PlayStation and Me, 30 Years In

I don’t remember when I got an original PlayStation. I think it may have been for my birthday in 1997 or 1998. I remember my mom didn’t want to buy the console for me and my brother because she considered its games to be “too violent.” But really, the only game that I knew on the console was Croc: Legend of the Gobbos (I still have its TV commercial embedded into my brain). We had a Nintendo 64, with around 3 or 4 games, including Super Mario 64. I spent a few years growing up with the Sega Genesis and SNES, which were at the end of their lifespans, and thus the cheapest consoles we could get. But on one hazy, fateful day, I did get that PlayStation. With Croc.

Turning on the console with a game inside blasted your TV speakers and screen with the famous Sony Computer Entertainment of America logo, with its hazy orange and red aura flickering across the CRT. Honestly, Croc was just an ok game. The controls were much less fluid than those of Super Mario 64. It wasn’t a life-changing experience, but somehow I knew that the PlayStation would be my gateway into more expansive videogames.

I started playing simple, but great games like the entire Spyro the Dragon trilogy. I was into the Digimon anime, and ended up getting the Tamagotchi-like Digimon World, which entranced me. Being able to raise my own Digimon was so cool. Like in the anime, I was raising my very own Digimon, going on adventures and exploring the entirety of File Island. And when I say “raising,” I do mean raising. Watching it grow from a hatched egg. Training it at the gym to make sure it had the stats it needed to digivolve into a decent Digimon. Making sure I had enough meat and mushrooms to feed it. Rushing (and sometimes failing) to make it to the bathroom. I never beat the game, but I spent countless hours living in this little virtual world.

One day, I had my original PlayStation model (known as the PSX) fail. For whatever reason, it would just display a black screen. I’m not sure what happened, but I would have to wait a few months to get the newly released PSOne. This was sometime in 2000. Its most notable feature was the detachable LCD monitor. I now wasn’t beholden to the tyranny of the television. I just needed a power outlet, and I could strain my eyes and play my games wherever and whenever I wanted.

My family moved to Alaska in the summer of 2002. One day while we were walking out of Fred Meyer, my family stopped by the electronics section. I enjoyed seeing what kinds of games there were. And there I saw a game that I heard about in legends at school, from my brother and other older kids Final Fantasy VII.

Even 5 years after its release, it was considered THE RPG. I didn’t know what an RPG was, but I was mesmerized by the idea of what the game was. I knew there was an evil guy called Sephiroth, and that the game was massive, spanning three whole CD ROMs. And there it was, the Greatest Hits version staring at me, for only $14.99.

I needed this game.

My mom had some spare money, so she bought the game for me and my brother. I was ecstatic. Here is this game that I had been hearing about, one of the greatest games of all time, and I now owned it.

Final Fantasy VII marks the moment that videogames started to make me think about all of a game’s components; the story, the art direction, symbolism, world building. This was the game that blended all these things I had never experienced before. I could connect to Cloud as a character. His lost sense of identity, imposing someone else’s personality onto his own to deal with trauma. Isolating your true feelings and thoughts from others around you. The want to be accepted by others, but pushing those close to you away to protect yourself. These are emotions that I would experience as a child (well, maybe not taking on someone else’s identity), and to see someone going through these same emotions in a videogame was powerful. I wasn’t alone in how I felt.

What all this showed me was that videogames could be something more than pure entertainment -- they could be a medium that engaged the player with the story in an intimate and personal way unlike anything else. You controlled the characters. You got to explore the world and experience the story. You grew with them as the game progressed.

I got into a lot more story-based games afterwards. Soon I was playing Final Fantasy VIII, which I didn’t care for. But Final Fantasy IX pulled at my heart strings with its themes of selflessness and love. At a rough point in my life, it showed me what it meant to be able to give meaning to one’s own life. Final Fantasy Tactics introduced me to the strategy genre, and its critique on religion and the horrors of war got me to pay more attention to not only those topics, but scriptwriting and world building in general. Metal Gear Solid was an excellent spy thriller, with a complex story that touched on everything from politics and philosophy, to friendship and loyalty. The Resident Evil series introduced me to survival horror, how thrilling being scared could be, and the empowerment of overcoming that fear.

I played and enjoyed consoles before the PlayStation. But now because of the original PlayStation, gaming was more than a hobby. It solidified the medium as a life-long passion. On some days, I must have spent 14-16 hours playing that little LCD screen that was a gateway to so many experiences.

When I got a PS2 in the later part of 2002 as a birthday gift, I had to wait a couple of weeks to get Final Fantasy X. When I did, I was awed by the graphics and what the PS2 could do. Though it is now one of my favorite games ever made, as a kid I was disappointed in its linear progression, and the “uncool” voice acting. Still, it was Final Fantasy, and the world was intricately detailed, with many places to explore. Oh, and this console could play all my PS1 games. This was the ultimate gaming machine.

