What was the launch of the PS1 like?

CastletonSnob

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Someone on another site told me that people and publishers "immediately flocked" to the PS1. Anyone who was old enough to be there, what was the hype for the PS1 like? How would you rate the launch lineup?
 
Someone on another site told me that people and publishers "immediately flocked" to the PS1. Anyone who was old enough to be there, what was the hype for the PS1 like? How would you rate the launch lineup?
1994 without being pre-Internet, kind of was for most people it was a completely different time, for which immediately would be different than today.

For one it released almost a whole year after the Japan launch in the US and Europe,

Japan launch was 100,000 unit on the first days apparently, 2 millions units in the first 6 months with Saturn outsolding it at first because of virtua fighter according to wikipedia. A PS5 would launch worldwide and sales more than 2 millions unit the first day for a comp (and that because you could not buy one).

I was young but conscious at the time and had not idea about any of this but when it launched in the US it was a somewhat of a big deal relative to the middling Saturn:
The PlayStation went on sale in North America on 9 September 1995. It sold more units within two days than the Saturn had in five months, with almost all of the initial shipment of 100,000 units sold in advance and shops across the country running out of consoles and accessories

But to put in context, the old SNES was still outselling it:
From September to the end of 1995, sales in the United States amounted to 800,000 units, giving the PlayStation a commanding lead over the other fifth-generation consoles,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_(console)#cite_note-98[97] though the SNES and Mega Drive from the fourth generation still outsold it

I got fully aware played it for the first time in april-may 1996 I think and in my almost pure pre Internet, it was quite mysterious, with graphic I never saw before on my old 4x86 or Nintendos.

You can look at what was available on Launch both in japan and after that in the US:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PlayStation_games_(A–L)

From a low memory I think that in my market the Sega Saturn marketing was more agressive and present than the Playstation
 
To be fair, the SNES had a LOT of good titles, and continued releasing hits (even if many were ports) long after it's launch.

I wasn't old enough, but I imagine gaming 'zines helped Playstation's initial popularity quite a bit, and it was additionally boosted by all the demo discs you could get virtually free from multiple sources.
 
The interesting thing about the PS1 is that it wasn't tough to get. All the gamers I knew wanted one and we just rolled up to the mall and Toys R Us on launch day morning. Nobody left without one. The only places with lines were stores like Software Etc, Babbages, EB, etc. Toy stores had shitloads of 'em. Stacks and stacks. That's the last time I can ever recall being able to snag a launch-day console without pre-buying, waiting in line, getting lucky on restock day, etc.
 
I got my PS1 in november of 95, and my mom had no trouble getting one. She ended up getting it from Service Mechandise and they had a huge pile of them there. Back before scalping consoles was really a thing, that didnt really start until PS2 launch, when both the internet and ebay was a thing.
 
This is an actual quote from the guy who inspired this thread:

Also, it doesn't matter if games hold up today, What matters is how they were enjoyed when they were new. Games "holding up" is terrible metric. It doesn't matter how we feel today.
I've read some bad takes, but that has to be one of the worst.
 
This is an actual quote from the guy who inspired this thread:


I've read some bad takes, but that has to be one of the worst.
well some games were mind blowing back then and are absolute shit today.

re ps1 launch, it was good if you like what they were offering. i only liked 3 of the 10 or so launch titles.
 
I've read some bad takes, but that has to be one of the worst.
I am not sure what the word matter could mean in that sentence.

There is something to that too, it is easy to be too harsh to art/product that are made to be experimented in a certain way, something we would not necessarily do when talking about the best military of all time or cars, where how good they were during their time will be quite the factor, versus how well they age.

Holding up is not terrible, but more than a tiebreaker I am not so sure, but depending what the person mean by "matter" the sentence could be 100% correct, for example if we talk evaluating how the title available at launch participated to the sells or not of the consoles then obviously holding up absolutely do not matter.
 
This is an actual quote from the guy who inspired this thread:


I've read some bad takes, but that has to be one of the worst.
Although I understand your knee jerk reaction to that train of thought, I actually agree with it. A lot of the ps1-era games don't hold up for variety of reasons beyond their actual game quality like sound processing, poor graphics, poor programming, and clunky controls. Similar to a lot of 8-bit games.
 
