THE RANT: In the mid 90s this became THE system to get. I remember reading about this in GameFan magazine and thinking "That'll last two weeks." Boy was I wrong. Sony reportedly threw over $500 million dollars into it's advertising campaign when this thing came out in about 1994. Well, you get what you pay for. The only real competition came from the underpowered Sega Saturn (the N64 was still a year away.)
The console had three advantages from the get go: Sony was a dependable worldwide corporation with brand name recongnition and tons of cash, the cost of printing CDs was way lower than manufacturing cartridges, and the system was extremely easy to devleop for. Sony totally destroyed the competition, sold Playstations on like a 10 to 1 basis, and knocked Nintendo out of the number one spot they'd held since 1985. Nobody saw it coming. Pretty soon all the cool 3rd party developers that had exclusive licensing agreements with Nintendo jumped ship and flew over to Sony's camp.
Now with the PS2's backward compatibility this machine is totally obsolete. I got in mine in 1998 from this stoner fool named Ryan who was feinding for weed so bad he sold his Playstation to me for $40. Who knew drug addicts were such a good resource for collecting game systems?
The system sold over 50 million units worldwide and was re-relased in 1998 in a sleeker shell as the PsOne.
THE GOOD: The console it's self is a mixed bag. It looks neato enough, not enough like a toy to make you embarrassed or anything. Sony went for the 18-25 year old age group right from the beginning with games like Loaded, Battle Arena Toshinden, Metal Gear Solid, etc. They were not afraid to pile on the blood, gore, or skimpy female outfits (this forced Nintendo to go the kiddy-game route with the N64.) Games like Metal Gear Solid, Grand Theft Auto, and Final Fantasy XII changed the way people think about video games. They're not just simple diversions for geeky computer kids, now they're more like movies that appeal to a broader general audience with wider entertainment value. Every game system since the beginning of time has been trying to break through to this level and this was the system that finally did it. If you want good, asskicking games with adult themes this is the system to get.
THE BAD: The early consoles had a tendency to screw up sometimes, like the lens would get dirty, the drive that spins the CD would wear out, etc. Later editions of the console tend to be more trustworthy. I'm sorry, I just do not like the Playstation controller. It's just...funky. The whole pistol grips thing is just unnatural to me. One the good side they are pretty durable, unlike all the controllers for every other game system since 1985. Luckily it's not hard to find a decent 3rd party controller that works better. While there are a lot of incredible and revolutionary games for this system there sure are a lot of stinkers as well. About 3 out of 5 Playstation games suck log, especially towards the end of it's life cycle because ironically the last games released for it are kiddy fare like Barbie or Disney games.
THE UGLY: Since the PS2 came out people have been dropping this system like a bad habit. You can't give these things away now, the used game store I go to has a whole room of them stacked to the ceiling.
