After Sony and Nintendo's collaboration on the Super CD-ROM came to an end, Sony continued their research and decided to make a stand alone console. A deal was reached with Nintendo to allow the Play Station (as it was called then) to play SNES cartridges. This feature was dropped from the final design, and the name changed to PlayStation.
A powerful machine, the PlayStation featured 3D graphics capabilities which at the time were remarkable. Games like Tomb Raider made 3D game worlds popular and effectively put an end to the 2D shoot 'em ups and platformers which had been around since the late '70s and early '80s.
Early units suffered from problems with the laser mechanism. The CD tray was made from plastic and over a period of time would wear away resulting in games no longer working. A common solution was to turn the console on its side or even upside down to relieve stress on the laser's motor. Later units had a metal tray to prevent this problem.
Even to this day the PlayStation is often wrongly referred to as the PSX, the correct term being PS. PSX was the name given to the PlayStation based arcade hardware and later a Japanese only version of the PS2, which was capable of digital video recording and featured either a 160 GB or 250 GB hard drive.
A redesigned machine named PSone was released in 2000. This smaller version lacked the serial port but was otherwise fully compatible with older games. The PS and PSone achieved combined sales of more than 102 million units between them, making the PlayStation the first ever console to break the 100 million mark. In the process PlayStation became a household name, ended Nintendo's domination of the market and fought off competition from Sega's Saturn and Dreamcast, which no doubt had an influence on Sega's decision to pull out of the console hardware business.
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Contributors: Ste (text & info)
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Recently when i was in London i bought a PS1 from a local flea market for 10 pounds.
At first it looked broken along with most of the stuff but i did get a perfect copy of TME CRISIS: PROJECT TITAN along with that it worked like a charm on my HDMI TV
Wednesday 1st July 2020
James (Ireland)
The PS1 graphics was less powerful than the N64, but the PS1 could display better/more colours than the N64. The use of CD instead of cartridges allowed longer games. It also meant that speech and video could be used for cut seen''s due to more storage space. The N64 is linked to the TV and the ps1 is in the cupboard under the TV due to lack of space. The ps1 does still find use when I fell like playing it.
acyually the psx monicker is correct in developement the plsyatastion was known as playstation experimental abbreviated to psx the name has stuck ever since to refer to it in shorthand the confusion was not helped by the matter of sony's brlliant ( read vauge ) idea to entitle the upgraded ps2 with dvd ripping abiltiies and a hd the psx it might be the official name of the machine the real psx is stil the old grey playstation it has always been and will be
the psx has had one of the most longest and distinguished lives of any console it has been inproduction for a full decade from 1994 till 2004 putting it in the same leuge as the nes ( a staggering 21 years ) the atari vcs the gameboy and the snes ( 9 years) its off spring stil lives on in the form of the playstation 2 and 3 and the ps1 stil lives on in its off spring as a dedicated chip in each of them to enable ps1 playback the playstation 2 has proven it self durable has wel celebrating its seventh birthday on 4 march this year
Friday 6th April 2007
bluekatt (netherlands)
NAME
PlayStation
MANUFACTURER
Sony
TYPE
ORIGIN
Japan
YEAR
1994 (Japan) - 1995 (USA & Europe)
END OF PRODUCTION
2000 (PS), 2006 (PSone)
BUILT IN LANGUAGE
CD Player + Memory Card manager
KEYBOARD
Original - 8-way d-pad, 8 buttons + Start + Select Dual Analog - 8-way d-pad, 10 buttons + Start + Select, two analogue sticks DualShock had the same layout but was able to vibrate
CPU
32 bit MIPS R3000A
SPEED
33.8688 MHz
CO-PROCESSOR
GTE (Geometry Transformation Engine), Data Decompression Engine (MDEC), GPU, SPU
RAM
2 MB main, 512 KB sound
VRAM
1 MB
ROM
512 KB
GRAPHIC MODES
256x224 to 640x480
COLORS
16.7 million palette, 32768 on screen
SOUND
16 bit, 24 channel PCM
SIZE / WEIGHT
260mm x 185mm x 45mm / 1.5 Kg PSOne: 193mm x 144mm x 38mm
I/O PORTS
Expansion port, Serial port, AV out, 2 Memory Card slots, 2 controller ports
