Hasta La Gadget!

By Ben Kuchera

There was a time when Sony’s entry into the world of gaming was far from assured. When the PlayStation One was announced many claimed it was a fool’s errand, and that only Nintendo and Sega could do well with gaming hardware.

In 1995, it stands to point out, it was a very different world.

After saving for almost a year I finally had enough for the PlayStation and a few games, along with one of these new-fangled memory cards. The PlayStation games would come on discs, you see, so you couldn’t save your game directly to the cart. Despite my friends’ laughter at the purchase, I felt like we were looking at the future. Looking back, we certainly were. The PlayStation was one of the most popular systems of all time, and helped usher in modern gaming. Happy Birthday.

This was supposed to be an SNES accessory

The Play Station (as it was originally called) started out as a CD add-on for the Super Nintendo, until the deal was broken in a very public way and Philips entered into a similar partnership with Nintendo. The Philips and Nintendo combination ended with some terrible licensed games on the CD-i platform and nothing else. Sadly for Nintendo, Sony was infuriated by the double-cross and vowed to enter the gaming market. Rarely has revenge tasted so sweet.

Sony made all the right moves. The system was powerful, and did 3-D very well. It was simple to code for. The CD media was inexpensive to mass produce, a stark contrast to Nintendo’s cart-based Super Nintendo and later Nintendo 64. It came in at a lower price point than its immediate rival, the Sega Saturn, which featured a tricky dual-processor design that made it difficult to program for. Sony was often accused of dissuading publishers from releasing 2D games in order to push the 3D aspects of the system. These restrictions were loosened over time, but the company made its point: the PlayStation became known for 3D games, and looked more advanced than its competitors

Sony began hyping the system with a brash, striking set of TV ads that ended with the now infamous “You are not [e]” tagline, with the “e” written in red. When you preordered your console you were given a disc filled with music. When the PlayStation One was released on Sept. 9, 1995, you could insert said disc into the system to view a number of videos, including the legendary T-Rex. This was mind-blowing stuff back in the day.

Who could forget the rest of the tricks? After you loaded upRidge Racer you could remove the disc and put in your own audio CD to race along to your own music. If you swapped out discs while using a pencil eraser to fool the system into thinking it wasn’t open, you could play imported games. Audio CDs could be played with an interesting visual program running in the background, and many audiophiles still believe the PlayStation is one of the best CD-players available.

The tide turned, and the medium helped become the message

Final Fantasy VII development began on the Nintendo 64, and there were even some screenshots and video available, but Square ended up taking the title to Sony to take advantage of the extra space the PlayStation’s CD-ROM drive gave developers. This was a major blow to Nintendo, especially when the gorgeous two-page print ads mocking cartridge-based systems began showing up in the gaming magazines. Final Fantasy VIIwas a massive hit, and helped to sell the gaming public on the PlayStation. Owning Sony’s hardware was no longer optional; these were the games to play.

What other games defined the PlayStation era? Too many to list, but some of our favorites were Jumping Flash, Parappa the Rapper, Einhander, Metal Gear Solid, Tomb Raider, Symphony of the Night, Soul Blade, Bushido Blade, Suikoden, Intelligent Qube, Gran Turismo… dear God, I’m going to go spelunking into my collection this afternoon to play these again.

The PlayStation One was the first console to ship over 100 million systems. It was redesigned with a smaller case later in its life. The fact its games could be played on the PlayStation 2 was a major selling point, giving Sony’s successor system a major boost. The secondary market for PlayStation games and hardware is still strong, with many collectible games.

The PlayStation One was an incredible system filled with wonderful games, and we invite you to share your own memories of the hardware and software in the comments. Happy Birthday, PlayStation One, PSOne, PS-X, or whatever you want to call it. We still love you.

See Also:

• Why PlayStation Move Could Give ‘3-D Games’ a Whole New Meaning …
• PlayStation Network Problems Cause PS3 Meltdown (Updated)
• 10 Things to Do While Your PlayStation 3 Is Broken

Have you ever wanted to spin into a black hole of music oblivion? We all have. And it looks like that dream may finally become a reality. The Apple obsessives at Patently Apple have excavated some hidden treasure from Steve Jobs’ private wing at the patent office: a new spiral-theme interface for iTunes.

Patently is concluding that this new spiral interface will be a replacement for the standard Excel-like content list. But it’s more likely a replacement (or option) for the traditional “Cover View” that presents your content as a parade of cover art marching through the abyss. I can’t imagine Apple ever completely replacing the utilitarian “List View”–we don’t all need so much jazzamatazz in our interfaces.

This spiral UI hints at some interesting discovery aspects. It seems you can “spiral in” on particular artists or genres and even music of specific geographic locations. Crazy!

The patent makes note that this will be for iPods and iPhones, but it will likely be available, in some form, for the whole iFamilia. Look for it in a future iTunes update.

Much to newspapers’ chagrin, these days everyone advertises and looks for work online. But how do you find work if you can’t read? Here, the new generation of touchscreen computers is light-years ahead of newsprint.

That’s the premise of Indian jobs site Babajob.com, with help from Microsoft Research’s ethnographic UI expert Indrani Medhi.

Besides the informal labor market, Medhi has also deployed and studied the use of text-free interfaces in mapping, mobile banking, and disseminating health information. Since many parts of the developing world are adopting mobile phones without books or traditional PCs, the implications of widespread text-free mobile computing applications are tremendous.

Medhi’s research is not just technological but anthropological, as the “ethnographic UI” phrase implies. Speech, for instance, is preferred over multimedia/video by her study subjects. The presence or absence of computing devices in the home has class implications. Medhi writes that her team is “also trying to understand characteristics of the cognitive styles of those with little formal education and their implications for UI design for this population.” Hindi, for instance, is like English read from left to right. It’s natural for us to arrange pictures from left to right to show chronology or causality. It’s not necessarily intuitive to a nonreader.

The demo video above of Babajobs’ text-free interface is in Hindi, without subtitles, but it’s not hard to make out what’s happening. (If you want to skip to the site in action, go to 2:50.) A middle-class couple is looking for domestic help. Meanwhile, one woman convinces another (who can’t read) that she can use a computer to find work. At the end, they find each other. Such a simple, happy story is easy to understand without letters or language.

See Also:

• Wired 10.02: The Ever-Expanding, Profit-Maximizing, Cultural …
• 5 Huge Green-Tech Projects in the Developing World
• The Netbook Effect: How Cheap Little Laptops Hit the Big Time
• Mobile Devices Need Custom Maps
• 2010: The Year Of Mobile Banking & Payment
• Phones, Calculator Give a Glimpse of Mobile Tech in Afghanistan …

Television maker taps Netflix instant streaming for its line of 2010 HDTV models. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20016057-17.html” class=”origPostedBlog”The Digital Home/a/p

While having romantic relations with a low-energy light bulb is generally frowned upon, I think even the most fervent human-on-inanimate-object naysayer would make an exception for the sensuous Plumen light bulb by London-based design brand Hulger.

Hulger’s mission statement claims they want to break away from the dehumanizing aspect of the march of technology by building products that allow “form, feel and personality to preside.” Which basically means you shouldn’t feel ashamed by your unnatural attraction to the sinewy curves of the “world’s first designer low-energy bulb.”

And if you’re the kind of person who looks for more in a person or illuminating device than superficial curves and multi-year warranties, Plumen bulb boasts sexy efficiencies of up to 80% less energy and will last eight times longer than conventional devices. It will love the earth long time.

The curvalicious bulb is not yet available in the US, but is available throughout Europe for £20 pounds.

via Dezeen