[HN Gopher] How I launched 3 consoles and found true love at Bab...
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How I launched 3 consoles and found true love at Babbage's store
no. 9 (2013)
Author : zepearl
Score : 42 points
Date : 2026-02-19 15:14 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| blargthorwars wrote:
| I lived through this, and it captures the era well. I'm trying to
| see through young eyes, but I can't stress how _new_ things
| seemed every year during this era. Nowadays, there doesn 't seem
| to be as much progress, just better iteration.
| ecshafer wrote:
| I am a bit younger but I agree. Going from the SNES/Genesis to
| Playstation/N64 with 3d graphics was amazing. It was like
| having an arcade machine at home. Going to the PS2/Xbox and
| then 360/PS3 was again a massive jump. Every console jump was a
| very noticeable improvement in graphics, so it became a big
| deal. PS4/PS5/XBONE these were just such minor improvements,
| there is no big wow factor.
| pipes wrote:
| The snes to N64 jump to me is definitely the biggest. It
| wasn't just graphics, the gameplay completely changed too. By
| the end of the snes era I had grown out of games due to
| endless platforms and 2d fighters (I was 13ish). I was 16 by
| time I started playing them again. Wave race 64 was just mind
| blowing. And like nothing else I'd played before.
| lee_ars wrote:
| Good times, they were. Good times indeed. (And we're still
| married, too!)
| MobileVet wrote:
| Thanks for this... great trip down memory lane. I also worked
| at Babbages during the 1993 academic year. I probably spent my
| whole paycheck there! I definitely considered myself lucky, I
| didn't find a wife but it sure beat McDonald's!
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| I mean the PS2 was a bigger hit than the PS1 and anything
| Nintendo put out so that analysis wains.
|
| The jump in graphics was massive.
| ErneX wrote:
| I'll never forget the PS2 US launch. I visited the US for
| holidays and landed just the day before launch. I thought I was
| going to be able to get one unit the next day if I asked in a few
| shops if they knew they were going to have stock. After my sister
| took me to a few it was clear it was going to be next to
| impossible, some were going to get as few as a dozen of them and
| those were already reserved.
|
| But in the last Best Buy we visited the person I asked about the
| launch told me the same as all the other stores we visited before
| but said "you really want one?" And he pulled out his wallet and
| started digging into a bunch of papers and gave me a receipt of
| his own PS2 reservation at another chain (I think it was
| Electronics Boutique?) and said "keep it, I don't feel like
| getting it now I'll just get one down the road", he didn't want
| any money for it, we insisted profusely, even though his
| reservation had like 15 dollars already paid. I was so lucky.
|
| That other store was doing a midnight launch, they even had
| police in the parking lot keeping an eye. Picked up the console
| with Ridge Racer V, Tekken Tag Tournament, Kessen and a 2nd
| controller if I recall correctly.
|
| Good times.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| Can you imagine what it was like to work on the PS2? Everyone
| knew it was going to be huge and it was so hard to get the dev
| kit. I remember I had to fly somewhere with my prototype game
| and my development PS2 hardware. That was not long after "911"
| and TSA was very strict. They were like: what the hell is weird
| piece of electronics. Those were very exciting times.
| ginko wrote:
| >In the end, the console wars of the late 1990s were won by
| Nintendo, which built on the momentum of the Nintendo 64 by
| launching the GameCube in 2001, along with an arsenal of handheld
| systems
|
| Does the author live in a parallel universe where Sony didn't
| completely dominate gen 5 & gen 6 sales?
|
| >The limited amount of storage on the cartridge means that the
| textures laid over the game's polygons are blurry and often
| hideously ugly.
|
| The cartridge storage wasn't the limiting factor here. The
| problem was the unified RDRAM memory architecture of the N64
| which turned out to be too slow for texturing. Instead developers
| had to use a 4KiB bit of onboard memory which was just too little
| in hindsight.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| >Does the author live in a parallel universe where Sony didn't
| completely dominate gen 5 & gen 6 sales?
|
| Difficult to ascertain. Sales wise of course Sony will sell
| more. It was N64's 388 worldwide games vs Sony's 4,074 titles.
| More games than you could possibly try + Lower prices + higher
| install base will lead to more game sales and frankly I have
| seen so many more "experimental" titles on Playstation.
|
| Never thought i'd be playing as a beach ball escaping a maze
| while eating watermelons and listening to egyptian trance but
| it happened on Playstation.
|
| https://youtu.be/OcaNdzEXch8?t=7
|
| Plus Sony always felt like a "global" console. They expanded
| the user base to not only non gamers but a truly international
| audience (latin america, middle east etc.) It was probably the
| modchips that made it happen but still.
|
| But "winning the console war" is more than just raw sales. For
| example, of that extremely small 388 titles it is astounding
| how many of those games have won numerous prestigious awards,
| were genre defining, moved its genre in a direction that all
| others copied, or are still cited as one of the best games of
| all time.
|
| The N64 really laid down an entire historial footprint for the
| millennial generation despite its significantly smaller sales.
| I guess a lot of that is down to Nintendo and many of their
| games demonstrating why they have been in a league of their
| own. But the console also had superb titles released by third
| parties as well.
| chocochunks wrote:
| I think it was just a joke based on that store's sales where
| N64 was dominating at the time...
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| I used to work for a Sony retailer in Scotland when the PS2 was
| launched, and we were all incredibly annoyed they wouldn't give
| us one to demo.
|
| "But you sell TVs, DVD players, and audio systems, not games
| consoles, you won't sell any of these"
|
| Well not if we can't demo it we won't!
|
| Despite this being the prevailing attitude at Sony - "don't sell
| them in shops where people are already spending five figure sums
| on home entertainment" - it did really well.
|
| The one thing where I think they really missed a trick though,
| was their 200-disc changers. They had a CD changer and a DVD
| changer, massive units (we had a DVP-CX850D on demo), that took
| 200 discs like the name suggests, plugged into your TV and audio
| system, and you could select which one you wanted to play from an
| on-screen menu.
|
| I think they really biffed it by not offering that chassis with
| PS2 guts. Just think, you've got your library of films, audio
| CDs, and games, all in one unit tucked neatly out of the way. It
| would have been expensive but it would have blown the market
| apart.
|
| And, like the CX850, it'd still be about 700 quid on eBay 27
| years later.
| sylens wrote:
| What a great trip to the past this was. I'm sure this is the rose
| colored glasses talking, but I do miss how video games weren't
| quite so mainstream in the 90s and early 2000's. Launches were
| smaller but felt like much bigger deals. There wasn't wall to
| wall coverage of every game all the time, so you could still
| easily be surprised by one that you had bought.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| I love this essay for how it captures point in time.
| brainzap wrote:
| you can observe Microsoft Gaming fall apart over the next 12
| month.
| RunSet wrote:
| Correction: The illustration in the article labeled "Sony's
| original Playstation" does not show the original playstation
| controller.
|
| For comparison purposes that is shown in the following image:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_(console)#/media/F...
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