15 years of fun: Happy Birthday PlayStation

Amazingly, the Sony PlayStation is fifteen years old this week. The console that defined a generation has (almost) come of age - a fact which, aside from being a sharp reminder of how old we've all got, has many of us donning our rose-tinted nostalgia specs and remembering the fun times it's given us.

And it is in honour of those fifteen years of Sony-powered fun that TechRadar has compiled this definitive history of PlayStation home consoles through the years. The highs and lows. The favourite games that kept us awake till 5am. And what the games industry itself remembers of each era of enjoyment.

Back in 1994, the original PlayStation was widely ridiculed by gamers at its Japanese launch, mainly because it bucked the dominant tech trend for home consoles set by the likes of Nintendo and Sega in the late 1980s.

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The games came on a CD (of all things!) and not on a chunky plug-in cartridge. Yet while Nintendo and Sega (and Amiga and ST) fanboys scoffed at Sony's upstart, the sales figures soon began to speak for themselves. This was a game-changer.

EARLY CONCEPTS: Sony's early designs for the now famous PlayStation logo

Through various improvements, iterations and re-launches over the past 15 years, PlayStation has unquestioningly become the brand that is synonymous with gaming on the TV in the late 1990s and throughout the Noughties.

And while Microsoft has made considerable moves into the home gaming arena with Xbox 360 over the last five years and Nintendo has re-gained some of its 1980's kudos with Wii of late, Sony's latest PlayStation 3 Slim looks set to come into its own in 2010.

All-in Sony has sold an incredible 269.7 million PlayStation consoles over the last 15 years (140.7 million of which are PS2s, 27 million of which are PS3s) and an astounding 2.632 billion PlayStation games.

PlayStation / PSone

• Launched: December 1994 / October 2000
• Cost: £300 / £80 on UK release
• Spec: 32-bit, 5th generation games console
• Distinguishing features: CD-based games, CD player, Triangle/Square/Circle/Cross on controller
• Main competitors: Sega Saturn, Nintendo 64
• Biggest titles: Gran Turismo, Ridge Racer, WipEout
• Lifespan: 11 years

Aaah, the original PlayStation. Where do we start? The real and deeply visceral future-shock of playing Ridge Racer on our TV at home is perhaps what we remember most vividly. The graphics! There genuinely had not been such a superbly realised and deeply immersive driving experience up to that point outside of your local seaside arcade.

Playing Ridge Racer on the first PlayStation (that we bought second-hand for around a hundred quid from Loot back in 1996) was a revelation. It immediately made the lounge a far more exciting place to be.

"Without shadow of a doubt, my favourite PlayStation game was WipEout," says Bethesda Games UK's PR Manager, Alistair Hatch. "There were a lot of games which I played to death on the PlayStation including the likes of FFVII, Ridge Racer, Time Crisis, Gran Turismo, and Tony Hawk: Pro Skater, but WipEout was revolutionary in so many ways that it stands as my favourite game on PlayStation."

"In addition to playing arcade games like Ridge Racer in the comfort of your own home – probably a favourite memory of many gamers, the games that stood out for me were Final Fantasy 7, Syphon Filter, Metal Gear Solid and Medal of Honor," recalls Majesco Europe's Marketing Manager, John Merchant.

"It was also a real hotbed of creativity - from titles like Final Fantasy 7 and Metal Gear Solid to cult favourites like Parappa The Rappa."

And let's not forget the game that really put PlayStation on the map (and on the cover of now defunct style bible The Face). Eidos' Tomb Raider created one of gaming's first major female heroines in Lara Croft and combined elements of 3D action, platforming and puzzle games in ways that many have copied but few have matched since.

So those were the games that we remember. And in terms of the hardware, it seems almost quaint now, but for many the simple fact of having a CD player for the first time was a massive added-value bonus with the first PlayStation console. Let's not forget, for those of us who were floating through our student days around that time, we were still listening to a lot of our music via cassettes and even those funny old vinyl disc things.

However, before we get too carried away, let's also not forget that there were also a few glitchy "lows" with the first PlayStation console. Most notably the annoying necessity of "having to turn the PlayStation upside down to make games run" as Alistair Hatch recalls.

The first PlayStation hardware also wasn't quite up to the task of delivering any truly great first person shooters. "Medal of Honor was nice – but it wasn't quite Goldeneye," as Majesco's John Merchant so eloquently puts it.

Though that of course was all soon to change with the arrival of PlayStation 2…