Throughout the day, we’ve been recounting our personal PS1 memories. But this is a community site, and we’d be remiss to overlook all of you.
Whether it’s birthdays spent with the DualShock in hand or PS1-sized boxes under the Christmas tree, we want to hear about your memories of Sony’s first ever gaming format. What are the stories that are most special to you when you think of PlayStation?
As we mentioned in our anniversary article, everyone has a slightly different tale to tell. That’s the beauty of the PS1 and the scale of its impact. Perhaps the older among you remember testing out WipEout in a seedy nightclub. You younger lot may not have even played PS1 until it was already well-established.
And what were the games you loved? Who were the friends you played with? What are the smells and sounds that take you back to those halcyon days? This is your stage, so please share all of your PS1 memories below.
In the meantime, here’s a round-up of all our articles if you want to embrace even more nostalgia on this special 30th anniversary:
Comments 54
I lost my dad when I was 10. It was a lot to process for my brother and me, so my mom got us a PS1 to help. Playing games like Tony Hawk and Gran Turismo together really helped us cope, and games like Spyro and Final Fantasy helped me shaped my taste in gaming. Playstation has been my go-to console ever since.
So thank you Playstation. You've helped me through most the hardest times in my life
When I went to college in ‘95, one of the folks in my dorm had a PlayStation. Battle Arena Toshinden was my introduction. It was impressive but just didn’t sell me.
It wasn’t till more than a year later when I saw a friend playing FF7 that I decided it was time for me to dive back into the gaming world. Ever since then, I’ve been a PS fanboy.
Mine was wrapped up under the Christmas tree Xmas ‘95. My folks went out for my old man’s work do and all my mates came over. We used a Stanley knife to carefully open the wrapping and played Wipeout, Fifa 96 and Tekken until around 1am… when we then re-wrapped the PlayStation and games before placing them back under the tree. My folks still don’t know to this day 🤫
One of my memories of the PS1 is playing the very first Resident Evil with my brothers. We would pass the controller around because we were too scared to play for very long. I remember we used a guide and knew the snake was going to be in the attic, so we were just tossing the controller back and fourth between us until one of us was brave enough to go in the room.
A friend brought his PS1 round to my place to play Command And Conquer. I absolutely loved it.
The very next day, I saw Street Fighter Alpha at a car boot sale, which I didn't know even existed. Bought that, but after our SNES days my friends were less enthusiastic about playing SF with me, and he wasn't so keen on bringing his PS over. Soon pulled a couple of late night shifts at a local bakery, bought my own PS1 and never looked back.
I still remember getting the PS1 as a kid. We did have a Genesis that I played before that but that was my Dad's. Having a system that was mine was pretty sweet. I had played so many games both good and bad; From the awful, yet incredible(for all the wrong reasons) Phantom Menace, to Spyro 2. Ghost in the Shell, Crash, Fighting Force, Mega Man Legends, Parappa, Street Fighter Alpha 3, Medievil, just to name a few.
God now I feel old 😑
I moved in with my first girlfriend in a little rented two-up-two-down, and got it so i could still play games. I kept it in a little drawer in the bedroom and played it on a 12” tv. It sounds so Dickensien now, but i loved it. Ff7 lead me to find Suikoden 2 in a bargain bin at Game, which made me fall in love with JRPGs. I don't consider myself a Sony fanboy 30 years later. I just haven't seen anything better
Edit: i have to say my first experience with VR was a similar experience three or four months ago. Reminded me of first playing Doom in 1984
Playing Metal Gear Solid for the first time was unlike anything I had ever experienced before. The story and voiceover work rival anything the motion picture industry could produce. I still have my original black label copy, because it came on this neat thing called a disc which I’ve held on to and can play anytime I want without restriction or the fear someone will take it away from me or permanently alter it against my will.
Got my PlayStation as a youngster when it first came out. I have particularly fond memories of Resident Evil 1 & 2, Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, Final Fantasy Tactics, Xenogears, Vagrant Story, Crash Bandicoot, Tomb Raider, Twisted Metal, Tekken… man I’m sure I could go on and on. What an absolutely AMAZING system! Seriously good times!
Playing Metal Gear Solid with my then wife, (not a gamer), totally enthralled with the game. It was such a revolutionary change.
