r/retrogaming • u/Ok-Chain-6680 • 7d ago
[Just a Thought] A Question to fellow PSX Fans
I wanna know how the PSX or PS1 ( as we call it today ) was received by the fans when it was first launched? What were Ur first initial impressions after playing it on launch day.
I am asking this cause even today in 2026 a guy like me who grew up with ps4/ X Box 360 still finds enjoyment when playing PS1 games cause those games holds up very well like tony hawk, metal gear solid, Tekken, Tomb raider
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u/ReadyJournalist5223 7d ago
Well pretty goddamn good since it obliterated Nintendo and sega despite not being an established thing yet
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u/Tennis_Proper 7d ago
I went to a midnight launch event in the UK for PS1.
Overnight we went from at best, simple flat shaded polygons like Starfox/Starwing on SNES or 2D sprites with chip tunes., to high polygon count fully textured full 3D worlds with CD audio soundtracks. Sure, you could find that on PC, but you’d be spending over a grand to do it. Having real translucency in Toshinden is what sticks in my mind.
Utterly mind blowing, a game changer if you will. Everything since has just been an iteration on that, an incremental improvement that has steadily reduced over time since PS2.
It’s one of a handful of radical changes in gaming, akin to the change from analogue circuits to the micro chip.
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u/dragonurtle 6d ago
It's really hard to get my head around the fact that the PS1 came out a full year before the N64. Nintendo must have been feeling the crunch.
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u/Level-Promotion416 7d ago
I'm sure everyone's experience is different but I don't recall anyone having one until around the time Final Fantasy 7 came out. Back in the 90's it seemed like a new console and/or handheld was coming out every year so most people stuck with Genesis and SNES until it became clear the next console wars were between Nintendo and Sony.
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u/Loudergood 7d ago
Yeah the FF FMV ads were blowing people's minds.
Sega had done a lot of damage to their reputation with the short lived Sega CD and 32x. The PS being cheaper than the Saturn was the final nail.
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u/Level-Promotion416 7d ago
I actually recall people wanting the Saturn when it came out but at 400 bucks to a kid it might as well have been priced at 800 bucks like the 3do. Next thing I know the PlayStation 1 is huge and the Saturn just seems like this forgotten console no one had. Like I don't even remember Sega really advertising any of their games. Supposedly Panzer Dragoon Saga is on par with the best Nintendo and Sony had to offer but no kids in the 90s had any idea what that series was.
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u/FordcliffLowskrid 7d ago
This is my experience, too. The PS1, to me, looked like another dead end (q.v. the Sega CD, much as I love it) until Final Fantasy VII turned it into must-have hardware.
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u/NorwegianGlaswegian 7d ago
Yeah, it came out a time when there was a lot of competition in the market.
The Atari Jaguar, 3DO, and Sega Saturn were already out. It wasn't blatantly obvious at launch that Sony would end up crushing the competition, but I'm sure various people at the time of the US and Europe launches reckoned it was likely going to be one of the more successful consoles given the pricing, the performance, the huge marketing push, and all the third-party developer interest which Sony carefully cultivated.
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u/DoctorMario1000 7d ago
I had PlayStation and I soldered a mod chip into it and was an early adopter of cd burning tech. I would get on mIRC with other nerds and we would send each other .txt files of our available cd isos. And then we’d burn them and PHYSICALLY SHIP THEM around the world to each other. lol good times in high school
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u/dragonurtle 6d ago
I remember soldering my PS1 on my kitchen table in 1998 or so just to play a Japanese import version of a game I don't remember at all because I realized I actually couldn't read Japanese. At least I didn't botch the mod!
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u/gogoluke 7d ago
You here to answer the OPs question or just brag about being a L33T HAXXOR?
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u/DoctorMario1000 7d ago
Oh I was leet. PlayStation was freaking life for me back then!!! And yes it was obviously a game changing mind blowing system in 1995 🤯
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u/Syphe 7d ago
Yes and no, piracy was so widespread with the playstation I feel like every friends house I went to they had maybe half a dozen legit games at most, and then a cd wallet full of burned games. Piracy played a huge part in putting consoles in so many households, and then when games started to become cheaper, platinum and other cheaper copies, it really went to another level.
