Image: Genki / EA / Activision / Capcom / Marvel / Square Enix / Kotaku
The original PlayStation was never supposed to happen. Sony had intended to team up with Nintendo on a disc-based, next-gen successor to the SNES. Then the Mario maker decided to stick with cartridges at the last minute, completely changing the console gaming timeline in the process. A new machine was born, one that gave us some of our favorite games ever made. That was thirty years ago, and now it’s clear that it changed video game history forever.
Image: Sony
PlayStation needed a colorful 3D platformer mascot to compete with Mario and it got Crash Bandicoot, a bizarre anthropomorphic marsupial in jean shorts who loves to crotch chop. Thankfully, his game was a fantastic platformer that mixed up the camera angle and pace to deliver bite-sized levels that were distinct, memorable, and fun to replay over and over again. And I did—a lot. — Zack Zwiezen
Just explosive, over-the-top fun. This single disc was bursting with arcade action, containing fully realized video game adaptations of all three (at the time, the only three) Die Hard movies, each one completely different from the others. The first is a third-person shooter that has you gunning down hordes of terrorists as you navigate Nakitomi Plaza, while the second is an on-rails, first-person shooter that sees you blast your way through Dulles Airport and beyond before a ludicrous final sequence takes you to the skies in a helicopter, from which you shoot terrorists off the wings of an in-flight 747 before bringing the whole evil airplane down. It’s surprising, stupendous, and so uniquely video games.
The one I remember the most, though, is Die Hard With a Vengeance, an absolutely crazed driving game in which you barrel down the streets and around the parks of New York City. Drawn into a terrorist’s twisted game, you must intercept cars that have been rigged with bombs and prevent them from exploding, which, of course, you do by crashing into them repeatedly, Chase HQ-style. You get an assortment of camera options here, one of which is a first-person, in-the-car view. Hit pedestrians in this perspective and your windshield might get momentarily splattered with blood, quickly washed away by your windshield wipers. It’s all very ‘90s edgy and extreme. With a Vengeance, while pretty simple and limited, is possessed of the kind of kinetic energy that would later make games like Burnout 3 so exhilarating, and Die Hard Trilogy as a whole crackles with a balls-to-the-wall enthusiasm that made it a defining release of the early PlayStation era.—Carolyn Petit
Image: Sony
Free-wheeling, chaotic arcade action at its raucous best. Twisted Metal 2’s cacophony of vehicular violence features a phenomenal roster of playable characters as well as a terrific assortment of locations around the globe that actually feel like a meaningful part of the action and not just a backdrop for it. Blow up the Eiffel Tower! Send your opponents plummeting from precarious New York City rooftops! Like so much of the PS1’s library, Twisted Metal 2 had a go-for-broke quality that seemed to shatter the old ideas about what gaming could or should do, and it was a thrill to be along for the ride. – Carolyn Petit
Image: Square Enix
Final Fantasy VII is, deservedly, one of the most analyzed and celebrated games of all time, so there’s no insight I can offer into its greatness—especially in a relatively brief slideshow blurb—that hasn’t already been made a thousand times over. Instead, I’ll relay a memory. During my senior year of college, some friends and I had a borrowed PlayStation in the apartment we were sharing, much to the detriment of our studies, and the discovery of that game’s world, the struggles of its characters, and the monumental achievement of its design became part of the fabric of that year for us.