When my brother got a PSOne last month, and let me have his old model. I still haven’t tried it. But we’re were playing FFVII on his “new” one a few weeks ago. It was very fun! I loved every minute. I need to get myself some games though.
I have a couple. My dad was a huge gamer from his time in America and Taiwan (like high scores in Pacman good). He got us the PS1 and a ton of pirated discs. The ones that really stuck out to us as kids were:
All 3 Crash games which were just so cool and played so well. Hog Wilds theme was always stuck in my head.
Pepsiman. It was ridiculous and it was fun. That song would always be sung when friends came over.
Spider Man 2: Enter Electro. I think I only ever played the first three levels of the game since I never owned a memory card but, it was incredible and my love for the Webhead started over here.
Gran Turismo 2 players. My brother and I loved this game. The music, the feel, the graphics.
Tekken 3, using Gon to beat my friends.
Finally, my most iconic PS1 game: Activision and Z-Axis' Space Invaders 1999. My dad used to always play this game with us. It was great. My brother and I would also always play this game. The first levels Hammer boss is probably one of my earliest gaming memories.
Ironically, in the PS1 days, I was an anti-PS gamer. The console was marketed in an edgy fashion and friends that I had with the console played games like Twisted Metal and similar titles, so the console seemed obnoxious and violent to me. I didn’t get it. I was team Nintendo in those days (wasn’t much a fan of Sega back then either) and didn’t become PS based until PS2.
By the time of the PS2, I had gotten the fact that I’d missed out on the games I was more into and dived deep into the back catalog, and discovered I was a foolish kid.
As far as remember, my 1st experience with PS1 was in the middle school / 7th grade. My childhood friend got a PS1 from his parent so i came to his house and seen him playing Wild Arms 1 and Tobal no 1. Wild Arms 1 opening intro was so beautiful and it turned me from Sega fanboy into a PS believer lol.
The PS1 was my introduction to the console wars. Despite the aggressive marketing between the Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis, there were no such wars on my grade school playground. Everyone acknowledged that both systems had their own great games and friendships were forged so everyone could get a taste of the console they didn't own. Then the PS1 came out and everything changed. Suddenly Sony was King and Nintendo was a baby's system. I had a Nintendo 64 and I enjoyed it. No one I knew had a PS1 so I never got to play it on the original hardware. I bought a PS2 in the mid-2000s and played the heck out of it. Skipped the PS3 in favor of the Xbox 360, but went back to the PS4 and later PS5 after the disastrous Xbox One launch reveal. I love my Sony systems but I still haven't played any PS1 games, even all these years later.
My mother was the type that would give you your Christmas present in September, my father not so much so whenever he had to do shift work, she would let me sneak the PlayStation out of the Christmas gift hiding hole and play it. So my first PlayStation memory is trying to play a rental copy of wing Commander 3 without a memory card, stayed up most of the night and died spectacularly then getting booted back to the start because I didn’t have a memory card.
I also recorded every CGI cut screen from Final Fantasy 7 and 8 onto a VHS cassette tape, I should hunt through the basement and see if I can find it.
I was at Uni when I first played a PS1, and at first, like all the other console games we played at that time, it was a multiplayer affair, worshipped for Tekken 3 and Tony Hawk’s etc, just like the N64’s were for Goldeneye and Mario Kart, and (later) the Dreamcast for Power Stone and some weird fishing game that used a bonkers peripheral… but whilst the other systems were played often and totally awesome, they stayed reserved for that co-op or PvP experience… and with the PS1 I went on journeys both with friends and alone, to places that that I’d never imagined video games might take us before then - that first trip to Silent Hill, infiltrating Shadow Moses, losing (spoilers) Aerith in FFVII… So many indelible memories. The PS1 felt like the first console that had grown up with those that had started gaming in the boom of the 80s, and that was not making games for a new generation of kids but was crafting new and more adult experiences for those on the cusp of such things - and I think that’s why, particularly with folks of my now vintage, this particular console is so mightily revered. Each new generation of Sony consoles has brought with it amazing experiences and surprises, and I’m happy to be gaming now on the PS5, but nothing will top that first voyage of discovery that me and my friends went on (as I’m sure so many of you here did), back when we first booted up that unassuming grey box in the mid 90s.
