PlayStation Era is the Greatest, Period
Amidst the excellent new games on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 today, gamers are still powering up their PlayStations playing classics they loved or missed. To put in in simple terms, nothing beats the time when the PlayStation hit our living room SDTVs. It all started on September 9, 1995 (approximately a year after Japan received the console).
Of course, the Nintendo 64 and Sega Dreamcast came around during PlayStation's reign, trying to knock it off the throne. And while each system did pack some awesome game's such as the N64's Goldeneye and Super Smash Bros. and the Dreamcast's Jet Grind Radio and Sonic Adventure, developers continually chose the PlayStation as their console of choice.
PlayStation was domicile of some of the greatest RPGs of all time. In 1997, Square Enix released the critically-acclaimed Final Fantasy VII on the console, getting almost perfect to perfect scores in nearly every review. This followed the release of Final Fantasy VIII and Final Fantasy IX, another of my personal favorites. Grandia was another RPG of choice released by Sony Computer Entertainment.
The console also featured many loved franchises that have went bad today. This includes the first three Crash Bandicoot titles, which were amazing back in the day and the first three Tony Hawk's Pro Skater titles. If only Crash wasn't sold to the now-gone Vivendi (transferred to Activision) where he was milked like a cow producing terrible games like Crash of the Titans. Poor guy.
And of course, who could forget Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, Tekken 3, Syphon Filter, Silent Hill, Persona 2, Mega Man Legends, Twisted Metal, Tomb Raider, Fear Effect and Driver.Among all of these great titles, there were even more in greater abundance. Even a game like Digimon World 3 was pretty awesome, especially if you're an RPG fan.
Then there was Metal Gear Solid, considered by many to be the greatest game at all on the console. Metal Gear Solid was Hideo Kojima's pride and glory, containing the best stealth and action combination seen at the time, as well as including some of the best graphics of the time as well. Metal Gear Solid ended up with a 94 average review rating, shipping over six million copies worldwide.
Nowadays, many of us, including myself, sit back and put aside our PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 games for a couple of hours, and pop in the classics we have stowed away. Some part of us may be doing it for the memories of playing them in our youth, other parts may just be playing because the game is pure awesome. I know I'm doing it for both.
I just want to mention an add-on released for the console only in Japan, called the PocketStation. While it was only released in Japan, I owned one myself just because I'm a huge PlayStation fan. It was easily usable on North American PSones using the switch method when playing Japanese games to access features available to the PocketStation.
What the PocketStation's main function did was allow gamers to continue playing their PSone games on the go. Now of course, that doesn't mean the CD-ROM, but what it did was add a little feature to your PocketStation that you could later place back into your game save. The PockeStation's other main function was just adding some little side-games from that PlayStation game that you can play on the go. It also featured a clock, infrared communication capability, and doubled as a PlayStation memory card.
In the Japanese (and North American) release of Final Fantasy VIII, a PockeStation mini-game was added called Chocobo World. This allowed gamers to play as a Chocobo and grow your very own by advancing him through 100 different maps and experience many different events. Players could level up their Chocobos and fight each other through the infared communication on the PocketStation. Other games released in Japan, such as Pocket Digimon World, allowed you to bring along your creature, raise it on the go, then upload it back into the game.
Sony did extremely well in the PlayStation era. Starting from the release of the PlayStation in 1995 to the release of the newly designed PSone in 2000 (pictured above). The same goes for the traditional PlayStation controller to the DualShock controller and the Memory Card to the PocketStation. They were all an evolution for the first PlayStation, and they were damn good ones. It's an era that went down in history as a transformation in the world of gaming.
Sometimes I just want to go back to the times where we played games without worrying about the amount of trophies or achievements we had and that we played a game solely for the fun of the game. That's the PlayStation for you.
It's okay to live in the past, at least in this case.
http://scrawlfx.com/2009/03/playstation-era-is-the-greatest-period
______________________________
WELL.......to each his own
for me PS days = FF, tomb Raider, GT (HE didn't even MENTION THIS)
But PS360 generation = BEST for me......its the generation that turned me into a hardcore gamer!
______________________
_____________________