But there was one game that I wanted, that was the talk of gaming magazines and media outlets nationwide: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

When I first played Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, everything changed. Here was this massive, open-world sandbox that I could play around in, with. Minimal structure. One of my favorite things to do was to drive around the city, listening to 80s music. Vice City is the reason that I am a Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, and Rick James fan to this day. I would make up missions once I finished the main game. I’d pretend I had to deliver something from one end of the island to another, and would have the cops chase me as I raced there. I would scour for the hidden packages, unlocking weapons and vehicles to unleash mayhem on the city. The game was my escape from a mundane reality. I played and replayed it over and over, approaching missions in different ways. There was an exhilarating amount of freedom, unlike anything else I had ever experienced in a videogame before.

If Final Fantasy VII opened me up to how videogames could make me feel, the sandbox of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City illustrated the liberating, unadulterated freedom a game could provide. This was my gateway into open-world games that I would fall in love with in the future.

I remember having the Friday off from school in November 2004, the same week that Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas came out. My mom made a deal with me -- if I read two books and could tell her the summary of them, she would get it for me. At this point, she didn’t have a problem with me playing violent videogames -- she understood that I could differentiate reality from fiction. We bought it at a GameStop on a Thursday after school, and my whole weekend was spent driving around Los Santos, blasting Gangster Rap and Alternative Rock on the radio. I always appreciated how dense the worlds were in the GTA games, and San Andreas was the largest and most varied world to date. I could get lost exploring this world. Customizing CJ with all sorts of clothes. Customizing cards. Flying freaking airplanes. The game had it all.

The PS2 also introduced me to other genres of games. Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec is an excellent racer that looks gorgeous and plays well to this day. My appreciation for RPGs grew as I rebuilt towns in Dark Cloud, and fell into the bizarre, magical rabbit hole of Kingdom Hearts. I was introduced to more psychological horror through Silent Hill 3, which I could never finish because of how terrifying the game was to a 10 year old.

My proudest gaming moment from the PS2 era is beating the Hydra in God of War, with a busted circle button. There is a quick time event where you have to mash the circle button to do significant damage to the boss. If you fail, it heals most of the damage you’ve done and you have to whittle its health down before you can try again. No matter how hard I mashed the circle button, I couldn’t mash it fast enough. I later learned it was because the button would drop inputs. I was frustrated. I got this as a part of my birthday gift, and I was debating returning it.

But then, I had an epiphany.

I remembered reading an old Game Informer magazine from 2002. I don’t remember the context, but there was a small section talking about button mashing in the NES classic Track & Field. There was mention of using an electric toothbrush to rapidly mash a button -- like a jury-rigged turbo controller. I had an electric toothbrush. I figured, why not try this? I got back to that section of the Hydra battle. I carefully placed the toothbrush at an angle to hit the button repeatedly. I turned it on.

And it worked. By god, it worked. And 2 days later, I was watching the ending credits.

I held onto the PS2 for years, and wasn’t until 2009 that I would get a PS3. I vividly remember getting it right before my Geometry final in high school, and doing terrible on it because I was addicted to Grand Theft Auto IV. I think this was the first time that I truly felt that games could be serious pieces of art. Though it wasn’t as grand as San Andreas, the density of Liberty City and the game’s Oscar-worthy story gripped me. The game looked dark and gritty compared to the more saturated color palette of the Xbox 360 version. This felt like a next-generation experience.

Outside of a few experiences though, I was never much of a fan of PS3 exclusives, at least at the time. Outside of GTA IV, I most remember exploring the Wild West of Red Dead Redemption, and again being floored by the mastery and command of narrative and world building. I played the Uncharted Trilogy, but I simply viewed them as decent shooters with high production values. Nothing special. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots was a thrilling conclusion to the story of the Metal Gear Solid series, with a dizzying amount of plot twists and revelations. The revamped gameplay allowed for playstyles outside of pure stealth. Final Fantasy XIII was good, but a disappointment compared to the games that came before (and would come after).

But what the PS3 did have was a lot of these cool side-applications; Sony leaned heavily into marketing this as a mini-supercomputer and all-in-one entertainment device. I remember leaving the PS3 powered on as I would go to school so that it would contribute to the Folding@home project, an amazing project that lended the Cell Processor’s unique simulation capabilities to help fold proteins, helping gaining understanding of various diseases. I remember PlayStation Home, an interesting take on the “metaverse”, but something I didn’t really understand the appeal of. Sadly, option to install Linux was removed before I started getting into computers and the Linux ecosystem.

I owned the PSP for a few years during high school. It was an ok system, and a decent multimedia player. My handheld came bundled with Rock Band Unplugged, and to this day it is my favorite game in either the Rock Band or Guitar Hero series. Burnout Legends was great for killing time on the school bus ride. Besides those, I never got into many other games, eventually selling the console for a Nintendo DSi (and later, a 3DS).