I’d been playing games my whole life, but in so many ways, Final Fantasy VII was like nothing I’d ever played before–so grandiose, so thematically complex, so audacious and spectacular. I’ll never forget one of my roommates coming back from class one afternoon, tossing his backpack down on the ground and shouting, “Gold chocobo!” before recommitting himself to the grind for the precious bird. We knew the world of Final Fantasy VII still held secrets we hadn’t yet attained, and we wanted to explore it for all its mysteries before venturing to that fateful final confrontation with Sephiroth. In the decades since, so many games have given us worlds that are more vast, more graphically detailed, more packed with time-wasting “content,” but I don’t know that there’s ever been a world that was more memorable and astounding, or that has served as the setting for a more epic and unforgettable tale. – Carolyn Petit
Image: Capcom
What Ocarina of Time was for Zelda, Mega Man Legends was for the blue bomber. It ditched 2D levels for an expansive, Saturday-morning-cartoon-esque world full of sprawling underground dungeons hiding powerful gear and dark secrets. I still remember the first time I went down a hatch, creeped around a corner, and immediately got skewered by a dual-drill-armed Sharukurusu. It was my first taste of open-world exploration and massive sandbox battles. Everything in this game was firing on all cylinders and it’s a travesty we never got Mega Man Legends 3. — Ethan Gach
Oddworld fucked me up. I wasn’t even 10 years old when I first saw Abe get gunned down outside a totalitarian industrial complex for getting on the wrong side of management and messing up a puzzle. The 2D adventure game had immaculately grim vibes with just enough cheeky, gallows humor to keep it from feeling entirely overbearing. The sequel spin-off had more depth and polish, but it still didn’t come close to the visceral gut punch of the first game. The opening FMV remains seared into my memory, and the late-game mechanical twist is an all-time great one. — Ethan Gach
Image: Sony
Parappa the Rapper is not only one of the best PlayStation games; it’s also one of the most PlayStation games. By that, I mean it’s emblematic of the spirit of the original PlayStation, a spirit of playful innovation and experimentation that sought to produce new kinds of home console games and to create new kinds of fun and memorable experiences. Parappa proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that tapping buttons on a controller in rhythm with a song could be great fun, and that concept would go on to power some of the biggest games of the decade to come. And yet, it all could have failed if Parappa itself hadn’t been so great–so creatively distinctive, so vibrant, so packed with unforgettable songs. Thankfully, however, within a few minutes of starting the game, an anthropomorphic onion is teaching you to rap and do martial arts with the words, “Kick, punch, it’s all in the mind!” and it’s all so wild and surreal and committed to its own vision that you know, immediately, you are never gonna forget it. — Carolyn Petit
Image: Konami
Today, we have more Metroidvanias than you can shake a stick at, and so many of them struggle to stand out from the crowd. When Symphony of the Night arrived on the scene in 1997, however, it made a very strong impression, in some ways redefining our collective notions of what was possible in the genre of 2D action games. Going in without pre-defined expectations, many players of the time–myself included–found ourselves absolutely astounded by the game’s richness and depth. Just when we thought the castle couldn’t possibly have more to give, we’d find our exploration rewarded yet again with still more areas, secrets, and bosses. For my money, the game’s second half may represent the single biggest surprise in all of gaming, a secret the likes of which may never be topped. — Carolyn Petit
The follow-up to Lara Croft’s inaugural adventure is, in some ways, a diabolical and infuriating game–I think part of me will be forever trapped in its notorious Venetian opera house level. The incredible intricacy of its environments, however, is also part of what makes it so memorable. Tomb Raider 2 proved that Lara Croft was no mere one-hit wonder, no fleeting sensation rocketed to short-lived stardom merely because of her sex appeal. With the success of this game, her status as an icon was cemented, and at the time, no other figure represented the new, PlayStation-powered era that video games were entering quite like she did. — Carolyn Petit
The PS1 was a golden era not just for RPGs but especially strategy RPGs. Vandal Hearts wasn’t the best of them but it was one of the most evocative and bold, with characters dying in geysers of blood and battles that constantly put your party’s back up against the wall as you faced impossible odds. The sprite art was excellent, the class upgrades looked really cool, and the music was exceptional. I can still see the glowing blue oceans and molten lava battlefield squares pulsating in my sleep. — Ethan Gach
While Vandal Hearts will always have a special place in my heart, Final Fantasy Tactics completely revolutionized my understanding of what types of stories games could tell. Not only did the hero not live to tell the tale, the true history of what happened was ultimately buried with him. While Final Fantasy VII examined corporate exploitation and militarism, Tactics interrogated political power and religious dogma. Even optimizing the job system to create a teleporting, dual-wielding ninja of death wasn’t enough to come out the other side alive. History only remembers the victors. — Ethan Gach
