Since launching 20 years ago in December 1994, what's your favorite PlayStation memory so far?

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

My house was a Nintendo house, but a friend of mine was a Sega and Playstation house.

We would go to each other's house and play games that we couldn't. I remember one time he called me over because I found a game that he knew I'd love, and so after school on a Friday I went to his place. He sat me down and told me I needed to play Silent Hill. I remember we played it all weekend, and scaring the shit out of each other in the process.

Good times.

Another memory is playing Ratchet and Clank and Sly Cooper for the first time. I played with a giant smile on my face the whole time when I first played both of those games.

 

[Ten Foot Bunny]

My parents got a ginormous big-screen TV that covered up a good 1/4 of the wall in the theater room... just weeks before the first Silent Hill came out. The rest should be easy to deduce.

 

[stroopwafel]

Getting my import copy of Final Fantasy 7 way before the euro release. Costed me an arm and a leg as a teen but I was sooo hyped for this game. Absolutely loved it and still do. It remains my favorite JRPG. Next is the Resident Evil 2 demo that came with RE Director's Cut. First time I played a RE game and the original didn't look so good in magazines(yes, magazines), but I'm glad I gave it a chance b/c it was awesome. It made me want RE2 even more! Another is a game which looked kinda cool espescially in the wake of FF7 which was an import copy of Xenogears. This turned me into a JRPG nut for a while(something FF6 or Chrono Trigger never accomplished, which I played way before) but none ever came close to FF7 or Xenogears for me, so gradually lost interest. Finally its Demon's Souls which is another game I kinda imported on a whim but holy shit was this game soooo incredibly fun. Slow and methodical but way more satisfying than the offshoot God of War hack&slashers which were all the rage at the time. Incredibly atmospheric as well with a truly unique art design. Challenging for sure but since the combat was so much fun I didn't mind(infact it became the next game's appeal).

Lots of good stuff during 20 years of Playstation but those were definitely the highlights for me. Atleast so far.

 

[Dreadman75]

I actually posted this on another thread but in the beginning it looked like I was going to be a Nintendo fan through and through until my family took a trip to Austin one year to visit one of my dad's friends. While we were at his house his son showed me a game for the Playstation that set me on the console path that I follow to this day. That game was Spyro the Dragon. Gods do I love that game and it's sequels (not so much the PS2 ones).

From there I was introduced to games and studios that I've loved ever since. Final Fantasy VII and IX are some of my favorites from that era. Along with Twisted Metal, Ape Escape, and Dino Crisis 2 among others. God what a great system. I bet if I broke it out today and hooked it up to my TV that tough old bastard would still work.

 

[vledleR]

That would be in FFVII. Playing the early sections of the game, I thought the game was going to primarily take place in Midgar..and that would be the point of the game: You were going to travel around the city trying to save it. Then came the part where you travel outside the city and it's like "oh, hello world". I never played a FF game before that so I had no idea that was going to happen.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Some of my favorite memories are of me and my friend playing Duke Nukem: Land of the Babes versus mode on PS1. It was hilarious. One minute of playing followed by 15 minutes of drowning in tears of laughter. It's hard to explain why because I don't remember the details. But it was a good time and it makes me miss my childhood.

 

[Ask]

Legend of Dragoon...seriously I loved that game. From the constant spelling errors both in the characters names and dialogue, as well as a lack of knowing You're from Your...it just killed me. The game itself was actually pretty good, the combat system was something new that I hadn't seen previously and voice acting happened in the game which, for the time, was unusual as far as an actual script (albeit it only happened during cut scenes for the most part). Plus, back when you could name characters whatever you wanted, I had the pleasure of naming my main character "A. Teacup". So hard to take a game seriously when one of your character's, during a pivotal moment, is being asked whether or not they're really A. Teacup's father.

 

[necromanzer52]

This last summer I finally did a 99 mudokan run of Abe's oddysee. It only took me 15 years or so. In fact these last couple of years I've slowly gone through childhood games I never beat, checking them off the list.

One strong memory I have from my childhood is finally beating that fucking opening mission of driver. You know something's gone wrong when the tutorial is by far the hardest level in the game.

Of course the games I've played most from those days is the spyro trilogy. I know these games so well I can just play them on autopilot. It's a great way to relax.

