Last Christmas, one of my very close friends gave me, what I can call, one of the best presents I have ever gotten.

It was a PlayStation 2, the console I used to have – Well, before my brother up and burned the lens by leaving it on in the house while we went on vacation… He still owes me for that. As I reconnect with a piece of my childhood, I am now in search of the games I once had in my collection; Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers, Kingdom Hearts and many more. Now that I am older and posses an ever expanding curiosity, I started thinking about the history of the PlayStation. I researched it and found things I was never aware of.

The PlayStation is considered to be the offspring of Ken Kutaragi, a brilliant visionary and computer engineer. Known as “the father of PlayStation”, Ken Kutaragi used what he learned from SONY, adopting System- G, the technology that allows 3-D computer graphics to be shown on television in real time. In 1991, He used the jointed works made from the past partnership of SONY and Nintendo called the Super Disc, a CD-ROM attachment of Super Nintendo, a console from Nintendo.

The PSX was not released until 1994 in Japan and not until 1995 in the US. About 200 models of the first PlayStation were made, only allowing them to play Super Nintendo cartridges, play audio CD’s, and read CD’s with audio and video information. As PlayStation improved, it was no longer compatible with Nintendo game cartridges and started playing CD-ROM games in the new and improved PlayStation X, or PSX. Their logo was redeveloped multiple times before choosing the design made by Japanese designer by the name of Manabu Sakamoto. I was surprise to find out that even though to me the typeface is in decorative sans serif, he customized this typeface specifically for PlayStation. The red “P” and yellow, green and blue “S”, signify “joy, passion and excellence”. After becoming well known, their logo was changed to a solid black or white, depending on the background on which their logo is placed.

Introduced to the United States in 1994, the PlayStation’s interactive marketing relationship boomed, paving the way for newer and better types of PlayStation and games for each console.

Evolving from the PSX in 1994, to PlayStation 2 in 2000, PlayStation 3 in the year 2006, and the PlayStation 4 in the year 2013, each console along with the newer and futuristic typeface differs from one another to some extent. Typefaces are now sans serif black or in a blue to white gradient with the number, 2, 3 or 4, to specify which type of PlayStation it is. Branding continues as the word is spelled out on different occasions, such as for the PlayStation portable (PSP), PlayStation Networking, and the service logo.

All of this research is making me want to stop what I’m doing, put my homework away and play some Kingdom Hearts…Now if only I had the time to do that.

Works Cited:

http://playstationmuseum.com/history/

http://us.playstation.com/corporate/about/theplaystationstory/

PlayStation Logo

http://gaming.answers.com/playstation/the-history-of-the-sony-playstation-logo