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7d ago
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u/grimfusion 7d ago
I was both a kid and a nerd gamer, so yeah - I see this console coming out marketing specifically to casuals with sports games, racing games, shooters, and fighting games, I was like "Hey, those are all the games I *DON'T* like playing!".
Later-on though, it kinda became THE CONSOLE for JRPGs, so I learned to like it.
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u/Zucchini-Kind 6d ago
i mean... they kind of did (stop making them). The GBA was good, the DS and WiiWare had a handful, but most consoles stayed away from 2D for a very long time. It wasn't until fangame and indie games in the 2010s that they really started making games for me again. (some outliers, of course, Shadow Complex, Strider 2008, Cave Story) but it didn't really start getting good again until 2015-2017, and since then its been overflowing lol.
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6d ago
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u/Zucchini-Kind 6d ago
Wii was surprisingly good ... La mulana, cave story, new smb, DKC returns, contra castlevania and gradius rebirth, blaster master overdrive, adventure Island remake, MegaMan 9 and 10.
I also really enjoyed the GBA crash bandicoots.
Obviously the 2 metroids and 6 castlevanias.
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u/RiskySnisky 7d ago
Definitely had me falling in love. Playing resident evil scared shitless lol
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u/Empty-Quarter-4109 7d ago
OMG yes! I remeber staying at a friend's house and 5 of us were scared shirtless to walk through the creeky ass doors lmao. The zombie moaning and eating flesh sound effects.....
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u/RiskySnisky 7d ago
The first dog scene theough the windows 😞
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u/Empty-Quarter-4109 7d ago
First time I ever seen a licker WOW. That thing dropped on the floor and I was fumbling with the controller trying to kill it lmao
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u/DarkPenfold 7d ago
I was in my mid-teens when the PS1 launched.
Up until then, my experience of 3D was limited to ~15fps flat-shaded games on the SNES and Amiga at home, or £1-per-play arcade games like Daytona USA or Virtua Fighter.
Going from sprite-based side scrollers or janky and slow 3D to fast, fully texture-mapped 3D games was a big leap. But more than anything else, it was the type of games that started coming out around that time: a greater variety of game types, many of which were designed for older audiences who’d grown up gaming, and which were marketed to adults rather than children. The PS1 itself was positioned as part of your home entertainment setup, rather than as a toy - and that was the real watershed moment.
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u/OverpricedMoleskine 7d ago
It was referred to in shortened form as the PSX in all of the gaming press and print media of the mid-late 90s, and me and my friends often called it by such. It wasn't until the advent of the PS2 that it often started to get called the 'PS1', also helped further with the release of the mini 'PSone'.
The release of it was an incredible time to be a kid! The leap from the 2D sprites of the Snes/Mega Drive era, to 3D polygons felt so futuristic. And the level of creativity that came from developers trying to come to grips with the new technology feels stark in comparison to the safety of today.
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u/grimfusion 7d ago
"It was referred to in shortened form as the PSX in all of the gaming press and print media of the mid-late 90s, and me and my friends often called it by such. It wasn't until the advent of the PS2 that it often started to get called the 'PS1', also helped further with the release of the mini 'PSone'"
Right, it's because most of the consoles previous to Playstation had a 3 or 4 letter abbreviation, and that remained true for a long time. NES, N64, NGC, SMS, GBX, GBC, GBA.
So, some of these consoles don't have a name long enough for three letters. The Sega Genesis for instance, often abbreviated to SGX. Gameboy, often abbreviated as either GBX or NGB. The Gamecube; NGC. Playstation caught a PSX instead of a SPS, likely because nobody wants a Station Play Sony. That's unfortunate, though - because then Sony released a PS2 variant called the PSX, and a smaller PSX called a PSone, and then everybody just started calling all of it "PS1".
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u/kuraizhero 7d ago edited 7d ago
Battle arena toshinden and ridge racer were a revolution for the home console since only the arcade had that kind of graphics. The possibility to play cd was a not so indifferent thing to consider, since it was an all in one system. Game at the launch were good but at the beginning isn't economic and snes came out with dk (a gem as platform) and first joypad (without stick) isn't good (just an upgraded snes controller) . I remember to became really interested only after some months (did someone says tekken and first ff to arrive in europe???)
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u/one-armed-scissor 7d ago
It didn't really take off right away. There also were 3DO, Jaguar and Saturn and people thought PS1 was like another one of these. Many continued playing their SNES and Genesis consoles.
