Brutal Gamer

Lookin’ Back #18 – Sony PlayStation

By Mike - September 6, 2009 - 09:00 UTC - 5 Comments

The machine that started it all for Sony’s gaming empire.

Nowadays, everyone talks about the so called ‘console war’, and arguably this war can be traced right back to 1995 when Sony released the original PlayStation console.

The original PlayStation had an interesting history.  The PlayStation originally started life as a project between Nintendo and Sony to bring an add-on to the SNES which allowed it to play games off discs.  However, things fell apart when Nintendo realised that Sony had it written into the contract that they had control over what games were released for the add-on.  When Nintendo realised this, they stopped working with Sony and decided to work with Phillips instead. Sony decided that, instead of halting their research, they would just build their own console based on the work they had already done.

And thus in 1995, the original Sony PlayStation was born.  The PlayStation played it’s games off CDs and could also play audio CDs as well.  It was also a home to the beginning of many great franchises, and sold a staggering 102 million units and was still produced up until 2006, 11 years after it was first launched.  There was a slimline version called the PS one as well.  Here are a couple of my favourite games for the system.

FINAL FANTASY VIII

While many people would suggest that VII was a better game, I much preferred Final Fantasy VIII.  As would become the trend with Final Fantasy games, there were some graphically impressive  CGI scenes in the game, as well as a fantastic storyline.  It also came on 3 discs, as I remember.  Probably my favourite game on the system.

METAL GEAR SOLID

This was where it all started, and we first saw a 3D Solid Snake and heard a voice.  To my mind, this and MGS2 were the best games in the series.  Interestingly, the original was remade for the Gamecube using all the added control features from Metal Gear Solid 2, which made it a different game.  But the game had lots of fantastic touches, like seeing guards react to noticing footprints in the snow, to Psycho Mantis using details from your memory card to give the impression he could read your mind.  There were also some interesting things, such as a codec frequency on the back of the box to one of the characters, or plugging the controller into the 2nd controller port to stop Mantis from reading your movements.  All in all, a fantastic game.

GRAN TURISMO 2

Another big franchise that started life on the PS1.  Gran Turismo 2 was a detailed racing game with a huge list of cars and tracks which looked really good in it’s day.  It also had a great soundtrack, but the US version had a much better soundtrack than the EU version.  It was a great fun racing game, though.

TOMB RAIDER

Poor old Lara Croft hasn’t been in many good games lately.  However, the original Tomb Raider was a well designed, good looking game which had you jumping around, solving puzzles and shooting down anyone or anything that got in your way.  I remember the first time I encountered a T-Rex and it was a bit scary at first.  But extremely impressive.  Ah, those were the days.

And there we have it, the console that arguably turned gaming into a more mainstream thing.  It outsold the SNES more than 2-to-1 over the course of it’s lifetime, and had some of the best games of all time in it’s line-up.

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