PlayStation

"A station you play with. Elementary, my dear Watson."

It was either a choice between a Nintendo 64 and a Sony Playstation for Christmas five years ago. I had a choice between cartridges or compact discs. I had a choice between Mario, or Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, and many, many more. I chose Playstation. To me, Playstation was the greatest three-dimensional console at the time. They made over 400 games with it, and you could even play CDs on it! WOW! Even the console design looks awesome. It was just this little gray rectangle with two buttons. It didn't take up much space, and you could put other things on top of it without interfering (except when you wanted to put in another game). Too bad you had to waste another fifteen dollars on a Memory Card, which was essential to save any game. Without a Memory Card, you can expect to be up all night trying to beat Resident Evil 3 without shutting the console off. And what about the probable, sudden power outage? That console will be out the window in no time. See? If you spend the extra money to get a Memory Card, all will be well.

Gameplay: 10

You can expect thousands of hours of enjoyment on this machine. There are tons of games to choose from, most of them seem down-right decent. Some of them suck, but a vast majority will have you playing until you finish the very last level. There are also a few mascots that Sony made. All of them seemed to have pretty good games, like Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Drago, Tomba the Pink-Haired...guy, Gex the Gecko, Jersey Devil, and probably a lot more I can't recollect at the moment. Most of them have a save feature, which you need a Memory Card for. The controller looks pretty cool too. It's small, yet has 14 buttons (15 and two analog sticks on the analog controller), and it all fits comfortably in your hand. Instead of the usual ''A'', ''B'', etc. buttons that Sega and Nintendo used, Sony put some easy-to-remember shapes instead on the buttons. So even little kids can remember where the green triangle, or the blue ''X'' is on the controller. On analog controllers, there is an ''Analog'' button that can turn on the use of the Analog Stick, which is just like the on on the Nintendo 64 controller. This feature is great, especially if you don't like using the analog stick and can switch to the directional pad (and vise-versa) if you wish. A final note on the Gameplay: The three-dimensional feature could cause a lot more headaches than the old side-scrolling games on NES and Sega Genesis. More emphasis on this in the Graphics section.

Sound/Music: 10

Try listening to any music from the old NES, Sega Genesis, or Super NES. Now, listen to Playstation music. Notice anything different. If you don't, then please stop reading this right now and develop some good ears. Any music coming out of Playstation rocks. I'm not talking about how cool the music sounds (some games have terrible tracks of music), but rather the quality. Old systems have metallic-sounding tracks, and really old systems may get away with ''clicks'', ''bloops'', and ''dings'', but Playstation...I won't go into much detail here. All I can say is, it doesn't sound like something that was put together in a 1980's DOS program. It sounds more like actual musical instruments playing. As for sound...it's just better than I could imagine. Most games have the main character actually crying out when pain is induced, instead of a ''bleep''. When characters jump, you (most of the time) don't here a ''boing'' sound. I used to hate that in old games. Now, there's a grunt of the main character ready to leap, and the small slap of the character hitting the ground again. Also included are running sounds, realistic weapon noises, and ryou can tell that a race car engine is running because that's what it sounds like! Pinch me, I must be dreaming...

Graphics: 9

Well, way back yonder in the good old days...roughly 1996...the new Playstation was a great accomplishment that revolutionized the entire video game industry for years to come. OK, maybe I'm over-exaggerating, but you have to admit the graphics are really cool. Never before has there been characters running around in a three-dimensional environment. Still, there was a lot of room for improvment...well, more like a pea-sized room for...sugar grain-sized improvement......OK, my point is they could have maybe improved a little bit on the graphics. Do you follow now? Good. Some of the early games have that fog affect only about 10 inches in front of the character. A lot of later games have some pretty (excuse the term) half-assed detail and textures on walls, floors, and ceilings. Objects and characters are very blocky, octogonal shapes. Nothing is perfectly round. Oh, when will we get perfectly round objects that are meant to be round? Even PS2 isn't perfect yet, but that is another story... Oh, and another good point is that there is an entire rainbow (and even more) of colors and shades that really add to the gaming experience. Now for the headache factor, which I started mentioning in the Gameplay section. The reason: 3D effects can cause headaches, which can drop your fun gaming experience like a rock. I'm one of those people, yet it doesn't affect it that bad. So if you are prone to headaches in video games, you don't have to worry whilst playing Playstation.

Story: N/A

Er...a story. OK, one day the people at Sony were tired of making TVs. One guy says ''Hey, I have a great idea! You know how Nintendo makes a lot of money selling video games and consoles? Well, why don't we start producing a video game console. You know, something like a station that you can play with!'' And, hence, the Playstation was born! .....OK, shut up. You try coming up with a better story! Well, we may never know the real story behing the making of Playstation (perhaps my story is true after all).

Replayability: 10

Did you expect any less? With the 400+ games available, you could be playing Playstation until either the console or your brain gets warped. Don't be afraid to waste away countless days of your life sitting in front of your TV with a mindless look on your face playing this unbelievably great console. That's what it was created for.

Overall: 10

Who cares if it's obsolete? It wouldn't have stopped me from buying it. You could probably get a good condition used one for about 100 dollars. What are you waiting for? Go out and buy one now! And if you already own one, then what are you doing wasting time reading this review? You must be pretty bored.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 04/17/02, Updated 04/17/02