So, the PlayStation turns 20 years old today. It was originally released in Japan on Dec 3, 1994, and was initially developed to be a CD-based add-on for the Super Nintendo (SNES). Nintendo, for whatever reason, decided to get cheeky, pulling a fast one on Sony by announcing a deal with Phillips for a disc-based system when it was fully expected (and anticipated) that Sony and Nintendo were already in bed together for the SNES peripheral that would take on the Sega CD. Not so as it turned out.
Sony decided that turnabout is fair play and used their advanced, CD-based gaming technology to produce a video game system of its own that would compete with whatever the Big "N" brought to the table. Thus, the PlayStation was born. And the rest, as they say, is history...
(If you'd like a more robust version of what really happened between Nintendo and Sony, I highly recommend giving Blake Harris' excellent book "Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo and the Battle that Defined a Generation" a read.)
My personal recollections of the first PlayStation are quite vivid as I was one of the first people that I know of who actually owned one. I was awed by the potential of the Sega CD, and everything I was reading about the PlayStation in the gaming mags of the day strongly implied that this new system was the bigger, badder brother of the Sega CD. So I took the plunge and imported a PlayStation from Japan at a pretty steep price...$700 all told if I am recalling correctly. The system wasn't due to come out in the U.S. for another nine months and impatient Jer just couldn't wait. I ordered three games with it as well: "Ridge Racer," "Battle Arena Toshinden," and "Kileak: The DNA Imperative" (which I had to look up because I totally spaced on the title...the game itself was rather forgettable, quite frankly).
It was clear to me upon booting up the PlayStation for the first time that this system was an order of magnitude greater than anything that was on the store shelves at the time. "Ridge Racer" was an almost arcade perfect port, which I played the hell out of it even though I typically dislike straight-up racing games. "Battle Arena Toshinden" was a fun fighting game with some glossy special effects and symphonic music that really made it stand out. It was also one if the first fighting games (Sega's "Virtua Fighter" is the other) that utilized the 3D space, enabling you to literally run rings around your opponent if you so desired. "Kileak: The DNA Imperative" was the clunker of the bunch. As I recall, it was a first-person, sci-fi maze shooter of some sort. It was drab, dreary, and a bit ponderous. I only threw it in when I got bored of the other two titles. Can't win 'em all, I suppose.
One of the other things that I vividly recall about the PlayStation was other people's reaction to it when I would show it off to them. I'll never forget the slack jawed looks of awe and amazement this system inspired. It was truly something to behold. I even remember one guy, a friend of a friend who I worked with at the time, who I practically had to throw out of my house because he just wanted to keep on playing. He even went as far as to say that he was going to import his own PlayStation the very next day. I have no idea if he did it or not because I never saw the dude again. And thank the gods on high for that.
I would go on to have many great memories of PlayStation games throughout the years: plowing through the original "Resident Evil" with my roommate and I swapping the controller back and forth during the trickier bits; playing "NFL Blitz" against my ultra-competitive brothers and shaking the house as we did so; staying up until the wee hours of the morning so I could conquer "just one more part" of "Final Fantasy VII"; endowing my young son with a love of video gaming with of titles like "Crash Banicoot," "Spyro the Dragon, and Disney's "Hercules"; and, of course, discovering my favorite game of all time "Metal Gear Solid" which helped me soldier through one of the most difficult periods of my life.
Thank you, PlayStation. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. You filled the majority of the 90's with wonderful, polygonal recollections that I won't forget all that easily.
Also, as one would expect, Sony is pulling out all the stops today in celebration of this momentous occasion in their company's history. They have revealed a limited edition PlayStation 4 that is modeled after the original PlayStation (check out the cool unboxing video below), and is offering free, "classic" themes for the PS3, PS4, and Vita on the PlayStation Store that emulate the PS1's color scheme and sounds. Very cool indeed.
