This past Sunday, December 3, marked the 23rd anniversary of the release of the original PlayStation in Japan. Brought to life by Sony engineers after a deal to collaborate on a Super Nintendo CD-ROM drive went south, the PlayStation - also sometimes called PSX and latterly PSone - sold an extraordinary 102.49 million units in its lifetime, and gave birth to some of the most enduring game series of the 3D era. Here's a list of 23 amazing games, one for each year of its amazing life and legacy to date.
1. PaRappa the Rapper
Arguably the first true rhythm-action game, PaRappa was a colorful seed that sprouted inspiration in all sorts of vibrant directions in the two decades that followed, siring a genre that spanned pure arcade rhythm games like Frequency and Amplitude to the plastic instruments and licensing orgies of Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Combining surreal visuals and original raps, it stands up to this day.
2. Gran Turismo
PlayStation already had more than its fair share of racing games when Gran Turismo came out in 1997, but as the series' incredible success suggests, this really felt like something else. This was a game that not only loved cars, but tried to bring you closer to their soul. It felt grown-up and authentic, without leaning too far towards stuffy simulation.
3. Metal Gear Solid
Hideo Kojima had made interesting Metal Gear games before Solid Snake made his debut on PlayStation, but the transition to three dimensions - and the opportunity to use cut-scenes - proved the making of this series, which combined interesting gameplay mechanics with an agile narrative and an impish sense of humor.
4. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Symphony of the Night was such a bold reinvention of the Castlevania concept that - along with Nintendo's Metroid series - it gave us an entirely new way of thinking about similar games: the Metroidvania. Keeping the whipcracking, vampires and gothic aesthetic, SotN added nonlinear world design, RPG mechanics and an incredible twist that, even now, we don't particularly want to spoil for anyone who hasn't experienced it.
5. Tomb Raider
Lara Croft became gaming's first real sex symbol in the PlayStation era, although it feels laughable to describe the angular graphics of her first adventure as remotely titillating. The controls haven't aged well either. But the sense of being alone in a dangerous, undisturbed world with just your acrobatics and a couple of pistols to stave off traps and wildlife has a timeless quality that has helped the series through various generations and reinventions.
6. Vib Ribbon
Another early rhythm game, Vib Ribbon's minimalist visuals are a neat gimmick, but its moreish gameplay and sensational soundtrack are the reason we still keep a copy lying around for the occasional trip down memory lane.
7. Destruction Derby
We probably spent more time marveling at the way you could smash up cars in Destruction Derby than we did actually playing it as intended, but like Mortal Kombat's fatalities, sometimes the novelty of technology helps a game feel more than it otherwise might.
8. Crash Bandicoot
We grew up in a Nintendo household and as a result the closest we got to Crash Bandicoot was watching other people play it on store display PlayStations. To us it was just a poor man's Super Mario 64. Returning to it a couple of decades later - particularly in the excellent HD remaster on PS4 - it's interesting to note that it's arguably aged better than Mario 64. Nintendo's opus is hard to play and enjoy now thanks to controls and camerawork that were bleeding edge at the time and feel archaic now, whereas Crash's simpler use of 3D is much more accessible, allowing us to appreciate the fiendish level design of this devilish game as though it were new today.
9. Grand Theft Auto
Nowadays GTA games offer sprawling 3D worlds of incredible fidelity, where flip-flops are famously animated to both flip and flop. The original GTA was much simpler - a top-down high-score game where you raced around taking on driving and shooting missions inspired by movies and pop culture. Fantastic at the time, it felt very much at home on PlayStation.
10. Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy VII was always going to be a huge moment for Squaresoft, as they were then known, because it signaled their defection from Nintendo consoles to the upstart Sony Computer Entertainment. The result was particularly galling for Nintendo fans because it showed the RPG maker at the peak of its powers, using new technology to tell an unforgettable story about indelible characters who haunt us to this day.
