PlayStation

"The console that showed what the 3D era really was about."

It doesn't matter how old you are, where you were and even if you're living in Amish communities (and I'm not talking about after being let off for a year into the modern world) there is no getting away from the name PlayStation, the console that even you're grandparents have heard of, and has since seen a huge success in the PlayStation 2, a portable version of the PS2 in the name of the PSP and the omnipotent PlayStation 3, you don't actually have any senses if you've never hear of it.

The PlayStation originally gave birth as a SNES CD-ROM project, and Sony would also create their own console using the CD's but more of a multimedia system, but would play SNES cartridges. As Nintendo didn't like the concept of Sony having a large amount of control over the joint-project, Nintendo dropped the alliance secretly in favour of Philips. While Sony were infuriated by this, they decided to go solo with the project, but Nintendo were angry about breach of contract but later agreed the PlayStation would have a port for SNES games. As SNES was getting obsolete this was later dropped and the PlayStation was born, while Nintendo still couldn't figure out how to make a CD-ROM drive by themselves and still used cartridges with the N64.

Sony saw off many rivals in its bid to the top from its release in 1995, which was surprising as Sega and Nintendo had long-established themselves in the market, while the 3D0 and the Atari jaguar failed, notably a high price tag for the former and a lack of good games for the Jaguar. Sega on the other hand shot themselves by releasing the 32X add-on for the Mega Drive, which was marketed badly and was nowhere near as good as the real 32-bit consoles, as for the Saturn that was marketed badly and was a nightmare to develop for due to it's unique architecture, while the PlayStation was more industry standard. The N64 was the only other success in the era, but threw away it's lead in the industry and sold only a third of what the PlayStation achieved, partly due to it's high-price, low capacity cartridge usage unlike the CD-based PlayStation, but nonetheless had a strong library of titles and still at least gained a foothold in the market.

So that leaves us with the PlayStation, the first CD-based console that succeeded, being a favourite with developers with high-capacity CD's which meant CD-audio, voice acting and FMV galore. The traditional cartridge media wasn't without it's advantages, with near-instant load times, impossible to counterfeit (bar emulation) and better durability, but with the latter that's your problem if you can't take proper care of your disks and in the long-run the advancements in graphics meant that cartridges were no longer viable for storing all the data unlike CD's, with endless opportunities with it's 650MB capacity meant home consoles have since (bar N64) opted for optical media, even today.

At first glance the PlayStation is a down-to-earth, simplistically designed piece of hardware. The top-loading CD tray occupies most of the area on top, with the power and ejects buttons on the side. At the back are the various sockets for power, TV and serial cables that no-one used (such as the link cable) while two controller ports sit at the front accompanied by memory card slots. The unit measures about 25x18x4cm, not too tiny or too big, but redesign of the model appeared in 2000, which was about a third smaller in size but maintained it's basic appearance, albeit with removals of often disused ports and was much harder to add a mod-chip to (the PS was relatively easy to chip allowing pirated games from home CD-burners to be played, and was popular) while it was small enough to add an LCD screen to so you could play your games on the move (if you have a battery) while you waited for the PSP to come out, or you could've bought a Game Boy you fanboy.

The PlayStation's is powered by a whopping 32-bit 34mhz MIPS R3000A (OK, that doesn't mean much to me either) with a purely theoretical maximum polygon count of 360,000 per second and could handle 24-bit colour. The PlayStation's graphics were worse than the Saturn in some cases, but the Saturn was awkward to get the best from due to it's unique architecture and rendering. The Nintendo 64 could render more polygons and was 64-bit and was capable of smooth texture filtering, which neither the Saturn or PSone could muster and thus textures looked very pixelated, but bottlenecks in both the cartridge media and RAM in the N64 meant that games couldn't make full use of detailed textures, resulting in many games looking blurry.

Nonetheless many games made full use of the PS hardware, Metal Gear Solid had high levels of detail, and basic movie-style blur effects plus impressive real-tiem cut-scenes, Gran Turismo 2 was jaw-droppingly realistic for its time with plenty of detail and lighting, same could be said about Ridge Racer 4 while the Final Fantasy series, most notably FFIX made extensive use of pre-rendered backgrounds making them look much more realistic, but also had impressive real time 3D battles. It was clear PSone was designed for FMV's, with some top-notch full-screen MPEG movie renderers, games such as the Final Fantasy series used this to it's full with impressive looking FMV's. The Saturn was better for 2D games but the PS still managed to bring us 2D showpieces such as Einhander.