Went to a Electronics Bouquet Store with a friend from a Bakery I drove to the Greenbay Port Plaza Mall he told me I should pick one up so I did he did as well. The only games I really enjoyed on the system were Street Fighter Jumping Flash and the Kings Field Series which was early From Software. Think I also had Castlevania SOTN or was that PS2?

The guys name at EB was Dana I doubt he's still alive he was about 400lbs and sweating his butt off with McDonald's straws in his chest pocket. He was sweating his butt off in the EB store just goes to show Mall Food isn't a everyday meal type if thing.
 
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I took a tour of Lambeau field nothing special the tour guy was about a 100 year old Packer fan. Greenbay isn't the Greenbay of the 1990s.
 
Publishers definitely flocked to the console, but it was slower for people to pick up. My perspective was from the availability of rentals and it really wasn't until around a year later that it started to become difficult to find any games to grab. That is when signature titles like Resident Evil, Tekken, and Tomb Raider came out. By the second year you had to go in on a Thursday morning to be able to grab anything. That is the time when the huge titles of Final Fantasy VII and Gran Turismo released. The flocking of publishers to the console contributed to the PlayStation having a large and diverse library that was able to appeal to almost everybody.
 
This is an actual quote from the guy who inspired this thread:

Also, it doesn't matter if games hold up today, What matters is how they were enjoyed when they were new. Games "holding up" is terrible metric. It doesn't matter how we feel today.

I've read some bad takes, but that has to be one of the worst.

I think he has a point. I wasn't old enough to remember launch but I do remember playing a lot of PS1. 3D graphics back then were frankly just BAD. Now I go black and play those games and can't even tell what I'm looking at. They don't hold up well for me at all, but made quite the impact at the time.

Not PS1 but easy example, I can't even play my favorite N64 games like golden eye or perfect dark anymore. We played these games for years and yet now it's just a chore to decode that triangle shaped mess. Hell even games like Grand Turismo 1 and 2 don't hold up well. What made them great is that they were "realistic" 3D racing games for the first time ever. Armored Core and Twisted Metal are some more good examples. The 3D tech is what made them cool. There's no way they would hold up to a modern equivalent game though.
 
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Don't ask me, I went with Sega Saturn. XD

I got PS1 a couple years later. Played the hell out of Dave Mira Pro-BMX and Twisted Metal II.
 
I got the saturn first too, panzer dragoon, myst and dayona were cool, but after I got my playstation the next christmas... I put way more hours on that machine. It was worth it just for FF7.
 
Publishers definitely flocked to the console, but it was slower for people to pick up. My perspective was from the availability of rentals and it really wasn't until around a year later that it started to become difficult to find any games to grab. That is when signature titles like Resident Evil, Tekken, and Tomb Raider came out. By the second year you had to go in on a Thursday morning to be able to grab anything. That is the time when the huge titles of Final Fantasy VII and Gran Turismo released. The flocking of publishers to the console contributed to the PlayStation having a large and diverse library that was able to appeal to almost everybody.

Yeah I went to Blockbuster video for PS1 disks not knowing what games were published was a problem. I saw Kings Field 1 so I had to get that game. The number of NES games dwarfs any console they had walls full of them.
 
Yeah I went to Blockbuster video for PS1 disks not knowing what games were published was a problem. I saw Kings Field 1 so I had to get that game. The number of NES games dwarfs any console they had walls full of them.
There were only around 700 games made for the NES. There were nearly 8,000 for the PlayStation by the end of its life. The largest Blockbuster that was in my area had 4 rows of shelves at least 15 feet long with just PlayStation games on each side.
 
Back then nobody had any idea I'm sure alot of those games were just Japanese.
 
Although I understand your knee jerk reaction to that train of thought, I actually agree with it. A lot of the ps1-era games don't hold up for variety of reasons beyond their actual game quality like sound processing, poor graphics, poor programming, and clunky controls. Similar to a lot of 8-bit games.
A lot of 8-bit game hold up really well to me versus the first 3d games, from Mario Bros 1, Duck Hunt, Mega man, Tetris to Zelda and so on are still played a lot today, it was solid 60 fps for a lot of it (and nice way to slow down when it happened) with solid responsive control, people will play them on the original NES at a party if there is one.

For some of the first 3d games, a lot of the fun came from seeing/hearing some stuff for the first time, which is more bound to age terribly, aliasing is much more of an issue and any attempt to realism will have an hard time aging than a 8bit astheatic not going for that at all.

