Sony PlayStation 1

Introduction

Back in the days of the NES and SNES, Nintendo got involved with Sony to develop an add-on for the SNES to play games that came on CD, called the Nintendo PlayStation. However, Nintendo fell out with Sony who took the CD games technology they had created and transformed it into what we know to be the Sony PlayStation, despite Nintendo trying to stop them. The PS1 successfully took on the Sega Saturn and the Nintendo 64, the main competitors at the time, and came out on top, the original PlayStation regarded as one of the best video game consoles ever made.

Introduction

Overview

Accessories

PlayStation Link Cable

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Overview

The PlayStation was a 32-bit games machine that when against Sega's Saturn and Nintendo N64's and even though the PlayStation was less powerful hardware wise (even compared to the Saturn), the PlayStation lasted about 12 years from when it was released in 1994 and has had over 7000 games made for it. Games that include classics such as Tomb Raider, Resident Evil and Silent Hill, as well as many sequels that other consoles, such as the Saturn missed out on due to poor sales. As well as playing games the PlayStation could also play audio CDs which no doubt helped to sell the games system.

At the bottom of the photo below is an original (PAL) PlayStation which featured connectors for two controllers and two memory cards, and a power on/off, reset, and eject button. At the back are a parallel port (actually more advanced than a parallel port you would find on a computer) that wasn't officially used by Sony for any add-ons but was used by cheat devices but was removed from later revisions (possibly due to its 'misuse'). There is also a serial port (used to connect PlayStations together for multiplayer, see accessories section), composite video and stereo audio (absent on some revisions) and an A/V 'multi' connector as well as a mains power supply connection.

On top of the original PlayStation is a standard PlayStation controller that is digital only (controllers were later introduced with analog support). Above that PlayStation is a (PAL) slimline PlayStation that is better known as the PSone and as well as being a much smaller version of the original PlayStation it has just two buttons on top (Power/Reset and eject), and just a power adaptor socket and Multi A/V connector at the back. I'm not sure why the serial port was removed other than to cut costs and to reduce the overall size but most likely the parallel port was not included in the PSone was to stop people using cheat devices (cheat software on CD was sold that would work on the PSone but did not have the advantages of cheat code cartridges that connected to the original PlayStation's parallel port, such as to boot automatically when the PlayStation was turned on).

The PlayStation 1 lives on in that PlayStation 2s can play PlayStation 1 games as standard, some PlayStation 3s can play PlayStation 1 games out of the box and PlayStation 1 games can be downloaded onto and played on a PSP.

Accessories

PlayStation Link Cable

The PlayStation Link Cable, model SCPH-1040, was released by Sony in late 1995 and allows supported games to permit multiplayer across two PlayStation consoles, eliminating the need for split screen for two player or for four player, giving more screen space across two TVs, rather than having to do four player split on one screen. Making use of the PlayStation's serial port (not present on some models of the PlayStation), two PlayStations could be linked up but a copy of the same game was required for both consoles and two TVs/monitors were also needed.

For a list of games that support the link cable please see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Link_Cable

Please note that there were numerous third party versions of the link cable but it's recommended to use the official cable if possible to ensure compatibility.