Sir Daniel Fortesque may not be the most enduring PlayStation mascot from the first system’s era, but the MediEvil series has had some surprising staying power ever since the first game launched in 1998. A Tim Burton-esque marriage of horror and whimsy, MediEvil is bursting with grody imagery, and though it’s all cartoonish and goofy, that didn’t stop me from fixating on the scary shit when I played it in Kindergarten. MediEvil is clunky to play by modern standards, but its charm and humor are pretty timeless. Maybe that’s why Sony keeps remaking it. The PS4 version is a solid way to play it. — Kenneth Shepard
Metal Gear Solid didn’t just help pioneer the stealth genre, it messed with me in ways I never expected. There’s the infamous Psycho Mantis fight, but also a host of other wild deaths, reveals, and showdowns. Metal Gear Solid taught me it was okay for a game to be weird, but also that it could still be a tightly wound action-adventure experience with incredible gameplay while doing so. —Ethan Gach
What a time the PS1 era was for Square. Not only did the developer usher Final Fantasy into a bold new era, but it did so while also producing numerous other incredible works that pushed the role-playing genre forward. Parasite Eve is remarkable for many reasons, not the least of which is its fantastic use of a real-world setting, a real rarity for an RPG at the time of its release. Taking place in New York City in the final days of 1997, the game whisks you from elegant operas to hushed museums to grimy city streets while you–as NYPD officer Aya Brea–work to thwart a horrifying threat to the Big Apple’s population. To this day, Christmastime in New York City still makes me think of Parasite Eve, a game that manages to feel wintry, melancholy, thrilling, and unsettling all at once. — Carolyn Petit
Capcom’s spectacular, two-disc sequel to its groundbreaking 1996 survival horror hit is a massive triumph of mood. Bigger and better than its predecessor, sure, more explosive undoubtedly, but what makes it such an enduring horror classic is its precise and remarkable cultivation of atmosphere. The Raccoon City police station lobby, with its gloomy shadows and that statue fountain at its center, is that rare video game location that feels indelible, so powerfully absorbing that it’s almost as if I’ve actually been there. Put on the game’s safe room music and I feel transported back in time, electrified by the delicious tension between my temporary safety and the knowledge that I have to take a deep breath, calm myself, and head back out into its world of terrors. – Carolyn Petit
The first two Tekken games are awesome. But for my money, the best Tekken released on the OG PlayStation was the third entry in Bandai Namco’s fighting game series. Many fan-favorite fighters were introduced in Tekken 3, which also looked better and played better thanks to all characters being able to sidestep. It’s not quite the full 360 degrees of fighting freedom found in Tekken 4, but it’s a big step in that direction. And Tekken 3 also included Gon, a little dragon who farts a lot. Instant classic. — Zack Zwiezen
Xenogears is a heady mix of Christian existentialist philosophy and sci-fi dystopia that I first fell in love with because its turn-based combat system featured Dragon Ball Z-like special combos. The pacing is shit and the edges are so rough they’ll slice your hands open, but Xenogears is bold, wild, unsettling, and uncompromising at every turn. Using giant mechs to kill god was a bit cliché even back then, but few games have made the absurd premise feel so personal, intimate, and authentic. My dreams will be forever haunted by the ghostly radio comms chatter punctuating the boss battle music and the stomach-turning middle-act revelation at the city in the sky.—Ethan Gach
In many ways, PlayStation’s early cultural appeal was defined by all the ways in which it distinguished itself from Nintendo. Still, I think plenty of PlayStation owners were keenly aware, by 1999, that the system didn’t really have anything that could compete with Mario Kart. That all changed with the arrival of Crash Team Racing, a kart racer so good, some justifiably felt it beat Nintendo’s series at its own game. CTR’s visuals were vibrant and appealing, the racing was thrilling, the tracks were brilliantly designed and had terrific shortcuts–it had all the pick-up-and-play fun of a kart racer along with the high skill ceiling genre enthusiasts crave. To top it all off, its Adventure Mode, which has you racing against bosses, unlocking new stages and making story progress, was the most elaborate and exciting single-player mode ever offered in a kart racer at the time. — Carolyn Petit
Image: Square Enix
When it comes to Final Fantasy experiences on the original PlayStation, Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy IX are easily the most celebrated numbered entries—and for good reason. Of course, there was another title stuck in the middle of those two that, while not enjoying the same level of popularity as its predecessor and successor, has still managed to sustain its own dedicated following of adoring fans: Final Fantasy VIII. And I don’t think any conversation about the impact of the original PlayStation is complete without it.
