Celebrating 15 Years of PlayStation

Lorne Lanning, creative director, Oddmob

What were you doing 15 years ago?

In 1995 we were still madly trying to figure out how to burn CD's without write failures due to trucks passing by outside. My, how the times do change.

What were your favourite games on the original PlayStation?

My two favourite games on the original PlayStation were Loaded and Driver. With Loaded, PSX had just come out and this updated mix of Smash TV meets guts out lunacy was completely addictive in two-player mode. It was also a cool production design with excellently executed lighting effects for the day.

Was one of the first times where the weapon lighting effects on the environment really had that visceral popping impact that firearms should have in simulation. We had a blast with that game and even referenced how they did a number of the light effects for how we would approach some of the effects in Abe's Oddysee.

With Driver, this game had it going on way before most even tried to pull it off. The true genre predecessor to Grand Theft Auto, even though Grand Theft Auto never got a burnout button right like Driver did. Driver's burnout button made all the difference in the world, and for the first time you actually felt like you were in high speed pursuits in an open city. That button gave you an entirely different level of control over the physics and fun factor just in raising havoc with your car.

The controls and physics of the cars in that game still supercede the feeling of most driving games today. They just nailed it for the day and it was amazing the degree of simulation that they were running that early on the PSX. It was absolutely my favourite game of the era, and also the first time I ever wrote a fan mail to a game company.

Which titles would you say have been the most influential?

I would have thought that Crash Bandicoot would have had the most impact, as it had such tremendous sales for the era, but in hindsight its interesting how little those genres are moving forward on consoles. Then there was the Final Fantasy games, which had enormous sales, yet they too did not tend to shape much into the future. So I'd have to say it was probably Tomb Raider that had the most impact on games going forward. How many games have we seen and still see that are taking the format of the genre seriously.

At the time, it was the best looking real-time environments in a game and the blend of story, action, and adventure has only taken off all the more since then. I'd have to say it was Tomb Raider that had the most influence on games to come.

What has been the legacy of the original PlayStation?

It was the first real viable CD-ROM based system that had enough horsepower to start ushering in those next-gen games. It was also a great system for playing around with bitmaps in a new way and the more memory enabled games like Oddworld to start being made with the graphics quality we were looking for. In many ways, I'd have to say that the true legacy of the PSX was that it did shine the light on the next generation of 3D gaming possibilities for consoles. It was a great system and its dev environment was more reasonable than its later incarnations.

Karl Hilton, managing director, Crytek UK

What were you doing 15 years ago?

I was busy making backgrounds for GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo 64. I was new to the industry and on a steep learning curve.

What were your favourite games on the original PlayStation?

Ridge Racer. It seemed so close to the arcade version which I loved. It had a great frame-rate and was truly addictive. And Wipeout. Once again it looked fantastic, had great gameplay and also a superb use of music. One of the first 'cool' games for a console.

Which titles would you say have been the most influential?

The first Gran Turismo set new standards for realism, both in terms of the physics and graphics that we could expect in a racing game. It immediately made all previous racing games obsolete and brought in new and much broader gameplay ideas to the genre.

What has been the legacy of the original PlayStation?

I think PlayStation elevated gaming from a child's pursuit and brought it in to the adult realm. The demographic of game players was growing older and Sony used the PlayStation 1 to not only satisfy, but grow and expand the market for new age groups. And I still love playing Wipeout games

David Braben, chairman, Frontier Developments

What were you doing 15 years ago?

We just had our first Playstation 1 devkits, and were trying to get them to work! They were fragile PC cards, as I remember, and took careful treatment to get them to work.

What were your favourite games on the original PlayStation?

Bizarrely, probably the original Ridge Racer. Not because I think it was the best made, but for a while it was one of the few games (other than our own in development) I got to play in those very early days. We also got quite competitive in our office about lap times!

Which titles would you say have been the most influential?

Tricky. There are a few that moved things forwards, but didn't get the recognition for it. Ape Escape was perhaps one, where the control moved on to the analogue sticks for the first time. The original Gran Turismo raised the quality bar for racers, and perhaps Metal Gear Solid for presentation and stealth gameplay. For me, there was no one title (unlike on some of the other platforms at that time) that stood out as the obvious one for this.

What has been the legacy of the original PlayStation?

From a developer point of view, it turned a business that felt a little amateurish, into something that felt slick. I remember the original presentation from Phil Harrison to developers, of the new "PSX" machine. It felt a little like unveiling of a new car. It was slick, professional, polished (with great imagery of an animated T-Rex). We haven't looked back since.