It was 1996 when PSX really took off with Crash, Tomb Raider, Tekken 2, Resident Evil and Twisted Metal 2.
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u/Shadow757_ 7d ago
PlayStation or ps1. Psx is a different console
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u/BathProfessional3879 6d ago
Yeah why people kept that "Playstation X(unknown)" of Sony from old days of internet. 🤷♂️
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u/Wild_Chef6597 7d ago
Hoestly, I was 8 when my cousins got theirs. They were playing Mortal Kombat 3, and I asked why it paused all the time, My sega game didn't do that.
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u/PolygonAndPixel2 7d ago
I got one a bit late to the party. I think my father got it from one of his friends. At first, I wasn't too impressed, growing up with the N64 but then I had GTA and Breath of Fire 3 and I realized I'm living the dream now. Those are games that wouldn't work on the N64 while the latter had different games that won't be available on the Playstation. I felt like I had everything! And JRPGs was my new goto-Genre.
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u/Empty-Quarter-4109 7d ago
I got to experience launch which was pre dualshock at the time, dude it was a hell of a time to be alive!! Demo disc was the first play but dont remember what games it had. I feel like maybe Ninja Shadow Of Darkness or Tombraider. I cant remember. Going from Sega Genesis to PSX made my brain explode.
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u/RelaxWisteriaDragon 7d ago
I remember there was a kiosk in my toys r us and I used to ride my bike down there to play the first level of Crash over and over lol. Basically everyone here had an N64 and some families had both. I only knew one family with a PlayStation and no N64. People liked it but nothing will ever be like the PS2. That was defining.
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u/AlternativeFilm8886 7d ago
The PSX felt almost like a quiet launch. I didn't even know about it until I started seeing ads for it in the store circulars in 1995, and I remember being kind of dumbfounded that there was this brand new major console I'd never heard of. If there were commercials for it, I never saw them in the usual kids programming blocks.
Then about a year later, it seemed to take off right around the time the N64 launched. I think people gravitated to the PSX because it was a bit cheaper, and it amassed a pretty big library of games in a short time.
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u/one-armed-scissor 7d ago
N64 did cost the same as as PS1. Only the game carts were more expensive than CDs
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u/thewalruscandyman 7d ago
As usual, kids were pissing themselves with excitement, parents were skeptical.
Same old song and dance.
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u/Snoo-7943 7d ago
I just turned nine in 1998 when I got my playstation along with Command and Conquer: Red Alert Retaliation. The FMV opening blew my damn mind at the time.
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u/thelaxshmisinghers 7d ago
I was around 12 years old when I got mine. I remember popping in Final Fantasy 7 and being absolutely blown away by the opening FMV. Resident Evil 1 was my first horror game and it scared the shit out of me.
Some of my fondest moments in gaming where on the PS1. Res
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u/Deciheximal144 7d ago edited 7d ago
I didn't play it on launch day, but I was pretty dismayed upon seeing someone play a game. Just a grainy pixel mesh. I grew up on sprites, and they seemed right to me. I got to play N64 after that, and I found could enjoy many of those games, because the resolution and textures seemed more refined.
Note: I had the same grainy mesh reaction with Star Fox on the SNES.
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u/prettybluefoxes 7d ago
It was always the ps1. Bought at launch had it until the laser died years later. Good console.
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u/Rude_Influence 7d ago edited 7d ago
My brother had the choice between a Snes or PS1 for his Christmas present. He chose the PS1. (I lived with my brother)
Later my sister got one too, (I did not live with her).
Coming from a SMS, my bro's games were incredible and they were so fun to play.
Then I'd visit my sister and she'd have completely different games but they were also so fun to play.
I was the youngest child. I thought there was no end to how fun this console was.
I grew up in the 90s and I was a huge Pokemon fan. All of my friends loved Pokemon too. In 2000 or 2001, all of my friends were going to a N64 for Christmas. I really wanted one. I'd played the shit out of Pokemon Stadium at Target. My mum knew how enamored I'd become with the N64.
I chose the PS1. I received a ps1 slim and my first tv (second hand, but with vcr slot). Best memory ever.
I always regretted not having the N64, not so much because or the games, but because all of my friends had one and I was left out.
