HAPPY BIRTHDAY PLAYSTATION!

It’s hard to believe that it was twenty years ago today that the PlayStation was launched in Japan. It took a year to find it’s way to western audiences but it was eagerly received. I still remember going over to a friend’s house and being blown away by it. After spending the night playing Wipeout and Final Fantasy 7 I was soon trying to get my parents to buy one for me.

Despite having played console games for years on the Master System 1, 2 and the Megadrive, the PlayStation was the first console that gave me what my friends and I refer to as Tekken thumb. A full night of playing Tekken, eating junk food and drinking soda gave me a a sore thumb that felt as if there was a hollow there that perfectly matched to the D-pad buttons. Ignoring the blister that formed later we were playing it again that night.

So many classic titles were launched on the Playstation. There were series like Syphon Filter, Tomb Raider and Resident Evil.  I spent hours playing platformers such as Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon. The first time I ever played Diablo was on the PlayStation. I was constantly disappointed that the copy of Alundra at the local Blockbuster was nearly always rented out to someone and I still yearn for another game like Vagrant Story.

Just going through the list of games that I had or played is filling me with a feeling of nostalgic happiness. Many nights and weekends were filled with those games. We still tell stories from those halcyon days, like when David stated that we probably didn’t need to save right before the giant snake in Resident Evil only to be swallowed whole in the first ten seconds of the fight. He still continues to tease me about the time I took down a T-Rex in Tomb Raider without using the grenade launcher because I wanted to save it only to have the main villain take it away from me a couple of levels later.

To celebrate Sony have released a limited 20th Anniversary edition PlayStation 4. I think it’s pretty neat that they have brought back the iconic grey colour for this edition. Also it seems like they say iconic a lot in the unboxing below.

There aren’t many details on how to get one if you’re outside of Japan. More details on it are to be released later.

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