PlayStation 30th Anniversary

[BinaryMessiah]

If anyone hasn't already heard, the PS5 now has temporary themes for each PlayStation generation, and they are fantastic, including the original boot-up screen for the PS1. I hope these stay! As for the anniversary: What are your fondest memories? How many of those 30 years were you a PlayStation fan?

For me, I got the first PlayStation on Xmas of 97/98. Even my mom can't exactly remember. It was used from a pawnshop and came with the demo for the first Crash Bandicoot. I got Mortal Kombat 3 for it. Sadly, I had the system for less than a year before my youngest sister destroyed it. I remember going into a local game store, and they said it would be more expensive to replace the laser than to buy another used system. Fast forward 30 years later, and I could have done it myself, as I mod consoles now for fun. I wish I had that knowledge back then!

I was a huge PS2 fan. I never owned an Xbox or GameCube, but came to appreciate them later on. The OG Xbox is now my main console of that generation for all multi-platform games. I got a PS3 in 2009 after the slim came out but was originally an Xbox 360 fan. That system just hit it off just right but slowly fell behind Sony and lost nearly all of their exclusives to other platforms. I got a PS4 6 months after launch, and I'm here now. I didn't get my PS5 until 2022 thanks to the system being nearly impossible to find for so long.

 

[Strategist]

I was on board with the Playstation idea as soon as it was announced. Sony had an impeccable reputation in the consumer electronics sphere before jumping into gaming and there was no way this project was going to be a failure in my mind. The decision to go with CD-ROMs cemented it for me. I had seen what CD-ROM technology could do for gaming with the Sega CD and the 3DO. I was a bit worried in 1996 with the early batch of games, none of them were particularly impressive to me. Then Tomb Raider came out and it impressed me. And then Final Fantasy VII made my decision clear, along with a slight price drop. It didn't hurt that the N64 was more expensive than the PS1, and the N64 games would often be priced at 80-90 dollars, while the PS1 games topped at 60.

 

[Yousef]

I’ve been PlayStation fan since around 2004-ish, so I’d say I’ve been a fan for 20 of those 30 years. I started with both ps1 and ps2 funnily enough. On ps1 side, I had crash, pepsiman (yes really), metal slug x, tekken 3 and a couple other games. On ps2 side I had Dynasty Warriors 4, Pac-Man world 2, crash again, Megaman x8, gta, tekken 5…. I’d actually be here all day listing it all haha

 

[Deleted member 2175]

My fondest memory of the Playstation is actually Christmas '97, which I think for a huge number of people was when they got theirs, Crash Bandicoot 2, Tomb Raider II and a transparent lime green memory card. Love the original Xbox, built like a tank and the motor on that disc drive is so smooth.

 

[kaharg]

i got my ps1 around 2 years into its life i got it dirt cheap and it came with about 50 demo disks so i had a really good idea of what games to get also my brothers friend was one of the first guys in the area to start modding them so i had it done for basically free because while i loved rpgs he loved racing games but was too tight to buy a system for himself or buy games full priced for mine so got his friend to mod it. i still have it with around 1200 cough backup cough games. my mum got me my ps2 on release the shop that sold it had a release party with competitions to win games accessories and other goodies i came home with tekken tag and ridge racer v and a ps2 cap also still have the original ps2 to this day still works perfectly with no problems only now it runs mx4sio games instead of physical disks as for the rest ps3 and 4 as well as psp and vita no real stories to them i just sort of acquired the over the years though the handhelds are modded now as for ps5 im honestly not interested in it there are still so many games ive not played on these older systems that even if i live to be 100 thats still 57 years of games i will most likely still miss out on some good ones

 

[Strategist]

Oh yeah, one of the hidden benefits of the PS1 is how easy it was to pirate games. A friend of mine clued me into a mod chip that could be plugged into the serial port. It allowed to circumvent the copyright protection in the loading screen and play CD-R discs. I burned a bunch of games when I was in college from my friends copies. That was fun times.