11. Resident Evil
Another birth-of-a-genre story, Resident Evil wasn't the first scary video game, but it redefined our expectations for them. Iconic moments like the zombie dogs bursting into the house were laced throughout this fantastic blend of - as UK sitcom Spaced once put it - lateral thinking and extreme violence, and the core formula of exploring a mansion and discovering it has untold depths has rarely been bettered.
12. Driver
UK-based developer Reflections ultimately found a happy second life as part of Ubisoft, but for a while Driver seemed like a proper rise-and-fall story, with the miserable Driv3r on PS2 and Xbox among the worst high-profile flops of that era. The first Driver was a great game, though - a tough and unforgiving tale of an underworld wheelman inspired by classic Hollywood chase movies.
13. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2
We could have gone with the original, but this is where the series really came alive, defining the skateboard game archetype for several console generations in a way that made other attempts - like EA's Skate series - feel like weird anomalies. Using fighting game-style button combos to pull off tricks between balance-based grinds in fast-paced urban environments, this was a combo-lover's dream.
14. WipEout
The game that earned PlayStation its reputation as a console for the sort of people who went to nightclubs, WipEout was a futuristic racer where you 'piloted' racing craft around low-gravity racing environments slung across sci-fi cityscapes while proper techno music played in the background. One of those games that sold an image while also being good.
15. Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver
Developed by Crystal Dynamics, who are better known these days as custodians of the Tomb Raider franchise, Soul Reaver was the second installment in the Legacy of Kain series and its dark, gothic atmosphere and great visuals made this one of the archetypal third-person hack-and-slash games of an era where they proved very popular.
16. Tekken 2
The original Tekken was a fantastic fighter, more than justifying its existence in a world that already played host to Toshinden and Virtua Fighter, but the second one is the game that barely left our disc trays for months on end. It had a huge roster of characters, refined the great gameplay of the first title, and introduced practice mode, which became a genre staple.
17. Grandia
A notably great Japanese RPG during a period that felt like their heyday, Grandia saw protagonist Justin inherit a magic stone that took him on adventures all around the world, brought to life as 3D maps with 2D bitmap sprites. As well as a distinctive appearance, Grandia's battle system gave players more strategic options than most turn-based efforts at the time and inspired other similar approaches.
18. Syphon Filter
One of those franchises that fans regularly ask Sony to resurrect, Syphon Filter was a third-person shooter that also included stealth and puzzle-solving elements. The inspiration from games like GoldenEye and Metal Gear Solid was obvious, but Syphon Filter still felt like its own thing, and picked up plenty of fans.
19. Parasite Eve
Speaking of old games people often ask to see revived, Squaresoft's Parasite Eve gave us elements of horror and role-playing in New York City as police officer Aya Brea tries to stop the Eve, a woman who plans to destroy the human race. The sequel was also rather good, although The 3rd Birthday, released for PSP in 2010, wasn't quite what we wanted.
20. Bushido Blade
While most fighting games focused on hand-to-hand combat, with the odd fireball (or twenty) thrown in for good measure, Bushido Blade was about armed combat, and that novelty - with depth to support it - helped it stand apart in a sea of Street Fighter clones.
21. Bishi Bashi Special
Back in the days before the Wii, mini-game compilations were exciting and novel, and Konami's Bishi Bashi Special was one of the most absurd and delightful. From top-down race horses to a pair of characters bound together trying to reach puddings on either side of the screen, Bishi Bashi certainly was special.
22. Silent Hill
While Capcom's Resident Evil series focused on tangible threats like zombies and mutations that could be seen, touched and blown to pieces, Konami took a different route with Silent Hill, delivering more a psychological style of horror that gave it a distinctive and eerie feeling that helped it carve out its own place in the PlayStation pantheon.
23. Ridge Racer
Last but not least, Namco's Ridge Racer is a series we dearly miss: an absurd arcade racer in which you slide sideways round corners at ridiculous speeds. The ridiculous thrill of drifting - such a novelty at the time - meant that this game with only one track was still in and out of our disc trays at the very end of the PlayStation's life. Bring it back, someone, for us.