Were people expecting this to be another CD-i or 3DO?

No. Most gamers at the time only knew about Sega and Nintendo and had never even heard of the CD-i or 3DO.

>>4171419
Before seeing it for real: maybe. (Sony was a respected juggernaut like Apple is today, so we hoped it would do at least better than the 3DO.)

After seeing Toshinden and the other early games: no way this can fail.

>>4171423
They weren't gamers, they were normies. All the gamers were reading magazines and thus knew these consoles.

>>4171419
Played PSX at my friends while I waited for the N64. The games were ok, but nothing compared to what I had played on my SNES. I didn't expect its library to end up being better than a Nintendo console's though.

>>4171441
I never had many opportunities to have those magazines as a kid. But when I did I only vaguely remember seeing something about the 3DO. Maybe in a cheats section.

>>4171446
Ridge Racer and Resident Evil were nothing compared to SNES games?

>>4171454
To be fair, the SNES had pretty much reached its zenith when the PS1 came along

>>4171441
I saw my first PSX game in 1996. Remember the console came out in 1994. I also only saw those very early games like Toshinden 2 and Road Rash. Only by the end of 1997 I came in contact with better games.

So yeah, even if I followed magazines back then, I didn't see the games until much later, and the ones I saw were shit.

Also I'm a BR.

Not really, it had a pretty respectable amount of third-party support early on (even during the Japanese launch) and Sony were smart enough not to priced their console at an unreasonable price like the 3DO did. Sony pulling Square away from Nintendo was what really sold me on the PS1 though.

>>4171454
Not everyone had those "killer" games. Remember that even with magazines, we didn't know everything that was released back then. The first game I had was some weird spy racing game (you play as a car that shoots missiles, you need to pursue targets), so my first impression wasn't very good. I barely played with my Playstation, I still played with my SNES quite a lot (had to give it to my cousin later). Only when I managed to buy my second "batch" of games, three games in all, was when I managed to get a game that hooked me. IIRC, I got Biohazard 1, Jet Moto and King of Fighters 96. I managed to reach the lab in Biohazard 1 before running out of bullets and herbs.

>>4171491
The game was called Auto Destruct, by the way. Nowadays I think it's a good game, but back then I thought the car was floaty as fuck, and all the objectives and crap popping up all the time confused the hell out of me.

>>4171485
>>4171491
Didn't you have a kind of monthly PlayStation magazine with all the latest demos? Or shops where you could at least see the games?

>>4171454
F-Zero > RIIIIIIDGE Racer
Super Metroid > Resident Evil

>>4171503
>this is what Nintoddlers actually believe

>>4171525
Nintendo is simply the best, deal with fucking it, australia-kun.

>>4171441
Or maybe they were just kids. I was 6 years old when the PS1 came out. I didn't start reading gaming magazines until 98 or 99.

>>4171525
Sad, innit?

>>4171531
I was buying gaming magazines at 6 years old, though.

>>4171503
XD

>>4171419
Never saw those things you are speaking, for all I knew the psx was the first cd console.

>>4171542
>Sega CD?

>>4171529
>Anybody who say dissenting things about Nintendo MUST be Australia-kun
pfft

>>4171536
Good for you. I wasn't, because I didn't know they existed.

>>4171548
>for all I knew

>>4171441
I wasn't allowed to have magazine subscriptions because parents think it's just a waste of money. I also wasn't allowed to go to arcades (alone) because the demographic was older. If I did go with them, it would be like touring around the place casually and not have the opportunity to sink hours and credits into a single game. At the time I had a decent internet connection, a Geforce, a chipped PS1, so I don't think magazines are really a metric for gamurz.

>>4171501
I had my first magazine subscription in 1999.

I waited until 1996 to buy the PlayStation because I saw all the console failures of the 5th gen and was happy as hell with my Super Nintendo. However, just from the launch titles I played at the local department and game stores, I could tell this was going to be the winning system.

Department stores back then had numerous kiosks to play the new systems. I had played 3D0, Sega CD, 32X, and even Cd-i from 1994-1995 and wasn't impressed at all with any of them. I remember how much I hated FMV games like Mad Dog McCree at the arcade and those were the only games that seemed to be coming out for these systems. 3D0 did impress me with Road Rash, but the system was still $600.

In summer of 1995 I tried the Sega Saturn and, while I liked Virtua Fighter and Daytona, the Game Players magazine screen shots of Toshinden and Ridge Racer looked amazing.

Near the end of 1995, I played the heck out of those games and Wipeout at kiosks at stores and as soon as PS1 dropped to $199, I convinced my parents it was worth it. I was also not too keen on N64 because of the expensive price of the cart games.

That was 21 years ago, but I still remember that summer, knowing that this system was going to give me gaming experiences I never had before. I never had more fun with a system than the PS1.

>>4171419
I played some kind of on-rails race/shooting hybrid on 3DO on display at a kaybee when I was nine or ten.
The whole future seemed p bright in general.

>>4171454
Not all of us were dazzled by Lego-simple polygons.

>>4171531
For me it was Hero and Wizard, I could actually afford comics back then, $70 for a single game was beyond my means so the magazines just gave me blue balls.

>>4171605
Not every PS1 game looked like FF7, dude.

>>4171605
Really? Sure seemed that way with Star Fox.

>>4171615
They did at launch compared to late snes masterpiece pixel art.

>>4171617
Not everyone was wowed by Star Fox either. I remember thinking "why are people so impressed by origami"?

>>4171619
>masterpiece pixel art
It never reached Arcade quality. Don't kid yourself.

You want masterpiece pixel art? Look no further than the Saturn.

>>4171419
I was - or, more specifically after my experiences with the 32x, 3DO and CD-I I thought it was just me who was getting too grown up for video games. The commercials for Playstation got my attention but I thought it was all just more bullshit until I played Twisted Metal. Then that Christmas when Tomb Raider and Resident Evil came out I knew I was back in it.

The PS1 was relatively unknown in the USA, and then came the Final Fantasy 7 advertisements. That alone won the generation.

>>4171626
Agree on Saturn, OP was talking about Launch PS1. The kiosk of Virtua Fighter for Saturn and some racing game for PS1, at the time, did not move me. I thought that Saturn was p cool after my cousin's husband bought one tho, and I saw some other things.
PS1 got cooler for me when friends brought one over for a party and I saw shit like Twisted Metal

>>4171619
>masterpiece pixel art
Yes, I love the Neo Geo as well.

>>4171441

I think you're either autistic or 15, if you remembered times when PSX came out you would know that no "normie" cared about gaming back then. Also in Poland where I live nobody heard about CD-i or 3DO before internet was a thing in every house. Most of people still dont know such consoles existed. I've heard about them in 90s only because I bought some magazines abroad.

>>4171557
>>4171573
>magazine subscriptions

Buying them month after month, after browsing them all carefully at the paper shop (and choosing only the best), was the superior option. I paid cash with the little coins my parents gave me whenever I got good grades.

>>4171679
>no "normie" cared about gaming back then
I'm talking about "normies" aged between 7 and 15, not actual adults.

The boys all cared about the hits like Street Fighter II or Mortal Kombat; virtually everyone knew Mario and Sonic. Overall, at least half of my class was somewhat knowledgeable about vidya, and probably 4-5 kids out of 30 knew about the 3DO, although no one ever touched it.

Of course this is Western Europe, because the Polish context in 1991-94 may have been slightly different.

>>4171419
Got that because I saw Lunar in all its packaged glory. Seriously though, Lunar was the first time I had ever seen a "limited edition" game.

>>4171419
I knew it was going to be good when I heard about the Namco arcade support.

I thought PS and CD-i came out at the same time.