If you haven't checked out my 'Nintendo Experience' articles, I advise you go read those first before reading this. You can read part 1 here.
Holding onto my first game controller in 1990, it was a tough start playing a standard NES and Sega Genesis game with my tiny young hands, let alone having the experience to beat any of the games I played. Through a few years of trial and error I learned the ins and outs of strategy as I quickly turned 10, but by that time both of those systems were traded off for an N64 and a Sony Playstation. Unlike getting the N64 around its launch date, I had to wait a year to get the Playstation system.
The games I first started out with were Killing Zone (pictured above), Jet Moto, Twisted Metal 2, Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee, Gex, Lost World: Jurassic Park and a rather odd first person shooter called Kileak: The DNA Imperative. My family had a bit of a rocky start with games that were fit for my level of experience, but Gex was a 2D platformer with a well balanced difficulty. My older brother played both Twisted Metal 2 and Jet Moto while my stepdad huddled on the couch to play Kileak, sneaking around every corner of a room and shooting anything that moved.
1998 showed a bit more promise with some added games to our library, as we got games such as Gex 2, Wild 9, Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus, Pandemonium, Driver, Crash Bandicoot 2, the ever popular Final Fantasy VII and a special gift from one of my brother's friends, the immersive RPG, Wild Arms. I didn't quite grasp the concept of RPGs yet, but I had a lot of fun with Crash 2, Gex 2 and Pandemonium. Digging out the old cheat guide book that my stepdad bought for us, it was fun finding the secret warp room levels in Crash 2 as well as the cheat codes for some of the harder levels in Gex 2.
The first Wild Arms was also one of the few RPGs on the Playstation that only required one disc, and for a launch title it actually garnered much success with sequels to follow.
Since we had both a Nintendo 64 and a Playstation in our home, many lost weekends happened even with my mom trying to drag me and my brother outside, so much so that it was affecting our homework. Thus the two hour limit of playing games became more common, and during the school year we could only play Friday through Sunday. Since my older brother was getting a job he soon had the idea of buying more games, but for the moment started buying random issues of the Official Playstation Magazine to not only get news of future games, but to get our hands on demo discs to play games that would be hitting shelves later in the coming months.
Although it didn't quite have the same charm as Nintendo Power, reading through the issues and getting some behind the scenes looks at an upcoming game while getting some Q and A's from staff members more than made up for it.
1999 is where our picking up games actually slowed down a bit. Now that my brother was working and my stepdad had his own lawn care business, my brother took it upon himself to buy more games, though he had to watch his money because some of it was going toward bills. Driver 2 was the first game he picked up along with its strategy guide, Konami's nightmarish survival horror Silent Hill, Mega Man X4, Medal of Honor for my stepdad, and Naughty Dog's swan song Crash game, Crash Team Racing as a Christmas present. Though 2000 was coming, Sony and other developers would still hang on to the original Playstation just a bit longer until some new hardware was underway.
Stay tuned for Part 2 where I give my retrospective of my last years with my Playstation, move on to the Playstation 2 and 3 and wrap it up with my time owning a Playstation 4. See you next time!
