For a lot of you the answer to this question will likely be "nothing" because you were either a baby or weren't even alive at all in the mid 90's... But for me this was a point in time where I was a legal adult and had expendable income for the first time in my life. No more did I need to worry about only getting one game a month because I only had time for a part-time job in high school, I was working full-time and had plenty of money.
I didn't get the PS1 at launch because the Atari Jaguar had already taught me a lesson about doing that. Sony was untested in the gaming industry when the Playstation was released so there was no reason for any of us to believe that it was going to become the industry giant that it is today.
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It was a pretty slick looking system and the controller in particular kind of blew us away. It was simply perfect in design and I wouldn't mind seeing a documentary about how they came to decide on the design of the controller the way that they did.
If you look at PS controllers over the course of history, they haven't really changed all that much because if it aint broke, you don't fix it. Certain additions have been made to it, sure, but for the most part the original design was perfect and there was no reason to change that. I'm glad they never really did.
My original question was "when you see the picture of a system, what game do you think of?" and for me the answer to that question is Resident Evil.
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I liked a lot of the games on PS1, but nothing holds a candle to Resident Evil. I don't know for sure about this but this was one of the first "survival horror" games that ever existed. It was the first one that I ever played for sure.
The graphics look stupid by today's standards and honestly, the controls were pretty hilarious in how you would run even if you were stuck on something or in a corner, but overall, this game was something the likes of which we had never seen before.
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The first zombie that you encounter right at the start of the game was such an iconic moment in gaming that it has been turned into collectible statues that you can buy. If you have one of these in your house and someone recognizes it, you will know that you can be best friends. That was such a wonderful moment in this short but perfect cutscene that you encounter near the very start of the game.
Since there was very limited internet when this game was released, it's not like we all knew exactly what to expect in this game. I knew nothing about it other than what was written on the box and this was truly a shocking moment.
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This game contained elements of many other types of games but they put them all together in a way that had never been done before. It was an RPG of sorts, it was a FPS (over the shoulder) kind of game in a way, it was also a puzzle game and a story-driven game. There game was linear in a way, but it also had optional aspects to it that could only be unlocked once you progressed with certain items. It also introduced limited ammo that was potentially very frustrating. For me, this whole running out of ammo all the time got so frustrating that this is where my tradition of saving all the "good ammo" that I would find to the point that I would finish the game and still have most of it. Oh so you found some rocket launcher rounds did you? Well you probably aren't going to use them because you will be saving them for a battle that never actually happens.
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How about a giant snake boss that took up almost all the space on the screen and gave you a sense of claustrophobia? That was just incredible and once again, this was something that us gamers had never seen before.
Perhaps the most memorable moment in the game for me was when I was looking around a room that was a billiard hall and it is totally quiet except for a grandfather clock ticking and you search around and don't see any enemies and you relax and figure that this is a "puzzle room" only to not notice gigantic tarantulas that are hiding in plain sight.
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When these these things hit the floor with a thud I'm pretty sure that I jumped out of my beanbag chair and ran like hell to just get out of that room and consider never going back into it. You don't really see many more spiders at all in the game so this was something that really scared the hell out of us.
The very first day that I bought this game me and my "co-pilot" stayed up all night playing it and still hadn't completed it despite working as a team. When my roommate came downstairs in the early morning to get ready to go to college classes, she looked at us with tired eyes and said "you guys are nuts." We laughed and carried on playing until around lunchtime and still hadn't defeated the game after around 20 hours of straight gameplay. I have never done this with any other game that I have ever owned.... RE was truly that epic.
When I finally did defeat it, it was a bittersweet moment because now I had played what was at that point in my life, the greatest gaming experience I had ever had and therefore anything else I might play wasn't going to really resonate with me. I think I took a break from gaming for a month or so after that.
I'll never forget the day I first fired up that game nor the time me and my pal (who unfortunately I lost touch with) ooohed and aahhed over and over again at this legendary game unfolding right in front of us. Resident Evil of course went on to become one of the most famous gaming franchises of all time and other than RE6, most of their games are considered really damn good. It all started somewhere though and that was on the PS1.
So tell me: What game do you think of when you see a picture of the Playstation 1?