Well one memory of mine is getting that exact crystal green controller in the photo from the shops with my dad. It was my favourite one so I never let anyone else use it. Think I still have it in a box tucked away.
My parents bought me my PS1. Although I loved playing games like Winning Eleven, Nascar Rumble and CTR, but I still prefer playing outside with my friends more.
Until one day, my friend lent me his copy (copies?) of Final Fantasy IX. It was the first game that made me pull an all-nighter and a sickie as a kid. Damn, those were the days.
I don't have a lot of PS1 memories as my family had an N64 for that generation. That said though, I remember getting one when my brother-in-law got a PS2. He very nicely just gave us his old PS1 and the first game my brother and I played was MGS1.
Up until that point I wasn't really that into gaming. Sure I played Sonic and Street Fighter growing up on the Genesis and Mario 64 and Zelda but while I liked all those games, none of them really hit me in a major way.
MGS1 was different though. I was completely blown away by that game from start to finish. That was the game that made me love games, not just like them. It still holds up to this very day too. Truly one of the greats and it was only on PS1. So that really was the beginning of me becoming a Playstation fan.
Those launch day PlayStation demos stick in my brain to this day. The T-Rex, Manta Ray, the rotating 3D shapes…pure memory overload. Also, the game demos! Kileak the DNA Imperative, Jumping Flash, and the super cinematic voiceover for Philosoma - “Can you Survive?” - sends a chill down my spine. That PS startup sound!
I could go on and on and then the first two games I bought with my own money were Battle Arena Toshinden and Warhawk.I sold me SNES and about 15 games at a pawn shop so I’d have the money to pre-order the PS and waited in front of Electronics Boutique with my mom in Wichita, Kansas for the doors to open so I could get my day one preorder go home and take over the living room tv for the weekend. I really miss those days!
Man, I remember back in 1997 my mom out of nowhere gave me a PS1 for my 16th birthday. The first game I got was the PlayStation Underground demo disc and the first demo I played was Tomb Raider 2. Then the first full game I got from my mom was Mortal Kombat Trilogy, which I still play. Most of the time, I play Final Fantasy 7, 8, 9, Anthology, Chronicles, and Origins. I actually got into RPG's because of the PlayStation and ever since then I played nothing else but anything PlayStation!!
I moved into my girlfriend’s apartment Dec 97 and we moved into our new apartment summer 98 when we saw numerous commercials for “Parasite Eve” and it blew us away. She bought me the system and game that Christmas and we played it twice back to back. The following summer a friend of mine bought me FF7 for my birthday and wow. She watched me play FF8 as we were engaged and it was the perfect game for the perfect time for us. We also played that back to back. We’ve owned every PS console since, and still do except for PS2 which I traded in.
The Dreamcast made me forget about PS1 and the PS2 made me forget about the Dreamcast, and nothing has surpassed the PS2, but my adult gaming started w/ PS1.
After graduating high school I remember pouring over game magazines in 1995, wondering if I should get the PS1 or the Saturn. The PS1 was the first console I bought with my own money. Drove all over town looking for different launch titles. Played Ridge Racer the most. Later I remember loving Tomb Raider, Blood Omen and Soul Reaver. Played some NHL and Madden and others too, so much fun.
Micro Machines V3 was what got me to buy a Playstation at the time.
Me and friends would play it with 8 players locally and it was so much fun! You would need a multitap accessory to enable 4 controllers and then you would have to share each controller between two people to get all 8 players, so it was pretty crowded on the couch.
Colin McRae rally
Here in queens new york in 1995.day 1 when i started playing ps1 games.i enjoy a lot.but syphon filter and crash bandicoot made me love the ps1 even more.im glad i chose ps1 it was sony debut console i had faith in it in 1995.and 2024 im still with PlayStation .goat 🐐 status 👑.word up son
I remember the day my dad finally went out to pick one up for me, not knowing anything about the games, we grabbed Jumping Flash. I still don't know what that game was actually about!
I remember waiting for the school bus when my buddy said he'd lend me his copy of Final Fantasy 7, I was excited despite not knowing what Final Fantasy was actually about - thankfully by that time I'd managed to nab a GameShark, otherwise no way I'd have come close to beating that game!
And being excited every month when a new copy of PlayStation Magazine would come out, just for the demo disc!
