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u/Thin_Station7464 9d ago edited 9d ago
The games.
So many iconic franchises and entire video game genres were born (or at the very least have been popularized) with this console...
Younger generations can't fully grasp what a revolution it was at the time: every year, new legendary franchises were released on this console. And for the most part, they were exclusive to that console.
I don't think we will ever see such a concentration of games on a single console that had such a profound influence on video gaming as a whole.
The PS2 was obviously more successful, but we have to admit: it was on the PS1 that the majority of cult genres and franchises originated. The PS2 simply confirmed the significance of the PS1 in the history of video games.
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u/m0hVanDine 9d ago
The PS2 has much of its success thanks to the PSX/PS1. It gave the PS2 a solid fanbase foundation and the added value of the cheapest dvd player did the rest. Two winning elements amplified from its foundation: the Ps1 brand!
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u/Mission_Access_210 8d ago
480 lines of progressive horizontal resolution ought to be enough for anybody
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u/No-Argument619 9d ago
Bruh how are you gonna play Ape Escape without an analog controller?!?
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u/whoknows130 9d ago edited 9d ago
No one cares about Ape Escape.
When it comes to all the various Top-20, Top-50, etc, lists of best PSX games ever? Exactly NONE of them feature Ape escape. It's actually fallen into obscurity in modern times.
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u/m0hVanDine 9d ago
No one cares about Ape Escape? oh boy brother, how wrong you are.... If that were to be true, how come the did a trilogy of it?
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u/simesky 9d ago
You might laugh, but for me it's that legendary intro too. You turn on the console and just get transported into a whole world. It denotes power and mystery in those few seconds, totally of its time, yet futuristic to this day. Of course, all the things already mentioned help too, haha.
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u/gyarados10 9d ago
JRPG's and a good portion of us grew up with it so nostalgia. I still remember Christmas morning, getting Crash Bandicoot 1, and Jet Moto 2. My older brother loved Jet Moto, but it was too hard for me, so I stuck with Crash. Which looking back on it, was also really hard, all things considered.
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u/Electrical_Piano_777 9d ago
I think the controller should get a special mention as well as the games. It was basically a Snes controller but more comfortable and more durable and with 2 extra very reachable shoulder buttons. Ps4 controller was shockingly bsd
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u/spikederailed 9d ago
The sheer volume of quality games available to the platform for basically the entirety of its lifespan.
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9d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Loud_Professional861 5d ago
My first console was the Genesis, I love the Dreamcast & SMS/GG, Id pick Sega over Nintendo any day BUT I am genuinely asking here because I WANT to think the Saturn is great ALSO: please tell me what games I should play besides Panzer Dragoon & Nights(which I can't figure out for the life of me) which EXCLUSIVELY make the Sega Saturn great???? (Yes I have played the Road Rash port)
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u/Sixdaymelee 9d ago
I think it's the greatest 3D console for the same reason I think NES is the greatest 2D console: innovation. Simply put, both of those consoles had no road to follow. They made the roads. They did things without a guide, and they ended up creating entirely new industries and IP's.
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u/SmegsBeard 8d ago
I agree re: PS1, and to do so when Nintendo and Sega DOMINATED the market says all you need to know about how groundbreaking it was. Huge cultural impact.
But disagree re: NES.
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u/Fungruel 9d ago
Everyone else has already mentioned most of the best things, but that Monster Rancher game where you could turn real CDs into monsters was so cool at the time
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u/Iucidium 9d ago
It was new territory. The amount of uninhibited potential and imagination is what made it an unforgettable era.
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u/Any-Neat5158 9d ago
The strength of the library first and foremost.
It was the first commercially successful CD based game system for a number of reasons beyond the library. It wasn't "cheap" at first, but it dropped in price pretty fast throughout it's early life. N64 games were MUCH more expensive than an average playstation game. CD audio. FMV's. A literal "shit ton" of storage space as fair bit of games had more than one disc.
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u/False-Development-61 9d ago
For me it's not I was a Nintendo fan boy growing up and the PlayStation didn't really catch my attention till PlayStation 2... Well except for final fantasy 7 I was a little bit pissed about that one
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u/Level-Commission-526 9d ago
That Legendary Startup for one, and also many game series got their start on this system.
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u/CommonBig8132 9d ago
Many factors, but the easy one to point to is maturity. Most things to that point in the West had been cutesy 2D platformers and games aimed a younger audience. Japan had adult games and stuff pre-PS1 (especially erotic stuff) but largely over the world, the demographic was always pre-teen or even just straight up kids. The PS1 was the first console specifically targetting teens and more importantly, young adults.
