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The PlayStation Turns 20
An anonymous reader writes: The 3rd of December marks an auspicious date in gaming history: 20 years ago today, the very first PlayStation went on sale in Japan. In that time, Sony has successfully muscled its way into the gaming scene, and seen off a few rivals as well. In a new retrospective, a writer looks back at how Sony's console series has changed gaming, from introducing the DVD and the Blu-ray disc to innovations like the second screen PocketStation and the still untapped power of Remote Play and Gaikai game streaming.
Coming in 3.. 2.. 1..
Nor will I illegally download any of their products
Coming in 10**100.. 10**100-1... 10**100-2..
innovations like the second screen PocketStation
Not only was PocketStation released after Sega's VMU, it doesn't even function as a second screen. Both devices plug into the memory card slot, but while the Dreamcast's memory card slot is in the controller (which makes the screen usable while playing games), the PlayStation's memory card slot is in the console.
Nice try attempting to rewrite history in Sony's favor.
innovations like the second screen PocketStation and the still untapped power of Remote Play and Gaikai game streaming.
The PocketStation was never released outside Japan and most playstation owners have likely never even heard of it, let alone have made use of it. And when you go in to "still untapped power", you venture deep into slashvertisement territory.
I know there are tons of Sony fanboys here on slashdot, but this is a bit absurd.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Are they first-party or otherwise? If otherwise, have you written to the publisher's support department and asked when the PC port is coming out?
Have you tried PCSX2?
While the single thumbstick was certainly an advance, I don't think you can sell dual thumbsticks short--it was a big advance. Being able to work two sticks at once (often one as character control and one as camera control) made a big difference.
The funny part is, they didn't expect it to be. The second thumbstick was added only because the designers thought it made the controller look more balanced.
Except that the real innovation was to introduce ONE thumbstick, and it was done by Nintendo with the N64 controller. Whatever...
I'm not really sure what Nintendo was thinking but I'm pretty sure the N64 controller was designed for three armed aliens. It was really awkward to use for video games that made full use of all the buttons on the controller because since the majority of games made use of the thumbstick and trigger half of the controller would be inaccessible at any given time.
This was shortly after the NES and partially Atari completely ruined everything. Companies thought they could put out anything that was vaguely a game, regardless of quality and fun level, and people would buy it. There were more bad Atari games than the NES but still, there were some real tragedies from no-name startup companies that instantly bankrupted them. When the Playstation came out, they enforced better standards and suddenly game makers realized games couldn't suck. This was just in time for the whole world to start considering video games a fad and collapsing the entire market.
The only real reason to celebrate the Playstation is that it dramatically increased the average age of gamers, which is definitely a positive thing.
All those 10-year-olds in the 1990's who got a Playstation for Christmas are now playing video games in their 30's. Yeah, whatever. I got an Atari 2600 in the 1980's and I'm still playing video games in my 40's. We played our video games with ONE JOYSTICK and ONE RED BUTTON!
I generally hate any game products from Japanese countries, since they're such nationalistic/xenophobic and conformist society (Japan always gets all the releases first, every game is on-rails with the same lame anime style, and so on). But I did buy a PS1 (because I hate Nintendo even more than Sony) and a PS4 (because MS made all the wrong moves in the early days of the XboxOne). So that says SOMETHING about the quality of their consoles.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Yeah. Great. Now instead of having all sorts of interesting platformers, side-scollers, RPGs, etc, etc, etc. with a wide range of innovative and interesting gameplay mechanics, I can now choose between 10,000 slightly different versions of "run around shooting people in 3D" with various different graphics slapped on. What progress.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Did it really increase the gamer's age? or is that just a function of.. time?
I'm 32. I got an NES in 2nd grade at age 7. After playing video games for so many years, buying a PS4 or Xbox doesn't seem that outlandish.
But to a to a 32 year old back in 198x (or earlier for atari, etc) -- lacking that familiarity with video games and not spending gobs of their formative years zombifying themselves in front of a console, would they have been quite as inclined to purchase an NES or atari?
Sure the games are less kid oriented now, but that's only part of it.
And it wasn't proportional.
PCSX2 requires a lot of horsepower for some games (ie: some of them are unplayable even with a Core2duo running at 3.8)
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
In other words, people who grew up with consoles are still buying them...
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
You can fit a lot of savegames on a memory card. Besides, Cartridges and optical discs were better since games had to be more or less bug-free. Now with HDDs in consoles they are selling alpha material and patching afterwards.
