15 Years of PlayStation: a Retrospective

I stand by the theory that a person is at their most impressionable during their teenage years. I was 13 when I first picked up a PlayStation controller and the next few years spent gaming on PS1 were to have a profound effect on my ideas about gaming as well as cement this great hobby as a permanent fixture and fixation in my life.

2010 marked the 15th anniversary of the PlayStation brand. In celebration of this event I thought I’d put together an informative retrospective covering the major milestones achieved during this period of time. Not only do I want to delve deeper into the history of PlayStation, but also to connect these facts to my memories of growing up alongside the PlayStation family of consoles. The evolution from PS1 to PS2 to PS3 over 15 years ties up nicely with the defining periods of my life - I was at high school during the peak of PS1, at university during the period when PS2 was dominant, and out in the working world by the time PS3 hit the scene.

Sony is the company behind PlayStation, and how they first started out should be of interest to any gaming aficionado. The story goes that one of the founders of Sony - Masaru Ibuka - started a radio repair shop in Tokyo shortly after the end of World War II in 1945. One of the ways he obtained spare parts was by scavenging relevant materials from sites which had been bombed during the war. He was later joined by colleague Akio Morita and it was only in 1958 that they called their company Sony. The name is derived from the Latin word sonus (which means sound) and the English slang phrase sonny boys which was used in Japan during the 1950s to refer to well-dressed, respectable young men. The two founders must have believed themselves to fit this description and so the name Sony was born.

Sony went on to develop innovative and compelling products over the next few decades and made some important advancements to electronics-related technology, such as the Walkman in 1978 - the world’s first commercial portable music player and forerunner to the iPod.

The development of the first PlayStation dates all the way back to the late 1980s, when Nintendo commissioned Sony to develop a CD add-on for their SNES console. To cut a long story short the deal went sour and Nintendo chose to partner with Philips on the project instead. Sony took all the know-how they had acquired during the years of developing the add-on for Nintendo and decided to release a next-generation video games console by themselves. PlayStation was launched in North America on September 9, 1995 for $299 alongside titles such as Ridge Racer, Air Combat and Warhawk.

The Sega Saturn was PS1’s main rival in the months following its launch. There was a video shop near my house which had both consoles side by side in a room and you paid something like R5 to play for 15 minutes. For us kids this was an amazing opportunity to sample games we couldn’t afford to buy for ourselves. The Saturn had a lot of arcade games like Virtua Cop 2, Sega Rally and Virtua Fighter 2, and PS1 also had its fair share of Namco arcade titles such as Tekken and Ridge Racer. Then there were the multi-platform titles like Tomb Raider and Pandemonium which weren’t available in the arcades. My friends and I soon gravitated to PlayStation due to the better graphics and excellent controller of that system. The Saturn also began to fade off store shelves once the PlayStation launched (at least here in South Africa) and the games became more and more plentiful for the PS1 over the next few years. Many electronic stores around Durban had a PlayStation display stand that drew children to it like bees to honey. I remember playing the first Crash Bandicoot game and being amazed by the vibrant colours of the apples as you smashed overhead boxes, not to mention the incredible 3D scrolling and smooth animation as you ran away from a rolling boulder. This was Uncharted developer Naughty Dog’s first game.

PS1 was an incredible console in its day. The CD-ROM format allowed games to have FMV and CG cut-scenes, voice acting and realistic sound effects. The CG sequences in games like Final Fantasy VIII were featured heavily in promoting the game, and pre-rendered titles like Parasite Eve always looked superb on the pages of video game magazines. I would pore over the screenshots of Final Fantasy VIII or Parasite Eve 2 and try to imagine what the bordering pre-rendered screens would look like.

To be honest, us gamers never worried about HD or 7.1 surround sound in those days. I remember playing Resident Evil at fellow reviewer Oliver’s house and being astounded by the FMV intro (despite its cheesy dialogue), the detail of the mansion and the crispness of the music and the sound effects. These were elements that I had never experienced on any other console before. Another exciting development was how games were starting to resemble movies in terms of production values. For example, a game with the scope of Final Fantasy VII, with its hundred of pre-rendered backgrounds, epic musical score and dozens of CG cut-scenes had simply not been done before. Squaresoft (now Square Enix) had over a hundred people working on the game – an achievement which was only possible due to the overwhelming success of the PS1 and the broad demographic which embraced the system. In my opinion, it was at this time that video gaming truly went mainstream. Go back to your old movie collection and see how many instances of people playing PS1 you can find. In the movie Hackers starring Angelina Jolie there’s a scene where Wipeout is being played on a big screen in a club.

