???? – 2006retired
Lego Mindstorms
“It had no main model to build — so you built everything.”
“Born of a broken deal with Nintendo, it outlived the grudge and everyone's expectations.”
The PlayStation — codenamed PSX, later PS1 — was a home video game console built by Sony Computer Entertainment and designed primarily by Ken Kutaragi. Fittingly, it only existed because Sony's early-1990s CD-ROM partnership with Nintendo fell through, and Sony decided to go it alone. It leaned hard into 3D polygon graphics and made game production easy enough to win over a flood of third-party developers, which mean
Launched in Japan on 3 December 1994 and in North America and Europe in 1995, it went toe-to-toe with the Nintendo 64 and Sega Saturn — and won hearts with its franchises, low price, and marketing that finally treated older players like adults. Sony kept it going until 2006, an impressive run for a fifth-generation console. It didn't die so much as hand over the controller and step back.
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“It had no main model to build — so you built everything.”
“A phone that dared to be a Game Boy, and a taco that dared to be loved”
“Big, green, and first to put a hard drive where its heart should be.”