FFVIII arguably endures in the hearts of its fans for many reasons: It’s a moving coming-of-age story set in a strange, hard-to-comprehend world. Its off-beat RPG mechanics are capable of being entertainingly exploited and utterly broken. The game features a rich, hybrid sci-fi/fantasy world with numerous cities and settlements to explore as you piece together its strange, time-bending narratives about moody teenagers shouldered with the burdens of protecting the world and each other. It didn’t land with everyone. But those of us for whom it did are still thinking about it nearly 30 years later.
I would argue that FFVIII’s dark horse status, however, is part of its character. While other FF games receive endless celebration and expensive remakes, the joy of FFVIII’s greatness is a sort of “if you know, you know” status for fans. In the last 30 years, I’d argue that the PlayStation brand has been home to many such experiences (fans of lesser-celebrated PlayStation titles like Heavenly Sword, Killzone, and SOCOM know what I’m talking about). FFVIII, to me, is one of the best early examples of that: Owning a PlayStation meant you could enjoy landmark titles while also finding some genuine hidden gems in its vast library. — Claire Jackson
The first time I ever played Gran Turismo I remember thinking, “Wow, video games will never look better than this.” I was a dumb kid and I was wrong. But I still stand by the belief that Gran Turismo, the first entry in Sony’s long-running racing sim series, looks good. It might not look realistic, but GT’s polygonal cars and wobbly roads still get the job done and remind me of a time when racing games weren’t live-service monsters. Plus, Gran Turismo’s chill jazz vibes make it easy to just relax and sink a few hours into racing around its various tracks in cool cars. A classic PlayStation game that proved the console was a real rival to Sega and Nintendo’s offerings. — Zack Zwiezen
Honestly, it’s a shame Jade Cocoon didn’t go on to become one of the JRPG standards from the PS1 era, but I have a lot of fond memories of it. I spent what was probably hours playing around with the monster fusion mechanic that let me mix the creatures I captured into something that took on their physical traits, which was mind-blowing to me back in the 90s. But even setting that aside, I was enthralled at a young age by its melodrama. Walking through the village I’d been running around all game after its citizens had been turned to stone was terrifying and has been etched in my brain for decades. I never got around to playing the sequel on PS2, but getting to those final hours in the original was enough to know the series has potential. — Kenneth Shepard
New advances in video game technology meant new advances in 3D action-adventure games, and while the Nintendo 64 saw the arrival of Ocarina of Time in 1998, the PlayStation received its own innovative entry in the genre with the 1999 arrival of Soul Reaver. Dripping with wonderfully overwrought gothic atmosphere, Soul Reaver features a mechanic by which you shift between planes of existence, one material and the other spectral, to solve puzzles and navigate the world. It was a very cool technical achievement for the time that made playing as betrayed wraith Raziel feel unlike anything else out there. Does Soul Reaver hold up as still worth playing today? We’re about to find out, as remasters of the game and its sequel are almost here. — Carolyn Petit
The notion of a first-person shooter set during World War II and released on a console doesn’t sound remarkable today, but in 1999, things were different. Back then, first-person shooters tended to be heavily inspired by sci-fi or action movies, think Doom or Golden Eye on N64. And only a few ever leapt to console. Medal of Honor on the PS1 showed that console gamers were hungry for serious WW2 shooters, and it was also a really good game, which helped, too. — Zack Zwiezen
Image: Sony
The first Spyro helped me realize that the Nintendo 64 didn’t have a monopoly on fun, whimsical 3D platformers, but the sequel was the one that actually made me believe in them. It added more traversal capabilities like swimming and climbing, and more variety to the puzzles and challenges. It was short but sweet. The Autumn Plains are still my happy place. Breathing fire, collecting gems, and gliding in front of bright empty skyboxes was more fun than it had any right to be. — Ethan Gach
