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[IGN] How the PlayStation Changed Everything

SmokedMeat

Gamer™
Didnt tons of games have sequels?

Capcom had a shit ton during the PS1 and PS2 eras....Resident Evil, Onimusha, Dino Crises, Various Street Fighters and im sure more.

There were like 3 Twisted Metals on PS1 alone, 2 Xtreme games, Multiple Final Fantasies, 3 Crash Bandicoots , like 4 Tomb Raiders...

Those were also brand new franchises, not to mention the many new franchises that no longer exist today.

The difference is night and day. Just about every AAA release is a sequel or remake.
 

RAIDEN1

Member
I mean the history of how Sony came in has been done to death, how about something different in terms of how Virtua Fighter heralded a new dawn for fighting games...this changed everything...(especially for one-on-one fighters.)
 

Imtjnotu

Member
PS1 is amazing, too bad ps4 and ps5 suck.
Over It Eye Roll GIF
 

Holammer

Member
Sony wasn't really unexperienced in gaming though, they did publish games already. But its ridiculous how Nintendo still chose to use cartridges, their fear of piracy must've been extreme as business wise its completely stupid. They and Sega basically gave Sony a free pass.
Don't ask me to provide source (I don't want to dig through 20 year old Edge magazines), but I seem to recall how Nintendo spent a lot of money into cartridge based tech during the 16bit era and had a factory in Osaka. By going CD, they would piss away a lot of invested money.

After Sony got humiliated by Nintendo they approached Sega to work together with them, but the talks lead nowhere. So the Playstation succeeding really is the best tech revenge story ever.
 

SkylineRKR

Member
I brought home a Japanese import 6 months before the US launch with Ridge Racer and Toshinden. Everyone in my family were in awe with Toshinden, running on a Sony 35" CRT, it looked glorious!

Got this controller along with Ridge Racer, worked incredibly good:

NeGcon.jpg

Awesome.

I ignored the Negcon when it was widely offered for a few bucks way back, and I loved RR. The first time I actually played on it was only about 4 years ago at a retro covention. It played great once i got the feel for it.

I still have the Namco arcade stick though, and it works with Brook adapter.
 

Mr Hyde

Member
PS1 was an amazing console with an equally amazing library of games. I have a major nostalgia boner for it and frequently replay games from this era.
 
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Sojiro

Member
I put the PS1 alongside the SNES as my favorite consoles of all time. I still actively collect for the PS1, I fucking love that console. Many of the games were experimental, and so much wacky shit was made, not to mention Squaresoft was shitting out top of the line games at an unprecedented pace each year, and the console is a JRPG wet dream. Such a good fucking time, that PS1 boot up noise will stick in my head until I die.
 

Sojiro

Member
I brought home a Japanese import 6 months before the US launch with Ridge Racer and Toshinden. Everyone in my family were in awe with Toshinden, running on a Sony 35" CRT, it looked glorious!

Got this controller along with Ridge Racer, worked incredibly good:

NeGcon.jpg
I never tried this thing out, but often hear it's actually really solid once you get the feel of it. I adore kooky periphals like this (I have a ton on the Dreamcast lol, which has so many), I have the one handed ASCII controller which is great for JRPG games, and of course I still have my Guncom, which is still the best light gun ever IMO.

*Oops double post
 
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TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
I actually had both the SNES & Mega Drive and wanted a Sega Saturn.
My dad got me Sony PlayStation instead.
Who knew ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
You just had to be there. Going from the 2D era to PS1 and then PS2 eras in 6 years is something we'll never see again. People just have no idea.
Final Fantasy VI and Gran Turismo 3 came out 7 years apart. Let that sink in.

Sony just had such an incredible start on the console business. They knew exactly what they were doing and were doing it right with developers, consumers, multiple decisions with huge publishers like Squaresoft from day one. In a way they made consoles cool to an audience that previously saw videogames as something for kids only.
Think about the fact that dennard scaling died in 2000s and moore law started to slow down a lot.
Not to mention the law of diminishing returns, in which the human eye can see a much bigger gap between 240p to 480p than 720p to 4K
m5P2o28.png


In the last 10 years, PCs evolved less than 2 years in 1990s decade

Just think about the fact that Geforce 2 Ultra and Geforce 8800 GTX are 6 years apart
 

Ozzie666

Member
My takeaway from all of this was how shit Sega and Nintendo were towards third party developers. Especially Nintendo and their controls. It actually makes me think the current 30% digital tax is almost as bad. I believe the 30% tax is higher than any cartridge or cd rom manufacturing charged before. If anything, it's worse now. Sony's overall approach just went against the established grain of the market leaders. Sony was able to capitalize on Sega and Nintendo's mistakes across the board. Definitely a perfect storm and time to enter the industry with the right product.
 