As a PlayStation gamer, it was interesting watching the controller evolve over the years. The original controller had no analogue sticks and no vibration. The analogue controller was later sold separately and I think Crash Bandicoot 2 was one of the first games to support it. Around the launch of Gran Turismo was when the DualShock burst onto the scene. People were amazed at the subtle force feedback the controller was capable of, such as a slight rumble when your wheels touched a chicane. I remember disabling rumble in Final Fantasy VIII because your hands would literally get numb during the long GF summoning sequences during battles which were un-skippable. In 1999 Ape Escape was launched – the first game which required an analogue controller to play. It made novel use of the two sticks, such as rotating both of them to mimic the action of rowing. This seemed about as revolutionary back then as the Wii did in 2006.

The original PS1 was also a noisy machine – you could hear a FMV or CG sequence coming a mile away as the machine would make a grinding noise before it played. This spoilt the surprise of a beautifully-rendered cut-scene somewhat, but it all seemed worth it at the time. Many games were also spread across multiple discs (as is the case with Xbox 360 these days) and it was not uncommon for a RPG like Final Fantasy to be on 4 discs. Riven: the Sequel to Myst was on 5 discs and it’s interesting to see how the publishers fitted them all into a double PS1 case. Each disc was on its own spindle – three in one compartment and two in the other. This is unlike how they package multi-disc games these days on Xbox 360 – up to three discs are on a single spindle.

Psychologists talk about ‘middle-child syndrome’ but in the case of the PlayStation 2 nothing could be further from the truth. The PS2 is one of the most popular and successful consoles of all-time, and games for the system are still available on store shelves 11 years on. The PS2 launched in 2000 and hit its peak around 2005. I still remember how excited everyone was pre-launch – there was a ton of coverage on the internet of the launch titles and all sorts of tech demos showing just how powerful the system was. For instance, they showed the CG dance sequence from Final Fantasy VIII rendered in real-time on the PS2 – if that didn’t have PlayStation fans foaming at the mouth then nothing would! The early games for the system which were surrounded by the most hype include Tekken Tag Tournament, Dark Cloud, The Bouncer and of course Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. In fact, MGS2 has to be regarded as one of the most anticipated games of all time. The trailers Konami showed of it boasted the best graphics we had ever seen. One trailer in particular which drew a great deal of media attention demonstrated the realistic physics which the game employed – bottles and watermelons shattered in relation to where you shot them. The lighting and rain effects were also second to none at the time. All in all, it was a very exciting time to be a gamer.

I believe part of PS2’s great success was the number of massive exclusives which released early on in its lifespan. There’s nothing like a brilliant exclusive to convince you to leave your old console behind and adopt a new one, especially if that exclusive is a continuation of a franchise you love. The PS2 had incredible exclusives like MGS2, Final Fantasy X, ICO and Grand Theft Auto 3 (for a limited period) which boasted graphics and gameplay which were cutting edge at the time. One of the things I miss from PS2 days is the number of great Japanese RPGs which steadily streamed to the system. Games like Suikoden III, Dark Cloud 2, Dragon Quest VIII, Persona 3 & 4 and Kingdom Hearts to name but a few.

To this day PS2 has one of the most impressive and engaging gaming catalogues of any home console. Among the greats (which I haven’t yet mentioned) are Shadow of the Colossus, God of War II, Okami, Silent Hill 2, Resident Evil 4, Final Fantasy XII, Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Thankfully, the memory card was upgraded to 8MB for PS2 so you could finally fit the save files of all these great games onto one memory card. There were certain games like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas which took up over 1MB of space on the memory card, so storage was still an issue for some. PS2 also made some short strides towards HD as certain games (such as Okami) supported 480P – you would need to purchase special component cables to take advantage of this feature however. Most games for PS2 featured surround sound and some supported widescreen mode (such as Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy). The PS2 also allowed you to play DVDs on the system, which greatly increased its value proposition for many buyers. It was my first DVD player and I spent hours watching movies on it. PS2 thus began the trend of a game console being your multi-purpose entertainment hub that we see in a much more sophisticated form on PS3 and Xbox 360 today.

PS2 games used either the CD or DVD format. A few games like Tekken Tag Tournament were on CD and had cool-looking metallic blue bases. The rest were on DVD – either single or dual layered. I’ve never encountered a game that was on more than one disc so the formats the PS2 supported served their purpose admirably. Sometimes games would come with bonus DVDs that could be played on the PS2, and this was always cause for celebration. The Final Fantasy X and MGS2 bonus discs are some of the most interesting I’ve ever watched.

The PS2 had a few issues and problems over the years. Many PS2 games had bad aliasing (i.e. jaggies), and this negatively affected the quality of otherwise excellent graphics in many cases (think of Final Fantasy X). The rival consoles – Dreamcast, GameCube and Xbox did not share this problem, and multi-platform games sometimes looked worse for wear as a result. Online multiplayer never really gained traction on the PS2 and just couldn’t compete with the Xbox as an online platform towards the end of its lifespan. The promised hard drive expansion that was needed for online games like Final Fantasy XI never made its way to our shores, which highlights both its lack of software support and marketing by Sony. However, these problems were never enough to waylay the behemoth that the PS2 had become by this time.

