PSX20 #1: Final Fantasy VII

In 2014 Sony's PlayStation turns 20 years old. It was a revolutionary console, exploding the Nintendo vs. Sega paradigm that had dominated videogaming for a decade and its effects can still be felt today. PSX20 celebrates the 20th anniversary of Sony's Playstation videogames console by counting down my 20 favourite videogames for that platform. These aren't necessarily the best PSX games ever made, but they are the ones I liked and played the most. Today we've reached #1, my all-time favourite PSX title: Squaresoft's 1997 role-playing game Final Fantasy VII.

It's a very predictable choice, I know. The thing is: it's predictable for a reason. Final Fantasy VII seems amusingly dated these days, with its numerous advances and innovations long-since superceded or improved upon. At the time it felt genuinely revolutionary.

Final Fantasy had kicked off as a last-ditch attempt by a failed production company to have a hit game: hence it's name, a bleak joke that it was in all likelihood Square's final shot at success. It was a breakout hit on the Nintendo Famicom, and two sequels on the Famicom and three on the Super Famicom helped cement Final Fantasy as one of the premier franchises in Nintendo's stable. Then the time came to make Final Fantasy VII. Square planned to take advantage of the CD-ROM technology promised by Nintendo's forthcoming disc-based SFC successor. It would enable better sound and in particular the use of pre-rendered video sequences. Then, quite suddenly, Nintendo parted ways with their CD-ROM partner Sony, to focus on a third cartridge-based console (ultimately released as the Nintendo 64). Nintendo assumed Square would revise their plans. Instead Square jumped ship to Sony's PlayStation and gave Sony their biggest weapon in the fight for the loyalty of Japanese gamers.

PSX20 #2: Metal Gear Solid

In 2014 Sony's PlayStation turns 20 years old. It was a revolutionary console, exploding the Nintendo vs. Sega paradigm that had dominated videogaming for a decade and its effects can still be felt today. PSX20 celebrates the 20th anniversary of Sony's Playstation videogames console by counting down my 20 favourite videogames for that platform. These aren't necessarily the best PSX games ever made, but they are the ones I liked and played the most. Today we've reached #2, Konami's Metal Gear Solid.

Metal Gear Solid (1998) is a stealth-based action game in which the player controls secret operative Solid Snake as he infiltrates a nuclear weapons facility to disable or kill a group of super-powered terrorists. It always struck me as an odd game. Odd because it combines elements that are startlingly realistic for a late 1990s videogame with elements that are deliberately weird, silly or self-referential. Odd because it's characters are so bizarrely drawn and named. Most of all it's odd because when the story and the characters are taken all together it's pretty much the most tortured and ridiculous narrative imaginable, and yet its characters treat it all with a deadly seriousness.

PSX20 #3: Silent Hill

In 2014 Sony's PlayStation turns 20 years old. It was a revolutionary console, exploding the Nintendo vs. Sega paradigm that had dominated videogaming for a decade and its effects can still be felt today. PSX20 celebrates the 20th anniversary of Sony's Playstation videogames console by counting down my 20 favourite videogames for that platform. These aren't necessarily the best PSX games ever made, but they are the ones I liked and played the most. Today I take a look at #3: the 1999 horror game Silent Hill.

For most videogame enthusiasts it was Capcom's Resident Evil franchise that become the poster child for horror in console games. The PlayStation hosted three instalments, each of which sold millions of copies and collectively spawned their own multi-media empire of movies, comic books, toys and spin-offs. For my money, however, none of the Resident Evil games came close to Silent Hill. This was a genuinely scary game: not only peppered with 'jump' moments designed to startle the player, but soaked with a genuinely disturbing sense of unease throughout. Silent Hill generated a little empire of its own, with numerous sequels, two feature films and a string of comic books, and it all started with this first game in 1999.

PSX20 #4: Vib Ribbon

In 2014 Sony's PlayStation turns 20 years old. It was a revolutionary console, exploding the Nintendo vs. Sega paradigm that had dominated videogaming for a decade and its effects can still be felt today. PSX20 celebrates the 20th anniversary of Sony's Playstation videogames console by counting down my 20 favourite videogames for that platform. These aren't necessarily the best PSX games ever made, but they are the ones I liked and played the most. Today I take a look at #4: the 1999 rhythm-action game Vib Ribbon.