Sound capabilities on the other hand are excellent, featuring stereo CD-audio sound, 24 channels and 44 khz sampling, in other words it sounded as good as any CD now. The fact that voice-acting could be implemented into games was another one of the key features of the 32-bit generation, from spoken sequences in games such as Spyro, the ability to use movie star voice samples in movie tie-ins whilst sports-games utilised in-game commentary, although rather basic and often repetitive although I could swear FIFA 98 was real when I heard Motson commentating. The PlayStation nonetheless had synthesisers for games that had large soundtrack scores, such as Final fantasy VII.

This was the system that bought the all famous X, Circle, Square and Triangle buttons on the controllers, rather original but infuriating when trying to write out cheats in text. Believe it or not, there was a time when the controllers didn't have the analog sticks, but the DualShock came out in 1998 and bought a fun yet basic rumbling system. The analog sticks themselves make it a lot more fun to control certain games, but some games infuriatingly don't allow you to use the d–pad and analog sticks simultaneously, while early games understandably don't support the analog sticks at all. PSone controllers are comfortable on the hands on most cases, the Dualshock does feel a bit bulky at first but you get used to it quickly enough. 4-player (or even 8-player) is available through the use of multi-tabs but doesn't provide the multiplayer madness that the N64 did. In order to save games you need to own a memory card, storing 1MBit data, but are easily filled up as many games require multiple blocks (there's 15 blocks in total).

The PlayStation's easier and more potent hardware eventually prevailed it to have a massive games library littered with classics (and inevitably some rubbish ones), most notably the Final Fantasy series which revolutionised the RPG genre, with memorable cinematics and stories; Tomb Raider was a stronghold in the action/adventure front, the stealth-action based Metal Gear Solid, the world-famous arcade beat-em-up Tekken; Resident Evil was famous for its horror-game zombie striken approach; ISS Pro Evo was football for the purists but never got a strong foothold in getting licenses. Spyro and Crash Bandicoot are a selection of some of the best platforming series on the PSone, (although there are many others) while games like Tony Hawk's skateboarding and FIFA soccer developed a strong base on the PS while going multiplatform. In other words, the library of games is brilliant and has something for everyone, with roughly 1300 titles up until the last came out in 2004, you couldn't go wrong.

Is the PlayStation still worth getting today? Not really is the answer, seeing as both the PlayStation 2 and PS3 (the PSP can through emulation, but you have to buy the games again) can play your old PlayStation disks, the PS2 (but not the PS3 at this time) can even enhance the PSone graphics with some much needed texture smoothing, although it's only noticeable when close and the nasty jagged engines remain. So while you see it for a tenner at a car boot, there's nothing cool about this being retro, it's just outdated, get a PS2 for playing PSone (and PS2) games.

Graphics Jagged and crude pixelated textures, but still good enough to churn out some graphically impressive games. 8/10
Sound Voice-acting and CD-audio all the way! Another key-stone of the 32-bit generation. 9/10
Controllers Good then, just as good now, and you have no choice but to like them as that's what the PS3 uses also. 9/10
Multiplayer 3-8 players with multilayer, plenty of games supported it but didn't give the instant madness unlike the N64. Could also link with another PlayStation for games that supported it, but you need another of everything for that. 7/10
Games Library Tomb Raider, Resi, Final Fantasy, Gran Turismo, Spyro, Metal Gear, Parappa the Rapper, ISS Pro evo…10/10
Value for money Well seeing as it'll cost a tenner and there's lots of good games out for it, but isn't as much of a collectable as the N64 or even the Saturn. Get a PS2. 8/10

The PlayStation console was really a definitive console that did everything right for the much-anticipated 3D-era. It was the first success story of CD-ROM based console, and not hard to see why as CD's could store about 10 times the amount of even the biggest N64 cartridges, 3D graphics were solid although a little rough and the CD-technology bought real-life sounding music and speech, which helped a lot. The result? 100 million units sold and a lifespan of 11 years, from 1995 until 2006, although the last game to come out was in 2004, that was FIFA 2005. A great console in it's day, but now superseded by the PS2 and PS3, which play the PSone classics anyway. 9/10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/28/07