Saturday HardWare - Playstation

December 3rd 1994 - Saw the release of the Japanese console the PlayStation - one word, is one of the emblematic consoles to define a generation of gamer these that were born in the 90's. Released September 9th 1995 in NA and September 29th in Europe. 

This gray thing was born following the aspiration of Sony to enter the market of video games, but is before everything else a story of revenge against the folks that have humiliated them publicly. To fully understand the story behind this console we need to go as far back as 1990 and one man in particular. 

Ken Kutaragi, then engineer worked on a chip for the Super Nintendo that handled audio rendering. Following what his leadership qualified as mistake which nearly got him fired,a partnership with Nintendo seemed like the next logical choice for Sony to enter the console market. It was then agreed that Sony and Nintendo will work conjointly on the Super-CD. 

An Add-On for the infamous ext. port under the Super Famicom. Nintendo had cancelled secretly the contract with Sony and doing so created its own rival. That public humiliation came when Nintendo announced at the CES 1991 that they were working on a Super-Cd's add on with Philips, historic rival of Sony. 

On the same CES - Sony unveiled its ''Play Station". That treason from big N was a direct blow not only this but announcing you're working with your partners rival is an another dirty move made. 

Stronger, following this backstory - Sony decided that they didn't need a partnership with Nintendo to enter the video game market thus developing the "PlayStation" after a long story of lawsuits, a brief partnership with Sega and some other blows. Development began somewhere as early as 1992 and up until the end of the year - their console still had a SNES cartridge port. 

A design that was scrapped entirely. Looking someday at Virtua Fighter from Sega the team at Sony was impressed and decided that the Playstation will be polygon friendly console seeing it as the future of gaming. 

In terms of what do you get inside the box - a standard AV Cable, the power cable - the console and the OG controller of the Playstation with its recognizable horns. The shape is still very much in use today and throughout the iterations.

In terms of hardware, what you get is a fairly average CPU - however complimented by extra chips to handle the rendering (GPU) and the audio(DSP) as well as fair amount of RAM. Which allowed the console to stay relevant from its initial release up until 2003, 9 years thereafter. 

The console was known in its early form to have defect from the vents which overheating made its plastic components warp as well as the famous upside down trick to help the disc reading as it was prone to failure - due to rails and resting made out of plastic in the earlier models. 

The game discs, black just because it looks cool there isn't much anything as a reason behind it - though the coating was extremely fragile and stressing up whilst booting the console was very common for much anyone.

Speaking of the games for this little bad boy some of the recognizable name in today's video game landscape premiered on the Playstation at various points of time : 

- Metal Gear Solid 1998

- Final Fantasy VII - 1997

- Tomb Raider 1996

The game console has also one of the most extensive list of exclusive games, which comes from the fact that the competition was outsold and no match for the grey box. The only console that came forward to instate itself as a worthy opponent is its successor the PlayStation 2.