Much of what I wrote about PaRappa the Rapper - rhythm-action gameplay, distinctive design aesthetic, a game quite unlike others on the shelf - also applies to Vib Ribbon. Not surprisingly, it even shares a designer: Masaya Matsuura. The biggest differences are that Vib Ribbon is even more abstract and distinctive, and I like it even more. This isn't just one of my favourite PlayStation games - it's one of my favourite games on any platform.

You play as a skipping rabbit, rendered in deliberately crude wire-frame graphics. It's a black screen, and the rabbit is designed with a bunch of white lines. She skips along another line, and occasionally a weird bump or shape will scroll up along the line, and you'll have to press the right button at the right time to successfully skip over it. As the music continues, the shapes get more complex and approach faster. The better you perform, the more advanced your character becomes. Eventually, if you play well enough, she transforms from a rabbit into a fairy. Perform poorly and you'll devolve into a crudely animated frog, and then a tadpole. Then you die and have to begin the level again.

PSX20 #5: PaRappa the Rapper

In 2014 Sony's PlayStation turns 20 years old. It was a revolutionary console, exploding the Nintendo vs. Sega paradigm that had dominated videogaming for a decade and its effects can still be felt today. PSX20 celebrates the 20th anniversary of Sony's Playstation videogames console by counting down my 20 favourite videogames for that platform. These aren't necessarily the best PSX games ever made, but they are the ones I liked and played the most. Today I'm highlighting #5: the 1996 game PaRappa the Rapper.

PaRappa the Rapper really stood out among its fellow PlayStation games. It wasn't a third-person action game for one thing, nor a car driving game, or a platformer. It was a rhythm-action game, in which the player had a press a combination of buttons in time with some music. The genre really peaked in the last generation of videogame consoles with titles like Guitar Hero and Rock Band. PaRappa may have lacked the guitar peripherals, but I actually enjoyed it a lot more.

PSX20 #6: Final Fantasy VIII

PSX20 celebrates the 20th anniversary of Sony's Playstation videogames console by counting down my 20 favourite videogames for that platform. These aren't necessarily the best PSX games ever made, but they are the ones I liked and played the most.

I'm going to dive in and assume that if you're reading this blog you have at least a cursory understanding of Final Fantasy. It's a hugely successful Japanese role-playing game franchise that started out on Nintendo's Famicom and Super Famicom, but then made a very open and contentious jump to the PlayStation. This understandably upset Nintendo, who assumed they could use Final Fantasy sequels to sell their upcoming Nintendo 64 console, but tempted by the benefits of a CD-ROM-based system Squaresoft signed up with Sony. They made three Final Fantasy games for the original PlayStation; this was the second.

Squaresoft undertook a massive shift in visual aesthetics with this game. The first seven titles had all used rather cute, squat character designs with a strong manga/anime aesthetic. With VIII the company used comparatively realistic characters throughout, giving the game a visual maturity and depth that went far beyond its predecessors. When it was released in 1999 it looked jaw-droppingly good. People were comparing its look to feature films rather than games. Certainly it made enough of an impact that Columbia Pictures signed up to release a Final Fantasy feature film, released in cinemas two years later.

Today, of course, it doesn't look quite that impressive. Not really. Context, as always, is king.

PSX20 #7: Tekken 3

PSX20 celebrates the 20th anniversary of Sony's Playstation videogames console by counting down my 20 favourite videogames for that platform. These aren't necessarily thebest PSX games ever made, but they are the ones I liked and played the most.

Namco's Tekken was a 1994 arcade fighting game, later ported to the PlayStation, which used the then reasonably new technology of polygon-based 3D graphics to make a more exciting experience. It lagged a year behind Sega's similar title Virtua Fighter, which was a significant hit in arcades worldwide. I was never a particularly big fan of Tekken, vastly preferring both Virtua Fighter and its 1994 sequel.

This all changed with Tekken 3, released in arcades in 1997 and then ported to the PlayStation in 1998. Graphically it represented a huge leap forward for the genre. In terms of gameplay it was more instinctively playable: you could pick up the controller and have a reasonable time, employing a fair number of special attacks and combos (combinations of button-pressing creating high-powered attacks) in pretty short order.

