There were two games that really convinced me that the future was now when the original PlayStation launched back in September 1995. Those games were Ridge Racer and WipEout*. Ridge Racer because, holy hell, it was an ‘arcade perfect’ (remember that expression?) racer on a home console! This can’t be happening! And WipEout because it was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Sure, I’d played F-Zero on SNES, but this game’s anti-gravity racing took players on precipitous, rollercoaster-like courses at speed, and did it all to the sounds of a superb club/rave soundtrack. Wipeout was Cool with a capital C.
And if you took a step back, and looked at gaming at the time more broadly, the arrival of PlayStation represented several huge shifts for console gaming. It was the move to the bold – and as it seemed at the time, more mature and sophisticated - new world of 3D, it was the move away from cartridges to CDs, which meant more cinematic presentation and proper CD quality audio, and it was a console that – from the get-go – was marketed to teens and adults. Sony wanted the PlayStation to be a console for the clubbing generation, and WipEout was the game that most perfectly encapsulated that.
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And if you took a step back, and looked at gaming at the time more broadly, the arrival of PlayStation represented several huge shifts for console gaming. It was the move to the bold – and as it seemed at the time, more mature and sophisticated - new world of 3D, it was the move away from cartridges to CDs, which meant more cinematic presentation and proper CD quality audio, and it was a console that – from the get-go – was marketed to teens and adults. Sony wanted the PlayStation to be a console for the clubbing generation, and WipEout was the game that most perfectly encapsulated that.
Continue reading…
Continue reading...