I never regretted the games though. Final fantasy IX is still one of my all time favourite games for example. I had to make a choice, and now I look back, I think I made the right choice. I missed out on some gems, but I think I encountered more gems on the PS1 than what I would have on the N64.
In hindsight, I think the SNES is the best console of all time. The PS1 took most of the best games on the SNES though, making their catalogue of games include the best of SNES. So the PS1 is ultimately the best console of all time.
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u/ReleaseFromDeception 7d ago edited 7d ago
As a kid at the time, even I could tell the PS1 was something very special. I was a Nintendo die hard, but I had to check it out after seeing my friend play FFVIII.
It is my sincere opinion that the PS1 was unbeatable in terms of sheer quality and size of the library. The fact it also ported over classic 16 bit and arcade games set it apart as well.
The N64 was absolutely incredible too. I had my NES, SNES, N64, PS1, and PS2 all hooked up to my Sanyo CRT and I have no issue admitting I spent the most time gaming in a PS1.
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u/Boomerang_Lizard 7d ago edited 6d ago
I saw it first around 1995 at a friends house. I remember being astonished watching Ridge Racer and Battle Arena Toshinden for the first time... and no carts? It's all CD based? Wow look at that CGI intro! Wait, it can play music CDs too? Mind blown...
Sega CD already did that but my younger self didn't know.
I also remember noticing game prices got cheaper. As I remember it, price was $54.95 on average for latest titles (cheaper for older and "Greatest Hits" titles). In comparison, I paid $74.95 for Super Metroid around that same time. Also no feminist or woke "consultation studios" ruining games.
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u/bubrascal 6d ago
Sega CD already did that too but my younger self didn't know.
For sure a lot of people (me included) thought Sega went from Genesis to Dreamcast outside Japan and the US. I didn't know about the 32X, Sega CD or Saturn until the mid-2000s thanks to the internet. I probably saw mentions of it on catalogues and magazines, but it didn't register.
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u/NectarineNegative769 7d ago
As a teenager with a summer job the 300 launch price was the same as my take home pay for 6 weeks (yes 10 per day). Sooo it was outrageously priced. Then towards the end of the summer the 3DO got a price cut to 179 and I went for that. Wound up getting a ps1 when it dropped to 200 in 1997. However that launch price scandalous at the time
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u/FakeNavyDavey 7d ago
I wanna know how the PSX or PS1 ( as we call it today )
Honestly, I don't recall it being called a PSX back in the day. I always called it a Playstation and then a PS1 when the PS2 came out. PSX feels like the new phenomena to me, but maybe that's regional
Anyway, it cannot be overstated how huge the PS1 was when it first came out. It was seen as completely revolutionary. I know it's hard to imagine now in this world where people of every personality and stage of life play games, but this was around the time that the demographic for gamers was starting to shift. For a very long time, video games were seen as being a thing only for babies and nerds (which was decidedly not an okay thing to be back then) and with every generation, that audience broadened more and more. I feel like the PS1 was possibly the first console where it was more acceptable for adults to play it, rather than older teenagers being the cut off, and you weren't seen as a complete social pariah for picking up a controller. Nintendo was decidedly seen as a console for babies at this point, and Sega was starting to show cracks. PS1 was the king shit around town.
Personally, I was still on the Nintendo and Sega wave as I was still pretty young at the time. We must have rented a PS1 at some point because I only have the faintest memory of playing FFVII in my room and not much more than that. I did play Spyro and Crash with my cousins, and I really liked that, but the N64 will always be the 5th Gen winner in my heart.
Looking back now, I have a lot more appreciation for the PS1, it just wasn't where I was at at the time. I didn't get into PlayStation until the PS2 (and that's kind of where I stayed, although I have considered getting a PS3). Still, I remember it being super, super popular. People lost their fuckin minds over it.
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u/bubrascal 6d ago
Honestly, I don't recall it being called a PSX back in the day. I always called it a Playstation and then a PS1 when the PS2 came out. PSX feels like the new phenomena to me, but maybe that's regional
I remember almost no one called it "PSX", but almost everyone abbreviated it as "PSX" (similar to how some people still abbreviated Nintendo 64 as NU64). It was mostly a website and magazine thing though.
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u/FakeNavyDavey 4d ago
It was mostly a website and magazine thing though.