PSX20 #8: Wild Arms

PSX20 celebrates the 20th anniversary of Sony's Playstation videogames console by counting down my 20 favourite videogames for that platform. These aren't necessarily the best PSX games ever made, but they are the ones I liked and played the most.

By the time Wild Arms was released in Australia in 1998, it was already somewhat out of date. Its SNES-era charms, while sufficient to get it fairly positive reviews, left it a little bit redundant in a post-Final Fantasy VII market. I didn't care. I still don't. Wild Arms is a superb Japanese role-playing game that's rich in design and personality, and wonderfully enjoyable to play.

It lures you in at first, perhaps under false pretences, with a beautiful anime opening complete with beautiful orchestral score and hand-drawn animation (produced by Madhouse, for those familiar with that particular production studio). The game itself is all two-dimensional sprites running around two-dimensional maps, although the menu-based battle sequences are rendered in a rather primitive polygon-based fashion. The character design is one of the game's strengths, though, as is its balance between three protagonists.

PSX20 #9: Ridge Racer Type Four

PSX20 celebrates the 20th anniversary of Sony's Playstation videogames console by counting down my 20 favourite videogames for that platform. These aren't necessarily the best PSX games ever made, but they are the ones I liked and played the most.

Ridge Racer started life as a series of arcade titles, but like all mid-90s arcade games it rapidly found its way onto the PlayStation beginning in 1994. The original PSX Ridge Racer was one of the key early titles and went a long way towards selling the system in both Japan and overseas. Given its huge success it's no surprise that Namco followed it up with Ridge Racer Revolution in 1995 and Rage Racer in 1996. It was the fourth and final PSX Ridger Racer title, Ridge Racer Type Four (1998), that really grabbed my attention.

That's the thing with videogame sequels - they're almost the opposite of Hollywood, where the quality goes down with each instalment. Videogame quality tends to go up, as technology improves and designs refine. Type Four isn't just the best of the Ridge Racer games. It's my favourite racing videogame ever. I'm sure there are better titles out there, but for sheer nostalgia and the number of hours of entertainment found, Type Four is my sentimental favourite.

PSX20 #10: Soul Edge

PSX20 celebrates the 20th anniversary of Sony's Playstation videogames console by counting down my 20 favourite videogames for that platform. These aren't necessarily the best PSX games ever made, but they are the ones I liked and played the most.

Soul Edge if you're in Japan, Soul Blade if you're in English language territories. Either way, this was a tremendously addictive and enjoyable fighting game that had me sitting in front of the television, PSX controller in hand, for months on end.

Namco's sword-wielding brawler originated in arcades, but by the end of 1995 it had been transported to the PlayStation in an expanded and considerably improved form, so much so that I'd argue it's the home console version and not the arcade original that's the definitive version. While weapon-based fighting games had been made before (the Samurai Shodown franchise being an obvious example), Soul Edge was the first game of its type among the PSX generation polygon-based titles. It took an awful lot from Namco's Tekken games, but managed to introduce enough fresh ideas and game mechanics to feel very much like its own game.

PSX20 #11: Resident Evil 2

PSX20 celebrates the 20th anniversary of Sony's Playstation videogames console by counting down my 20 favourite videogames for that platform. These aren't necessarily the best PSX games ever made, but they are the ones I liked and played the most.

Resident Evil (Biohazard in Japan) was one of the franchises that seemed to really make the PlayStation: Capcom's George A. Romero-inspired pastiche created the most effective horror games to date, and sold consoles by the bucketload. Now I personally found the original Resident Evil to be a fairly awful game: it was crippled by one of the worst control mechanisms I had seen and had some very silly live-action video sequences. Its 1998 sequel, however, is a different story.

PSX20 #12: Bushido Blade

PSX20 celebrates the 20th anniversary of Sony's Playstation videogames console by counting down my 20 favourite videogames for that platform. These aren't necessarily the best PSX games ever made, but they are the ones I liked and played the most.