Also buying dodgy copies where you had to stick a match stick in to fool lid it was closed, put in a legit disc, wait for some noises to bypass copyright stuff then quickly change discs again and hope it works.
My dad surprised me with the PlayStation for my birthday in June way back in 97. I was blown away. The 3 games I had at the time was Crash Bandicoot, Tekken 2, and… Space Jam, lol. That was a great summer I had. Crash Bandicoot series were the main games I played back then but I had fond memories of Tekken 3, Street Fighter Alpha 3, Pa Rappa the Rapper, WWE Smackdown 2, Rival Schools, Mega Man 8, and the horrible version of X-Men vs Street Fighter 😂. Good times.
It has to be “Alundra” for me - I remember it so well as I had foot surgery at the time and remember playing it when I couldn’t do anything else!!!…left PS for bit after PS1 (for PC) but came back with the 4 and several 5s (Original plus the Pro)…
Saw Tekken 3 in the arcade and just had to have the game. Bought a PS1 just to play that. Didn't have much money back then so FFVIII, FF Tactics, lunar, tekken 3 and FF IX were all that I had.
I never had a PS1, but my friend got one back in 1996 as a birthday present (I think). Had to go through the first weekend without a memory card, should’ve included one of those in a box!
We played through a bunch of games (sometimes bought, often rented), but late evenings with Resident Evil 2&3 were the absolute highlights.
My very first PS1 memories were:
1. Bugs Bunny and Taz Time Busters
2. Diablo
3. Castlevania Symphony of the Night
I remember playing Blasto over at my cousin's house and begging my dad to take me to Walmart to buy a PlayStation the next day. I had gotten really good grades so he agreed. My favorite memory was staying up all night and beating Silent Hill with my dad.
The Sega Saturn version of Wipeout convinced me that it was time to get a PlayStation. Spent plenty of hours with that game, Gran Turismo and fond memories of Spyro.
But my most vivid memory is the (much later) arrival of a mod-chip and standing over my precious PlayStation holding a soldering iron in total fear…Do I REALLY want to do this?…
PS1 was so expensive in our country, so it was trading comodity between drug dealers. Unfortunately I was not doing drugs, so I didn't have PS1.
1) Wipeout 2097 and THAT soundtrack.
2) Tomb Raider - the original and best.
3) Playing Doom on a sofa
Mid 90s with PS1 was something else. Especially in 1998 with RE2 and discovering MGS for the very first time on the demo disc from the official Playstation magazine. An N64 in 98 too I think or could have been 99. Great times back then with hardly any worries too
So many. But around launch WipEout was it.
But I was also very lucky, my cousin worked for Psygnosis for a while and Infogrames in Paris, and so he gave me over a dozen Sony games like Destruction Derby, Tekken, Colony Wars etc. which were handed round the offices to play in cardboard sleeves or thin single-like CD cases. He also told me a lot about the game industry and frustrations with making games.
He worked on several games but being a film buff he was particularly very excited about Psygnosis' The City of Lost Children which was a pretty large budget game tied to the French film of the same name by celebrated filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amelie etc.). It was STUNNING... for 1997... similar to Resident Evil in terms of a fixed cinematic camera and wonderful pre-rendered backgrounds.
Sadly the gameplay was woefully bad, puzzles weren't intuitive, and you couldn't see the items you had to pick up (they didn't glow or anything), you had to be standing virtually on top of them to pick up. It was super frustrating to play and scored a lowly 54.5% on aggregator du jour Game Rankings. Almost no one bought it or remembers it, but I didn't know any of that at the time.
He gave it to me just before it officially released and asked me to let him know what I thought. Feeling excited to play a game pre-release from someone I knew I threw myself into it and... hated it. But I was young and I just couldn't be honest with him so I lied and told him it was great, highlighting the graphics and sound. It was only years later I bought it back up and we had a laugh about it. He said he knew, it had been a troubled production and while there were a lot of passionate creative people involved giving their all, it just didn't work out, and sometimes the wrong voices were heard. They worked hard but when it all came together, it wasn't it. Making games is hard.
Playing Bubble Bobble with my younger brother and eventually beating the game
Think I might have even given him a hug after doing that, we've never been so close since haha I joke but brilliant memories for me
Two words. Jersey. Devil.
