I remember first seeing the PS-X in action at the end of 1994. The Electronics Boutique I always went to had Battle Arena Toshinden playing on their TVs. I was like "
It's out?!" and the clerk said "naw man, my friend imported one and I'm playing a VHS of footage he recorded."
Then later on, in summer '95, I went to Dragoncon and the video game store I'd end up working at had a Playstation with Toshinden set up. The line to play it was MASSIVE. I didn't care because they also had a Neo-Geo with Samurai Shodown II.
I worked my ass off all summer and saved up enough to get a Playstation at launch. Also took major advantage of EB's trade-in deal where you'd get $10 or more on any SNES games. We'd find games priced cheaper than this and buy them all (I think it was Sam's Club that had Super Ghouls N' Ghosts for $5) to trade in for more credit.
As I was incredibly impatient back then, I almost made the huge mistake of
buying a Virtual Boy at launch. It was my father who talked me out of it and basically said I'd be fucking nuts to waste my money on that crap.
Got a Playstation on 9/9/95 with Battle Arena Toshiden, Ridge Racer, NBA Jam TE, and Street Fighter The Movie. As I recall, Jam went back to the store for The Raiden Project, and SF The Movie was returned for something else. Toshinden got pretty old after a few weeks, and then everyone was back on the SNES playing Street Fighter. I played the shit out Ridge Racer and The Raiden Project. Other games purchased were Tekken, Twisted Metal, Zero Divide (loved the Tiny Phalanx shmup that was hidden), and Rayman, which got plenty of play time. Despite liking the demo for it, I never did get Jumping Flash! until importing the sequel almost a year later. Still have the old demo discs, including the "black ice" disc. Wonder if that's worth something?
A few months later, I got into importing. Early Playstation models could make use of a swap trick, where you could just tape down the lid button and use American game discs as boot discs to swap out with Japanese games. I was mainly interested in Street Fighter Zero, but ended up getting one of the Live Power Pro baseball games and the Twinbee Deluxe Pack beforehand. Then in December, Street Fighter Zero came out, and I went NUTS. A perfect port of the game I was playing in the arcades? Several months ahead of the U.S.?! Crazy! I got pretty heavily into importing at this point and never looked back. I always wondered why games like Tekken 2 (came out like 8 months ahead of the U.S. version) and Tekken 3 (six months or so ahead) took so long to come out.
Anyway, I loved the Playstation. It was easily the best 32-bit system released, and without question the "NES" of its time. So many classics.
