Home Games Celebrating PlayStation One – The Arcade Remembers

Celebrating PlayStation One – The Arcade Remembers

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Twenty years ago today the PlayStation was released in Japan and gaming history was made and while it would be another 10 months before the console broke into the EU market, Sony and it’s grey little console had made their mark on the world. The 32-bit home video game console was developed and marketed in direct competition to the Nintendo 64 and Sega Saturn with Sony muscling in on the competition and declaring itself a contender in the console wars. Ten years after it’s initial release it was discontinued in production and had sold over 104 million units worldwide but games continued to sell for another two years before Sony finally ceased all production on PS One titles.
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To celebrate the launch of the console, the Arcade team share some of their favourite memories of the PlayStation. We’d love to know yours too so please feel free to share with us in the comments below!

Declan

The PlayStation arrived into our house a little earlier than my parents had hoped. I’d found the Christmas stash, 7 years old and I was pretty peeved – to keep me silent I got early access to the console and my love affair with gaming was emblazoned. My favourite memory of the console is actually a painful one – with five brothers game time was shared and it was my turn to guide Lara Croft through a cave.
Having learned recently that we could make the intrepid adventurer swan dive, Swan+dive+lara+croft+s+infamous+swan+dive_ffa5d3_4348147I found an edge leading into the next area and wanted to show off so as I took my leap from the cliff into what I assumed was a deep pool of water I saved the game much to the applause of my brothers… do you see where this is going? Weeks of hardwork were squandered as the save file was replaced with my olympic jump only for Lara to land on her head, breaking her neck in a puddle no deeper than a few a inches – applause soured, the controller was wrestled from my hands and I was banned from the console for a month! To this day that sickening crunch still churns my stomach and the ‘murder’ of Lara is often dredged up by my still resentful brothers.

Emma

The very first game we ever got for PSOne was Tomb Raider. It was insanely addictive and even though I was very young and still in school, my family would all gather round the TV till 3am sometimes, taking turns being eaten by dinosaurs and arguing over puzzles. tumblr_nemtbdCwEn1u0qcnpo5_500The sky was the limit with games. Abe’s Oddysee, Dino Crisis, Resident Evil we would buy them and trade them in so we could afford the next. Some games we would hold onto after we’d completed them. The kinds that stick around.
We had household competitions for the best Ridge Racer lap time and held family Tekken tournaments. Me and my brother were regularly beaten by our father who caught on pretty quick to the whole gaming thing. When I remember PSOne I remember spending time with my family and laughing till I cried. It was the first console we ever owned and it’ll always represent the best things about childhood for me.

Shane

The best game I ever played was on PS1 and it was FFVII.
I remember three moments in particular which was the chocobo racing which was amazing.tumblr_m6rx20tVDw1qepij6o1_500 I loved that you could raise their stats and breed them to get new colours and then to finally get the golden Chocobo that could ride all over the world and unlock more secrets.  The second thing I loved was when cloud gets poisoned by the mako in the earth and was out of your party I remembered feeling really emotional about him getting better and coming back to my party which thank god that happened cause my little seven year old heart wouldn’t have been able to take that blow.

Lastly was the death of Aerith Gainsborough. I was not expecting it and cried my eyes out but it was a brilliant ending for a game and letting her down into the water is the most vivid display in my head.

Andy

If you’re into JRPG’s, and why wouldn’t you be, the original PlayStation was, and some would stay still is, the holy grail. For me, choosing between the experiences I had on it is like choosing between Ariel and Kim Possible at the red head party, an impossible and unfair decision. That said, Squaresofts Chrono Cross will always have a special place in my heart.

