I bought a 3Dfx graphics accelerator so i could play Final Fantasy VII on the PC when it came out. It was more expensive than a PS1 would have been but i was a cool PC gamer, of course, not some console peasant. I’m a bit older than OP’s grandpa in this story. And now get off my lawn, damn kids!
kids my age were playing console games by the time they were 6 - 8 years old easily - 8 years old is not like being 4 years old; still, I think parents often do buy things for their kids that are really for themselves and this could clearly be an example
My dad got us the NES when he was 35ish and played Tetris more than any of us.
The PS1 was still more like older console systems at the time. You didn’t have to be a “gamer” to buy one, titles like Spyro and Rayman especially were for ostensibly kids.
PS1 might have been the end it’s that though. Tekken 2 and Gran Tourismo started to signal an older college age shift in those consoles. That’s when I got mine anyway.
definitely true! I’m just not sure it’s the most probable scenario, and regardless it’s helpful to clarify the man bought a PS1 when he was nearly 30 years old.
PS1 quite famously singlehandedly changed the target audience of consoles from little kids to college-age people. Largely due to ‘Wipeout’ with its acid visuals by Designers Republic and the edm soundtrack, and PS1’s marketing, also with DR’s involvement, including game rooms in over fifty nightclubs in the UK alone.
The first ‘Wipeout’ mostly had original instrumental edm music by Tim Wright, aka CoLD SToRAGE, with just three tracks by Leftfield, The Chemical Brothers, and Orbital. But the sequel ‘Wipeout 2097’, released a year later, had Future Sound of London’s ‘We Have Explosive’, Fluke’s ‘Atom Bomb’, an instrumental of The Profigy’s ‘Firestarter’, and the like.
In a gaming club near my home, the owner straight up put the ‘Wipeout 2097’ cd in the console and let it play the music like a stereo system. Which, by the way, is something PS1 could do but N64 couldn’t, because the latter still relied on cartridges.
Now imagine Nintendo 64 kids dealing with any of that for the first time.
My dad was/is a gamer. We had every Nintendo system except the SNES at release. He’s a little bit older than the grandpa in this scenario, but he still gamed on the old systems by the time I stopped speaking to them. Had a huge CRT in the garage next to the beer fridge and all that lol. My sibling and I had our own games that we could play, but we always had to ask permission because the systems were my dad’s
This is what it was like for me, too - my dad was a gamer and the gaming stuff was all his, not mine. My siblings and I all competed for time on the computer to be able to play (we didn’t have consoles).
If you ever need a thought that confirms that the world is a sick and pathetic place, we are right on the precipice of a person being born whose grandparents were not alive for 9-11.
That’s going to take a little while. If we assume that both parents got their first child at 18, that shouldn’t happen before 2037. While it’s technically possible to have children at 13, it’s so far removed from the norm in developed countries that it makes me wonder if they even had access to a TV that would have let them perceive 9/11 if they had been alive and old enough back then.
I have encountered several people who gave birth to their first child at 13, and assuming that the generational issues that enable such horrific outcomes is not resolved, then it’s entirely plausible that a child born in 2001 could have given birth to their first child in 2013-2014, who would then be giving birth to their first child later this year or early next year.
Our peers’ kids are graduating high school and college. Maybe our kids too? But that also makes them technically old enough to have kids. That is a terrifying thought.
PS1 was released in North America in Sept. 1995, 30 years ago.
So the grandpa was born in 1967 to be 28 in 1995, which does make him 58 in 2025.
Still, it sounds more like the grandpa was buying the PS1 for his 8 year old son in 1995.
Could very well be the other way around. My dad was born in 1967 and gamed on the PS1. I still have his Resident Evil strategy guides.
I bought a 3Dfx graphics accelerator so i could play Final Fantasy VII on the PC when it came out. It was more expensive than a PS1 would have been but i was a cool PC gamer, of course, not some console peasant. I’m a bit older than OP’s grandpa in this story. And now get off my lawn, damn kids!
I had an ATI 3D Rage Pro. Fucking loved that thing. I used that all the way up to 2006. Man, MechWarrior 3 looked so good on that.
Sure, like how my parents bought “me” a computer when I was 4. Before windows 3.11 was a thing.
kids my age were playing console games by the time they were 6 - 8 years old easily - 8 years old is not like being 4 years old; still, I think parents often do buy things for their kids that are really for themselves and this could clearly be an example
Grandpa definitely could have been a gamer who justified the purchase by saying it was for OPs father.
My dad got us the NES when he was 35ish and played Tetris more than any of us.
The PS1 was still more like older console systems at the time. You didn’t have to be a “gamer” to buy one, titles like Spyro and Rayman especially were for ostensibly kids.
PS1 might have been the end it’s that though. Tekken 2 and Gran Tourismo started to signal an older college age shift in those consoles. That’s when I got mine anyway.
definitely true! I’m just not sure it’s the most probable scenario, and regardless it’s helpful to clarify the man bought a PS1 when he was nearly 30 years old.
PS1 quite famously singlehandedly changed the target audience of consoles from little kids to college-age people. Largely due to ‘Wipeout’ with its acid visuals by Designers Republic and the edm soundtrack, and PS1’s marketing, also with DR’s involvement, including game rooms in over fifty nightclubs in the UK alone.
that’s excellent context, thank you!
The first ‘Wipeout’ mostly had original instrumental edm music by Tim Wright, aka CoLD SToRAGE, with just three tracks by Leftfield, The Chemical Brothers, and Orbital. But the sequel ‘Wipeout 2097’, released a year later, had Future Sound of London’s ‘We Have Explosive’, Fluke’s ‘Atom Bomb’, an instrumental of The Profigy’s ‘Firestarter’, and the like.
In a gaming club near my home, the owner straight up put the ‘Wipeout 2097’ cd in the console and let it play the music like a stereo system. Which, by the way, is something PS1 could do but N64 couldn’t, because the latter still relied on cartridges.
Now imagine Nintendo 64 kids dealing with any of that for the first time.
My dad was/is a gamer. We had every Nintendo system except the SNES at release. He’s a little bit older than the grandpa in this scenario, but he still gamed on the old systems by the time I stopped speaking to them. Had a huge CRT in the garage next to the beer fridge and all that lol. My sibling and I had our own games that we could play, but we always had to ask permission because the systems were my dad’s
This is what it was like for me, too - my dad was a gamer and the gaming stuff was all his, not mine. My siblings and I all competed for time on the computer to be able to play (we didn’t have consoles).
thank you for the reality check
Yeah, but that doesn’t gut punch annon; which is primarily what I’m here for.
If you ever need a thought that confirms that the world is a sick and pathetic place, we are right on the precipice of a person being born whose grandparents were not alive for 9-11.
That’s going to take a little while. If we assume that both parents got their first child at 18, that shouldn’t happen before 2037. While it’s technically possible to have children at 13, it’s so far removed from the norm in developed countries that it makes me wonder if they even had access to a TV that would have let them perceive 9/11 if they had been alive and old enough back then.
I have encountered several people who gave birth to their first child at 13, and assuming that the generational issues that enable such horrific outcomes is not resolved, then it’s entirely plausible that a child born in 2001 could have given birth to their first child in 2013-2014, who would then be giving birth to their first child later this year or early next year.
Fuck, I’m forty and I was alive for 9/11! Then I realized that I’m actually within the age range to be a grandmother, but just barely.
Our peers’ kids are graduating high school and college. Maybe our kids too? But that also makes them technically old enough to have kids. That is a terrifying thought.