 

[laggyteabag]

For the PS1 we had the attachable screen and a cigarette lighter power adapter. Being able to play some games on the PS1 during long car journeys made it a lot more bearable. Me and my brother used to do it all the time. Ah, the memories.

 

[FPLOON]

Despite growing up with Nintendo and the SEGA Dreamcast (at times), Playstation came into my life through both my cousins and my aunt...My first Playstation 1 game was, I think, the first Tekken game... I mostly remember pressing random buttons and the sound of the PS1 logo screen after the disk booted up on my cousins' PS2...My first Playstation 2 game was Namco Museum... Just walking in first-person through a virtual museum and learning(?) about the gaming history of Namco's [classic] gaming library...During certain nights when my cousins were asleep, I would watch my aunt play Grand Theft Auto 3... She even let me drive around the city at times...Since my uncle didn't know about me seeing my aunt play GTA 3, he showed off Vice City like as if I haven't seen a GTA game before... (I only saw him play that game once and, later, that disk alongside GTA 3 were nowhere to be found...)Playing those PS2 demo disk introduced me to the Burnout series in particular... (Honorable mention to the second Sly video game...)I only heard about PaRappa The Rapper through G4's Cinematech...Despite buying up to 50 PS2 games, I sold back half of them in exchange for either their HD Collection counterparts or just because...I still hate Kingdom Hearts 2's Journal requirements...Speaking of Kingdom Hearts 2 (and G4), I recoreded both the full episode of X-Play and Cheat that dealt with KH2 directly on VHS...I only bought a PS3 just to play both Catherine and Sonic Generations... Only one of those games became my first platinum trochievement...I bought 3 PS2s... The first came from buying off a close friend's seller after playing some DDR... The rest came from GameStop, with one being the PS2 Slim that I only bought just to install the tools needed to use Swap Magic in order to play Kingdom Hearts Final Mix...For two or so years now, my PS2 Slim is nothing more than a half-enclosed case with tape holding the mechanism that makes the disk drive read the disk... (and my fat PS2's disk tray noit working properly...)I had to pay for a PS3 Slim after my used OG PS3 crashed, loosing both power and memory...I only bought a PSP just to play Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep... (Basically bought the bundle pack which came with the system, the game, the memory card, and a code for free music...)The only games my PSP has is "JRPGs" of various degrees... (I have sold 0 of those games back...)So far, only two three games would make me buy a PS4... unless one of them comes in a console bundle in the future...

Whoops... I went from reminiscing to "preminiscing", I guess... Regardless, most of my early years with Playstation were with my cousins/aunt and my later/current years were mainly me only buying stuff Playstation-related used unless otherwise, like my first [two] PS3 games or [almost] every PSP game I bought...

 

[Sixcess]

Does anyone else remember seeing this trailer on a demo disc?

Spoiler

I'd bought my PS1 a few months before the release of FFVII. Those first few months were amazing - Doom, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Wipeout and then Final Fantasy VII, which I recall was hyped up to the stratosphere by the games magazines of the day, and actually lived up to that hype.

To this day three of my all time top 5 games - Fear Effect, Doom and Civilisation II - are games I first played on the PS1.

(Admittedly the PS1 really struggled with Civ II - I usually kept a book handy to have something to read while I was waiting for the AI to finish its turn in the late game...)

 

[busterkeatonrules]

Well, I do have a funny story concerning the first game I ever owned for the system. So my best friend at the time was a PC gamer and I usually would go over to his house and watch him play War Craft 2 or Fallout and stuff.

So when my dad took me out to Zellers to finally own my first game for my new system I saw Diablo and was like yeah I know that game from watching Matt play it. I want dat!

So he bought it, we got home and I was anxious to play it. Ran into some trouble though because damn it I couldn't get it out of the case. So I hand it over to my father thinking adults have magical powers and can do anything I can't. My dad gave it his best but that fucking disk would just not come out and then SNAP! The thing snaps in two heh I have been anxious about this happening again any time a disk shows me any real resistance.

To avoid this with the second one my dad snapped some of the teeth on that...whatever the hell you call those things that are in the middle of disk cases.

Something similar happened to me while I was working in a video store. Game discs were kept under the counter, in these cheap and shitty plastic holders with a little... bump in the middle which was supposed to fit through the hole in the disc, keeping it in place. Some of the things wouldn't hold the disc in place no matter what - and some of them just worked too well.

