PlayStation Aesthetic
I’m currently deep in the trenches, working on the next two issues of Forgotten Worlds magazine. It’s a whole process. And if anyone is interested the next couple of issues are basically written. They’re a return to the magazine about old-video-game-magazines format.
That’s all fine and good. But it means the website has taken a back seat in the interim. Which means new content is thin on the ground. Which impacts traffic and SEO. Which affects that part of my brain that likes to see the numbers ticking upwards.
I figure the best way to juggle the print and the online side of things is to re-up on the blog posts. They’re short, sweet, and help keep things moving while the real work goes on in the background. Huzzah! Etc.
Anyway, one of the blogs I wanted to write was a thing about ‘Weird PlayStation’. Long story short, I finally got around to buying a PS5 and splurged on the ultra lux subscription tier that gives you access to all the old PlayStation classics.
Without getting into a whole thing about it, I’ve spent more time in recent weeks playing these 30 year old PlayStation one (PSX?) titles than recent releases.
And yes, they’re janky, and the graphics are terrible by today’s standards, and the learning curve is steep, and yada, yada. I knew all that beforehand. What I didn’t appreciate, or maybe had forgotten, was how weird some of these games are. And not just garden variety weird. But a very specific PlayStation kind of weird.
Jumping Flash is a great example. Released in April 1995, I believe it’s on record as the "first platform video game in true 3D". And while the premise is indeed weird - you’re a robot rabbit jumping around a 3D space collecting pods and shooting abstract enemies - that description doesn’t do it justice. Jumping Flash has a throwback charm that I’m struggling to articulate here.
Same for Vib Ribbon. You can insert your own music CDs in the PlayStation and the game will generate levels based on the rhythm and tempo of the tracks. Coincidentally this one also involves a rabbit-like creature. And just like Jumping Flash, a quick summary doesn’t do it justice. There’s personality in spades. Even if the whole thing is nothing more than simple vector graphics.
If Sony Japan was nurturing an abstract and experimental approach to game design during this era, the western team was delivering some of the strangest marketing and promo ads you’re ever likely to see.
Seems that whoever was managing PlayStation's global branding back in the 1990s did not give a shit. And to demonstrate that we’ve going to flashback to an imaginary creative briefing for PlayStation circa 19xx.
“Dave, wanna show some gameplay footage in this print ad?”
“Nah, let’s do nipples. But like, as PlayStation symbols.”
“Are you sure about that?
*looks up from table covered in cocaine*
Oh, and let’s not forget the TV spots. Take the legendary PS2 Shirley Temple ‘Get on Board’ ad from the early 2000s. I’ve just watched it for the first time in 20+ years and it’s batshit crazy.
Looking at the PlayStation brand in 2024, it’s easy to lament the lack of corporate weird. The PlayStation that we know and remember from the PS1 and early PS2 era is long gone. Which is of course inevitable. Times change. Organizations grow up. And when it comes to video games the financial stakes continue to rise. PlayStation’s more homogenized, risk averse approach to their games library and promo is par for the course when you have billions at stake.
But then I look at the PS5’s industrial design and can’t help but wonder how that ever got approved. Turn it sideways and it looks like a house out of Architectural Digest. Whatever you think of it, it’s certainly not the safe, or obvious choice for a console’s industrial design. Which leads me to believe some of that old 1990s PlayStation weird lives on in the company’s DNA.
So yeah, I was going to touch on all the above in my blog post about Weird PlayStation. But I couldn’t figure out how to make it all work without doing a lot more research and a much higher word count. So here we are. Dealing with whatever this is, and feeling like Ben Affleck smoking a cigarette in a tabloid photo…
Anyway, I better get back to Forgotten Worlds issue four and five.
PS. SEO research tells me PlayStation Aesthetic is a better title than Weird PlayStation. So here’s that photo of Ben Affleck.
