Sony Playstation Downs the Competition

Determining which video game console I thought was the best in the business was an extremely difficult choice. There are countless factors that can weigh in on the decision: graphic capabilities, number of classic games, number of influential games, total sales, and more. And as uninformative as it may seem, my final choice combines all these factors to a certain degree along with personal circumstance as well. The choice that I settled on after almost a week of deliberation is the original Sony Playstation.

The Playstation's predecessors were hard to overlook because they immediately have a major one-up in that they were first, and thus were directly responsible for the staggering success of the video game industry. Just a few examples were the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), and the old ATARI system. There are many others but these were the three systems prior to the Playstation's release that I had the hardest time overlooking as "best ever."

All the following is subject to opinion of course but the original Playstation stands out as a drastic shift in video gaming. Minus the PC of course, the Playstation was the first game console to use discs as opposed to the more common cartridge. For one, this made room for a lot more memory in the game. However, it also required a separate memory card to save files from games. And at the time, paying an extra $15-20 per card seemed like a lot. The Playstation (along with the Nintendo 64) was a significant upgrade in graphics against predecessors and competitors; namely, the consistent shift from 2D platforming to 3D. While not all the games were presented in 3D, most were, and it opened up limitless possibilities. The presence of voiceovers began to appear as well; more than grunts of a fighting hero, or the one- liners such as "get over here!" by Scorpion in Mortal Kombat. Games like Metal Gear Solid began to show both the graphical capabilities as well as the voiceover usage with extreme precision.

Not surprisingly, one of the major factors on my decision is the vast number of quality (and classic where appropriate) games on the console. Many new series burst on to the scene via the Playstation, with many already established series finding rebirth/redefinition on it. You had the emergence of series like Twisted Metal (which continues to this day), Crash Bandicoot (predecessor to games like Ratchet & Clank), and Suikoden. There were also exceptional entries into already established series: Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, and Castlevania (Symphony of the Night). The four Final Fantasy games (VII-IX, Tactics) were four of the series' strongest entries, as well as re-releases of their older repertoire via Final Fantasy Anthologies (V and VI), Final Fantasy Origins (I and II), and Final Fantasy Chronicles (IV and Chrono Trigger). They all found homes on the Playstation and consequently made my day.

The system had all the subsequent sports titles continue on with great success as well. Madden, NBA Live, and dark horse Hot Shots Golf. Most all genres were well represented on the Playstation. At the time, the one thing that main competitor, Nintendo 64, had on the Playstation was it could accommodate four simultaneous players as opposed to Playstation's two. And really, Sony has stayed away from the four controllers even in subsequent releases, primarily due to the explosion of online play via Playstation Network and XBOX Live.

So many reasons, so little time; this just scrapes the surface of reasoning for (or against) Sony Playstation being regarded as the best system of all time. If you like video games, you owe it to yourself to play all the above mentioned titles and then of course, make your opinion.