 

[kaharg]

yeah it was like the wild west of games when i went to the local market. there'd be a dozen guys selling copies and when the cops showed up they would quickly fill there bags and make a run for it. i especially remember one time shortly after the ps2 came out these guys were wanting to get rid of there ps1 games cheap that day i went home with about 100 games for maybe £10 didn't know what most of them were just went of the cover pics but two of them have always stuck with me legend of legaia and the almost masterpiece legend of dragoon with its four disks god those games were good

 

[Scott]

I Remember it took me a bit to get a PlayStation. I had a gf and 2 kids to take care of then, but when I finally got one it was just fantastic! It was around 1997 that I bought a brand new one, the SCPH-5001 model, and I ended up selling that one as it wasn't reading the game discs very well ( I had bought Mega Man X4 used and it was skipping!) and got a 7501 model in 1998 to replace it. I absolutely loved the demo discs and the Jampacks you could get. It was just great to be able to try out games before you bought. A few of my favorite games are: Fighting Force, Akuji - The Heartless, Bishi Bashi Special, Gungage (love the music on that one), Jet Moto 2, Metal Gear Solid, Klonoa, NASCAR Rumble, Ridge Racer Type 4. One of my favorite systems of all time. So many good games and memories! I still play the PS1 games today quite a bit on my Xbox Series X. Take care!

 

[Waffles]

The PlayStation 1 was the first console I had ever stared at in awe. Looked so futuristic and fun... I played mine literally to the death. It will no longer power on. Let that be a testament to its greatness.

 

[dropsmegamega]

PS1 and PS2 are my favorite consoles of all time. My brothers introduced me to PS1 when I was really young, it was very impressive to me as the only games I knew up to that point were NES stuff like mario and duck hunt. And between demo discs and pirate games we had such a big library of games, stuff like GTA2, Klonoa, Medievil, the Squaresoft RPGs, platformers like Crash and Spyro, even random stuff like Pepsiman. And basically there is always new PS1 games to try and discover, even right now as I am finally playing Linda³! And same for the PS2, which basically kept the same soul as the PS1.

Then the PS3, although it was impressive at the start and I can't say I disliked it, lacked the variety and spirit of the past consoles. Its probably more of a general industry problem of course, as games became more expensive to make and the market shifted towards something more geared towards realism. By that time consoles also got progressively more expensive in my country and also I was getting older and had less time to play games, so I lost interest in consoles after the PS3 and became solely a PC player, but regardless of that I have great memories of my times with PS consoles.

 

[DunkeyKong]

Some people even said that they might create more like the PS2 until the PS4
It probably will happen and the PS2 one has gotta be the most nostalgic theme if it was added

 

[MajesticSiN]

Mini Ps2 Classic when

 

[Pop]

Some friends of my parents gave me their PSOne and I started using it regularly once the Pokemon thing started dying down (cuz that DEFINATLY took priority over almost everything else xD).

The first two rpgs I actually owned (also the only ones I had, wasn't able to get a hold of many outside of renting) at the time were Legend of Dragoon and Final Fantasy Tactics, and so those two games were the basically the main, or at least the initial, reason why it became my favourite genre. (which is actually not a bad duo now that i've gotten to play others)

The ps2 thing was really social, like a play stuff with friends kind of time. Wasting paper printing out guides, trying to plow through games over a weekend.

ps3 introduced me to the elder scrolls, as I hadn't even heard of the earlier titles at that point and that was almost the only thing I used it for, didn't really need anything else.

 

[Parasite_Steve]