IGN is an utter joke. The PS wasn't the CD console or even the only CD-based console and I tire of SONY killed the image of 'games for Kids'. SEGA Europe was doing that year's before most and really trying to market to the more mature and older gamer (sadly all male) with the Mega Drive; Sadly SEGA Europe lost Simon Morris who was the spearhead for looking to market to the older gamer

I will give credit to SONY for getting so much right for your 1st console, not just in GPU power, but also tools, onboard sound compression and even stuff like MPeg. Amazing really given it was their 1st console.
 
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Nikodemos

Member
Think about the fact that dennard scaling died in 2000s and moore law started to slow down a lot.
Not to mention the law of diminishing returns, in which the human eye can see a much bigger gap between 240p to 480p than 720p to 4K
m5P2o28.png


In the last 10 years, PCs evolved less than 2 years in 1990s decade

Just think about the fact that Geforce 2 Ultra and Geforce 8800 GTX are 6 years apart
The '90s were absolute crazytown. The top of the line PC spec in late-1995 would be a complete jalopy by late-1999. Such a difference from the early-2010s, when a 2011 2500K Sandy Bridge and 2013 mid-high-end GeForce 700 series could carry you all the way to circa 2018.

The only other time technology advanced as quickly was in the early-2010s with mobile tech. My LG P500 (which I got in summer 2011) was a potato by early 2014. Things only started slowing down around 2019 (and mostly because of heat and battery constraints).
 
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I’m certainly thankful that the PlayStation existed. After years of golden era gaming on the NES, SNES, and Genesis, we would have only had the Nintendo 64 and Saturn in 1995. This would have easily been the end of console gaming for me.

The N64 had the handful of first-party games (Mario 64 is one of the best games ever made), but the cartridges were insanely expensive at the time. Third-party carts were hitting $75. On the Sega side we had the Saturn, which would have been a 2D only console, playing arcade ports. This was a dire situation.

Instead, the PlayStation brought in a combination of 3D arcade ports, new genres, and fresh game design. All with games that cost $40-50. This led to immediate industry innovations (e.g. Saturn adding 3D), and is likely the catalyst for the creation of the Xbox. With the mediocre sales of the N64 and Saturn, what would have even remained of console gaming at the end of that decade?
 
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I’m certainly thankful that the PlayStation existed. After years of golden era gaming on the NES, SNES, and Genesis, we would have only had the Nintendo 64 and Saturn in 1995. This would have easily been the end of console gaming for me.

The N64 had the handful of first-party games (Mario 64 is one of the best games ever made), but the cartridges were insanely expensive at the time. Third-party carts were hitting $75. On the Sega side we had the Saturn, which would have been a 2D only console, playing arcade ports. This was a dire situation.

Instead, the PlayStation brought in a combination of 3D arcade ports, new genres, and fresh game design. All with games that cost $40-50. This led to immediate industry innovations (e.g. Saturn adding 3D), and is likely the catalyst for the creation of the Xbox. With the mediocre sales of the N64 and Saturn, what would have even remained of console gaming at the end of that decade?
If N64 had CDs, then Super Mario 64 would been different, not just about long loading times but also smaller levels which would make the game worse

The biggest advantages N64 has over PS1 is the transfer speed of cartridges, look what Factor 5 said about N64 cartridges
4LfcI6a.png
 
Don't ask me to provide source (I don't want to dig through 20 year old Edge magazines), but I seem to recall how Nintendo spent a lot of money into cartridge based tech during the 16bit era and had a factory in Osaka. By going CD, they would piss away a lot of invested money.

After Sony got humiliated by Nintendo they approached Sega to work together with them, but the talks lead nowhere. So the Playstation succeeding really is the best tech revenge story ever.
Sony drew first blood.

 
I’m certainly thankful that the PlayStation existed. After years of golden era gaming on the NES, SNES, and Genesis, we would have only had the Nintendo 64 and Saturn in 1995. This would have easily been the end of console gaming for me.

The N64 had the handful of first-party games (Mario 64 is one of the best games ever made), but the cartridges were insanely expensive at the time. Third-party carts were hitting $75. On the Sega side we had the Saturn, which would have been a 2D only console, playing arcade ports. This was a dire situation.

Instead, the PlayStation brought in a combination of 3D arcade ports, new genres, and fresh game design. All with games that cost $40-50. This led to immediate industry innovations (e.g. Saturn adding 3D), and is likely the catalyst for the creation of the Xbox. With the mediocre sales of the N64 and Saturn, what would have even remained of console gaming at the end of that decade?

Saturn was already going to have 3d. Just less powerful 3d, as they predicted it would take another generation to really get it right, which was pretty accurate.