Bushido Blade is a fighting game that was published by SquareSoft in 1997. It allows players to engage in one-on-one sword duels using an array of traditional Japanese bladed weapons. There is also a single-player narrative, but as with most fighting games it's the multiplayer part of the game that is the most satisfying.

And it is so satisfying.Bushido Blade is a stunning videogame. It brings an unexpected brutal realism to the genre. While competitors like Soul Edge featured long brawls and extensive trading of blows, a round of Bushido Blade can be won by hitting a single button on the controller. The trick is in knowing which button, and exactly when to press it.

PSX20 #13: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

PSX20 celebrates the 20th anniversary of Sony's Playstation videogames console by counting down my 20 favourite videogames for that platform. These aren't necessarily the best PSX games ever made, but they are the ones I liked and played the most.

When the PlayStation was released 20 years ago, it was pushed very aggressively on the back of its 3D graphics: not sprites and left to right gameplay, as was the norm for the SNES and Megadrive, but rather polygon-generated graphics and three-dimensional movement. In that respect then Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is a bit of an outlier: it's a 2D platformer that, some graphical and musical flourishes aside, would have comfortably squeezed onto the last generation of games console.

While the 2D platforming nature of Symphony of the Night might lead you to think it's just like it's NES and SNES predecessors, it's actually a sort of soft adventure-come-RPG. It cribs liberally from Nintendo's excellent Super Metroid to create an immerse environment rather than a linear string of levels. You might pass an area you can't reach, develop a new skill later on, and then return to access that previously unavailable area. It's a technique that works wonderfully to create a sense of space: you're not jumping and slashing your way through level after level, but actually exploring a massive labyrinthe castle.

PSX20 #14: Driver

These days Grand Theft Auto is pretty much the biggest name in videogaming. The most recent instalment, GTAV, sold an estimated 29 million copies in its first week of release. The blend of gritty crime, social satire and immensely playable car chases has made it enormously successful, but it owes a large chunk of its long-term success to Driver.

Let's jump back to 30 June 1999. That's the day Driver debuted in the USA, before being released in other markets around the world over the following weeks. At this point Grand Theft Auto was a single game - its sequel wouldn't be released until October. GTA was also a top-down game, with the player controlling a tiny squeaky criminal and driving around a very two-dimensional playing surface. The tone is there, but the three-dimensional immersion of later instalments is a distant future. Not so for Driver: Driver burst onto the scene as a fully realised three-dimensional driving game with breakneck chases, story depth, grit and replayability. It completely left GTA for dead. Then, two years later, Grand Theft Auto III essentially stole its act.

I'm a huge fan of GTAIV and V. They're two of my favourite videogames ever. I'm aware, however, that neither of them would exist had Driver - and its British developer Reflections Interactive - not been there first to show the way.

PSX20: Tony Hawk Pro-Skater 2

PSX20 celebrates the 20th anniversary of Sony's Playstation videogames console by counting down my 20 favourite videogames for that platform. These aren't necessarily the best PSX games ever made, but they are the ones I liked and played the most.

I'm not really into skateboarding. I never owned a skateboard and am generally too risk-averse to try balancing on one now. I am, however, really into videogames, and that - it turns out - allowed me to enjoy Tony Hawk Pro-Skater 2 immensely.

This wasn't an exclusive PlayStation title by any means, but certainly I played it on the PSX. I played it a lot. This is one of those cases where the initial game out and was broadly enjoyable, but whose sequel made just enough minor tweaks and changes that it creates a vastly more enjoyable experience. It was addictive and entertaining and, as a result, one of my favourite PSX titles.

PSX20: Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee

PSX20 celebrates the 20th anniversary of Sony's Playstation videogames console by counting down my 20 favourite videogames for that platform. These aren't necessarily the best PSX games ever made, but they are the ones I liked and played the most.

Abe is a slave working in an alien meat factory. When he learns that he and his fellow slaves are to be murdered and processed as the latest foodstuff, he breaks free from captivity and goes about rescuing all of his fellow slaves. He has the ability, via chanting, to possess the enemy Sligs and send them to their deaths. He can also communicate with his fellow slaves, using a combination of gestures, faceslaps and farts to get them to follow and cooperate with him.

