I have never owned a Playstation.

A pox upon your glass!

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/02/most-important-games-playstation-one?CMP=fb_gu

Twenty years, be buggered!* Greatest console.

*Not until 2015 in the UK.

And some of the bonkers adverts.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-12-02-the-bonkers-ads-of-playstation

Wow, so 20 years ago I'd have been playing the greatest games ever, on the greatest console the world has ever seen.

Oh how I loved my N64.

Yup, all of this could have been avoided if Nintendo had've gone ahead with the Snes Cd-Rom drive.

The third place adverts would've suited the Playstation more than its successor.  Because Saturn > N64 > PS. 

Exhumed, Grandia, Silhouette Mirage, Dead or Alive, Thunderforce V and Tomb Raider were OK though.

I had a Saturn.....

All my mates had Playstations though, so many good games.

A great time to be a gamer.

Metal Gear Solid, Pro Evolution Soccer and Bishi Bashi Special are probably my favourites.

Driver, metal gear, parasite eve, GT, Colin mccrae 2.0, xenogears, ff8, tekken 3(?), vagrant story, XI (devil's dice).

If I was doing an order...

1. Colin mccrae 2.0
2. XI
3. Metal Gear
4. GT

messy after that. Probably missing some games. But they're personal faves.

Fuuuuck.

Chrono cross. That may be at 3.

My first experience of videogames was on my dad’s rubber-keyed, 48k ZX Spectrum, playing Chequered Flag. In those days, getting the computer out was an event. It would be set up in front of the telly, which was in our small family room (technically another bedroom, we called it ‘the den’). Since there was only one telly, in the house, and also the way we were raised, you had to forego watching any television for a few days if you wanted the computer out, and time spent on it was strictly monitored by my parents.

In 1986 we moved to a slightly larger house, and the computer was set up in my brother’s bedroom, with a small TV. I was now seven, and the limits on my playing time were limited only by my brother granting access to his room, and how long I could go without mum or dad noticing that I’d breached my allotted time. Given that it was now a daily feature, and no longer an event, my parents became less aware of how long I’d spent, especially if I’d broken up my time. I could easily kid on that two forty-five minute sessions had only been a half-hour each.

By 1989 my brother and I were more aware of the larger videogame world around us, and we put our savings together to buy a second-hand Atari ST 520 FM from the paper. Along with a leap in graphics and playability came the frustrations of my brother becoming increasingly devoted to his homework. I had to be more strategic about when I played, and make the most of when he was out to get my playing time in. My dad, in particular, became increasingly frustrated that, as I got older, his ability to prohibit one past-time over another diminished.

It must’ve been Christmas 92 or 93 that I asked for a Game Gear for Christmas. I got a Yamaha keyboard.

In the summer of 1995 my brother took a year out to work in Germany. My dad had all but given up on limiting my time on the Atari, and with my brother gone, I could play whenever I wanted. I got my first summer and Saturday job, in a shoe shop, but found that as I had my own money for the first time, the availability of Atari games in the shops was extremely limited. Special Reserve and shareware/freeware catalogues became my friends.

In 1996 I got a summer job with my uncle’s firm, as a van boy. I got a lift into town with a family friend each morning, and at the end of the day I would walk around to my mum’s office for a lift home. This meant that, every single day, I could stop in at both the Virgin Megastore and HMV on my way there. The Virgin Megastore tended to only have one console set up for playable demos, and it was a PlayStation, but at that time of day it was usually still crowded by kids from the nearby public school.

Head up to HMV, though, and they had three consoles set up side by side. If somebody was waiting to play the title you were on, it was no hardship to move onto another.

And so it was that I developed a crush on the Sega Saturn, and specifically Virtua Fighter. I’d spend a not insignificant amount of time learning the moves for the various characters, and how to string those moves, juggling your opponent towards the edge, stopping in time for a millimetre perfect ring out.

My first year of uni came and went, and I returned to that summer job with my uncle’s company, this time on better pay as I was now driving a van. Each Friday visit, with my payslip burning a hole in my pocket, became harder. The PlayStation in the Virgin Megastore now had Adidas Power Soccer apparently permanently lodged in the drive, and it would eat up my time on my journey home. The Platinum range had launched, and the games prices seemed, now, to finally be within my reach. My focus shifted away from Sega, and I had set my sights firmly on the Sony machine.

Eighteen years old and earning my own money, I nevertheless knew that I would have to run this by my parents, and my dad wasn’t going to be an easy sell. He had always been opposed to consoles, because they could only be used for games. He liked that, on the computer, I’d occasionally do something constructive. I was met with some resistance, but ultimately they conceded that it was my money and they had to admit that, despite earlier efforts, the Yamaha keyboard was now just an expensive, poorly designed shelf in my room.

Come the day of buying the console, it nearly didn’t work out. My Switch card only allowed £100 of transactions/withdrawals in a day, so I had some juggling of at-home-savings, pay-packet and bank card to amass the money. I’d be lying if I told you all the games I got with it - it’’s been a few years, but I definitely took home Platinum copies of Tekken and Destruction Derby that day. I think Road Rash and Die Hard Trilogy were in there too. If not, they came shortly afterwards.

This was perfect. My brother had picked up a summer job in Germany, so I had the PlayStation set up in his room, where there was space. My parents didn’t mind me playing all night, because I’d done a hard days work, and I didn’t exactly have homework to do, it being the summer. My mum did ask me to turn down the volume playing Jonah Lomu Rugby, but then four hours of contextless Bill McLaren would drive anyone mad.  Each Friday I would stop in Virgin and HMV and, with the Platinum range growing, I rarely made it to my mum’s office with my pay packet intact.

