I remembered the Dreamcast's birthday, but not the PS1s'? For SHAAAAME on me.

One of the most influential systems ever released, I think it can safely be said, the PS1 brought everything that we have in modern gaming to a new level. It blew away the Saturn in terms of sales, had quite possibly the single largest library of any system in history, and with the exception of the Atari 2600 was supported long after its "prime" from 1995 until 2006 (for comparison, the VCS was supported officially from 1977 to 1990).

The games, the styles, the franchises, the... well, the Final Fantasy titles. The genres that were both created and put to pasture, the games that flew off of store shelves. the hardware and the history, if you have anything to say about the PS1 let it be said here. What did you like? What did you hate? What will you never grow tired of, and what are you never planning to play again? Any thoughts?

Where to begin?

I love Sega but I think Playstation was superior to Saturn and could handle 2D gaming almost as easily (If you played the Capcom games, then you know what I mean.). The system seemed to better welcome and accomodate the thoughts and ideas of today's gamers better than did the Saturn, hence the Playstation's unparalleled success. The digital controller was hell when playing very clunky games like the Tomb Raider series (overrated at the time). I'm glad they changed that and led the way for the format for future Playstation controllers with the added analog sticks.

Obviously the strength of PS was its unheard of list of top notch RPGS. SQUARE ENIX immediately comes to mind when I think of these. Final Fantasy, Mana, SaGa, Lunar, Xenogears, Dragon Warrior, and Vagrant Story to name a mere few. This was my favorite PS genre and always will be. (Though some cynics call this stuff "more of the same." I don't necessarily agree. Every game must do something new. That was the rule for PS games and beyond.)

I think PS was just warming up with the not-so-grest earlier games. They didn't start to look and play nice until FF7. I think that hit was Playstation's ultimate success "catalyst."

It's weakness and my gripe as well, was its lack of first party titles. No, Sony cannot be Nintendo in that aspect. Yes, it slaughtered the N64. However, Sony could have had better characters than Crash and Spyro. Fortunately for Sony, that didn't really mattter.

The last thought I have is how impressed I am with its duration. It went longer than NES and that's long! But that is to be expected of the world's most successful console. I am glad my slim PS2 will play these games forever. Happy 11th Playstation! You have a place in my gaming heart forever!

The ps1... Well, I got a Playstation system early on and was generally impressed with the madden games and such, but my system had the laser problem that Sony, even to this day, says never existed, the one that causes the sound to skip and crack. I really thought that was part of the system at first.

The first RPG I bought for the ps1 was Beyond the Beyond, and boy was that game so repetitive, it got really boring fast. I think there were 3x the monster encounters as the dragon warrior type games.. You just move 2 feet, and there's another encounter.. move 2 more feet.. again and again and again and over again.

I absolutely hate the new final fantasy games on the system. They're just way too pre-determined. If I want to watch a movie, I'll buy a dvd.

There were a few cool games on it, like resident evil, silent hill, and parasite eve, probably a few more, but if you compare how many games that were available vs how many games were good, it was pretty disappointing, for me at least.

It's true that the PSX had slightly better graphics than the saturn, just like the SNES had better graphics than the genesis, mainly because sega was putting more resources in to features other than graphics, like the sonic speed technology (ok i know that's not what it's called, but hey) - both had 2 mb of ram though.

One game I forgot to mention was Legend of Legaia. That was my favorite rpg on the playstation system, and I really liked how it worked with the 2 analog controller sticks.

Overall, the ps1 had a few good rpgs, and probably was a sportslovers and platformer's paradise, but I have yet to fall in love with it :/

I just remembered, I never answered my own post!

When I first got my PS1 I was, honestly, disappointed. Not with the games themselves, but because I was so biased that I didn't want to give Sony a chance. I wanted a Saturn, but those were still more expensive, and since my dad didn't really know anything about gaming (only that I thoroughly enjoyed it) he got me the cheaper system.

And now I've collected about 60 or so different games for it. I mostly play the games that you don't hear so much about, like Top Shop and Monopoly, as well as a handful of bigger names like Lunar. It's one of my favorite systems, and it really makes me wish I could find my other PS1 with the red/yellow cables so I can play it with all of the colors and no weird stuff...

I know the playstation was very popular, but give me a Sega Saturn anyday. Best rpgs (Shining force, dragon force, panzer saga, etc) Great imports, it was huge in Japan.

Back in the day I was all about the PSX. Air Combat, Tekken, Project Overkill, Loaded were some of my favorite games for a long time, then the N64 came out with the WCW wrestling series and it was all over. Don't get me wrong i still like the PSX and still play some of the games for it today and i love collecting for it. but I was never a die hard fanboy of the system.