Page 2: The games

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And what games there are! Sony teams up with Namco to bring the latter's 3D arcade hits such as "Ridge Racer" and "Tekken" into living rooms. In 1993, a year before the PlayStation was released, they took over the British studio Psygnosis ("Lemmings"). The poaching of Square has an even greater signal effect. They had become successful with the role-playing game series "Final Fantasy" on the NES, but found the possibilities of the CD-ROM too tempting. "Final Fantasy VII" (on three discs) becomes the second most successful game on the PlayStation. The most successful? Not surprisingly: "Gran Turismo" with almost 10 million sales.

No one can say exactly how many PlayStation games there are. Winnie Forster writes in his book "Gameplan" of 3,000. That's more than any other console; but other estimates go up to 8,000. There's something for everyone: lots of Japan like Konami, lots of big American publishers like Electronic Arts and Activision, lots of European manufacturers like Ubi Soft - and even, and this is new, German ones. Like the "Moorhuhn".

Many game series are linked to the PlayStation and grow with it:

"Tomb Raider" with the brave Lara Croft, now sold 100 million times and made into a movie three times so far.

"Resident Evil" by Capcom, which popularized the survival horror genre (actually founded by "Alone in the Dark"), the model for games such as "Silent Hill" and "Clock Tower" and also made into several films.

Grand Theft Auto" also starts on the PlayStation (and PC), initially with a bird's eye view, before the series has its breakthrough on the PlayStation 2: Three of the five best-selling games for the console are "GTA" parts.

Sony didn't have any iconic characters like Nintendo at first, but the"Crash Bandicoot" swag badger, which was of course conceived with Mario and Sonic in mind, did very well as one of the first 3D platformer games: the trilogy was the 7th, 8th and 11th best-selling game for the console.

Don't forget 6th place: "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone". This is astonishing because the PlayStation 2 had already been on the market for a year when it was released. On the other hand, it is the most successful feature film of 2001, even ahead of "The Lord of the Rings". The games for Peter Jackson's film series were first released for the PlayStation 2.

Developer version Net Yaroze

While today even small indie developers are allowed to develop games for the major consoles, this was practically impossible thirty years earlier. Sony opened the first door in 1996 with a special version of the PlayStation for hobby developers: Net Yaroze. It comes with restrictions; games have to fit into the RAM, so they cannot access the CD, and they only run on a Net Yaroze, of which there are around 1,000 in Europe. But you can exchange information in special forums; and in some cases games make it onto the cover disc of magazines or receive a regular release.

Cheats, cheats, cheats

It's also the heyday of cheats. Many PlayStation games have cheat codes built in. There are the first websites with cheats, tricks and solutions. This is a whole new quality compared to magazines, which can only help with a few games. But above all there are the cheat modules such as GameBuster and Xploder. They overwrite the memory cells in which values such as the number of lives or credit are stored, add items to the inventory and unlock locations. This is a task that so-called trainers solve on everything from home computers to PCs. Some code investigators are true magicians, allowing Lara Croft to soar through the air and walk through walls.

Even game saves are not safe from cheating. With devices such as the DexDrive, the files are read out on the PC. This not only saves money on additional memory cards. You can happily download game saves from the Internet, swap them with friends or manipulate them with a hex editor.