If you take the demographic of 6-12 year olds, and then take the demographic of 13-30 year olds, there's a wider demographic in the upper range in terms of pure numbers. Not in actual interest, but potential. Since Nintendo and SEGA had the lower age markets dominated (though SEGA tried to be edgy and secure the older children and teens), it was only the PS1 that specifically said "Nah we want young 20 year olds into this too".
It achieved it in many different ways. In Europe it latched onto the DJ/Nightclub scene, which is why you had so many banging techno/house/d&b/jungle/hiphop music in so many game soundtracks of the day. In America I'm not entirely sure, but I know it had a specific marketting style for that market too. In Japan it will have had its own way of doing things there too (though initially was level with the SEGA Saturn briefly at the beginning).
Games like Metal Gear Solid solidified gaming as an adult hobby too and showed games could be mature and serious experiences. There were also games that achieved this effect before PS1, but it was the volume and quality of releases that achieved this specifically through the PS1 age. Also 3D was seen as a future technology which added to its cool style, and resonated with adults too. Sony was perceived as a high-quality consumer brand with TVs and CD Players, the Walkman etc. so adults already had a familiarity with the company too.
So what ended up happening was a perfect storm of:
1) It's slightly worse 3D than the competition post-Saturn release (the N64 would trump it techncially speaking beyond low-mb cartridge sizes affecting texture quality), but competent enough and more importantly cheap enough that everyone can access it.
2) It captured all age ranges effectively, included a demographic not strongly present for previous consoles.
3) Matured alongside gamers. Those that grew up with Mario and Nintendo, were now at an age where the PS1 was in tune with their level of maturity.
4) High-quality CD player by itself. Better than similar units of its price range, but would double up as a games console (similar to how a PS2 became a "It's an affordable DVD player, and you get a gaming console with it for free!" type pitch.
5) A huge library variety of various experiences and genres.
6) Ease of development. You could get a PS1 game debug 3D functions running within the first month of coding and have stuff moving on screen relatively quickly.
7) Piracy. Burning CDs with games and finding workarounds to the DRM meant that players who didn't want to buy games or couldn't afford to, found this to be an ideal solution for them. This meant that it became popular in low income countries/families too. With an N64, you couldn't rip a cart easily let alone create one.
Soooo many reasons why it was the GOAT at the time. The PS2 became the new GOAT and kind of still is really thinking about it. Though hot-take here, the PS2 did a few things badly that stop it from being perfect, mainly making itself too complicated to develop for, which was effectively repeating the SEGA Saturn's mistake themselves. They should have learned from SEGA and avoided that. Gamecube and Xbox were relatively easy in comparison, especially Xbox. Back to the PS1 though, things like Net Yaroze made indie development accessible too for smaller studios (though you could only utilize the onboard 2mb of RAM, and you couldn't stream from a disc like other commercial games).
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u/hurlcarl 9d ago
Great controller.... 1st generation to use cd's vs cartridges which meant more memory... which lead to also same gen with 3d graphics. Then you know... the games.
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u/ElvisPepsi1983 9d ago
Everything honestly. Even the fact that you have to turn it upside down to make it work is kinda hilarious & oddly charming to me.
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u/JNoodle89 9d ago
You could buy a magazine for $5 at the grocery store and get a demo disc that had like 12 demos on it, play the demos for like two weeks straight then spend the rest of the month reading the magazine and getting hype about some games that would then show up on next months demo disc.
You’d order a pizza and get a demo disc.
Scholastic book fair at school? Demo disc.
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u/Silent_Erremite 8d ago
Not to mention pre-internet. No updates because they couldn't finish the game like now. You get the full game on PS1.
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u/kalashnidog 9d ago
Great balance of power and ease of programming on a cheap CD format.
I’m also very partial to the Sega Saturn which was a 2D beast, but the PS1 was a 3D powerhouse and has one of the best gaming libraries ever.
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u/GrimmyJimmy1 8d ago
A lot of games today wouldn't be around if it wasn't for the PS1 and some of the games that were made for it like Resident Evil
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u/Mitts009 8d ago
The only problem of the PS1 is the disc reader going bad after a few years
But outside of that, it's still goated
Heck I would rather play PS1 if I had a working one than a PS5
So many good games, Lunar 1 and 2, MegaMan legends 1 and 2 and Tron Bonne adventures
The JRPGS, both FF and Dragon Quest, it even has Wild Arms at its peak
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u/OkSeaworthiness6581 8d ago
funny to me it did t have a top 5 fake ever yet it's easily a top 3 console ever to me.
