Limited Run Games is a company that has found its niche. In our modern digital world, where many games are download-only, the company’s limited edition boxed copies provide a way for fans to enjoy the tangible, tangible pleasure of having a game they love in physical form. Sometimes Limited Run gives beloved classic games a luxurious treatment by presenting them with accompanying essays that put those games into context, much like the Criterion Collection does with movies. Today, however, the company is announcing a new venture, one that strikes me as a logical step toward catering for people who want to see games with the attention and treatment they deserve. Limited Run will be publishing books with its own imprint, Press Run, led by former game journalists Jeremy Parish and Jared Petty, and we have an exclusive excerpt from the label’s first book.
It’s important to note that, unlike the company’s games, while there are collector’s editions of books that are out of print, the books themselves are not designed to be “limited.” As Limited Run put it in a statement to the press, “Press Run exists to keep great books in circulation for as long as people want to read them, which means these publications won’t necessarily be out of print – if there’s interest, we’ll get second or even publish third editions.” The label’s kick-off includes topics such as games on the Virtual Boy, the history of publisher Sunsoft, and a book on the launch and history of the original PlayStation.
called PlayStation: a look back, we have an excerpt of it below. Originally published in 2011 by Jeremy Parish and the GameSpite Crew to mark the console’s 15th anniversary, it has been revised for this new release. I’ve had a chance to flick through the entire book a bit, and my first impression is that anyone with a real interest in the history and impact of Sony’s first console will love it. It combines a knowledgeable historical perspective on the business decisions Sony made that would change the video game landscape forever, with first-hand memories of many PlayStation games. Not just a gleaming look at the console’s greatest hits, in the pages of games like the flawed but fascinating Warrior 2 get as much attention next to people as Final Fantasy VII.
Below I present to you an excerpt from the first pages of PlayStation: a look back, the intro to the console launch book section, in all the glory Kinja can muster. It’s a fascinating read that vividly reminds us of what Sony was up to with the original PlayStation, going side to side with the Sega Saturn. Instead of reading it below, you really should click through this link and check out this intro (as well as later pages, including a piece on the original Resident Evil) as they actually appear in the book, because the book is beautiful and beautifully laid out, full of photos, screenshots, and other artwork.
You can order PlayStation: a look back and the other launch titles in the Press Run imprint on the Limited Run website.
After several years of development, Sony’s redesigned PlayStation was launched in Japan in late 1994. The three years between Nintendo’s public double-cross and the system’s realization had seen many changes in the industry: Sega had shattered Nintendo’s hammer in the US market; 3D graphics presented through polygons had become a clear standard; FMV-based adventure games (“Siliwood”) fell into oblivion after a brief bid for attention at the dawn of the CD-ROM era. The 1994 gaming industry was a fractured, unstable mess, with every major player (and several future giants) making forays into the post-16-bit world.
PlayStation could have just been another Jaguar, 3DO or PC-FX – another costly, aimless failure – but Sony had a clear vision for its new console. Where Sony’s approach to games was once limited to publishing software of questionable value, largely as a subordinate function of the company’s film arm, PlayStation positioned them as hungry, ruthless leaders.
You need look no further than PlayStation’s closest competitor to see just how progressive Sony was. Sega launched its Saturn in Japan about the same time as Sony’s debut, and for a short time the Saturn was the more popular console. But in the end, the pendulum swung in Sony’s favor, as the PlayStation’s hardware design turned out to be predictive while Saturn was reactive. Sega always excelled at designing 2D games and built Saturn to take advantage of this power, but it soon became apparent that the market was drawn to polygons. Sega’s leaders and engineers are said to have panicked and added a polygon-pushing coprocessor to the system board. The result was a machine that produced glorious 2D that could surpass even the mighty (and hugely expensive) Neo-Geo, but whose 3D was anemic and difficult to work with.
Sony, on the other hand, correctly foresaw the direction of game design and built the PlayStation to meet the needs of developers. The processor was powerful, capable of rendering hundreds of thousands of polygons per second, covering any surface with detailed textures and producing impressive lighting effects. Unlike the Saturn, its Achilles heel turned out to be 2D graphics; according to some stories, the machine didn’t even have the traditional sprite processing capabilities, meaning bitmap images had to be faked by pasting them onto polygons.
True or not, the hardware had absolutely no RAM compared to the Saturn – no problem for pushing simple math objects, but extremely restrictive for storing bitmaps. Fighting games in particular suffered from the loss of animation frames needed to squeeze all that data into the system’s cramped memory tables. Of course, just like Saturn’s top developers were eventually able to produce such Burning Rangers and Panzer Dragoon Sagaclever PlayStation programming resulted in some Saturn-quality 2D games, such as Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Street Fighter Alpha 3.
Screenshot: Namco / Limited Run Games
Yet those developments were still years away. In the short term, Sony’s hardware offered an arcade-quality conversion from Namco’s Ridge Raceramazing fighting games like Toshinden and Tekkena creative new take on the platformer in the form of Jumping Flash! (a breathtaking update of an obscure X68000 game called Geographic seal), and even an old-school RPG in the form of Bow the boy. While the latter failed to make it to the system’s US release – reportedly due to a Sony CEA mandate against 2D games, although the presence of sprite-based titles such as The Raiden Project and Rayman relegates this to the level of an urban legend – the others arrived intact nine months later and helped launch the PlayStation strongly in America.
The system was unlike anything anyone had ever seen at the time. Not only were the guts ridiculously powerful (but easy for developers to design for, thanks to Sony’s vast library of hardware documentation and programming APIs), the console’s physical design also set it apart. Sleek, sleek and densely packed, the PlayStation felt like a serious piece of consumer electronics; it had weight and sturdiness. The case was molded in a higher quality plastic than expected from a gaming machine – neither the shiny, cheap material Sega had used for the Genesis or the toy-like substance (so vulnerable to aging and discoloration) seen in the Super NES. , the PlayStation case felt expensive but far from fragile. At the same time, it was more interesting than the solid black plate offered by Sega in the Saturn. The case shape was distinctive, with a slim profile designed around lean right angles punctuated by circles that gracefully echoed the shape of the CD medium the games ran on: an aesthetic descendant of the Discman, but distinctly its own creature.
Sony handled the launch of the system in the US with calculated ease. At E3 2005, Sega infamously announced an immediate debut for their console in an attempt to undermine Sony; the next day, Sony’s press conference for the PlayStation launch was simply announcing the price – $100 ($139) less than the Saturn. Most gamers were willing to put off the three-month wait for the PlayStation launch to enjoy a superior software lineup for less.
Ultimately, Sony’s only real stumbling block with the PlayStation launch was the mind-boggling advertising campaign, which drifted a bit too far into the slant. UR NOT e — with the letter e printed in red, as in “done” — the ads, seemingly to tell customers they weren’t worthy of the new machine, generally weren’t the most endearing tactic. But maddening as these abstract and snooty first ads were, their follow-up swung too far into prosaic, with Sony creating an ersatz mascot in the form of Polygon Man, a sleazy jumble of spikes whose purpose was apparently to get the system down. paint as a home for ugly 3D character models.
However, even these ill-considered advertisements could not derail the system’s prospects. Hands-on play was all people needed to appreciate the pure power of the PlayStation, and five minutes of WipEout was generally enough to sell potential customers on the merits of the sleek, gray 32-bit box. The PlayStation got off to a strong start and even the specter of Nintendo’s Ultra 64 lurking in the wings couldn’t flinch Sony’s style.
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