Zero, I had a PC and my first PS was a PS2, that console seemed to me to be still green.
I was in my 20s when PS1 launched. Favourite games were Ridge Racer, the original Wipeout, Tomb Raider, and last but definitely not least…Gran Turismo. At the time the graphics were amazing, and even better were the replays. Not only that, but GT had a meaty single player campaign which in a racing game was unheard of at the time. But the thing I’m most thankful to PlayStation for, was that it made gaming cool. Before PS, gamers were always regarded as “nerds”, or “geeks”, and being a gamer wasn’t exactly a hobby we shouted from the rooftops! Slowly but surely though, PlayStation became mainstream and we were no longer embarrassed to be gamers. Thank you Sony 🙏
I never owned a PS1 but one of my best friends did and I remember going to his house to try out a lot of the latest releases. The game we constantly revisited, though, was Twisted Metal 2, just a great multiplayer mode.
As far as the memory that sticks with me the most, I've mentioned here plenty of times before, is the first time I ever played a PS1. I saw the kiosk at the local KB Toys and decided to give Twisted Metal 1 a try. It was a mind-blowing experience for 12-year-old me compared to the more kid-friendly games of Nintendo and had even more of an edge than some of the stuff I was used to on Genesis. Ultimately decided to wait for N64 but that first taste of 3D gaming was awesome. It was pretty clear Sony had something special.
For me, the PS1 was a necessary evil. As a Nintendo fan (and to some extent Sega fan too) I saw Sony as the "Big Evil" mega corporation coming in to try to capitalize on what Nintendo, Sega and Atari had built. I was going to hold off getting one at all and just stick with the N64, but a couple games almost forced me into buying a PS1. Final Fantasy VII and Resident Evil. Of course I played a bunch of other games for PS1 as well but overall I still liked my N64 more and played it WAY more, especially 4-player games with buddies.
The PS1 generally does NOT hold up well at all today, even compared to the N64. The lack of anti-aliasing, texture warping, polygon popup just look brutal today. Honestly I thought a lot of the games looked like crap on PS1 even back then.
However you still have to give Sony their flowers for the things the PS1 did bring to the table and the way it changed the gaming industry forever.
I got my PS1 in Christmas 97, which was a couple of years after the system came out in the UK. I originally wanted a Sega Saturn because my older brother had one. But weirdly he put me off it because he said and I quote "stop copying me".
Anyway for whatever reason I gravitated towards PlayStation, I think partly because of games like Crash Bandicoot and Tekken were proving popular. Plus the commercials they had here were very memorable such as the "second life" advert.
final fantasy 7 symphony of the night legacy of kain final fantasy tactics dragon warrior 7..
My brother got a PS1 in late 95 I think. I knew very little about it but was blown away by games like Battle arena Toshinden and ridge racer.
We had a PS1 from pretty much the start and it sealed my love for playstation to this day
Eating discs. I have no memories of PS1 as I was quite literally a toddler.
My fondest memory of PS1 is playing Resident Evil with my best mate John. We stayed up all night drinking beer and screaming at the jump scares, especially when the dog jumps through the window! It revolutionised scary games for me, I’d never played anything like it. We did the same for Resident Evil 2 which took the horror genre to the next level. I still love the series to this day. Sadly my friend died a few years ago and didn’t get to see the RE2 Remake, but I remember our time playing the original every time I play the it.
Parasite eve 2 with cheat disk, another game worthy of a remake
With respect, and I speak as probably the oldest on the forum, its a little like going on to AVFORUMS and asking folks what are their memories of the switchover from B&W broadcasting to Colour. Its ancient history, even to an old fart like me . But given you ask...... my memory is Wipeout, thats it. All the cool kids got to have pretty girlfriends, play Wipeout at nightclubs, and have sex with those girlfriends afterwards. Us uncool nerds did not have any of those 3.
I was always a Nintendo junkie and didn't have much interest when the PS1 came out. Saw it at a friend's a few months later who showed me Medievel. Meh. Didn't care for it. Few months later was at another friend's house who showed me Metal Gear Solid. I was hooked in the first 20 minutes. During my lunch break at work the next day, I bought a PS1 with MGS and Silent Hill cause it looked cool. Went home and hooked it up (lived very close to work). Called them and told them I had a flat tire and had one of the best gaming days of my life.
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