The Playstation. A magical time in my life in many ways to be honest. It was the first time I understood what gaming was really capable of. While the Nintendo and the N64 had huge moments as well, it was the Playstation that unlocked another door for me. The door to a more mature style of gaming was open.
I was used to Mario, Zelda, Duck Hunt. I didn’t know that games could be made for adults. I was just a kid, of course, but I didn’t vibe with the kid-friendly content. I wanted to see games like the movies I’d been watching with my parents. I wanted the cool, and Playstation was the key to that castle.
Come with me as we take a trip back into the golden era of gaming. The 1990s, before HD, before VR, before social media. Just me, you, and Playstation’s best games for every year it was around for.
10
2001 – Spider Man 2: Enter Electro
A Glimpse of Greatness
Spider Man 2: Enter Electro was a last gasp in many ways for the PS1 to show what it’s made of. This was the first superhero game that I can remember that actually worked. We had great combat, a fun and interesting story that made great use of several comic book characters and, of course, the voice of Stan Lee to make everything all the better.
The combat was a huge standout here, giving us the first game that made you feel like Spider-Man before it was a meme. While it would be a few years until we were swinging through the city in an open world, there was some great use of web swinging here with some standout set piece moments.
It was a solid successor to the first game in many ways, but it didn’t sell all that well because the gaming age had already advanced, with multiple new consoles coming in 2001. It’s still a great superhero game as the pickings got slimmer and slimmer as the new consoles came out, that’s as much as we could’ve hoped for.
9
2002 – MLB 2003
Baseball Starts to Feel Real
Game | MLB 2003 |
|---|---|
Release Date | June 18th, 2002 |
Developer | 989 Sports |
MLB 2003 was a bit of a flex for the PS1 when it came out in 2022. While so many were already ready for the next generation of gaming, this game showed it had a little bit more in the tank.
The graphics here are pretty amazing and the advancement of baseball games from the mid 90s to 2002 was incredible. The mechanics here felt far more advanced too, as the impact of well-hit balls vs weakly-hit ones was noticeable. Plus, the accuracy of the stadiums was of a higher fidelity than ever before.
Even though the tech had passed, MLB 2003 showed what was originally the most impressive console the world had seen even in its waning years. There was still something left to show those that had yet to shell out for the next generation of gaming.
The World’s Game
FIFA Football 2004 was an impressive entry in the FIFA franchise and was one of the first times that soccer felt fully realized. While this was just a lower-effort port of the game from other consoles, there is still a lot of good here to be enjoyed.
You had more realism than ever before, with the ball moving at different speeds depending on the variety of different shots and passes you could perform, and the control was sharper than ever before, allowing user made moves when taking the ball to the goal.
Career mode was also improved heavily too, with a full-blown manager mode allowing you to really dive into what it’s like to be an owner of a team and the details were not shorted despite being a lesser quality port than the one the next-gen consoles got at the time.
The PS1 slowly stopped getting new games around this time and the best you could find were lesser-made ports of games making it big on other consoles, but luckily some sports titles were still a good time.
7
2004 – Madden NFL 2005
Still a Juggernaut
Madden NFL 2005 was already the talk of the gaming world when it released on the Playstation due to how popular it was on the new generation of consoles. But even as those platforms neared the end of their own existence, the title still got a release on the now ancient PS1.
Despite that, Madden looks damn good here. While there is obviously some blockiness in the character models and animations, the gameplay is more or less the same as what you’d have gotten on the PS2 or Xbox at the time.
It was remarkable how, despite being on a console over a decade old at this point, how the graphics engine could be pushed so hard. This version of the game also had new bells and whistles like the Hit Stick and defensive hot routes to make the gameplay feel nearly identical to its way prettier older siblings.
It showed that the PS1 was an exceptionally powerful machine that probably didn’t ever get pushed to its limit fully due to the need for new console generations after a brief period of time.
6
1995 – Tekken
The Birth of a Fighting Champion
Tekken jumped into an already crowded fighting game genre in 1995 and immediately made a mark. Unlike the other games in the genre, Tekken felt weightier.
