System Retrospective: The PSone era

Console Name: Sony PlayStation, later rebranded as the PSOne in its final years
Original SRP: USD 299.99
Original Philippine SRP: Php 15,000.00 (modified)

Notable Titles / Cult Classics: Gran Turismo 1 & 2, Parasite Eve, Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy Tactics, Suikoden II, Metal Gear Solid, Syphon Filter, Vandal Hearts I & II, Tomba!, Parappa the Rapper, UmJammer Lammy, Final Fantasies VII through IX, Ridge Racer Type 4, WWF Warzone, Tomb Raider 1 & 2, Poy Poy, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 & 2, Ace Combat 2, Tekken 1, 2 and 3, CastleVania: Symphony of the Night, Brave Fencer Musashi, Other Life Azure Dreams, Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete, Xenogears, Ape Escape, Bust-A-Groove, Valkyrie Profile, Legend of Dragoon, my hands are getting tired

With all the (admittedly well-deserved) praise the PS2 gets for having the best and most comprehensive console game library in the modern era, I thought it would be a good idea to shine some light on Sony's maiden voyage into the world of console gaming, its rich and interesting history, and reminisce about the many great titles we played on it.

First, as always, some history: as you may or may not recall, Sony's system wasn't even supposed to be a "Sony" system at all. The PlayStation was originally created as a special project for Nintendo; it was intended to be a CD-ROM based add-on for the SNES, which Sony would then manufacture. After Nintendo pulled the plug on the project, a vengeful Sony decided to strike out on its own and sell the hardware they had developed as a stand-alone product.

Thus, the Sony PlayStation (lovingly yet inexplicably dubbed the PSX by industry types) was born, and the era of PlayStation begun.

The PS1's immediate competition, the Sega Saturn, launched earlier than Sony in an effort to build up a larger install base ahead of their incoming competitor. However, this was a bad move tactically on Sega's part for the following reasons: A) They had no games to support this advance launch, and the Saturn launched in the States with an absolutely abysmal selection of titles. B) Just a few months prior, Sega had duped their loyalists into purchasing a 32X, which supposedly gave Mega Drive owners 32bits of game-processing goodness but in reality was a very expensive paperweight. Launching a "true 32-bit" console in the form of the Sega Saturn so soon after these empty promises left many Sega fans feeling betrayed, and these deserters jumped ship to the good ship Sony.

And what a good ship it was indeed! I remember that crazy piece of shit launching for 15 large at Game Stuff in Virra Mall (the pre-fire version), the unit amazingly enough coming pre-modified despite being scorchingly new hardware. Fake copies of Battle Arena Toh Shin Den sold alongside it for the princely sum of Php 300, and to those of us who first saw them, it was like the future had finally come.

Toh Shin Den in particular looked amazing; after seeing the blocky visuals of Virtua Fighter, we were all disappointed, thinking that if that was as good the visuals of these new fangled 3D fighters got, we'd stick with Street Fighter, thanks. BAT looked fantastic, was much more fast paced than Virtua Fighter, and was much easier to learn. Unlike Sega's disgusting abortion of a launch, Sony followed up BAT's impact really quick: Tekken 1! Ridge Racer! Wild Arms! Crash Bandicoot! The hits kept coming in waves, and Sega couldn't keep up. It didn't help much that the Sega Saturn's multiprocessor architecture was hard to program for in comparison to the comparatively simple PSX. (Oh, the irony. Little did Sony know that 2 generations later, they would follow Sega's ill-conceived architectural mistake, which surely cost them some market share to the Xbox 360.)

Moving forward, as the PSOne got older and the years wore on, Sony pioneered a lot of things that we take for granted nowadays:

First off, they began the emancipation of gaming as a medium in the public eye; by that I mean they elevated playing videogames as something that was percieved to be the territory of little kids and obssessive computer geeks to something that was viewed as socially acceptable.

Secondly, Sony became the only company to win a console war (in terms of unit sales) on its maiden voyage: the PlayStation handily outclassed both the N64 and the Saturn by huge margins, which had never been done before and hasn't been repeated since. (They would achieve another milestone in the 128-bit era by becoming the first console manufacturer to win the console war in two consecutive generations, but that is a story for another time.)

Lastly, they held their own and established the disc-based medium as the new standard that had to be followed. Discs were cheaper to make than cartridges and held more data, thus games could be mass produced for a fraction of the cost it would take to publish a cartridge game, and still retain higher profit margins. They were also able to hold much more space in terms of game data, allowing for uncompressed textures and sound, which in turn made for better looking, better sounding, and lengthier adventures. Nintendo counted on their brand recognition to carry them through, and failed miserably - their decision to use the cartridge based format (which meant more money for them, and a greater amount of control over game reproduction) cost them market share and the support of key allies. It is common knowledge that the reason long time Nintendo ally SquareSoft decided to jump ship was because of their belief that the RPG genre could no longer be advanced on the limited space a cartridge format provided. As a result, Sony got Final Fantasy VII exclusively, and the rest was history.

Anyway, while we're talking about games, have you ever stopped to think about just how MUCH gaming evolved as a medium during the PSOne era? It's not even close to resembling any other period in gaming history, as the level of evolution console gaming experienced in this span is simply unbelievable. When the system launched, we were mostly subjected to better-looking versions of the same stuff we were playing in previous generations, as Sony was basically trying to work from Nintendo's pre-existing template for success. But at the time of the system's death many years later, many genres had undergone a complete and total transformation. I'm going to put on my Ace Attorney hat now and present some conclusive evidence for your approval:

Remember when having an "arcade-perfect" conversion of a racing game was a crucial selling point for a console? That's how PSOne began, with Namco plugging Ridge Racer and its "futuristic" 3D graphics.









By the time the console neared its end, Gran Turismo 2 had clearly established that arcade ports were a relic of the past, and that increased depth of gameplay was demanded of console racing software.









At launch, RPG's hadn't evolved much from the 16-bit generation, as simplistic old school RPG's like Wild Arms 1 and Beyond the Beyond were the norm.










At the time of the PSOne's demise, Squaresoft had had successfully expanded on the much more cinematic formula that FFVII had previously established, heralding the advent of the CG-heavy, multi-CD epic.







The Street Fighter series and its countless spinoffs were absolutely dominant at the beginning of the 32-bit console cycle. Most fighting fans, after seeing the slow-paced, plodding gameplay that Sega's Virtua Fighter 1 provided, elected to stick with the old and familiar.







Six years later, Namco had pretty much established dominance in this sector, growing the fighting market by leaps and bounds with each successive installment of the new-fangled, gloriously 3D Tekken, and reducing the Street Fighter diehards to an insular cult (a cult to which I still belong, by the way, so no hate mail please.)







At launch, platforming was still pretty much mired in its 2D and 2.5D past - simplistic (if still satisfying) titles like the first installments of Rayman and Crash Bandicoot.











By the end of the era, it had evolved into the 3D collect-a-thon, represented best, I think, by the marvelous Ape Escape.










At launch, console first person shooting was still attached to last generation, flat-plane PC titles like Final Doom. (DOOM!?! WTF?)











In the twilight years, we had Quake II, which while still being port of a last generation PC title represented a considerable evolution from the pap us console guys were forced to live with. It was also one of the best multitap games on the PS1.








One last point to ponder: at the PSOne's advent, action adventure as a genre meant mindless shooting and simplistic, linear gameplay with a modicum of plot or character development, like Contra: Legacy of War.



While at the PSOne's deathbed...

action adventure meant Metal Gear motherfucking Solid. Nuff said.