PS1, as much as it was what the industry needed, has aged like milk. It was kind of a jack of all trades, master of none. Its 3d was more quick and dirty. No Z-buffer or FPU, resulting in pop-up and jitter.

I also didn't like what it represented for 2d, along with the N64. About every piece of hardware ever since has relied on brute force for 2d. (Also, to say nothing of the frequent rejection of 2d games. Thanks Bernie Stolar.)
 
If N64 had CDs, then Super Mario 64 would been different, not just about long loading times but also smaller levels which would make the game worse

The biggest advantages N64 has over PS1 is the transfer speed of cartridges, look what Factor 5 said about N64 cartridges
4LfcI6a.png
Sony introduced cinematic games. Obviously Nintendo fans don't give a shit they want their "bing bing wahoo".
But you couldn't do Metal Gear Solid or Final Fantasy on a cartridge.

And that's were the market was going in the 90s.
 
If N64 had CDs, then Super Mario 64 would been different, not just about long loading times but also smaller levels which would make the game worse

The biggest advantages N64 has over PS1 is the transfer speed of cartridges, look what Factor 5 said about N64 cartridges
4LfcI6a.png

The N64 using carts instead of CDs was a massive mistake on Nintendo's part

The reason why Nintendo did that was to cut costs. Since they said using a CD Disc Drive would have cost them alot more and they would be forced to sell the n64 at a higher cost. I think they should have went with CDs and yes Lose money on the system. They would have been able to make their money back if they went that route due to the third party support being there.

N64 is fantastic when it comes to First Parties, First Person Shooters and Rare games. It did change the gaming landscape when it comes to 3D Gaming. But I think the Playstation 1 was the superior console due to the amount of Japanese Third Party support. N64 is my least liked Nintendo console due to how it didn't have lot of good games and the good games that were on it was in genres I never played or liked
 
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Those were also brand new franchises, not to mention the many new franchises that no longer exist today.

The difference is night and day. Just about every AAA release is a sequel or remake.
Folks brought new consoles just to play remakes of 2000s games

The PS4 was called Remasterstation 4, as if you exclude ports/remasters then you got PS4 with less games than PS3
 
Saturn was already going to have 3d. Just less powerful 3d, as they predicted it would take another generation to really get it right, which was pretty accurate.
Not just “less powerful” 3D. It was fake 3D using sprites and could push at most 5000 sprites at once (1). Contrast this to real-world benchmarks of 180,000 textured polygons on the PlayStation.

The Saturn would have been doing 3D games with a lower polygon count than the Genesis version of Virtua Racing (2). That is not “less powerful 3D”. That is essentially “2D only”.

(1) https://mdshock.com/2020/06/16/hideki-sato-discussing-the-sega-saturn/
(2) https://web.archive.org/web/20151007061908/ign.com/games/virtua-racing/gen-6398
 
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SmokedMeat

Gamer™
Saturn was already going to have 3d. Just less powerful 3d, as they predicted it would take another generation to really get it right, which was pretty accurate.

It would take a generation for Sega, who literally spearheaded cutting edge 3D hardware in the arcades, to “get 3D right” on their home console?
 
Sony introduced cinematic games. Obviously Nintendo fans don't give a shit they want their "bing bing wahoo".
But you couldn't do Metal Gear Solid or Final Fantasy on a cartridge.

And that's were the market was going in the 90s.

It's the "bing bing wahoo" games, Nintendo or otherwise that continue to be worth a damn.

AAA has been a blight by and large.

It would take a generation for Sega, who literally spearheaded cutting edge 3D hardware in the arcades, to “get 3D right” on their home console?

They could have done it but you would have had to sell a kidney.

They were right in general. The fact that most of the generation's 3d is jank-tastic just goes to show.
 
Not just “less powerful” 3D. It was fake 3D using sprites and could push at most 5000 sprites at once (1). Contrast this to real-world benchmarks of 180,000 textured polygons on the PlayStation.

The Saturn would have been doing 3D games with a lower polygon count than the Genesis version of Virtua Racing (2). That is not “less powerful 3D”. That is essentially “2D only”.

(1) https://mdshock.com/2020/06/16/hideki-sato-discussing-the-sega-saturn/
(2) https://web.archive.org/web/20151007061908/ign.com/games/virtua-racing/gen-6398



 

SmokedMeat

Gamer™
They were right in general. The fact that most of the generation's 3d is jank-tastic just goes to show.

Oh yeah. Back then it was new and amazing, but it’s aged so poorly.

I remember being amazed by Crash and Burn on 3DO. Damn is that game ugly as hell, now.
 
Oh yeah. Back then it was new and amazing, but it’s aged so poorly.

