It had never been my intention to embark on the mad wild and time
consuming adventure that was console gaming, but in 1997 I got so
frustrated trying to get Tomb Raider running on my Win95 machine
that I reached for the Grattons and bought a PS1 on the drip. The
console arrived and my life was never to be the same again.
SONY tripped into the gaming world mostly due to the activities of
a lone wolf Ken Kutaragi. In the days before the console, an
expansion for the Nintendo had been conceived at SONY and a deal
struck to add CD to the gaming port. Nintendo got cold feet and
objected to the licensing agreements and jumped ship and joined
forces with Philips.
SONY were all but ready to abandon the console idea but were
persuaded by Ken Kutaragi to carry on. And so on Sept 9th 1995
the PlayStation was gifted to the world and probably the greatest
gaming console of all time was launched.
In the beginning the games basically were, Battle Arena Toshinden
a fighting game; Raiden Projects 1 and 2 which is a bit like
Banshee; Kileak which is a Doom style first person shooter; NBA
Jam Basketball with the option to customise players, Power Serve
which is a tennis game, Street Fighter with ' KYLIE '; ESPU Extreme
Games which is Road Rash on pedal cycles and skateboards... great
game this and kick ass, literally; Total Eclipse Turbo based on
the CDi version and a flight killer and pretty dull even though
made by Crystal Dynamics; Rayman... classic Rayman. Hoot'n'half.
The PS1 is a 33-bit system using a RISC processor at 33 MHz
It has 3 MB RAM of which 1 MB is for video. There are 16.7m colours
and can work with 360000 polygons per second.
The original machine was not boxed with any games but came with a
disc called PlayStation Picks.
Lara Croft was originally called Laura Cruz and was a paid mercenary
employed to recover lost artefacts. The brain child of Tony Gard with
the game created and developed by Core in Derby UK. Prior to the
release of the game Eidos were making no money at all. After the
release of the game their profits rose to £15 million.
The game now resides with Crystal Dynamics who have turned the game
into a shooter and destroyed the glamorous sexy beautiful Lara in
favour of a bloke in a 'T' shirt. They even extended the concept to
the film and so Lara Croft died with Underworld sadly, well unless
you like 'shooters' and dreary characters. Put me off buying a PS4
until I saw Yorha 2B... Saved at last. If I wanted to play a shooter
I would buy Uncharted, which also turned out to be nothing more
than a blood fest. Man what is this world like with its preoccupation
with killing stuff. Shows that man's base instincts have never crawled
out from under the prehistoric rock that we still reside under.
Gaming executive .. 'And your game is about ?'.. Reply 'Killing stuff'
I'm not against the killing stuff but you watch the game trailer for
Shadow of the Tomb Raider and she single handedly takes out a platoon
with a knife. This is hardly fitting behaviour for a lady of the manor
who is an archaeologist for goodness sake. Way too dark.
The one and only PlayStation
I bought this game in 1997 for the Win95
but after loading I just got a black screen
I was so excited at the time
I tried everything to get the game working
In the end there was only ' 1 '
thing for it. The rest is history
Well my history. Changed my gaming life.
That's not the controller that came
with the original unit... Like do you
think that survived... No way.
Assorted box stuff plus I dug out
the original controller.
This would be the final days of the
PlayStation as I said goodbye and
packed her away when the PS2 arrived.
My little box of PlayStation tricks
and my second PlayStation.
In truth probably not been used since 2002.
The PS2 was backward compatible so made
the old PS1 redundant. Such a shame.
Classic Tomb Raider before
Crystal Dynamics destroyed the game.
The very addictive Final Fantasy.
Probably the best game series ever.
Dino Crisis and the very wonderful Regina
Good old Raccoon City
' S N A K E '
Cannon Fodder meets Settlers
' F O O T Y '
Drifting and that halfpipe
Each and every night as I waited for
my tea to cook I would fire up Tony Hawk.
I regret so much never having a skateboard.
Man would that have been fun. At least I
skate on the PS1. I actually played a demo
from a cover magazine cus it was a special
level not included with the main game
And as for Ridge Racer... the joy of drifting
and using the brakes only to steer the car
was just magical. And you could not make a
single mistake or you would fail
Gaming has never ever been that much fun.
I have been put off buying a PS4 cus of the
Call of Duty style gaming world that now exists
but with Nier Automata I am tempted again