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
The only model with built in ethernet is the PS2 slim.
If memory serves me correctly, a couple of the later "Fat" PS2 boxes included Network Adapters. That being just before the release of the Slim's
It's nearly impossible to use one on a modern TV without horrendously bad image quality
Component cables, set the thing for Pb/Cr/Cb output. While most games are 4:3 480i, there are some with 480p or 1080i and/or widescreen modes. Even at 480i, they'll still look nicer over component.
I think it brought older gamers back into the fold. I remember a lot of people buying Playstations that were people that played Mario when it was new.
We played our video games with ONE JOYSTICK and ONE RED BUTTON!
You had a joystick *and* a button? Luxury! I used to *dream* of having a joystick. I only had a disconnected joystick cable and I'd control it by making the connections with my tongue.
And the button wire was missing. And I didn't have any games. Or a computer.
But you know, I were happy in those days, even though I was poor.
(FWIW, I was still using that type of one-button Atari-format joystick on my Amiga until the mid-90s when the Amiga died altogether as a mainstream format and I was losing interest in games anyway. That was probably the point at which the "classic" one-button 9-pin Atari stick died(?); I don't count the Mega Drive/Genesis controller, as that had three buttons even though it used the 9-pin Atari connector and was sort-of-compatible).
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Another little tidbit is that at one time, Sony was planning on releasing a PS2 badged LCDTV/monitor. IIRC it was a 1080i model, 15" Think they were planning on selling it for $500. I think some of the SCEfoo people on the PS2 Linux forums had them and loved them.
You can see the thing here: http://www.psu.com/forums/show...
They showed it off at a few events in 2001, alongside that PS2 running Netscape/AOL. That's the same keyboard/mouse they bundled with the PS2 Linux kits.
Pretty damn close it did. Sony released the PS2 on March 4, 2000. Until January 4, 2013, Sony would sell you a new PS2. Twelve years and 10 months. Close enough.
You can fit a lot of savegames on a memory card.
Not on the original PS1 memory card. It was like using floppy disks again, since the official PS1 memory card held 128kB of data, divided into 15 8kB blocks. Many games required more than one block, meaning that if you had a bunch of games that needed to save, and a household with more than one user, you needed a lot of memory cards, or a "super" memory card. I had one which was 2MB I think, divided into 16 128k "pages." Buttons on the memory card itself selected what page was active and would be read by the playstation. I have not-so-fond memories of corrupted memory cards (the non-Sony ones were problematic) and of using the PS1 interface to copy saved game data between cards.
I had three Commodore 64's for ten years (1984-1994) from middle school through college. Unlike the always breaking joysticks I had for the Atari 2600, I had a single third-party joystick with the red button on top for the entire ten years. Mid-1990's was when Pentium PCs became more affordable and widespread. I switched to keyboard and mouse on the PC to play Doom.
I switched to keyboard and mouse on the PC to play Doom.
Must have been Doom95. Classic 1993 DOOM doesn't have mouse support.
Many games required more than one block
I wouldn't say many. Most were 1 block, some were 2, more than 2 was uncommon.
The worst one I have is PSone Diablo. 10 blocks for the actual game save, another block for saved options, and another block for saved characters you weren't currently playing. The second worst one I have is the PS1 Diablo-clone, Darkstone. 6 blocks for a save.
On the PS4 now versus the Nintendo or Atari then? Not even close.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I hear this complaint a lot but I am wondering what games actually required the entire control stick at once? There was never any indication that you were supposed to hold all three "prongs" at once, no N64 game had you attempt this, and the manual even instructed that you'd be using the controller in one of two ways.
Normally you'd either use the Dpad and L button, or analogue stick and Z button. You gained no more buttons depending on the position of your left hand.
While in the grand scheme of things, gamepad quality ranks somewhere near the color of socks I am currently wearing, if I had mod points, I would totally mod you up.
http://www.devbattles.com/en/s...
Yeah there are no interesting platformers and sidescrollers like Super Mario 3D World, Shovel Knight, Super Meat Boy, no interesting RPGs like Dark Souls or Skyrim, and if you think there are no innovative gameplay mechanics then you must have stopped playing games years ago. I could name a hundred innovative games released in the last five years alone.
Sick of these old farts 'oh it were better in my day'. Yeah better when you had an Atari with 4000 space games that consisted of pressing a button to shoot a pixel at aliens.