What we remember

I was at art college in Carlisle in 1994 when the original PlayStation was released in Japan. Back then, the internet didn’t exist as we know it today, so I relied on getting all my information on the latest games from magazines like our sister title Edge, among others.

After reading Edge’s coverage of the PS1 and its launch lineup, I ended up taking out a student loan and paying north of £750 to import a Japanese PS1 from an ad in the back of the mag. As part of the bundle, I received copies of launch titles Ridge Racer and mech FPS Kileak: The Blood, and

I remember waiting patiently for a week or so for the parcel to turn up.

Suffice to say that when it did eventually arive, the first game I tried out was Ridge Racer. I’d spent a crazy amount of money in the arcades a year or so before on perfecting my powerslide technique, so I was already familiar with the tracks and how it handled, but what I didn’t expect was how close to a perfect arcade conversion it would be. In my own flat. On a home console. It was a mind blowing experience. Every polygon, every powerslide. It was a perfectly precise port, on an incredibly powerful piece of hardware. I’d lean into every corner and squeal with glee as I nailed lap after perfect lap. I rinsed every bit of gameplay out of that one disc. Flipped tracks, reverse tracks, hell I even loved playing Galaga as it loaded! I was incredibly skint, but I didn’t care; I had Ridge Racer!

OSCAR TAYLORKENT

GAMES EDITOR

What a strange thing Tomba! was. You played a pink-haired wild body leaping around, tackling pigs, and clambering over walls to track down a lost piece of jewellery. It was in many ways just like the 2D 16-bit platformers I’d grown up playing, but a clear step forward. Yes, it was side-scrolling and on a 2D plane like the classics, but it had foreground and background elements that would have you moving backwards and forwards in the screen.

It also had story and RPG elements that added extra depth to the experience, making the game much more than a simple platformer. At one point you were looking for a missing child, and at another you had the challenge of backtracking over an area to find another route forwards.

Despite being a fairly basic, if vibrantly coloured, game, it felt like so much more at the time, a massive advance in what videogames were capable of no matter what particular genre you were a fan of.