)! Tony Hawk was already a treasure to skateboarding, but getting his mug licensed the game was a great feat too, and it did a lot to expose the sport to the masses. Greatest sports games ever made. Not even close.

Basically, the PS1 is remembered to me as the machine I played Tony Hawk on, and that doesn't bother me a bit. Inasmuch as it inspired a huge pastime of my youth and was incredible in its own right, few games have affected me more.

BTW, interesting that you should cite FF Tactics as your favorite game, Jog. That was a game that was purchased for me as a kid for Christmas one year but that I was far too young to play. Maybe I should finally return to it.

Edit: Wanted to add one last point. Something I've noticed about my gaming tendencies is that for some reason, I'm less historically interested in the PS1 gen than its 16 and 8 bit predecessors (and beyond). I guess there's more intrigue in things that happened before I was born or something, but I've always been a more avid player and collector of NES/SNES/Genesis stuff than N64/PS1/Saturn. Just something that occurred to me.

[Kong Wen]

So the three or so posters above me have a solid decade (at least) on my age, so I've got a perspective a bit more like Bades's.

Yeah, I think it's awesome to see how our perspectives differ. I was only 14 or 15 when the PlayStation came out, but it was old enough to make what felt like a rational "adult" decision about acquiring it. I suspect the folks who are 10+ years older than me would have had the same difference in perspective about my automatic adoption of the NES as the ur-platform for video gaming as compared to arcades, Atari, or older home PCs, for example.

BTW, interesting that you should cite FF Tactics as your favorite game, Jog. That was a game that was purchased for me as a kid for Christmas one year but that I was far too young to play. Maybe I should finally return to it.

By the time Final Fantasy Tactics came out, I was already an avowed tactics junkie. I had spent a lot of time with the original Civilization, as well as games like Shining Force, Warsong, Dark Wizard, and Romance of the Three KIngdoms. When Final Fantasy Tactics came out, it basically married my two gaming passions, so I'm sure at least a little bit of my enthusiasm for the game is contextual and personal.

It's also worth noting, though, that FFT remains my favourite video game to this day, and that's not purely based on nostalgia—I've replayed it several times in the years since its release. I still prefer the original to the polished-up PSP & mobile re-release, too.

[Bades]

I walked home with WipEout XL (a series I've kept up with ever since),

Completely forgot about this one. I played it with my friends as well. I went back to watch some gameplay and it's amazing at how impressive that game was when it came out. I remember by friends and I talking about how futuristic and "real" it looked. Just played a little bit of that soundtrack and was transported back to my friend's dark basement where sleepovers consisted of WipEout and rarely actual sleep.

with some using full voice-overs (sometimes with known screen actors)

Of course! Let's not forget this "gem" from Mr. Bruce Willis.

Great thread, Bades. You can probably tell I like to reminisce.

Hey, thanks for sharing your story! I love getting different stories and perspectives on stuff like this.

I've got a lot to do! I know I'll like or love all of them, but I'm old and distracted...haven't gotten to them yet.

Yeah I can relate to that. I always plan on going back and catching up on the other games friends were always talking to me about, but I just need to find the time.

Another part of it was the promise of Final Fantasy games, which I had been loyally following since the first entry.

Wow, that actually quite impressive you were following them from the beginning. Not to get off topic but did you follow Square games in the past or did it appeal to you because it was sort of in the vein of the Dragon Quest series? I'm not sure I've run into anyone else who was a fan from the beginning.

Incidentally, it was the first game I ever played "professionally"—a friend of mine wagered real money that I couldn't finish the game under a set of restrictive rules he devised. That was my first experience with a "master" run, and I took his money.

I love stories like this too. Before trophies or achievements my friends and I would try and come up with our own challenges to extend games. Great times! Fun that you managed to work Dynasty Warriors into your chem class as well!

Curse the cartridge based media of the N64 all you want, it was idiot friendly, and it let little me play Mario 64 and the like to completion.