2D platform game were going on for quite a while by the end of the 8 bits era (The first Mario Donkey Kong was 1981, Super Mario Bros 3 was in 1988) and the progress since in the genre has not been similar to a lot of the PS-1 era genre.
 
A lot of 8-bit game hold up really well to me versus the first 3d games, from Mario Bros 1, Duck Hunt, Mega man, Tetris to Zelda and so on are still played a lot today, it was solid 60 fps for a lot of it (and nice way to slow down when it happened) with solid responsive control, people will play them on the original NES at a party if there is one.

For some of the first 3d games, a lot of the fun came from seeing/hearing some stuff for the first time, which is more bound to age terribly, aliasing is much more of an issue and any attempt to realism will have an hard time aging than a 8bit astheatic not going for that at all.

2D platform game were going on for quite a while by the end of the 8 bits era (The first Mario Donkey Kong was 1981, Super Mario Bros 3 was in 1988) and the progress since in the genre has not been similar to a lot of the PS-1 era genre.

Agreed man, when my ancient Genesis could already do passable real-time 3d graphics, adding in first-generation texture-mapping without perceptive correction / AA on the PS1 did nothing for me

I enjoyed PC games like Tie Fighter and Mechwarrior 2 on my 486,years before the PS1 dropped below $200! My Pentium gaming PC was the only platform to expericence lag-free Quake / HL1 on release year!

My first 3d console was the Gamecube, because everything prior to it had been a massive downgrade
 
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A lot of 8-bit game hold up really well to me versus the first 3d games, from Mario Bros 1, Duck Hunt, Mega man, Tetris to Zelda and so on are still played a lot today, it was solid 60 fps for a lot of it (and nice way to slow down when it happened) with solid responsive control, people will play them on the original NES at a party if there is one.

For some of the first 3d games, a lot of the fun came from seeing/hearing some stuff for the first time, which is more bound to age terribly, aliasing is much more of an issue and any attempt to realism will have an hard time aging than a 8bit astheatic not going for that at all.

2D platform game were going on for quite a while by the end of the 8 bits era (The first Mario Donkey Kong was 1981, Super Mario Bros 3 was in 1988) and the progress since in the genre has not been similar to a lot of the PS-1 era genre.
A lot of 8-bit games hold up, I agree. But equal to more don't. For every Mario there's a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. For every megaman there's s Mickey Mousecapade. For every castlevania there's a Simon's quest.
 
A lot of 8-bit games hold up, I agree. But equal to more don't. For every Mario there's a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. For every megaman there's s Mickey Mousecapade. For every castlevania there's a Simon's quest.


Most of the PS1-era games were shovel-ware (way more than the NES era)

Sony was desperate for a game library competitive with Nintendo/SEGA on this new platform, and they left quality control at the gate. What hurt them even worse was the fact that they discouraged 2d-only titles (so experienced nintendo devs were forced to cobble-together their "best-effort" 3d trash, like FF7)

Only a small number of devs can create gold like Naughty Dog can (under that shit dev environment.)
 
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There were only around 700 games made for the NES. There were nearly 8,000 for the PlayStation by the end of its life. The largest Blockbuster that was in my area had 4 rows of shelves at least 15 feet long with just PlayStation games on each side.
Yeah, too bad like 60% of those 8,000 games are garbage.

For every FFVII or Metal Gear Solid, there were 3 terrible licensed games that were thrown together in a week to make a quick buck.
 
I had one.. it was pricey as F though... which contributed to its downfall
$700 in 1993. Another issue seemed to be that developers were more interested in making interactive movies with a lot of FMV instead of real games. I guess they saw that as how games were going with the CD format? The only real good game I recall that was made specifically for the console was the original The Need for Speed.
 
I could care less about how these games hold up today. Whilst I wouldn't go back to the computing and graphics power of the time, I wasted many, many, many hours when I was a student to this console, which I still have today, and I wouldn't change it for the world. Wipeout was a stoner's dream (I have the Wipeout Omega Edition on the PS4 too). Good times :cool:

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Someone on another site told me that people and publishers "immediately flocked" to the PS1. Anyone who was old enough to be there, what was the hype for the PS1 like? How would you rate the launch lineup?
There was no internet, so it's tough to say. People were getting older though, and kinda wanted to shy away from nintendo, me and my friend group did at least. Nintendo was more of a kids game. Launch lineup was meh, i think twisted metal came out shortly after and it was awesome compared to SNES. I don't know about publishers flocking to it immediately, it was obscure to me for the first year or so it was out.