I remember being amazed by Crash and Burn on 3DO. Damn is that game ugly as hell, now.
They were right for Sega Saturn being 2D, However they were wrong with that complex hardware hard to develop

You got N64 games dropping to a single digit
 

Northeastmonk

Gold Member
Oh yeah. Back then it was new and amazing, but it’s aged so poorly.

I remember being amazed by Crash and Burn on 3DO. Damn is that game ugly as hell, now.
Pre-rendered graphics still hold up. Just check out the backgrounds in Final Fantasy VII-IX, Parasite Eve, and Resident Evil. There are SNES sprites that look good, no? Pixelated polygons have the same allure, but they’re pixelated and come off jagged. There are some good looking towns in Xenogears, plenty of acceptable environments in Fear Effect 1 & 2. Not to mention the Tactics games like Front Mission 3 and Final Fantasy Tactics. Id also rather dive deep in Suikoden I and II than a lot of modern RPG’s. MGS still holds up. It doesn’t have those fine, chiseled detail and textures. You don’t exactly ask for Skyrim when you’re playing SNES either.

I think it’s aged to those who just want things to look like rubbery mocapped human beings running around. I think there’s some knee jerk reactions when modern games come off as having rubber chickens for their character skin. Which is why I would rather not see the lips move in games like Dark Souls.

I guess there’s a group who stuck to sports, shooters, and Coolboarders. People who bought Gameday and other various arcade style games. The PS1 has always been the king of JRPG’s. We all love it (or hate it?) for our own reasons.
 
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JimmyRustler

Gold Member
You just had to be there. Going from the 2D era to PS1 and then PS2 eras in 6 years is something we'll never see again. People just have no idea.
Final Fantasy VI and Gran Turismo 3 came out 7 years apart. Let that sink in.

Sony just had such an incredible start on the console business. They knew exactly what they were doing and were doing it right with developers, consumers, multiple decisions with huge publishers like Squaresoft from day one. In a way they made consoles cool to an audience that previously saw videogames as something for kids only.
This, so much. With games taking so long to be made but even then being virtually indistinguishable to their predecessors, looking back times were just craaaaazzzzzyyyyy. Going from MGS1 to MGS2 in 3 years! I cannot believe it any more myself. Feels like it was 10 years at least.
 
This, so much. With games taking so long to be made but even then being virtually indistinguishable to their predecessors, looking back times were just craaaaazzzzzyyyyy. Going from MGS1 to MGS2 in 3 years! I cannot believe it any more myself. Feels like it was 10 years at least.
Think about this for a second:

Final Fantasy VII: 1997
Final Fantasy VIII: 1999
Final Fantasy IX: 2000
Final Fantasy X: 2001
Final Fantasy XI: 2002

Nowadays:
Final Fantasy XII: 2006
Final Fantasy XIII: 2009
Final Fantasy XIV: 2010
Final Fantasy XV: 2016
Final Fantasy XVI: 2023

Those early 3D generations were just something else. We'll never have them again.
 

JimmyRustler

Gold Member
Think about this for a second:

Final Fantasy VII: 1997
Final Fantasy VIII: 1999
Final Fantasy IX: 2000
Final Fantasy X: 2001
Final Fantasy XI: 2002

Nowadays:
Final Fantasy XII: 2006
Final Fantasy XIII: 2009
Final Fantasy XIV: 2010
Final Fantasy XV: 2016
Final Fantasy XVI: 2023

Those early 3D generations were just something else. We'll never have them again.
It‘s wild man. I‘m just glad that at least Capcom got their pipeline in check and releases new RE almost annually.

90s and early 00s were really something else. If I‘d have know where we went I would have enjoyed it more.
 
It‘s wild man. I‘m just glad that at least Capcom got their pipeline in check and releases new RE almost annually.

90s and early 00s were really something else. If I‘d have know where we went I would have enjoyed it more.
I mean...remove the remakes and RE releases aren't that many when considering only main entries:

RE6 - 2012
RE7 - 2017
RE Village - 2021

Final Fantasy also had FFVII Remake in 2020, the next one coming in 2024, we had Crisis Core in 2022...if we count all entries released, remakes, DLCs, etc...Final Fantasy also has an entry per year or close to it. Plus all the FFXIV DLCs after the original released. Same for FFXV. We had remasters like FFXII as well.

But i agree with what you said on that second sentence. Also...Capcom is night and day with the old Capcom from 2010/1016 for sure. They really got their act together.
 
Sony introduced cinematic games. Obviously Nintendo fans don't give a shit they want their "bing bing wahoo".
But you couldn't do Metal Gear Solid or Final Fantasy on a cartridge.

And that's were the market was going in the 90s.
But Resident Evil 2 was possible with FMV cutscenes on Nintendo 64
Even when FMV cutscenes are heavily compressed, still here.

However Resident Evil 2 was an exception

 
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