Yeah, I recall a few times myself where friends forgot their cards at home and we had to start over. Early on one friend didn't have any cards so we were always trying to beat his in one sitting, ended up being quite a bit of fun regardless as we got to know those levels so well. Reminded me that it was my first encounter with longer games, as I was usually accustomed to the platformers on the Genesis which could usually be finished in one sitting if you were determined enough. It makes me shudder to imagine what the youngsters of today must have to go through in order to move save files as I try to avoid it at all costs.

I'm less historically interested in the PS1 gen than its 16 and 8 bit predecessors (and beyond). I guess there's more intrigue in things that happened before I was born or something, but I've always been a more avid player and collector of NES/SNES/Genesis stuff than N64/PS1/Saturn. Just something that occurred to me.

Nothing wrong with that! I'm far more knowledgeable about the N64 which I owned yet I I'm actually far more interested in the PS1 and I think that's because I never owned one and thus it always held this sort of high regard as being unobtainable as my parents could only afford the one plus its games. Which is sort of why I made this thread as I'm always interested in hearing these sort of personal stories that revolve around gaming. It's fun to picture a young Kong Wen picking up a new Final Fantasy title and witnessing the new graphics at a young (older than me) age or hearing about how the individual consoles played a role in your youth. It's fun to see how people from different generations view these releases and it's fun to tap into my own memories and recall having my imagination be whisked away with new consoles.

This was honestly a lot of fun to read, I'm going to have to keep this idea alive for future anniversaries or just to celebrate a new addition of a classic series.

[Kong Wen]

Another part of it was the promise of Final Fantasy games, which I had been loyally following since the first entry.

Wow, that actually quite impressive you were following them from the beginning. Not to get off topic but did you follow Square games in the past or did it appeal to you because it was sort of in the vein of the Dragon Quest series? I'm not sure I've run into anyone else who was a fan from the beginning.

Ah the innocence of youth. Back in those days, there wasn't much of a Square to follow. The only games they had released in North America were King's Knight (which wasn't popular), 3D WorldRunner (also not popular, and released by Acclaim so I doubt I wouldn't have known it was them anyway), and Rad Racer, which I did have, and which I did enjoy—my then-30-year-old dad would put the 3D glasses on and beat the game in one sitting.

I had played Dragon Warrior, which I really loved. (I actually started creating my own RPG after playing it, before I discovered D&D was a thing that existed.) Then, a friend up the street got a shiny new copy of Final Fantasy, and I would read the map and monster charts while he played. I had a copy of Mega Man 2 that I was finished with, so my parents took me to the flea market and I traded it and $4 for my own copy of Final Fantasy. I played it in my bedroom on a 13" black & white TV (I'm not kidding—we had a better TV, but that little box was the only one I could have in my own room). I remember leaving it on for hours at a time because I would be in the middle of a dungeon, unable to save the game, when I had to go to bed, or to my grandmother's house, etc. A year later, on my birthday, I wanted to replay the game, but a friend had borrowed it. I got my dad to drive me to his house to pick it up, and we got a speeding ticket on the way. I was probably 8 years old at the time.

Of course, we never got Final Fantasy II or III in the West, so the next game that came out was Final Fantasy IV (released on SNES as Final Fantasy II here). It came out in the summer, but I didn't get it until my birthday (it's beginning to occur to me that I've had a lot of Final Fantasy birthdays), which would have been three years after the speeding ticket. Around this time, we had just finished our basement, which meant I got a brand new bedroom downstairs. Getting FFIV was a huge surprise, and my brother and I stayed up and played it all night.

Final Fantasy V never came to the West either, although we did see pictures of it in gaming magazines. When Final Fantasy VI came out (as Final Fantasy III), I got it at launch for $120 (the Canadian dollar was awful back then, but SNES games were also expensive anyway). The series became kind of an interesting series of signposts through my life, heh. Man, I could tell a ton of funny little stories revolving around each of those games.

So yeah, it wasn't necessarily that I "followed Square" or anything, at least not at the time. I was just a kid, and their games weren't as ubiquitous as they are now. But I did have a lot of good experiences with them, and that trend continued when I got to Final Fantasy VII and my acquisition of the Sony PlayStation. I remember Barret says "shit" early in the game, and I thought that seemed so adult for a video game. Then I saw the Titan summon, and my mind was blown that a video game could have such a photorealistic, movie-quality animation like that.