As we all know, the PlayStation is 20 years old this week – at least in Europe. Rather than make this a study in retrospect of what truly happened from that glorious month of September 1995 onwards, I've been asked to plunder my own brain for thoughts on the impact made by PlayStation in the UK.
I was just finishing my term as Deputy Editor of Nintendo Magazine System in September 1995, which meant that I could keep my thoughts about PlayStation to myself for a while. The previous Christmas I had borrowed the company's imported Japanese PlayStation, and drove the heck out of Ridge Racer. I really didn't care much for Crime Crackers, and I doubt that many people did. Sony's console was a known quantity, then, but my heart, soul, and source of income was then Nintendo.
Since its Japanese launch in December 1994, PlayStation had yet to prove itself beyond being an exotic imported machine with unusual controllers and a fairly impressive start-up screen. Sony had no history of dominance in the arcades, nor a roster of classic video game heroes that we couldn't wait to see emerge in next-generation glory. It had Namco, which was certainly something, but was kind of treated as the friend of a friend that wants an invite to your party, but the gang was all here.
I guess Sony spent the next four years reminding guys like me how to treat a VIP.
Still, like any gamer with money burning a hole in their pocket, I made an effort to buy a launch PlayStation from HMV on Oxford Street. I'm pretty sure, this was on day one. I picked up WipEout and Rapid Reload, but hardly touched the latter since it was not a patch on Gunstar Heroes, the awesome Mega Drive game upon which it was surely based. WipEout though…
See, here's what Sony did straight away with its launch titles outside of Japan: it gave us something that felt home-grown, that seemed extraordinarily cool for the UK. Not geek chic, or anything that required thinking about for longer than a second. Genuinely, cool. Though I'd hugely enjoyed pushing the limits of Ridge Racer with 'Rhythm Shift' and 'Rare Hero' working me into a frenzied state, WipEout had the Chemical Brothers' 'Chemical Beats' and Leftfield's 'Afro-Ride'. Its visuals were phenomenal for the time, showcasing the whizz-bang capabilities of PlayStation versus SEGA's Saturn and – I probably should give it a mention at least – the Atari Jaguar, AKA 'the Tempest 2000 machine'.
Though we'd missed the boat by a couple of issues when I took charge of Computer & Video Games magazine at the end of September, my assembled team of gaming diehards made sure that we went big on WipEout for the November issue, which went on sale in October. It felt like embracing the future, and our ambitions for the magazine itself, commissioning The Designers Republic to produce our cover image and cover lines. As somebody who had always wanted for games to be appreciated in the mainstream, looking to ignite a spark wherever possible, with that WipEout issue of CVG we were riding the lightning. We were embracing something huge.
PlayStation still seemed gimmicky, though, and a little bit 'one-hit-wonder'. In the approach to Christmas 1995, there were ridiculous levels of excitement in our office for SEGA's Virtua Cop, Virtua Fighter 2 and SEGA Rally. Then, in December, I flew out to Japan for the unveiling of Nintendo 64, with the game-changing Super Mario 64. The status quo of the past few years seemed undisturbed by Sony's presence in the market. Our prevailing champions were continuing to behave like the hottest venues with their own house bands, while Sony was just a club for hire with a snazzy PA.
At this point I should mention my favourite, or most valuable, PlayStation memory that was really a Nintendo memory to begin with. At the Shoshinkai Show in 1995, where N64 was first shown, I'd managed to muscle in on the 'after party' at a nearby hotel. I had a conversation with Martin Hollis from Rare, excited about Goldeneye. The proper way to behave here was to be fawning over the achievement of Mr Miyamoto and Mr Takeda, to discuss a lot of what company president Hiroshi Yamauchi had been saying about PlayStation being this blight on the world of video games with its too many titles overcrowding the store shelves, most of which were mediocre. Then I beamed at Shiny Entertainment's David Perry, a basic, 'what did you think?!' question, expecting an 'Oh my goodness, Nintendo – just wow' response. Instead, he seemed genuinely angry about the decision to go with the cartridge format. He was declaring quite loudly that he was never going to support N64. It was a portent of things to come, I just didn't know it at the time.
Yamauchi had also spent a good long while banging on about Final Fantasy and other exclusives belonging to Nintendo. What David Perry had said, combined with Yamauchi's cock-sure comments, became a time bomb at the back of my brain while it searched for reasons to admire PlayStation. In January 1996, that bomb went off: Square announced Final Fantasy VII as a PlayStation exclusive. Sony had started to assemble some very big guns indeed, with Resident Evil arriving in March 1996 to shake things up even further. PlayStation was still the pretender to the throne, however.
