15th Anniversary of Playstation

[Bolivar]

I'm sure some of you guys have been reading this around the web lately but today marks 15 years since the release of the Playstation in Japan. SCE has put up this site to commemorate it. It's minimal, in Japanese, and mostly just a few pictures, but there's some cool wallpapers up there.

So discuss, reminisce, and celebrate the impact Playstation has had in gaming and in our lives.

[Depression Moon]

PlayStation brought us a lot of great impactful games. If it wasn't for it I'm not sure if FFIX would have came out and would have been as great as it was. There were also the GTA series which was the first open world game that inspired so many other studios out there. There's Also the Metal Gear series which like IX I'm unsure if it would have came out at all or would have been as good if the PS never existed.

There's Uncharted 2 too which is one of the best games I've played in years. Sony has some great games.

[Christmas]

I liked the playstation Harvest Moon.

[Dreddz]

I always get a little sad when I think back to the PS1. Just such a good time in my life. Gaming has just never felt the same since. You just cant replocate game experiences like FFVII. Maybe I'm just too bothered by other things in life to appreciate games the way I did back then.

[Raistlin]

The PS1 was an amazing console with a ton of great games. Some of the ones that impacted me the most:

Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy Tactics
Suikoden I
Suikoden II
Lunar: SSSC
Metal Gear Solid
Breath of Fire III

Yeah, the PS1 was my favorite RPG console (FF7 isn't among my favorite RPGs, but it had a significant impact on getting me into the genre).

[Christmas]

Oh ya, Breath of fire iii was great! I really like the story and the combination of the dragon gem or something.

I remember I got stuck in the desert for a very long time until I get back to the game few months later and finally reached Caer Xhan.

[Shoeberto]

I always get a little sad when I think back to the PS1. Just such a good time in my life. Gaming has just never felt the same since. You just cant replocate game experiences like FFVII. Maybe I'm just too bothered by other things in life to appreciate games the way I did back then.

I feel the same. Something about those old blocky character models and unfiltered textures really resonates with me. The original Silent Hill, in my opinion, is far scarier just because of how obscured things are from the lower resolution graphics.

The PS1 was just a great, great great great great system.

[Depression Moon]

I meant to play Breath of Fire III. my brother's father had it and I didn't try to play it much becuase I was a kid i think and I said it looked ugly. I didn't immediately have fun with it too, the fartyhest I ever got on it was the part where you were chopping up logs.

[Rocket Edge]

Major nostalgia when I think of my old PS1 in the corner of the kitchen, just spending hours of my free time playing it away. It will always be the console closest to me because I was just so fresh on the scene of what I was playing, and at the perfect age to get lost inside it's world. Nowadays, games can be just as good, but the emotional impact & excitement of experiencing something new is just not quite the same. The games that made me fall in love with the system was Spyro the Dragon, Final Fantasy VIII, & Syphon Filter. I'll always remember it for FFVII, VIII, & IX though. It converted me from a guy who liked games to loving them.

[Rad Bromance]

Oh yes, I have fond memories of my Playstation. So many great games.

I never realized how inferior it's graphics were next to the N64 though. Looking at it today it's rather shocking.

[Bolivar]

I'm not gonna write my usual multipage analysis of things I really like, but I agree with Rocket Edge, Dreddz, and others that it was an amazing time. I fell in love with video games before that, but games like Final Fantasy VII and Metal Gear Solid showed me how far that could go. I nearly had a physical/chemical reaction the first time playing Final Fantasy Tactics, from the art to the music to the words.

I wouldn't say the feeling's gone though. While it's not that same magic from childhood, I can now enjoy games at night with a glass of brandy (and something else), as I did at night the dates that MGS4 and GTA IV launched last year. With that, HDTV's and surround sound systems, we now got big boy (or girl) toys to enjoy these things with.

[Vermachtnis]

This makes me wanna play Mega Man Legends. Those were fun times kicking that can. And jumping around the town while it was being repaired and after it was fixed. Oh and going into Old City and seeing how many dogs you could get to chase at once was fun too.

[krissy]

i bought a physical copy of galerians last year and still have no idea how to save

[Wolf Kanno]

I'll stick to the PS1 as my thoughts on the PS2 and 3 are still a bit up in the air.

I didn't exactly like going into the PS1 era but it wasn't really the systems fault as much as it was the fact I was drawn into the 2D vs. 3D debate at the time and all the gaming publishers were shying away from 2D in favor of 3D cause it was supposedly the next best thing as opposed to a design choice... I bought the system for the sole sake of playing FFVII cause I was still much in love with the series at this time and was hearing nothing but great praises about this title. Regretfully, it was not the magical experience people told me it would be and I was a bit annoyed at the time...

Still I rebounded with two titles that have become two of my favorite titles of all time which was FFTactics and Xenogears. For me, the PS1 was the era where I grew away from FF and actually started to explore other RPG genres and companies.

Breath of Fire III and IV as well as the introduction of the Suikoden series were some of the best gaming highlights for me. I also loved titles like Wild ARMS and Persona series. I was introduced to Metal Gear Solid and was even able to solidify my love of 16-Bit RPGs with the several re-releases of old SNES and Sega CD fare like the Lunar series and FFV and the true version of FFIV.

Creatively, I think it was the middle and end of the Golden Era for Square as I was never able to really ever go back to FF but was so pleasantly surprised with all its non-FF fare like Chrono Cross, Dew Prism, Brave Fencer Musashi, and Vagrant Story. Other companies seem to gain a new Renaissance like Capcom who struggled in the beginning but eventually rose to be a defining company for the PS1 not to mention that Konami itself rose to great heights finally distinguishing itself with its own slew of triple A titles. It was also the Golden Era for one of my favorite companies that recently passed on which was Working Design who kept filling up my need for quirky titles. I also was introduced to Rhythm games like Um Jammer Lammy and DDR.

Overall, I loved the system for being horribly experimental but at the same time, I can't say much has aged well from that era. It was an influential era though probably not the most significant for me. Of anything, this era simply raised the bar for what I expect from titles. Though lately some of the lessons learned from thisera needs to be reigned back in a bit...

EDIT: To clear a few things up, the 2D vs. 3D debate has more to do with fighting games nd Capcom titles than other genres.

[Rostum]