Not the first console I played but definitely the first I owned and I have incredibly fond memories of the PSX and PS2 days.
My family was mostly into home computers, so I grew up with Atari ST, C64 and eventually dos and win95 games. I have early memories of being really terrible at Toshinden and being amused by the soundbites of all the characters "thunder ring!" My older brother also briefly owned the pc version of Resident Evil.
We didn't get a psx until 97 which to this day ranks as one of my favorite years in gaming, period. I was totally blown away by Abe's Oddysee, Crash Bandicoot 2 and of course the big one: Final Fantasy 7. Almost 30 years later it's hard to appreciate just how big this game was and how fascinating. Furthermore in pal territories this was the first Final Fantasy we got too. I was slightly perplexed by the 7 in the title because of that. Imagine my confusion when shiny entertainment released Wild 9 a few years later. Trust issues.
Most of the early psx games weren't that impressive really but from 97 on it was just full speed ahead, MGS, Tenchu, Crash 3, Spyro, the Squaresoft games, Resident Evil 2, Need for speed hot pursuit, Tekken 3. Solid gold all the way into the PS2 era which similarly stumbled a bit early on, only to shell out banger after banger.
I got my own psx in late 99. It came with 10 games, most of which I have sadly forgotten. The only good titles I remember were MDK, Poy Poy 2, Sentinel Returns and ODT. Not the strongest line up to start with but when I got Tony Hawk's Pro Skater for christmas that year I was officially in love. Even in hindsight, having hundreds of games available through emulation, I don't regret choosing it over the N64.
I got my PS2 relatively early in 2001 (they were sold out for months on end) and spent the next year playing exclusively Timesplitters and Tekken Tag Tournament every waking hour (or so it felt), maybe taking a short break every once in a while for the SSX and Wild Wild Racing demos. Eventually later that year more classics started to drip in, especially in the 3D platformer genre and I've yet to run out of new games to try for the system. It may be my favorite console of all time and the one I own the most games for.
I got into both the PS3 and 4 super late in contrast. Around the time the PS3 came out I started to become a bit disenchanted with modern gaming and looking back, yeah, those years were rough on every system. I got into retro gaming instead and spent that entire hardware generation with the Saturn and Dreamcast. As a plus the PS2 was suddenly very uncool so I could build a large library of games for cheap which I repeated with the PS3 a few years later when the PS4 came out. I basically sat out that generation too because at the time I was focused on turning music into a career (didn't work out, lol) and traveling (it did, 26 countries and counting). Any money spent on gaming felt like a waste. I did finally get a PS4 pro about three years ago when I got back into this hobby and honestly I've been having an absolute blast since. Bloodborne has become one of my top ten favorite games (partly for turning me trans of course) and there's still new releases for it, especially in the indie realm. I'm not interested much in buying a PS5 at this point, there aren't enough exclusives yet, but I'll probably get one eventually.

 

[moonbits]

I loved my PS1, PS2 but the PS3 slowly made me loose my fate on Playstation. Overpriced, cocky, lack of games at the beginning, terrible optimizations, laggy piss poor online store. They did some tremendously awful shit and somehow ended up winning As the wise Chard Warden says: "Sony Always Wins". The PS4 was great, great games and great user experience, sleek design and hit all the right notes.
I don't have a PS5 and frankly I am not that interested, it seems like they again got cocky, but somehow still win.

My favorite memory was playing from 2003-2006 where I played so many games. DMC3, MGS2/3, Gran Turismo 3, Kingdom Hearts 2, Jak 2, Sly Cooper, God of War, SMT3 Nocturne, Silent Hill 3. I had it modded too so I played so many RPGs like FFX, Valkyrie Profile, Persona 3: FES. Budokai 3 with my best friend all night.

It was my happy place. My room was just my desk for homework and my CRT TV with an AV to 3.5mm to play with headphones.

 

[Ikagura]

I love that pic but it kinda makes me sad about the IPs that are unused.

 

[Octopus]

The PS1 and 2 are my personal favourite retro consoles, so hell yeah . So many good memories of being genuinely too frightened to keep playing Resident Evil 2 and especially 3, I used to be a wimp when it came to horror. I used to have an expansive physical PS1/2 collection but ended up losing it in a lot of moves, so now I have an expansive rom library of course.

 

[DunkeyKong]

View attachment 3190

I love that pic but it kinda makes me sad about the IPs that are unused.

This one actually made me a bit emotional, truly the peak era

 

[ShinnAsukaYESTaylorSwiftNO]

Playstation is 30 years old?!

Man, I feel old.

 

[IrkenElite]

the ps3 theme is the best, that menu sound can't be beaten....wish it was permanent

 

[Cheela]

I was more of a Nintendo fan in my teen years, but my first console was actually a PS2. It was funny because i remember asking for a Gamecube instead but to be honest i am happy that i got a ps2 instead. My favorite memories of my childhood was playing in my ps2 with my father, games like Top Spin, Need for Speed, Guitar Hero and a SNES emulator called SNES Station will forever be one of my cherished moments in my life. I also love a lot of the PS1 catalog because of my cousins that had a PSone. Games like Crash Bandicoot, Pacman World and Twisted Metal.
Then i got a PS3 for super cheap in 2019 and i got to play some modern games like Persona 5 and Killzone, but i used it more as a PS1 and PS2 box with HDMI to be honest.
Recently i also got a PSP, i wanted one as a kid soo badly because of Mortal Kombat Unchained and GTA Vice city stories. Now that i have my own money it was one of the first things that i bought one and absolutely loved it.
Sadly, i don't have a PS4 or a PS5, but recent games are becoming available on PC soo i have played games like Horizon Zero Dawn.
Now days i don't care what console is best, i love a lot of games from the Playstation that i ve played in recent years. Happy 30 years Playstation!