In CVG, PlayStation continued to play third fiddle to Saturn and Nintendo 64, the latter launching in June 1996 overseas. We gushed about Sonic Fighters, Fighting Vipers, NiGHTS and Mario 64. We hardly took the first-looks at PlayStation's Crash Bandicoot seriously at all (despite secretly enjoying it). We gave Wipeout 2097 some pages, though mainly because it had The Prodigy on its soundtrack. Resident Evil had been amazing, but another one-off. Then, in September, we saw Tomb Raider at the ECTS show in London, while in Japan – around the same time – our correspondent sent news about a game called PaRappa the Rapper. Though I may be over simplifying things, I remember observing how these two games convinced the mainstream style press to court PlayStation in a way that SEGA and Nintendo could only dream of for their old school mascots. Tomb Raider eventually made it onto the cover of THE FACE magazine, while PaRappa featured on the trending pages inside.
The January 1997 issue of CVG was probably the turning point regarding our acceptance of PlayStation as not only credible but irresistible. This was our Christmas NiGHTS cover that came bundled with a small book we'd made called The Complete History of Computer & Video Games, which more or less painted Nintendo 64 as the future, because it hadn't launched yet in the UK. We were toasting everything SEGA and Nintendo had delivered unto us so far as passionate hobbyists: jaunty mascots, faithful arcade conversions, AM2, Nintendo EAD, and Sonic Team. The next issue we had Rage Racer on the cover, because that game was just seriously awesome.
From the top of 1997 was just a period of acceptance. Not everyone was playing Tekken 2 instead of Virtua Fighter 2, but it became a genuine lunchtime favourite. We were getting reader calls about PlayStation more than anything else, including how to do the trick with the hair-clip and disc-swap for imported games on a PAL console. Rather unfortunately, though, creating the kind of publicity Sony benefited from having, pirated PlayStation games were spreading like wildfire owing to modified – 'chipped' – PlayStations that made them function similarly to specialist Debug units.
PlayStation had grown to become the console of the people, which may seem terribly corny, but this had never happened before in the UK. Not even with the Super NES and Mega Drive, no matter how edgy SEGA's Pirate TV campaign had been for the latter, or how many homes brought home Sonic the Hedgehog. PaRappa the Rapper was one of the coolest games ever. Final Fantasy VII just made time stand still at key moments in that unforgettable story. Polyphony Digital's Gran Turismo that launched in Japan that Christmas was completely jaw-dropping.
Nintendo had pretty much thrown everything into Pokémon by this stage, which was wonderful all by itself, and allowed The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time to be in no great rush for the otherwise unremarkable N64 catalogue. SEGA had Burning Rangers for the Saturn, which was Sonic Team at its best, but way too weird for most tastes. Some of you may remember the extensive coverage that CVG dedicated to Tekken 3 on PlayStation in 1998, completely deserved as it was off-the-scale amazing considering the hardware limitations. And then we were on the approach for Metal Gear Solid, which became another darling of the mainstream press. As did Gran Turismo, appearing in automotive publications that were rather annoyingly beating the games press to exclusive reports.
From being nowhere in 1994, to seemingly everywhere in 1998, PlayStation excitement rapidly grew to become big enough to support an entire market unto itself. Sure, a colossal amount of marketing spend that SEGA hadn't a hope of matching, while Nintendo bet the farm on Pokémon, would have ensured that PlayStation became a household name if not always a household possession. But, for me, having watched all the games – so many games – flourish on Sony's platform, benefiting from a once-in-a-lifetime period of financial stability and creative magic, PlayStation's greatest triumph was that it was never a me-too deal. It made real superstars out of anyone capable of reaching that high.
Comments 12
Amazing article, thanks so much for sharing Paul. It's incredible to learn just how little faith was put into the PSone by publications like CVG initially - especially considering how things turned out.
But I think this article perfectly encapsulates the seismic shift that occurred throughout the entire industry. Really great read!
Great read. I remember wanting a Saturn in 96 but my mum, who knows little about games now and even less back then, basically insisted she wouldn't be doing that and she's get us a PS1 for Christmas instead. I guess Sony's dominance of the generation was clear to many at that time, with only those still hung up on their loyalties to Sega/Nintendo in denial!
Perfect FFVII pic for this article. (On mobile, which sometimes somehow differs from normal.)