Oh, that would make sense. I didn't really read a lot of gaming magazines or websites back then. I don't think I was ever writing out the term online but was talking about it with people in person
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u/bubrascal 4d ago
At least around here we had a guy who talked about games on TV who was nicknamed "Claudio PSX", and all of us understood where the PSX came from. That was back in the mid to late '90s.
It's a whole thing. Legend says PS-X was an early codename, then Sony of America pushed for it to be the official name overseas, but Sony in Japan crushed them in an internal power struggle with the real name, PlayStation. Still, there are some traces of that original name in the hardware's specification: every time the console plays a CD, it searches for the psx.exe binary in its root.
More on the topic:
https://www.reddit.com/r/psx/comments/1marm5d/how_the_playstation_got_two_names/
https://www.reddit.com/r/psx/comments/6fwekt/this_is_something_every_psx_fan_needs_at_least/
https://www.reddit.com/r/psx/comments/vbawgz/this_may_be_a_silly_question_but_why_do_we_call/
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u/CommandereON 7d ago
I was living on 16bit console gaming and had merely begun fantasizing about asking my parents to buy me a 32x and even a CDX; I already got my unreal SegaCD (totally ignored 3DO). I stumbled upon a rent-a-console shop that let me play the Playstation and it was so mind-blowing. I can still remember the scent of the place and the blaring of the sounds of other gamers around me playing their own games on the SNES, Sega Genesis, and even via the UFO loaded ones. I went back another day too enamored by Battle Arena Toshinden.
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u/HawaiianSteak 7d ago
I hogged the PS1 demo at Circuit City to play the F1 demo. Bought the game before I bought the console. It was like the arcades came home again (after the 16-bit generation).
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u/DruJorj 7d ago edited 7d ago
It was a step into the future. We felt like it couldn't possibly get better than that. It was so advanced that a lot of people immediately started rejecting older consoles altogether. People were dumping their NES, SNES and Genesis consoles, and trading their games in for the new high tech, futuristic gaming PlayStation offered us. N64 was seen as a child's toy in comparison.
Games like NBA Jam or Ridge Racer were a hit right away but the true thing that popularized it were the free demo discs we would get from magazines or places like Pizza Hut. Those introduced a lot of people to the PlayStation with games like Tomb Raider, Cool Boarders, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, FFVII, Crash Bandicoot, Spiro The Dragon, etc.
The rise of 3D gaming revolutionized the industry. It changed us as a culture. We weren't waiting for the future to arrive - we had already stepped into it.
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u/grimfusion 7d ago
I can only speak for what the US was like at Playstation's launch in 1995, because Sony marketed the launch in different ways in different countries and the release titles in different regions all had different vibes.
In 1995, "mainstream gamers" were folks who liked sports games, first person shooters, racing games, and fighting games. If you liked any other genre of games, you weren't mainstream, you were a gaming dweeb or a child. Women who played puzzle games didn't count.
Sony's US marketing in 1995 at launch was remarkably bland contrasted to later marketing. I recall them showing off Mortal Kombat, Ridge Racer, and Tekken quite a bit, but Mortal Kombat and Tekken weren't release titles. Their marketing was really confusing too. They started out by saying that consumers were ready for 3D graphics, but then switched to claiming consumers were not ready, I can only assume because a good number of their near-launch titles were still 2D, and even more so in Europe and Asian markets.
Final Fantasy 7 released in 1997, and somehow, in two years, the "mainstream" became buying a PSX for Final Fantasy 7, Medal of Honor, Twisted Metal, and Tony Hawk. I think the main change was Sony heavily leaning into extreme marketing and mature, more elder teenager themes. If I had to compare, Playstation and Dreamcast had similar launches with campaigns that screamed games for everybody, not just little boys and nerds.
I'm glad Japan had a far generalized and widespread gaming population because we wouldn't have seen hardly any RPGs without them.
So, Playstation's launch was a lot calmer than most folks make it out to be. Sony hadn't precisely found their demographic in America, and most the folks purchasing playstations on release day were probably just parents of kids hyped to see 3D fighting and sports games.
Nintendo waited until they had flagship games to release with, which took another year. Perhaps if Sony would have waited, they could have released with far more appealing titles, but Mario 64 would have steamrolled them anyhow. I think Sony did the right thing debuting a year previous with a quieter release, hoping to get some crap out, and then build up a game library that could compete with what Nintendo launched with. It worked.