Any game where there's a specific control to make your character break wind is going to get my attention. Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee was a rather peculiar hit back in 1997. At a time when most hit videogames were presenting faux 3D graphics, awash with polygons, Oddworld was a 2D platform game. It wasn't even a scrolling platformer: you controlled the protagonist Abe from screen to screen. It felt remarkably old-fashioned. It looked great. It played very addictively.

PSX20 #17: Point Blank

PSX20 celebrates the 20th anniversary of Sony's Playstation videogames console by counting down my 20 favourite videogames for that platform. These aren't necessarily the best PSX games ever made, but they are the ones I liked and played the most.

Gun peripherals certainly aren't anything new: the Nintendo Entertainment System sold a lot of units based on the popularity of Duck Hunt, for example. The Megadrive had the Menacer and the SNES had the weird bazooka-like Super-Scope. To be honest I don't think it was until the PlayStation's GunCon that there was a gun controller that actually worked. It was developed for the console by Namco for use in ports of their then-popular light gun arcade games.

I spent a lot of time playing Time Crisis on my PlayStation. That said, I still think the best GunCon title was Point Blank. The arcade game came out in 1994, and the PSX adaptation was released three years later. It's a collection of mini-games, sure, but they're great mini-games and the whole package was simple, breezy and highly addictive.

PSX20 #18: Star Gladiator

PSX20 celebrates the 20th anniversary of Sony's Playstation videogames console by counting down my 20 favourite videogames for that platform. These aren't necessarily the best PSX games ever made, but they are the ones I liked and played the most.

Fighting games probably hit their peak in the 1990s, driven by the big name franchises like Virtua Fighter, Tekken and Soul Blade. While the Sega Saturn arguably got the best of the mid-90s generation of videogame consoles, the PlayStation still got its fair share. I've always enjoyed fighting games, even though I suck at them. One of the reasons I love them so much is their character design: they're almost entirely based around characters, since the backgrounds - while often beautifully constructed - are entirely secondary to the two protagonists beating each other up on screen.

Star Gladiator was never one of the most popular fighting games, but I've always liked it - partly for its great, vivid characters but also because unlike its competitors it was a science fiction game. You don't select your character from a bunch of human martial artists, you select it from a wildly varying array of aliens. Who doesn't like aliens?

PSX20 #19: Sheep, Dog 'n' Wolf

PSX20 celebrates the 20th anniversary of Sony's Playstation videogames console by counting down my 20 favourite videogames for that platform. These aren't necessarily the best PSX games ever made, but they are the ones I liked and played the most.

This pick is maybe a contentious choice, given the large number of original IP created for the PSX. Despite that, I simply can't go past it. Sheep, Dog 'n' Wolf (released in the USA as Sheep Raider) is an adaptation of Warner Bros' iconic animated shorts in which a wolf strives to steal sheep from under the nose of an ultra-vigilant sheepdog. Now videogames based on cartoons are a dime a dozen. They're generally generic platformers and they are - almost without exception - generic cookie-cutter cash-ins, produced without inventiveness and enthusiasm and relying purely on their connection to a popular cartoon to sell the product.

This one's an exception. It's got a lot of clever gameplay, and unlike most adaptations it positively nails what it is that makes the original shorts so entertaining.

PSX20 #20: Dino Crisis

In 2014 Sony's PlayStation videogame console turns 20. I'm not sure anybody back in 1994 was expecting the console to sell as well as it did. It originated as a collaborative project between Nintendo, who were looking to replace their Super Famicom (aka SNES) system, and Sony, who brought with them their own CD-based storage technology. When Nintendo pulled out of the project, Sony brought it to completion on their own. When released it became an international sensation, broke all sales records for a videogame console and pretty much left Nintendo's own effort (the Nintendo 64) in the dust. Over 10 years Sony sold 102 million Playstations, and transformed console gaming from something that kids did to a genuinely mainstream proposition.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the PlayStation, I thought I'd revisit my 20 favourite games released for the system. These aren't necessarily the best games, but they are my personal favourites. I've deliberately avoided including games that were released simultaneously on different platforms, and instead focused on PSX-exclusive (or, at least, PSX-first) games. First up: action and suspense, courtesy of publisher Capcom and the edge-of-your-seat thrills of Dino Crisis.