One day, two kids wanted to rent some fighting game. No problem, right? I whipped out the disc and tried to pop it out of the holder. No luck. I intensified my efforts. I had encountered tough disc holders before, but this one just wouldn't quit.

Right. No more Mr. Nice Guy, I thought. The odds were on my side. Which would break first - a Sony-approved game disc, or a bit of thin, flimsy plastic like the stuff Chinese-made toys come wrapped in?

So I get my Hulk on, grunting and grimacing while trying to wrestle the two chunks of plastic apart. Finally, I heard a loud, crisp SNAP, and triumphantly held the game disc up for the kids to see. And that's when we all noticed, at the same time, the straight, clean crack through the disc - all the way from the center hole to the rim.

"Oops. This one's broken." I said.
"Looks like it, all right." said one of the kids.
"Yup." said the other.
And then they calmly and casually went and found themselves a different game.

Yeah. There was never any doubt that I had caused the damage, nor that the kids knew it as well as I did - we just simultaneously reached a mutual, unspoken agreement to never speak of the incident at all.

 

[Noetherian]

The longest gaming marathon I've ever done was playing FFVII for 13 hours with my best friend. The PS2 was "my" console, enabling most of my all-time favorite games, and I'm happy to have a PS4 after XBoxing it up for many years in between. Hang in there, Sony.

 

[Techno Squidgy]

My favourite memories from the playstation? ooh. that's tricky.

Well, for the original PS, I'd say my favourite memory is probably the first time I beat my dad playing Air Combat.

PS2, the first time I played the Shattered Skies mission in Ace Combat 04. The music still sticks with me, as well as the overall intensity of that dogfight for the first time, the shock when the B2s start thundering in from the west, and the feeling of accomplishment watching the rocket launch.

PS3, Brutal Legend. Just that entire game. Loved it. Even though it couldn't make up it's mind as to what kind of game it wanted to be, everything else was great. One of the best soundtracks in any game, beautiful art style, and perhaps the most alluring game world I've ever wanted to be a part of.

 

[zegram33]

from ps1 I could probably still quote half the dialogue from spyro 3

from ps2: tricky one, but I think its gotta be rogue galaxy.
That game was fantastic, basically a fantasy/sci-fi combo mass effect rpg with realtime swordfighting. amazing game

from ps3: hmn... I think....the first time I stepped out of the dungeon in Oblivion and realised I could go....anywhere.
I'd never experienced that level of freedom before, and as a result I spent probably my first ingame week just wandering through the woodlands like some sort of crazy homeless mage

 

[CannibalCorpses]

My favourite memory of Playstation...hrmmm...i guess it has to be how my mate knocked my ps1 off my desk and the cd rom stopped working but when he bought final fantasy 7 it actually started working all the way to the end and when i had killed sephiroth it died for good. The gaming gods were smiling on me that month.

I'm having a hard time thinking of anything from the ps2 and ps3 era...because that was when gaming in general had started to become stale, simplistic, repetition to me

 

[Twinrehz]

I had a friend who had PS1, I remember we played Tekken a bit. Apart from that not much. He also had Medievil 2, a game which looked totally awesome back then on a CRT TV, tinted by ageing memory. I very recently bought Medievil 1 on PSN, and have played a bit on my PS3. It certainly hasn't aged well over 20 years, and it doesn't help that HD television is VERY cruel to anything below 720p. Still, it's playable, and I'm looking forward to seeing Medievil 2 on PSN.

 

[Mikeyfell]

I never owned a PS1, but my favorite PS2 memory was when my TV blew out and the only way I could get any picture was to crank the saturation to 100 and turn the brightness down to 0
So I was playing Jak 2 and the only thing I could see on screen were Metalhead's glowing jewels and the trail of my blaster rounds.

That was awesome.

 

[go-10]

the best thing I can still remember about the PSX is Final Fantasy VII. I was a kid and that game left a huge impression on me, the music, the story, the characters, etc. it all just became amazing for me to the point that I've been going back to it since its release and I still enjoy it greatly.

hell I liked it so much it became the sole reason I wanted to learn English, si that I could better understand the story... and based on this message you can tell that I actually did learn English so that I could better understand the story

 

[Guy from the 80's]

With PlayStation having launched 20 years ago in December 94, what's your favorite serious memory