You can taser enemies in this third-person action shooter. And if you hold the taser long enough, they burst into flames. It’s horrible and hilarious every time. Syphon Filter might not be a franchise people talk about much in 2024, but that original game on PlayStation spent a lot of time in my console because it offered up a fun, tense, and action-packed modern-day shooter about secret agents, deadly viruses, and government corruption. And also, that cool taser thing I mentioned earlier. — Zack Zwiezen
Image: Bandai Namco
The Digimon World subseries has taken many different forms since the original launched in 1999, and even the first three games are all drastically different from each other. The first was more evocative of Digimon’s digital pet roots, weaving raising a ‘mon from its baby form into a powerful monster capable of taking on some of the bigger threats you have to face. But it could also be frustratingly tedious, as your partner would go through multiple cycles of life, dying and being reborn as a baby you had to once again raise to the point of usefulness before moving forward. The sequels had their own progress-gating but felt much less arbitrary, and had interesting twists on the Digimon universe that kept them fresh. Would love to see a collection on modern platforms, Bandai Namco. — Kenneth Shepard
Image: Sony
I was in the tank for The Legend of Dragoon the second I saw the Game Informer cover story. The Sony-developed RPG took aim at Final Fantasy and missed, but not by much. The pre-rendered backgrounds were magnificent, the music was beautiful, and the mythological stakes helped me look past the ugly enemy designs and incredibly grindy random encounters. I loved it so much, I beat the whole thing and then watched my cousins play it again on an old TV in the basement that had no sound. — Ethan Gach
Image: Neversoft
If you’ve been raised on the current slate of Sony Spider-Man games, it’s probably impossible to look at Neversoft’s 2000 release featuring the wall-crawler and understand what all the fuss was about. At the time, however, it exploded onto the scene as one of the best superhero games ever made. It nailed the appeal of Spidey–his wisecracks, his decency, his abilities–and swept you up in a breathless adventure that had you swinging from New York City skyscrapers, battling supervillains on top of speeding subway trains, and tackling all kinds of other superhero setpieces. If you ask me, the lineage of great 3D Spider-games that’s still going today all started right here with this incredible achievement. — Carolyn Petit
The original Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater is amazing. But THPS2 is the better game, boasting the same snappy and responsive 3D skateboarding as its predecessor, but with new features and tricks. THPS2 added manuals, letting you combo more tricks together to reach higher scores. It also included create-a-skater and create-a-park, letting younger me spend way too many hours tinkering with the game. Really, the only reason I stopped playing THPS2 was to play THPS3 on PS2. — Zack Zwiezen
Image: Square Enix
I hated Vagrant Story the first time I picked it up. Horror-filled catacombs and zombies roaming the streets? If I’d wanted that I would have played Resident Evil, and I very much did not. But I stuck with it and quickly realized I’d actually discovered one of the best games—still to this day—ever made. The writing is brilliant, the atmospheric dungeon crawling is clever and elegant, and the hybrid turn-based action combat is surprising and satisfying. It only had one problem, and that was the awful damage formulas that rendered all attacks useless unless you spent a ton of time grinding against particular enemy types or mastering its baroque blacksmithing system. But I persevered through the single-digit strikes against enemies and one-hit spells from bosses because the medieval noir thriller at Vagrant Story’s core is second to none.—Ethan Gach
English (US) ·