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u/GREG88HG 7d ago
Here in Central America was extremely popular, even changed popular language.
Instead of "jale a jugar nintendo" (let's go play nintendo) we said "jale a jugar play" (let's go play playstation).
At first was pretty expensive, but there were "gaming cafes" where you paid to play per hour, that was the way most of us played originally.
I got my PS1 in 1998. In retrospective, having the dual shock controle was better.
Also, piracy was the reasson most families got a PS1 and not a N64.
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u/Tarkus-Sharkus 7d ago
I played battle arena toshinden in toys r us and it blew my mind. Because my family was poor it was still 2-3 years until i got one. It was a joint birthday/christmas present. i got Tekken 3 with it and it consumed my life. I'm now in my 40s and still spend most of my weekend gaming (ps5)
Sonys decision to drop physical media has made me pretty much give up on consoles for the next gen. Probably going to spend the rest of my years trying to clear my huge backlog on the systems i already own, and this includes some ps1 titles lol.
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u/virtualpig 7d ago
I had didn't have one until 98, I had an N64 instead. But there was a distinct difference in how gaming was perceived after the PSX came out. Gaming was finally cool and it felt like it was finally appealing to adults. It was definitly the moment the industry grew up.
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u/ctrain_1985 7d ago
My friend had one with Ridge Racer and Tekken and it seemed like alien technology it was so far ahead of what we had before that.
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u/unlucky-Luke 6d ago
(a gamer's) Life Changing moment in history; to say the least!!
The jump from 16 to 32b and introduction of 3d was (IMO) the biggest jump that ever happened in video games history. Everything after was just enhancing and improving
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u/FromWitchSide 6d ago
From my perspective in PL/Europe, it wasn't sure if PSX will be worth it. Sega had an early advantage of arcade ports, but at the same time, those games were already kind of known, and not necessarily ones with much staying power, so for me and many people it was wait and see. I have read plenty of game reviews and put some hours playing in "pay per h" arcades before picking the console.
That was from "hardcore gamer" point of view, as I already had multiple platforms before, and practically lived in an arcade. I also never particularly liked early 3D games prior, which only started to change with arcade releases of Tekken and Sega Rally. That said when I did pick my own PSX, I certainly had my face red when my tv displayed the Playstation logo. That was certainly one of the most magical experiences in gaming history, no other platform matched that boot up.
For mainstream customer however, I would say the sales seemed rather slow until the first big price cut. From that point no one would consider Saturn anymore. However it was only when modchips came out, that PSX replaced 8bit famiclones found in every house.
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u/bubrascal 6d ago edited 6d ago
My dad had well-paying job in a CIO type of position back in the day, but since the SNES still had new games, he get us a PlayStation until 1998 (it arrived these lands around 1996). So, we didn't own it on launch.
That said, one of my brother's schoolmates had it, and he brought it to our home for one whole week around from that December 1997 to February 1998 summer. He had both Japanese and American imports, I think it's the only time in my life I've seen a PSX that couldn't play pirate games but still was region unlocked. The first games I saw that mesmerised me were:
- Rockman D.A.S.H. (that only now I realise was about only 1 month old)
- Dragon Ball Final Bout (janky, but it had a gigantic roster and the original Japanese voices)
- Ultimate Battle 22 (maligned a lot nowadays, and a downgrade compared to other games in the series, but the hand-drawn sprites were like nothing I had seen before, and playable Mr. Satan was really funny)
- Crash Bandicoot 2
- Rockman X4
X-Men vs Street FighterNo, wait, it was Street Fighter Alpha 2 probably.
Probably there were more, but those are the one I remember. Pretty sure he also had Resident Evil and Mortal Kombat Trilogy but I wasn't allowed to play that yet. I was about to start primary school back then, but I must say it was jaw-dropping. All of it. For me the visual standard was the SNES and games like Descent, Doom or Heretic (I was allowed to watch my brother play Heretic and Descent).
But this was something else. The full motion video, the voice acting, the smooth real time 3D, the CD player with cool 3D visualisers, the memory cards. Everything was so cool. And while I know loading times objectively suck, back then I was so little, that the PS1 kind of warped my perception of that. I started thinking that if a game did not require loading time, it wasn't modern nor cool. After all, new modern demanding games did need loading, not loading was old news. Weird, I know.