By 2005 the PlayStation 2 was beginning to look a little long in the tooth, particularly when the Xbox 360 launched at the end of that year with its dazzling next-gen graphics. In 2006 Sony responded by launching the PS3 - an expensive ($599) but high-tech, fully-featured Wunderkind of a console. Unfortunately, it didn’t initially have nearly the same quality of games which its younger brother enjoyed. The high price and lack of any real software gems kept even the most hardcore gamers away from it for quite some time, despite its impressive list of features and outstanding graphical capabilities.

Slowly I’ve watched the PS3 find its feet, like a newborn calf struggling to become upright. The good exclusives slowly dripped onto the system –Uncharted… Metal Gear Solid… LittleBigPlanet… Killzone 2… The PlayStation Network – Sony’s online game platform – has also gradually gathered steam. Many people complained about lag during the early days of PSN and those same people will now admit the service has greatly improved since then. Sadly, Sony saw fit to remove backwards compatibility with PlayStation 2 games from the PS3, and this is a feature I sorely miss. Every now and then PS2 classics like God of War I and II make their way onto PSN, but many would question if there’s any sanity behind buying games you already own in disc format, even if the more recent releases have be remastered in HD.

The PS3 enjoys a host of advantages over its younger siblings, and these improvements couldn’t make me happier. The controller now has triggers for L2 and R2, albeit slightly cumbersome ones compared to the Xbox 360’s. The new controller is also wireless which makes a huge difference if you’re sitting far away from your TV screen – no wires to trip up your family members for one. The controller supports limited motion control but this isn’t implemented very often in PS3 games. Another big improvement is that you can connect up to 7 controllers wirelessly to your PS3. Before, you had to purchase a multitap separately if you wanted to connect more than 2 controllers to your PS1 or PS2. On the PS3 you can play FIFA with six of your friends without any additional equipment. Now that’s cool!

One of the things I love the most about the latest generation of PlayStation is how region free everything is. When I first bought PS3 I borrowed my friend’s Japanese version of Devil May Cry 4, not expecting to understand anything in the game. Well, the disc picked up that my system is set to English and displayed everything just like the Western release would. The same applies to the Asian version of Demon’s Souls. Obviously not every Asian PS3 title is going to have English dialogue, menus and voice-overs built into the game, but there are a few of them out there. The PS3 is so region free that you can even download NTSC PS1 classics from the USA PSN store and play them on your PAL PS3. The moment a demo is released on the Japanese store I can log onto PSN and download it (I intend to do this when the Catherine demo is released sometime this month). Certain PSP games like Persona 3 Portable have not even been published in Europe yet, but you can buy them from the USA PSN store and play them on your PSP without a hitch. Simply put, PlayStation has never been this universal before. During the PS1 era, you would wait for months for a NTSC game to be released in PAL territories, and sometimes a mega-hit like Chrono Cross would never see the light of day here at all. PSN has changed things for the better, and made us feel more connected than ever to the goings on in the PlayStation universe.

PSN has a lot more to offer than just great games and add-on content. There’s PlayStation Home – the virtual world where you can socialise with other gamers and play mini-games related to your favourite PlayStation franchises. Then there’s The Tester – a free-to-download reality show where contestants perform different skill-based challenges to compete for a job as a PlayStation tester. I’ve watched both seasons of this show and I recommend it to anyone who has an interest in games and wants to see some of the faces behind the PlayStation brand. Really intriguing stuff!

It goes without saying that PS3 blows its predecessors away in terms of graphical power. Combine HD graphics, multiple cores and the capacity of a Blu-ray disc and you have a system with incredible potential. PlayStation games have never looked this good, that’s for sure. PS3 is also the first fully-equipped online console in the PlayStation family and the effects of this are far reaching. We have never been so connected to our gaming peers before, and in a position where we can make such powerful use of the internet. Has anyone else noticed how many PS3 games are coming out these days which include YouTube upload functionality? Best of all, the main features of PSN are free to all PS3 players.

In 2011 PS3 is poised to overtake Xbox 360 in lifetime sales. To put it succinctly, PS3 has never been in such good shape. I don’t believe the PlayStation Move will add as many gamers to the PlayStation user base as Kinect will to the 360’s, and perhaps Sony will change their strategy and also choose to endorse controller-free gaming in the near future. Who knows how many more years this current generation of consoles will last. What I do know is that it’s never been as enjoyable to be a PlayStation gamer as it is now, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for the family of consoles which many of us grew up alongside over the past 15 years.