This article pairs well with Pizza Hotline’s “LEVEL SELECT”

-Douglas Rohal

“YEAH I AM A 90s KID” said the writer that was born in 1999.

Yeah I will admit it, I did not know what a Playstation was until at least 2011. I was not sheltered, we just didn’t “internet” at our farmhouse, or have cable.

As such I was supremely late to understanding what a console was. Video games to me were the Humongous Entertainment classics on a Windows XP computer.

The idea that a small grey box with a controller instead of a mouse can produce better 3d graphics than a tower pc, it was beyond my 12 year old ability to understand.

But now, oh my goodness the VIBES.

PART ONE: THE AFOREMENTIONED VIBES

The Original Playstation is the first console I ever cleaned and repaired.

It is an unasuming grey box. Four main parts, a power-board, mother-board, disk drive, and the case.

The aforementioned vibes come from those that developed for the Playstation.

As well as the when, it was the 90s, they were trying to decide what a 3d game was.

There was not only a large platform for experimentation, but Sony was willing to get everyone to make games for it.

VIBES FOR CONSIDERATION

Ignore that Two of these games are by Hideo Kojima, that is another topic.

Doug (a Fan of Hideo Kojima)

PSX, a new champion on the indie games.

Todays treasure is tomorrows trash, in fact that is how I got all my hi-fi equipment.

That is exactly why the Playstation is the “AESTHETIC” of indie development.

The Playstation pushed the development of 3D games, in 1994.

In 2022 it is low-fi enough that a small team or an individual developer can replicate the best of technology and style from the Playstation classics.

But mostly Horror classics.

No one lives under the Lighthouse

Soulsborne Demakes

Back in 1995

Omni-bus

There is also a large discord server dedicated to just replicating the shifting un-aliased textures on modern hardware.

Some people even develop and produce games for the PS1 hardware itself. Which is an insaine task that can only be done on Windows 95/98 computers.

I want to intervew people that do that and ask them why.

Summary

Not everyone is a triple A studio able to program full HD games. Which was the great filter that destroyed a lot of double A studios.

The PSX is no longer just about hardware, it is about style and lowering the bar of entry for good games.

The Playstation was once the pinical of 3D, now it is old enough to be emulated on anything.

I hope that games become ok with looking and playing like the old catalogue. Like they were built for the Dreamcasts, Playstations, Sega Genesis, and anything in-between.

Media to be preserved and understood.

I just wanted to gush about the Playstation 1

-Doug