For the first time I was in a position of owning a console that had the best versions of the exciting new games coming out, knowing what was new and what was on the horizon, and being in a position to buy them. I began buying every issue and reading every word in Play magazine. Previews of forthcoming titles would be meticulously picked through two and three times over.

I found this world genuinely exciting. As I waited and waited and waited for Bushido Blade, I bought Star Gladiator because it was a versus fighter with weapons, and might possibly go some way to satisfying my anticipation. I bought Shaolin because I couldn’t find Wu Tang: Taste the Pain. I never bother trying to find it after that. I took several visits to the shops to try both V Rally and Rally Cross to establish which was the better game. (History would tell you it was the former. History is wrong.) The music of the original Medal of Honour still gets my heart pumping, as much associated with the thrill of first playing as anything else. Colony Wars may well have the best ridiculous anticipation to somehow meeting that anticipation ratio I have ever experienced in a videogame. I lost several days and missed several lectures because of Metal Gear Solid.

I remember getting a lift into town with my mum one morning, she was heading to work, I was off to uni. I only had classes in the morning, and at lunchtime I had a very important trip into town. As we listened to Radio 1’s Newsbeat, they began talking about a videogame coming out that day, which shockingly involved stealing cars, and potentially running over pedestrians. It was called Grand Theft Auto.  “That’s not the game you’re buying to day, is it?” she asked, already knowing the answer. I’d been reading about it for months.

I could bore you (if I haven’t already) listing so many games I loved, patrolling the cities in G Police, battering controllers in Bishi Bashi Special, leaping out of my skin as dogs crash through the windows in Resident Evil, trying to edit a movie that captured the excitement I’d just felt racing the streets in Driver, laughing at the darkly humorous fate of the Mudokons in Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee, mirroring the rage of the protagonist in One, that Gran Turismo intro with the Manic Street Preachers (and replays with Feeder?), ridiculous Ridge Racer power slides, the audiovisual explosion of WipEout, I could do this all night.

I have some very fond memories of some really not great games, too. The aforementioned Star Gladiator, the Benny Hill shenanigans of Blast Chamber, one of the 3D Road Rash games, Star Wars: Rebel Assault II, Shockwave Assault, Starfighter 3000 and the multi-genre Bond games. The only reason I have any positive feelings about Final Fantasy VII is because my girlfriend (later ex-fiance) would come to visit me in halls of residence, and I’d play it while she had a post-sex snooze.

About that time was also when I fell in with my now best mate. I’d known him since I was eight, when he started at the children’s theatre group I was at. We’d always been friendly, but never really friends, as the four year age gap was more significant then. As we grew up through children theatre and youth theatre, we ended up running it together by default, the oldest ones there when the organisers left. It turned out that he liked PlayStation too, and what started off as a game of FIFA at the tail end of a meeting about the show turned into regular FIFA nights and the two 24 hour charity efforts we’ve done. In the few years I owned a PlayStation we got through a surprising number of football titles; Virtua Soccer, all three Actua Soccer games, FIFA 97, Pro Evo or ISS or whatever it was back then and - the one I’ll always have the softest spot for - This Is Football.

Those years were a perfect storm of an overly well paid job in the summer, 10 day return policies, reasonable trade-in rates, and most importantly so much time to actually play the games. Even as I write this I’m remembering more games I wish I’d included above that I somehow also spent an impossible number of hours playing. I maybe started my videogame playing life with Chequered Flag, but it was the PlayStation that really allowed it to take off, and I think is responsible for my continued enjoyment to this day.

I bought a PlayStation 2 at launch, and so started another chapter. The PlayStation 2 is the strongest challenger to PlayStation as my favourite console. On some days, I suppose it’s the other way around.

Happy Birthday, PlayStation. Here’s to the next 20.  Sort out your network, please.

I pirated the shit out of ps. Ntsc tekken 3 ftw.

D was on rails. It was all pre-rendered iirc. One of the switch puzzles relied on a knowledge of star signs so me and a mate just went thru every possible combination.

Playstation got me into this whole thing so, yeah (although technically my first console was a gameboy). Since the PlayStation The First I've owned a Dreamcast, N64, GBA SP, DS, Gamecube, Xbox and 360, as well as a decent gaming PC, but it's always the Sony consoles - PSP, Vita and PS2 especially - that I keep coming back to.

I've not interest in "company X is better than company Y" type discussions. All I can say us that games I played on the various PlayStations made ne love gaming. So, there's that.

I remember getting my PlayStation with money I had saved up with Driver, Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy VII (all second hand, we weren't a family to spend a lot of money at Christmas) and being blown away. Later came not just Team Buddies (as mentioned), Hogs of War (also mentioned) but also Grand Turismo 2, Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy VIII and IX, Fear Effect, Resident Evil 1, 2 and 3, Harvest Moon: Back to Nature, Vib Ribbon, Jumping Flash, ISS Pro Evolution 2 (seriously, this game was amazing), Bishi Bashi Special, the Syphon Filter games, Time Crisis, the Oddworld games and Dino Crisis 1 and, especially, 2! Plus, others I forgot. Those games had a huge influence on me and the PS2 just added to that.

So yeah, thanks Ken.

Fuck sake, nobody has mentioned Tomb Raider?