Never released in Europe, I’d heard about through whispers and mutterings on Final Fantasy forums and, determined to get my hands on it, had asked every American relative I had to keep their eyes peeled. When I finally got it, I had to physically modify my console to play it and even now I still have a hard time pinning down what it was about CC that clicked so strongly with me. Maybe it was the amount of work that went into getting it, a sense that I somehow earned it. Or maybe it was the score, or the ambitious narrative, or the innovative battle system, or the painted watercolour backgrounds, or any of the hugely important strides the PSX allowed developers to take. Whatever it was, it worked and Chrono Cross frequently gets a re-play, more than a decade after my first run. Long live the PSX.

And Ariel! I’d pick Ariel!

Brian

I wrote to Santa asking for a Playstation One. I was six years old and I very much believed in Santa (and secretly do). But on this occasion I discovered my PS1 under my parents bed while sneaking about the house. Now, I didn’t immediately jump to conclusions. You can’t shatter a kids belief in Santa that quick. I needed evidence. I decided to mark the corner of the box with a Nike tick. If that mark was there on X-mas day then my suspicion (as that’s all it was at that point) would be confirmed.tumblr_lkya8ldq3N1qf834qo1_500 X-mas day arrived and all my gifts were laid out in typical Santa fashion – unwrapped but neatly displayed. I was in complete awe for all the things left for me. Some things I didn’t even ask for.
Then I saw it.
The Playstation.
It looked even better than I imagined. As my parents opened their gifts I examined the box. For a brief moment I couldn’t find it and I was relieved. And then my fingers rubbed over something rough, a groove in the cardboard. And there it was the mark I made a few weeks ago. My heart sank. But I looked around and saw all the amazing things that were for me. And I didn’t care if Santa was real or not. I had amazing parents who had gone and bought me everything I wanted. That Playstation still exists today, somewhere, someplace… The attic maybe

Richard

Maybe it was due to being so young or maybe it was because it was the first time I really got into gaming but I remember how immediately immersive everything felt on the PS1.
No horror game in the last decade has managed to be as consistently atmospheric as I remember games on the PS1 being. Even games that weren’t strictly horror like Medievil or Tomb Raider had me completely engrossed and just a little unnerved. I think it was the music!

People often hold up NES and SNES era music as the most memorable but I can still, to this day, hum an embarrassing amount of music from PS1 games in general and one franchise in particular. And so we come to that one little marsupial that began my obsession with gaming.
You can keep your plumbers and your hedgehogs, Crash Bandicoot was the first game I ever bought with my own money,Crash 3 was the first game I ever 100%-ed and CTR was my first experience of kart-racing games that have the potential to break friendships. My mental image of the PS1 is inseperable from the image of that orange, mute bandicoot and the simple joy of gaming that it all represented. Sure, the loading times weren’t the best and the gameplay was simple but it really was nice just putting a disc in the console and it playing without having to enter a bazillion DLC codes, sign into three different accounts and download 6 patches. Simpler times.

Wayne

I adored my Playstation one, I still have it and most of my original
games (pictured below). It gave us the first glimpse into the future of gaming. My PSone story though is one of my proudest moments as a nerd.
Aerith’s Theme by Final Fantasy on Grooveshark

Final Fantasy VII had just been released, I was working in the Game section of Smyths toystore. A couple and they young daughter arrived at the counter. They were looking for a game for her, and wanted to know what was available for her age group. I had set up FFVII on a Playstation at the end of the counter for folks to play test, I walked them down to it, handed the young girl the controller and let her play it while I showed her parents the range of games. We arrived back to her five minutes later and she turned to her parents and said “This one, I want this one!” They paid for the game and left.

Fast forward about seven years and I am in a friends house with a bunch of mates RPGing and gaming we start talking about what set us on the path of being nerds and my friend Sarah starts to tell the story of the sales guy in Smyths Toystore who showed her Final Fantasy VII, and she made her parents buy it and how that game shaped her outlook on gaming and being a nerd. I was shocked, I shouted “THAT WAS ME!” we couldn’t believe it. Everyone was dumbstruck.
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Playstation: Shaping the gaming nerds of our future

Kieran

CRASH BANDICOOT!
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That’s all I need to say!

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