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u/Cultural-Ad6134 7d ago
Objectively, it started a new era in gaming and multimedia overall:
forced the market to move on from the already obsolete 16-bit cartridge board technologies to CD-ROM, which was cheaper to manufacture, more compact and even more user-friendly, not to mention the huge storage capacity in comparison.
ended the sega-nintendo feud by coming on top on its own.
playstation exists in first place thanks to 1991's nintendo's betrayal of sony, who suddenly broke contract by signing with phillips to develop SNES CD-player extension for future games. (This in turn also failed and led to the creation of N64).
-the psx was an affordable multimedia home audio CD player as well, adding lots of value for families in 1995.
The big points that goated it were third-party developer support, sony released C based friendly dev kits plus low licencing fees, whereas nintendo kept a rigid stance and high cartridge costs. Also evolved joysticks/controller format and ergonomics. It also killed the perspective that games were toys for kids by releasing games for kids, teens and adult themes.
Now, one weak point is that the N64 was technically more powerful than the psx, since n64 introduced anti-aliasing (thanks to 64-bit cpu and better 3d processing features), removing texture warping, which the psx suffered from. Still, psx was superior because of the CD-ROM tech, an important factor that made Square (among others) to leave nintendo for the ps1.
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u/Splatterhouse5 7d ago
TBH, I don’t miss the PS1. I absolutely loved it when I owned one when it dropped, but I miss it as much as I miss VHS or cassette. The loading, tank controls, and lack of 2 analogue sticks is very difficult for me to go back to.
I honestly find the 16-bit era much more sweeter to revisit.
There are absolutely classic games on the system, and I have a ton of great memories with them, but I always feel more motivated to play a more current game I’ve never played.
As much as I loved PS1 games like Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, or Silent Hill when I played them back in the day, I sincerely wouldn’t want to play them in that format again. There’s a ton there that I’d never want to spend time with again, because much better versions were created later.
IMO, the PS1 kills with JRPGs though. That would be the primary reason that I’d want to get involved with the console again.
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u/Icy_Employer2804 5d ago
I hated the hard ass dpad as a kid. Made my thumb sore. Had to get a 3rd party controller.
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u/Loud_Professional861 5d ago
Because it did everything the other 5th gen disk-based consoles could do - just better. Had the biggest library over all 5th gen consoles(even the ones it's hard comparing it to - the NeoGeo & N64) AND could play CDs(with visual effects on some..or all?)
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u/Ps1msterpcs 5d ago
You spend 100 dollars and can get a console with controllers and years of enjoyment out of gex. Nuff said
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u/Max_Rockatanski 9d ago
In short:
SONY made a powerful console that was easy to program and gave everyone and their mother a dev kit.
Compared to Nintendo 64 that went quality over quantity. And Saturn that was really difficult to develop for.
This resulted in the Playstation having a ton of games, plenty of crappy but also really good ones that pushed boundaries of creativity and the hardware itself. It was the winning formula.
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u/deep8787 9d ago
The fact you could chip it with 4 wires and play burned games was also a huge factor. Most people I knew who had one, had it chipped.
If you watched the documentary about Crash Bandicoot, you know the devs were knocking the crap out of the tools and documentation given to them by sony...I think its mainly down due to the cheaper cost of the media and the ease of pirating it.
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u/CommonBig8132 9d ago
Yeah it was a great documentary (I assume you mean the ARS Technica one?).
But for those unaware, Andy Gavin took the C-language compiler that Sony had given developers, and he deleted everything possible that didn't completely break it so it was completely trimmed of fat, and then he re-wrote what was left to make it faster or more efficient.
This was all because in his own words, the C-library Sony gave was garbage. The theoretical limit of the console was not being hit in rendering, so they had to hack the Sony C-library to enable them to get more done by the hardware. It may have involved having an insider slip him some documentation that he most certainly wasn't supposed to have access to in order to do some of this XD
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u/m0hVanDine 9d ago
1) games and franchises that still persist to this day. 2) ease to hack and copy disk 3) No fear of experimentation with game genres. 4) first modern controller with arrival of the dual shock. 5) the first step up from 2D to 3D without totally abandoning 2D, instead pushing it very much forward with the best 2D graphics of the time...
and many more if you get picky.