I loved reading CVG during that era. Paul Davies, Tom Guise, Ed Lomas.... they all had their unique spin on the articles they wrote. Really great in depth previews too. I used to love reading about Quake, NiGHTS, Super Mario 64 etc that they covered every month. Wish I still had the history of video games book that came with the above mentioned Christmas issue. Being a Saturn owner at the time was a bit disheartening reading about PlayStation exclusives such as Final Fantasy VII and Metal Gear Solid but all of my friends had one so I could always play them (eventually got my own anyway).
It seems now that most magazines are interested in reporting as one entity which is a shame as I like to think of the journalists as people just like us.
Great article. I went from being a diehard console enthusiast during the 8 and 16 bit eras to being almost exclusively a PC gamer during that generation, mainly because I thought those new polygon-heavy 3D games just had nothing on my SNES sprite-based classics (an opinion I hold to this day, and which helps make the SNES my favorite console of all time), so it's exciting to read reports such as this one and see history in the making with the power of hindsight.
I did come around eventually, learning to enjoy many PSOne and N64 classics in the process, but that remains the one generation I skipped entirely since I first got my NES and Master System.
Love the PSone. Has to be my favourite console ever. Great article!
Great read.
I still feel bad I begged my parents constantly for an N64 and they had a b*tch of a time finding one. I remember my dad commenting that Christmas 96 shopping season that Playstations were much easier to find in stores and looking back at it, I wish I had taken the chance on it. Being in middle school I was still relying on getting games mostly as gifts so it was one console. Needless to say, PS1 would've been the one to bet on. I still say the N64 had more what I consider 'classics' but for the long term you have to look at the whole library and the PS1 had a much, much better overall catalog of games. The N64, especially coming off the NES and SNES, was a massive disappointment in that regard.
Great article. As a Playstation (and Nintendo) gamer, I would say that while the Ps4 isn't doing that bad and the PS3 had some great games such as Demon's Souls, Uncharted, Infamous, Modnation Racers, etc., I still think the Ps1/Ps2 era was much better. Everybody didn't complained which was better (for me), every consoles has their own great games (Ps2 with Champions of Norrath, SotC and GoW, Xbox with Morrowind, Halo, and Forza, GC with Mario, Zelda and Metroid,etc), graphics wasn't a huge deal (well okay maybe a little) and their library were great. But now most communities has gotten worse, everyone are complaining that their console is the best, too many ports and rehashes , most games released , while still great such as Bloodborne, the Witcher 3 and MGS, some that were released were either broken like Wander and Calvino Noir, looked very outdated like Godzilla and Natura Doctrine (neither were they Fair) or just bad like Risen 3 and Arcania or disappointing like Mad Max (for me at the least) and it would have been great if Japan gave us their great games like Phantasy Star and God Eater right now, especially Yakuza. While I would say this generation was awful, it's just that the earliergenerat felt more “golden” than it is now. And I still remember the time I got a Ps1 for my birthday when I was 7 years old. sigh good times...
@SoulsBourne128
The gaming community today is very toxic. And what scares me, most of these fanboys are grown a$$ men in their 30s arguing with other grown a$$ men over the internet. It's pathetic.
This is a really excellent feature, I was especially excited to read it as soon as I noticed it was written by Paul Davies, his perspective as a games journalist who covered the transition from 16-bit to 32-bit, plus the boom of the fifth generation is fascinating. I've been reading Paul's work for over 20 years now, his writing style is so affable and welcoming, and he conveys his memories of one of my favourite eras in such a warm-hearted way.
I was also reading Paul's Retro Radar column in issue 146 of Retro Gamer recently, and this month's Play it Loud piece on how much he loves gaming music complements what he's describing about the tunes in WipEout here really nicely.
Big cheers to Push Square and to Paul Davies, I'm flicking through my fingerprint worn July 1996 issue 176 of CVG now in honour of this article. I'm reading this magazine in a new context now, it must have been at the point that the CVG team were starting to take the PSone more seriously, because it's brimming with PSone content. Highlights for the original PlayStation in CVG #176 include a 1996 E3 show report, two pieces on Jumping Flash! 2, and reviews of International Track & Field, Resident Evil, Return Fire, and Rockman X3.
Just as Paul is describing CVG's early impressions of Crash Bandicoot in this article, issue 176 has a small E3 '96 box-out on it that describes Naughty Dog's game as "Not as alternative as Sonic X-Treme, nor ground-breaking as Super Mario 64, but SCEA’s new mascot is arguably more sumptuous than either to behold". Good times, for sure.
The Complete History of Computer & Video Games - I still have this proudly displayed on my retro videogame wall.
@Worlock_ed the Quake, SM64 and NiGHTs cover CVG is to this day the greatest issue of any magazine ever produced, in my opinion. Still have mine.
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