Compared to today the launch wasn't very hyped up, but we were kids and didn't have much money. You could mow your neighbors lawns all summer and barely get $300.
 
Compared to today the launch wasn't very hyped up, but we were kids and didn't have much money. You could mow your neighbors lawns all summer and barely get $300.
Yeah, the door was left wide-open by Sega of America getting in product release spats with Japan (remember how quickly the 32x got cancelled?) then the Saturn launched at $100 more than PS1, guaranteeing it's death

And after the SNES CD got ditched for Phillips CDi fun
,it made Nintendo almost two years late with finishing the N64 with SGI
 
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Someone on another site told me that people and publishers "immediately flocked" to the PS1. Anyone who was old enough to be there, what was the hype for the PS1 like? How would you rate the launch lineup?

It was the console to get from the start. I got a Saturn and then was like 'crap I jumped the gun now I need a PlayStation'. Divorced parents made that possible lol.

Remember getting on my bike and taking my console to get modded by a friend of a friend in the neighborhood with a mod chip installed for $20 then paid $5 a game to him for burnt CD versions of games from then on out. Games were expensive, my lunch money had to buy me lunch and games.

It was my favorite console.
 
It was the console to get from the start. I got a Saturn and then was like 'crap I jumped the gun now I need a PlayStation'. Divorced parents made that possible lol.

Remember getting on my bike and taking my console to get modded by a friend of a friend in the neighborhood with a mod chip installed for $20 then paid $5 a game to him for burnt CD versions of games from then on out. Games were expensive, my lunch money had to buy me lunch and games.

It was my favorite console.
PC gaming was way easier- you didn't need a modchip to play ripped games

and if you had dsl, the downloads of newsgroups meant you wlould nerve run out!
 
PC gaming was way easier- you didn't need a modchip to play ripped games

and if you had dsl, the downloads of newsgroups meant you wlould nebver run out!

I played PC games too, but PlayStation was the thing to have still

Wasn't about PC vs console back then
 
Someone on another site told me that people and publishers "immediately flocked" to the PS1. Anyone who was old enough to be there, what was the hype for the PS1 like? How would you rate the launch lineup?

The PS1 took a while for people to actually get to see used correctly. It was a slow start, way slower than anything like what we downright expect for new console releases to this day.

The Gameboy Color was more hyped. And the first years of games for the Playstation didn't take advantage of the hardware. Even major titles like FFVII. FFIX was a Playstation game, and look how night and day the difference was between them. Everyone played 30 minutes of Twisted Metal and was like, eh, not sure this is worth the money, especially PC gamers because PC was much more mature on the developer side at that point.

And even then, some N64 titles felt more polished and fun to play. There wasn't the knowledge in the development community to really push things. Most of the "good" games were just tiny on the data side, and used the rest of the CD for uncompressed, lossless, CD-format audio. To the point where a lot of us kept games with good soundtracks in our CD wallets because you could play them in the car.

But later on, you eventually picked up Alan and Neil and went over to Zeke's house for some D&D, and fucking Zeke's got Einhander and N20, and that's all you did for the rest of the weekend. It went from a curious new entry to the gaming market to an actual paradigm shift in gaming altogether.
 
$700 in 1993. Another issue seemed to be that developers were more interested in making interactive movies with a lot of FMV instead of real games. I guess they saw that as how games were going with the CD format? The only real good game I recall that was made specifically for the console was the original The Need for Speed.

Yes, there were definitely some $hitty games. I enjoyed FIFA, Road Rash (i believe that is what it was called), and some of the fighting games, Street Fighter, Way of the Warrior were two that were fun.
🤣
 
I remember N64 first, thinking "well, this is cool seeing mario run around, but it pales in comparison to PC graphics"

then when I first played PS1 and it was another step backwards "ew, wtf is up with the nasty 3D/textures on this thing, and the insane load times"

I did however love playing the games, staying home from school "sick" to play FF7 was really exciting (even though I thought it sucked compared to FF6, graphics included)
 
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