PixlBit

So, September 9th happens to be the anniversaries of the US launches of two of my favorite consoles ever.

In fact, as you are probably aware, this year marks the 20th anniversary of the original PlayStation, the console that brought gaming out of the children's bedrooms and into the living rooms around the world.  If you were around in 1995, you might remember that gaming was not nearly as mainstream as it is today.  The PlayStation is one of the reasons for its acceptance.  Sony was the big shot tech company at the time, before Apple and Google made waves with their iPods and Android phones and tablets, and it leveraged that popularity to enter the lucrative videogame console business.  The brand spoke to young adults, and Sony developed and marketed games for them.  I still remember the original ads featuring fighting game character Sofia from the launch title Battle Arena Toshinden.  Nintendo had Mario, Sega had Sonic, and Sony had a leather clad dominatrix (Crash Bandicoot would come later).  Sony also leveraged their music industry connections by including a selection of songs on their first "demo" disc (the one with the T-rex), introducing those who obtained it to the nu-metal band Korn, and showing that yes, the PlayStation doubled as a CD player!  The point is, this was not a kid's gaming machine.

Right before launch, I was a diehard Nintendo fanboy, and began saving for the overhyped Ultra 64 (it had the power of a Silicon Graphics workstation!)  However, Nintendo delayed their system until the following year and I had all this money.  The Saturn had already been released but was too expensive and didn't have the greatest lineup of games.  All the gaming magazines (yes, print magazines!) were talking about the wonders of this Sony PlayStation that would soon be released, so I preordered it at Babbage's (which would one day become GameStop) and traded in my SNES to help pay for it (it was a bittersweet time, but I was ready for a change).  When launch day finally came, it was glorious!  I only got two games, the aforementioned Toshinden and Ridge Racer, but I played them constantly.  Looking back, those games were pretty shallow, but they looked better than any of the games in the local arcades (yes, we had those too, it was a crazy time).  I brought my PlayStation to my friend's house and he traded in his Genesis, Sega CD, and a ton of games and bought one that weekend.  This was the power of the experience.  The next 4 years were pretty much a golden age of gaming for me.  I had intended to get a Nintendo 64, but Mario and Zelda aside, Nintendo never gave me enough reasons, and with Twisted Metal, Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, Tekken 2, Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid, Street Fighter Alpha, Soul Blade, Xenogears, Parasite Eve, Silent Hill, Gran Turismo, and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night to buy and play, who had the money or time for another system?  While I skipped the N64 and Sega Saturn, I did have a brief love affair with Sega's next console, the Dreamcast.

In 1999, Sega launched the Dreamcast on the anniversary of the PlayStation.  I was never really a Sega fan, but the PlayStation was getting a bit long in the tooth, and Sega's new system had a lot going for it.  Well, for me it was one thing: Soul Calibur.  That game looked amazing.  I don't know how the wizards at Namco did it, but it put the PS-based arcade version to shame, along with Sega's own flagship fighting game, Virtua Fighter 3.  While I bought the system for one game, it became a treasure trove of Japanese gaming goodness, mainly from Capcom.  Capcom finally had a system capable of running all their famous fighting games without limitations, and put every single one of them on the system in about a 2 year span.  Fortunately for me, I happened to like fighters.  I also loved Crazy Taxi, Grandia 2, Resident Evil Code Veronica, and many other titles that came to Dreamcast long before they were ported to newer systems.  Alas, with the announcement of the PlayStation 2, I went back to gaming primarily on Sony, and then Sega abruptly left the hardware market after putting itself in a pretty good position (I honestly think they could have given Sony better competition during that console generation than the GameCube or the fledgling Xbox).  But it was not in the cards.  While Sega had the balls to release a game called Seaman, it didn't have the will to battle the much hyped PS2, and Dreamcast was killed off prematurely, despite having less jaggies and pioneering online console gaming.

I'll always remember September 9th fondly, as an early adopter of two of the best gaming consoles ever made.  Cheers.