Hot on the heels of its PS5 Pro announcement, Sony has once more upped the pre-holidays ante with its reveal of the PlayStation 30th Anniversary Collection, on sale November 21. But for some of us, the thought of enhanced ray-tracing and boosted performance aren’t its most exciting proposition.
Readers of a certain vintage go misty-eyed at the thought of their old PS1s—arguably the first console that consciously looked beyond the kids’ market and fully embraced adult players—not to mention the roster of stone-cold classic titles and a clubbing-culture-influenced ad campaign that propelled it to sales of 100 million units over its lifetime.
Now Sony has revived its ’90s groove to celebrate three decades since the console that changed everything—think gray. Lots and lots of gray. And it’s so good!
Gray Scale
The resulting makeover has injected some pre-millennium charm into perhaps Sony’s most unloved design of recent years. Yes, this writer is biased, but one look at the PS1-ified Slim and Pro models in their cool and calm slate, with none of the tackiness one only gets from too much glossy black plastic, and you can’t help but feel this is the color scheme Sony should have gone for in the first place.
Are both models still behemoths? Oh yes. But their fresh, flinty coats are balm for the eyes—and can it be that they even look less “swoopy” in their drab guise? Clearly proud of its work, Sony has even deigned to include a matching vertical stand (usually only available separately) so it can be appreciated, monolith-style (though purists like me will opt for flat, of course).
And yet this is not the console’s greatest design triumph. That is reserved for something far more humble: a special-edition charging cord for the controller. The DualSense and DualSense Edge have joined the pre-2000 party by emulating the colors of the original SCPH-1010, but in a glorious display of skeuomorphism, one end of the USB-C charging cable has been embedded in a simulacra of the PS1’s controller-connector plug, so you can pretend you’re in the good old days of being tethered a couple of feet from your TV. (Sadly, you can’t also upgrade your storage the old-fashioned way by plugging a memory module in the front—you’ll still need to crack this beast open with a screwdriver.)
Cable Guy
The decision to include this little Easter egg shows that someone at Sony has a long memory: The previous anniversary console, a PS4 marking the 20th in 2014, also embraced the gray but didn’t commit to the nostalgia quite so thoroughly. (It did, however, include the iconic PS1 startup sound, a feature we haven’t yet confirmed for this new iteration.)
The fake connector is not functional; it harks back to a less-convenient time; most of today’s wireless-native gamers will regard it with utter bewilderment. But to Gen-Xers it is beautiful, demonstrating a rare level of detail and care—Sony understands us. Sony was there.
As a person who spends a great deal of his PS5 time playing much, much older titles—Tomb Raider Remastered! Resident Evil: Director’s Cut! Assassin’s Creed! (OK, that one’s PS3, but you get the drift)—the Anniversary Edition Collection is a dream come true, spreading ’90s goodness across most of PlayStation’s current range.
Heck, it’s even made me wonder whether I might have a use for the baffling PlayStation Portal now it’s got tasteful ashen grips. For everyone else, the retro Pro is a distinct improvement on both hardware and aesthetics, squeezing that bit more longevity out of a pretty expensive gaming platform—and let’s not forget the potential resale value a few years down the line.
For those seeking a more recent bout of nostalgia, this limited edition of 12,300 numbered Pro consoles (a reference to the first release date of December 30, 1994) will almost certainly let you relive the unseemly scrambles of the PS5’s original release just four years ago. We can only hope that Sony will go full ’90s here as well, and encourage all-night, in-person queues outside Radio Shack come November 21. And note that Sony isn’t revealing the bundle price yet.
(PS: Can someone please remaster Tenchu Stealth Assassins in time for this release?)