Main Page

Sections

• Games
• Media
• Thumbnail Theatre
• Let's Play!

• Journal #11
• Journal #10
• Journal #9
• Quarterly #8
• Quarterly #7
• Quarterly #6
• Quarterly #5
• Quarterly #4
• Quarterly #3
• Quarterly #2
• Quarterly #1
• Issue 13
• Issue 12
• Issue 11
• Issue 10
• Issue 9
• Issue 8
• Issue 7
• Issue 6

• Last Update: April 14, 2012, at 02:05 PM
• RSS
• LJ Feed
• Edit Page

PlayStation's 10th Anniversary (Japan Edition)

Can you believe that the PlayStation is ten years old today? I'm trying to decide what makes me feel older -- that, or the fact that I've been corresponding with site users who weren't even alive when Ms. Pac-Man was released.

On December 3, 1994, the PlayStation arrived in Japan. (Or December 2, or 4, depending on who you ask.) Of course, the console didn't show up in the US for another 10 months -- in December of '94, most of us Yankee types were getting all googly-eyed at the Advanced Computer Modeling of Donkey Kong Country... or getting all misty-eyed when Celes sang "Aria de Mezzo Carattere" in Final Fantasy VI. Which we called Final Fantasy III back then. (I'm a little embarrassed to admit I bought the US version of the game's soundtrack and forced my college roommate to listen to it over and over. Poor guy was a music major... it must have been awful for him. Then again, he's the one who owned an inflatable sheep sex toy, so it's hard to feel too guilty.)

In 1994, 3D gaming for Americans was largely the fake stuff, like Doom II, or else so godawfully sluggish and choppy it was a desperate struggle not to get a headache. (See: StarFox.) So maybe it's small surprise that particularly jealous US gamers paid something like $700 to import a Japanese PS system, a price which probably made the 3DO look almost appealing in comparison to more sane people. No, I'm lying. Nothing made 3DO look appealing.

I've had a lot of trouble finding info on the system's Japanese launch, oddly enough -- I can't seem to track down a launch title list. I seem to recall it included both Ridge Racer and A-Train, and I think the latter might actually have outsold the former. But hey, don't quote me on this. I'm probably just making it all up.

I myself didn't actually buy a PS until sometime in 1997, after I realized Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64 just weren't going to be enough to sustain my gaming addiction; I swapped my N64 for a PS and never looked back. Well, that not entirely true. I bought a used N64 a year later in anticipation of Ocarina of Time. And Paper Mario made it all worthwhile in the end.

In retrospect, I really miss the PS. Sure, it was a shoddily-made piece of Sony junk, and hardly anyone who owned one failed to experience some sort of major hardware issue, but it had a great look and feel to it. Much more sophisticated and substantial than anything that had gone before; older consoles tended to have a flimsy, plastic feel to them, and the Saturn was a graceless brick. The PS was sleek and had a bit of mass to it without feeling unduly heavy -- there was a sort of solidity to the system that made you want to treat it with a touch of reverence. That incredible electronic chord it made at startup was great, too -- it said "I am here to rock your face" far more effectively than the wispy PS2 BIOS sound does. To say nothing of the Xbox's horribly cheesy construction zone sound FX. (Nothing beats that GameCube xylophone tune, though.)

The PlayStation was the system that got me hooked in importing, too. A few months after I picked up my system, I discovered the existence of Dracula X: Nocturne in the Moonlight, aka Castlevania: Symphony of the Night -- oddly enough, from an in-store video at Wal-Mart, of all places. It depicted Alucard wailing the tar out of those acid-dropping wall-hugging skeletons in the Alchemy Lab, and I was mesmerized by what I saw. Somehow, I discovered that there was a local gaming shop that would mod my PS and sell me a copy of the Japanese game months before its US release, so I gathered up my cash and bought Dracula X and spent about a week doing nothing but exploring the castle. I'm always a little embarrassed when I spend a few days doing nothing but playing a game, and the PS gave me ample opportunity for that sort of shame: Dracula X, Final Fantasy VII, FF Tactics, Metal Gear Solid, FF Anthology, Chrono Cross. Terrible!

I blame Sony for my complete lack of social skills these days. I used to be a pretty outgoing guy, I think.

Oh, as an aside, when I first saw that Dracula X video I was with a friend named Irene Lu. That's a quirk of random translation away from Irene Lew, the girl in the original Ninja Gaiden. See, even my life is like a video game.

Anyway, ten years. The PS changed pretty much everything about gaming, and unlike most older gamers I'd have to say it was almost entirely for the best. Thanks to the wide market Sony controlled and the low cost of producing the CD media that its games came on, the PS helped broaden the horizons of American audiences with games like Parappa the Rapper and Bushido Blade: quirky titles that would never have appeared on older systems. Look at how Sega went about things with the Saturn for comparison. Sega left its best games in Japan, hoping to cater to an American audience; ultimately, they alienated their core users and failed to compete. Sony had the right idea by drawing in the broader audience first, then expanding the available content beyond the bread-and-butter genres.

So yeah. Ten years. Rock on, PS. We'll always love you. <3

Back to 1UP Retroblogs >>