While Street Fighter was all over the top anime action and Mortal Kombat was brutally realistic and gory, Tekken felt like your strikes had heft to them and the technical aspects went well with the title.
It was a thinking man’s fighting game that focused on presentation and, most importantly, the introduction of fighting games into the 3D space. It definitely feels rough to play today, but it stands as an iconic moment in gaming history and was the best title to come out in 1995.
5
1996 – Resident Evil
A Biohazard Was Unleashed
Resident Evil is not the first survival horror game, but it certainly was the most groundbreaking one. It came out in 1996 and gaming would quite literally never be the same.
Suddenly, videogames were scary. They gained their horror genre in a palpable way and while the controls were awful and the voice acting laughable, the terror was very real.
The moment that first zombie turned around, the game changed. There is a real fear that hit and I think the fact that it was in a videogame made it all the more scary.
The series became one of the best known in pop culture. Spawning countless sequels that paved the way for many other franchises to start making their own titles. Iconic and important in every way, Resident Evil was 1996’s best.
Stealth is Born
Metal Gear Solid shook the gaming world up in a huge way in 1998. When it came out, there had never been a game quite like it. It was a classic Hollywood-style spy thriller, but with some absolutely insane story elements infused throughout to make it feel like something completely its own.
The stealth action stands up today with great sneaking mechanics, ways to distract guards and, overall, a gameplay experience that didn’t exist at the time.
The boss fights in particular are a huge standout, with the best being the one against Psycho Mantis, which broke all the rules of what a videogame boss fight is supposed to be. There hasn’t been anything quite like it since.
1998 was packed with amazing games, but Metal Gear Solid remains the best of the bunch.
3
1999 – Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver
New Blood
One thing that sells a game as much as anything is an iconic look. Raziel most certainly fit the bill with Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver and his striking appearance sets the stage for one of the best games the PS1 had to offer.
The gameplay was a unique mix of action and adventure, with a focus on puzzle solving and exploration. That exploration was so unique because this world was nothing like we’d seen before. This game was incredibly dark and mature and violent and almost felt like an M-rated take on The Legend of Zelda.
Perhaps that was the goal with the game name itself, but what’s here is wholly different from Nintendo’s cash cow. The story of Raziel and his eternal rivalry with the vampire Kain is an awesome one that blurs the line between good and evil and.
Overall, it’s just a fantastic game. The combat still feels pretty good to this day and the visuals and tone are something that modern graphics can’t quite get right to this day.
2
2000 – Chrono Cross
Something New
Chrono Cross came out in 2000 as a spiritual successor to Chrono Trigger, but for many, Chrono Trigger was a game they’d never heard of or never played at that point.
Chrono Cross was something so different for the gaming world when it came out. It was another Square JRPG, sure, but it was incredibly unique in its gameplay. The percentage-based combat system made you think about what attacks you were going to use and when and the Elements grid made it so you could customize characters however you wanted.
Speaking of characters, there are loads of them here, with the range being from young knights to old blacksmiths, aliens, cooks, skeletons and everything in between.
The story is the biggest highlight for me with Chrono Cross. It is a magical journey that is both dark and wondrous, inspiring thought-provoking ideas and having some of the best lore of any JRPG out there.
It’s a game where you simply have no idea what is going to happen next, which is rare in the genre and went a long way in making it a standout title as we crossed into the next millennium.
1
1997 – Final Fantasy VII
Welcome To The New Age
Final Fantasy VII set the benchmark for JRPGs in the 90s and really, for gaming as a whole. Never had there been a maturity and wackiness at the level of this game and, somehow, they came together to form one of the most important games in the history of the medium.
Final Fantasy VII was visually amazing for its time, with fully 3D-rendered characters and a unique battle system that made the action feel real-time compared to other turn-based games.
Then there were the incredible CGI cutscenes showing off graphics thought to be impossible at the time and the amazing soundtrack that held it all together.
The story of Final Fantasy VII may be its shining achievement though, giving us a story about adults for once in the JRPG verse while still maintaining a child-like wonder of the world we were exploring.
It still stands up today as a fantastic experience and easily sits in the top games of any self-respecting JRPG lover.
