10 shocking facts you never knew about PlayStation

Facts you never knew about PlayStation: Sony’s PlayStation has a long history of rivalries (Nintendo, Microsoft), successes (rebooting the video gaming industry and helping it become a powerhouse industry worth over $100 billion in revenue per year), and more. But with all the ups-and-downs, such as the successes of the PlayStation 1 and PS2, or the unmitigated financial failure of the PS3 ($3.5 billion lost because of outrageous R&D costs and a high price-tag), there are some interesting things that some fans might not know about the console’s history.

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With numbers like that, industry-leaders start to notice, and video gaming has since become one of the most financially lucrative industries in entertainment. That’s all fine, and most people know all of that, but here are 10 facts about the PlayStation that you might not know.yStation would have sold had they gone with one of these other logos.

6. The Playstation Button Controls Had a Purpose The PlayStation’s distinct controller was designed by Sony’s Teiyu Goto, and became a hallmark in video game controller designs, with its sleek, futuristic look. But rather than have to remember letters like ‘A’ and ‘B,’ he wanted users to remember symbols instead. The four symbols he opted for were chosen to consider each button’s function.

The triangle represented a player’s perspective; the square symbolized an option menu or map; and the ‘X’ and ‘O’ represented “no” and “yes” symbols, respectively. Eventually, American developers scrapped the symbols’ functions because American audiences were used to the lowest button being the ‘ok’ button, but many Japanese games still use the ‘O’ to mean ‘yes,’ or ‘ok,’ and the ‘X’ to mean ‘no,’ or ‘cancel.’

5. PlayStation Hidden Soundtracks Back when Easter Eggs and hidden gems were a big deal in many video games, and to show how much time was spent on making these games great, Sony pulled a genius move by releasing hidden soundtracks on many of their titles.

In a move that’s somewhat akin to playing Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon against Wizard of Oz, or playing an album backwards to uncode some hidden message, many games like Castlevania and Cool Boarders could be thrown on a CD-player, be read, and then hidden tracks could be heard from the stereo.

4. Final Fantasy VII Started Out as a Detective Story Final Fantasy VII became the RPG that set-off the RPG-craze for the PlayStation 1, with unparalleled 3D graphics, story, and design for its day. Originally designed in 1994 for the SNES – and subsequently the Nintendo 64 – designers realized that only PlayStation’s CD-ROMs had the storage capacity to fully render the game, and even that took three discs.

What many fans of the iconic game and series might not know (I sure didn’t), was that Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi originally envisioned the game as a detective story, not starring Cloud Strife, but rather a detective named “Hot-Blooded Detective Joe.” Some of that game’s ideas can still be seen in the opening area of Midgar. There’s no doubt that the original vision of Final Fantasy VII would have certainly veered the entire RPG industry – if even making a splash at all.

3. The PS2 Design Was Adopted From Atari Though many thought the PS2 had a spiffy, sleek design – with it’s vertical approach and black paint job – it was actually one of the more old-school designs out there. Sony heavily stole/borrowed from Atari’s 1993 model of the Falcon030 Microbox, after they acquired Atari Inc. The form of the console helped to make the PS2 the best-selling console in history, with over 150 million units sold as of 2011.

2. Secret Hidden Demo Games Continuing on with hidden stuff, it’s no secret that many game demos were released with big-named game releases, to try and pre-publicize a separate game’s release. For instance, Sony released many demos with its PlayStation magazine, while other games like Final Fantasy VII and Twisted Metal were first released as demos inside other games.

But what you might not know, is that there are even more hidden gems that first came out for PS1. Gamers found that if you popped underneath where the disc in the original VHS-shaped game box, underneath where the game’s disc was stored, you could find other demos and cases below the discs.

1. Net Yaroze Helped Create a Generation of Indie Game Developers Although not that big of news now, with soaring technology that allows practically any person to develop their own indie games, in the ‘90s, a system called Net Yaroze was a big deal. Sony wanted to get in contact with “garage developers,” so they developed a $750 black PlayStation in 1997 that could interface with a user’s computer.

Most of the designed games never made their way past bundled demo discs, but the Yaroze coding kits allowed a generation of would-be coders to get their first crack at making video games. Some success stories live, such as Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles developer Mitsuru Kamiyama, who first began coding with the Net Yaroze system.

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