Look at the video game industry today. There’s Nintendo with the Wii U, Microsoft with the Xbox One, and Sony with the Playstation 4. Four Playstations? Boy have things changed since the first. How? Let’s take a look at how Sony became a major company in the gaming industry.

-Nintendo’s Regretful Decision-

Let me set the scene. The Super Nintendo is performing greatly along with it’s competitor, the Sega Genesis. Nintendo and Sega are in steady competition, but technology was advancing, cartridges were starting to show their age, and many saw CD’s as the future of gaming. Nintendo saw the advantages and possibilities of CD technology and contacted Sony, striking a deal in the process. The two worked together to produce a CD add-on for the Super Nintendo called the Play Station. Unfortunately, Nintendo saw a problem, as the deal gave Sony most of the control over the add-on. Nintendo cancelled the deal with Sony, and instead struck another deal with Phillips, who were already developing their own console, the CD-I. After seeing the failure of the Sega CD, Nintendo cancelled the idea entirely, but Phillips had managed to obtain the rights to Mario and Zelda via the deal.

-Sony’s Revenge-

Sony took the information they had gotten from the research they did while making the Play Station, and made their own console. Unfortunately, Nintendo had a trademark on the name “Play Station”, so Sony combined the two names into one.

Sony also realized why other consoles had failed: lack of third party support. So Sony made it both incredibly cheap and easy to produce games on the Playstation. By the time it was launched, many games were already planned for the system.

-The Console Itself-

The console was big and grey, it had two controller ports (unless you used the Multi-Tap), and had a disk drive right on top.

The controller is grey, has a D-pad, four buttons, and two shoulder buttons. For a console with a focus on 3D gaming, not having analog sticks can be troublesome (Sony did later release a Playstation 1 controller with analog sticks). Instead of the typical A, B, X, and Y buttons that were common at the time, the Playstation controller used symbols. The “Cross” button is the “A” button, the “Square” button is the “B” button, the “Triangle” button is the “X” button, and the “Circle” button is the “Y” button.

One of the disadvantages of CD’s however, are their inability to store save data. Thus, the Playstation required Memory Cards to store data. To this day consoles are still incapable of writing data to CD’s (the only console that could write data to a disk was the N64 Disk Drive, which allowed it to do amazing things, but it didn’t use CD’s, just disks), they just use built in system memories. There was also a link cable, very similar to the one for the Game Boy. This is almost pointless.

-The Makeshift Mascot-

I say makeshift because he was never really the mascot, he was just often featured in Playstation commercials and associated with Sony in general. After the Playstation launched, a small company was looking at the various systems to decide which one to publish their new game on. After seeing that the Sega Saturn would be dominated by Sonic (Ha!) and the Nintendo 64 would be dominated by Mario, this company decided on the Playstation. Who was this company?

Naughty Dog eventually produced Crash Bandicoot, the killer app of the Playstation. Crash Bandicoot became the makeshift mascot of Sony, but it wasn’t long until various contract issues forced Naughty Dog to abandon Crash.

-The End-

The Playstation was a fantastic system, and it put Sony on the radar as a major video game company. It was the first console to truly use CD’s correctly, and it paved the way for many other developers to follow. Here’s to another Playstation, and another battle with Nintendo!

Sonic The Hedgehog for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive was a critical and financial success, so a sequel was pretty much mandatory. And sure enough, a sequel was on the way. But the two teams, one led by Yuji Naka and the other led by Naoto Ohshima could not agree on what they wanted the game to be like. Ohshima’s team wanted time travel to be involved, while Naka’s team disagreed. Eventually the two teams split up with Naka’s team going to America to make Sonic 2, while Ohshima’s team stayed in Japan to create Sonic CD.

Scrapped Levels

Sonic 2’s beta phase saw the scrapping of many levels that can be found in the prototypes leaked onto the internet. Some of them only have concept names. First there’s Dust Hill Zone, a desert level that we know so little about because we only have one screenshot. Then there’s Winter Zone, which would have been a palette swap of Dust Hill Zone, very similar to how Hill Top Zone is a palette swap of Emerald Hill Zone. Then there’s Rock Zone which we know nothing about other than it’s name. Next up is Wood Zone, a level believed to have been conceptualized when time travel was supposed to be in Sonic 2 and if so would have been a past version of Metropolis Zone. This level is actually playable in the prototypes, but is unfinished. After that there’s Hidden Palace Zone another one in a playable form, one of the first levels worked on, and the most complete. It even has it’s own music track (although in the prototypes it appears in it uses Mystic Cave Zone 2P’s music). This one is by far the most famous, and it even got put back in in the 2013 remake of Sonic 2. Next there’s Genocide City Zone (changed to Cyber City Zone after the team realized what the word meant) and was a one act Zone that came after Metropolis Zone. This one has no playable incarnation, however it’s graphics were re-used in The Machine in Sonic Spinball, and it’s level design was used for a third act of Metropolis Zone. Death Egg Zone was originally going to be two full acts, but was shortened down to one very small act. It’s worth noting that Aquatic Ruin Zone was originally called Neo Green Hill Zone.

Hope you enjoyed!