I skipped the PS4 era, because I was in college and had fallen out of gaming for a bit. I was away from home a lot. What little time I spent gaming was spent on the 3DS and my iPhone. When I got back into gaming in 2015, I sold my Wii U and PS3 to buy an Xbox One, mostly for the excellent Rare Replay. Nothing caught my eye on the PS4, since most multiplatform games of interest to me would come to the Xbox One. I wasn’t a fan of Sony’s lack of cross-play initiative at the time, and when Xbox’s Game Pass initially launched, it was an amazing deal. Between the Xbox and the Switch, I was pretty thoroughly covered for half a decade.

That was, until 2021.

I wanted to get a couple of exclusives for the console, and decided to get it a few months after it had launched. This was during peak COVID-19, so my ability to order one was based on when stores could get them in stock. While many people could not get a single PS5, something funny happened to me.

I got two PS5s.

My wife jumped on Costco when it was in stock and ordered it. However, the credit card information didn’t seem to be entered correctly, so the order didn’t appear to go through. I had to wait a couple of days to jump online at 3PM EST when Walmart was taking orders. I had multiple browsers open to ensure that I was in a good place in the virtual queue. Lo and behold, I managed to snag one.

A few days later, the Costco order went through. It included Spider-Man: Miles Morales (which I admit, I have yet to play) and an extra controller. When I got both consoles, I ended up selling the Walmart one to a friend and coworker of mine for the standard price. I didn’t want to be a scalper -- I hated seeing people be exploited and pay ridiculous prices; why would I do that to someone else?

I’ve detailed my thoughts on the PS5 and how the console has reinvigorated my love for PlayStation. I got to experience The Last of Us and the Uncharted series again, and gained a newfound appreciation and enjoyment from them. I played through Shadow of the Colossus for the first time through the remaster, and it has become one of my favorite game experiences of all time. Astro’s Playroom shows what the console is capable of, while Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is a realization of what I imagined the game world to be as a child.

The lack of any interesting games on the Series X convinced me to give the PS5 a shot. Until I bought the PS5 in 2022, the Xbox was my main multi-platform device. I still use the Series X for a lot of multiplatform and backwards compatible games. But the PS5’s strong first and third party support has convinced me to play the majority of modern games on it. Unless I want to play a game portably or there is a good deal going on elsewhere, the PS5 is where I tend to buy my games nowadays.

While game graphics and performance is much improved over the previous generation, what I love most is how short loading times have become. Compared to the PS2/PS3 error where you could sometimes wait minutes for games to load, we have come a long way. The sheer amount of variety on display is impressive. From the rich storytelling and epic combat of Final Fantasy XVI to the sprawling adventure and freedom of movement of the Spider-Man games, there’s something for everyone. And Gran Turismo 7 sees the series reach the heights it hasn’t had since the PS2 era.

There are some things that I hope to see in the future of PlayStation. I hope the rumor of having a portable, Switch-like system that plays PS5 games, but at a lower quality turns out true. At this point, I feel like consoles are plenty powerful, but having the option of having a console not teetered to the TV is infinitely appealing. I don’t plan on getting the PS5 Pro -- it’s too expensive for what I consider to be a minimal upgrade. I hope that the price-to-performance ratio stays as an experiment, instead of a shape of things to come.

I am cautiously optimistic for the future of PlayStation. Outside a few markets where Xbox is competitive, Sony dominates the “high-end” console space. This is potentially dangerous, as having little competition could lead to the pricing of consoles like the PS5 Pro become the norm. Nintendo doesn’t compete directly with Sony, but if the gulf between Sony and Nintendo platforms increases, third-party games will likely prioritize the current PlayStation model, with maybe PC and Xbox being considered due to the need to make a profit from the high-costs of modern AAA game development. While Sony is known for their massive, cinematic game experiences, I would like to see them focus on smaller, more experimental experiences. Astro Bot is a great exception, but I would like to see increased focus on creating and publishing more off-beat games similar to LocoRoco and Patapon.

Regardless of where the future of PlayStation lies, I know that my formative experiences with their consoles had an impact on the trajectory of my life. I would not be writing about and be deep into videogames without the PlayStation. For that I will always have a place in my heart and respect for PlayStation, and all it has done for the medium of videogames.. Nintendo doesn’t compete directly with Sony, but if the gulf between Sony and Nintendo platforms increases, third-party games will likely prioritize the current PlayStation model, with maybe PC and Xbox being considered due to the need to make a profit from the high-costs of modern AAA game development. While Sony is known for their massive, cinematic game experiences, I would like to see them focus on smaller, more experimental experiences. Astro Bot is a great exception, but I would like Sony focus on creating and publishing more off-beat games similar to LocoRoco and Patapon.

Regardless of where the future of PlayStation lies, I know that my formative experiences with their consoles had an impact on the trajectory of my life. I would not be writing about and be deep into videogames without the PlayStation. For that I will always have a place in my heart and respect for PlayStation, and all it has done for the medium of videogames.