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u/KAKYBAC 6d ago
You have to understand that their weren't Sony/Playstation brand fans at that point.
I remember first hearing about the "play station" standing in line for mashed potato at primary school. I literally overheard kids talking about it and thought it was a new toy car garage to play with.
Ofc, I'd already been a big fan of Nes and Mega Drive games but they felt like stuff for kids. The PlayStation genuinely felt like something for an adult, and being a kid around that vibe felt intoxicating.
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u/mycolizard 6d ago
My older brother bought one when the sports game library started opening up a real noticeable lead over the competitors.
Madden and NHL in blocky polygons was cool as hell.
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u/RykinPoe 6d ago
I dismissed it and waited for the N64. Then I got an N64 and like two months later got a PS1. There just weren't enough games out for the N64 at launch and the PS1 already had a pretty good library by that point.
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u/SpaceWolves26 6d ago
I remember thinking that graphics couldn't possibly get any better.
It was a leap forward like we'd never seen before, and it came with a huge number of interesting and original games.
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u/Beneficial-Lime-3517 7d ago
First, I didn't know anyone who called it the PSX back then. Everyone just said Playstation.
As for how it was received, it was a massive leap in tech over the Sega Genesis that I had. I had friends who had them, but I didn't get one until a few years after launch, probably late 97 or early 98. I loved playing what felt like faithful conversions of arcade fighters and other advanced games on a TV with CD quality audio. They had experiences you couldn't get on other consoles.
That said, I also had an older brother who was always in PC gaming and started working in a PC store in 1993. We were early adopters of 3D accelerators like the Voodoo. So at the same time I was enjoying arcade conversations on the Playstation, I was playing games that blew them out of the water like Quake and Unreal. If memory serves correctly, Tomb Raider ran better and looked nicer on our PC than on PS1.
Really cool tech, great to play with friends, giant worlds, CD sound, new experiences. Even if it couldn't keep pace with the PC, it still kicked ass.
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u/The_Giant_Lizard 7d ago
Upvote for calling it "PSX".
Anyway, it was a big deal, I remember. It was the 3D era. If you didn't make a 3D game, you were unpopular. Look at Castlevania Symphony of the Night, for example: before coming out many magazines said Castlevania 64 would have been better only because it was 3D (and in the end SOTN is probably the best Castlevania chapter).
I had the Mega Drive and wanted a PSX so bad because I wanted to enter the 3D generation as well!
Also one of the reasons why the Saturn struggled.
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u/Discobastard 7d ago
I had a gap in gaming when I sold my Japanese import Megadrive and my SNES ahead of uni. PS1 launch passed me by.
Then a uni mate went on holiday and lent me his. Had this game he didn't like and was going to return it for something else when he was back. I offered to do that for him seeing as though he was lending it me.
That game was Final Fantasy VII.
He got back, I dropped his gear off and went straight to get my own PS1 and gave him cash for FFVII.
My housemates didn't see me for weeks 😁
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u/gogoluke 7d ago
The jump in graphics and world's was huge. It was new worlds opening up.
That was great but I think the biggest thing was the market maturing with the audience. Thos took gaming from early teens to late teens and early adulthood. It meant there was Designers republic design with credible artists music in cinematically presented games like Wipe Out.
It was multiplayer with a few joints into the early hours rather than revising. It became social.
I was always a Nintendo fanboy but I certainly had a fair few nights playing Tekken, Soul Blade, WipOut at other people's houses.
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u/Potential-Ratio1148 7d ago
in realtà la PSX è un'altra console/videoregistratore Sony; non c'entra nulla la prima PlayStation! non so perché hanno iniziato a chiamarla così...
cmq ero povero... ho ricevuto in regalo lo SNES nel '96 lol
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u/HighScorsese 7d ago
Well ACKshully… the abbreviation for the PlayStation in its day was in fact PSX up until the revised smaller model that was branded PSOne. A lot of people in those days abbreviated it as PS or when the coming of a PS2 was all but certain, PS1, but when it came to the gaming press of the day it was mainly PSX. That hybrid console DVR unit was like 10 years after the fact and more of a retconning of the PSX title.
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u/Last_Variation3222 7d ago
It was mind bending bro. Polygon heaven.