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Two decades ago, Sony had displayed about as much skill in producing video games as Nintendo had Hollywood movies. Sure, Sony had published games sporadically under its Sony Imagesoft brand, but it’s hard to build much consumer goodwill with such a small catalogue of titles, especially when most of said titles are terrible.

Then, on December 3, 1994, the company launched the original PlayStation. While the 3DO and CD-i of fellow electronics manufacturers Panasonic and Phillips would both end in ignominious failure, Sony would go on to slice itself a very large piece of the pie in its new industry, dominating two generations of console gaming and remaining competitive ever since.

Of course, hardware isn’t worth much without fun games to play on it. Thankfully, Sony’s systems had plenty of hits, as shown by a poll of Japanese gamers’ 20 favorite PlayStation games.

“What’s your favorite PlayStation game?” seems like it should be a pretty straightforward question. Since Sony conducted its survey of 10,000 gamers to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the original PlayStation going on sale in Japan, you’d think only PlayStation One titles would be eligible. A handful of PlayStation 2 titles also sneaked into the top 20, though. What’s more, while most of the titles were PlayStation exclusives, at least at their time of release, some didn’t even originate on a Sony system.

In the end, Sony seems to have left the criteria as to what qualifies as a “PlayStation game” up to each individual respondent, so let’s see what they picked as their favorites.

20. Minna no Golf (Hot Shots Golf)

Known as Hot Shots Golf in North America, this was Sony’s first attempt at making golf fun for mainstream gamers who weren’t necessarily fans of the sport in real life. The intuitive user interface, and possibly the ability to harass your friends with distracting sound effects when taking their swings, won enough fans that five sequels have been made so far.

19. Biohazard 2 (Resident Evil 2)

Yes, the Japanese franchise title, Biohazard, doesn’t have anywhere near the panache of its international one, Resident Evil. It’s been a lot more appropriate ever since the second installment, though, when the zombies were no longer confined to a house and instead overran a whole city.

18. Shin Sangoku Musou (Dynasty Warriors 2)

And now we come to our first PlayStation 2 interloper, one of the very first times developer Koei decided to give generals from Chinese history modernly fashionable hairstyles and an action game to run around in.

17. Derby Stallion

Japan has always had a soft spot for virtual horse racing. It may seem kind of pointless, since your winnings aren’t real, but on the plus side, neither are your losses.

16. Kingdom Hearts II

Sort of like how people snickered when Sony said it was making its own console, a lot of people chuckled when Square said it was fusing its Final Fantasy characters with the collected casts of Disney’s animated canon. Then the first Kingdom Hearts became a gaming sensation, and Square laughed all the way to the bank, then right on into the development of its PlayStation 2 sequel.

15. Gran Turismo

License tests in a driving game? Weird as it seemed at the time, at the time of its release in 1997, no major console game had ever attempted the sort of realism that Gran Turismo was shooting for. The game’s forced tutorial mode not only made sure gamers understood the fundamentals of racing physics, but turned would-be cries of “This game’s control sucks!” into shouts of “Best racing game ever!”

14. Winning Eleven 8 Livewear Evolution

Think the name of this PlayStation 2 installment of Konami’s soccer simulator is unwieldy in English? Since the Japanese language requires a vowel in almost every syllable, gamers in Japan had to ask for a copy of “Uiningu Irebun Eito Raibuuea Evoryuushon.”

13. Final Fantasy VIII

While many of its new gameplay systems produced mixed results, the gorgeous opening animation and unabashed emotional charge of the eighth numbered entry in this role-playing franchise stands as testament to just how high the thrones developer Square and Sony sat on at the time were.

12. Kingdom Hearts

The PlayStation One starting point of the Square/Disney crossover also made the list.

11. Final Fantasy IX

You didn’t think we’d seen the last of Final Fantasy, did you? Final Fantasy IX took the series back to its fantasy roots after three increasingly steam-punk-tinged sequels, and is said to occupy a special place in the heart of Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi.

10. Tetris

We’re sort of surprised to see the standard-bearer of the “things falling from the top of the screen puzzle” genre on this list. But while many associate Tetris with Nintendo’s Gameboy, the Russian classic did also make its way to the original PlayStation in no less than four different versions, including an obscure collaboration with anime heroine (and cosmetics spokes-magical girl) Cardcaptor Sakura.

9. Puyo Puyo

Outside of Japan, Puyo Puyo has such a low profile that for its international Super NES and Genesis/Mega Drive releases, the cast was replaced with Nintendo and Sega characters. In Japan, though, the game was so huge that at the peak of its popularity, there were multiple stores selling nothing but Puyo Puyo merchandise, and its legacy is so strong that part of this year’s student festival at Tokyo’s Waseda University was a giant, lecture-hall filling Puyo Puyo tournament.

8. Dragon Quest VII

While the switch in loyalties of long-time Nintendo ally Square got more press internationally, Sony scored another huge coup in luring developer Enix to the PlayStation, and Dragon Quest VII was the first chapter in Japan’s most beloved role-playing series to debut on something other than a Nintendo console.

7. Final Fantasy

We’re blaming Sony’s ambiguous phrasing of “What’s your favorite PlayStation game?” for this. Yes, a remake of the very first Final Fantasy came out for the PlayStation in 2002, 15 years after its initial Famicom release. But while it was a nice little nostalgia trip for seriously stalwart fans of the series, there’s no way the updated version made enough of an impact to place this high on the list. The only logical explanation we can think of is that survey respondents meant “Final Fantasy” as a nod to the series as a whole on PlayStation.

6. Dragon Quest VIII

Since Dragon Quest IX is a Nintendo DS handheld title and X an online RPG, the PlayStation 2’s Dragon Quest VIII, with its crisp cell-shaded graphics and beautiful later-released soundtrack performed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, remains the last full-fledged, orthodox game in the series.

5. Biohazard (Resident Evil)

Everyone remembers freaking out at the scene where the dogs jump through the window, but you know what’s really scary? When players encounter their very first zombie, it triggers a CG cut scene of the creature turning around to face the camera. The zombie’s eye is especially unnerving, and well it should be: Capcom’s artists visited a morgue, photographed the eyeball of a corpse, and dropped it into the zombie model for the scene.

4. Final Fantasy X

Japan loves tales of bittersweet, even tragic love, and lovers don’t get much more star-crossed than protagonists star-athlete-turned-warrior Tidus and enchantress Yuna.

3. Dragon Quest IV

Originally released for the Famicom in 1990, Dragon Quest IV would return on the PlayStation in 2001 with all-new graphics, a longer quest, and a few gameplay tweaks such as being able to manually control all party members in battle.

2. Final Fantasy VII

Earlier installments in the series had their dramatic storytelling kneecapped by the graphical and aural limitations of the hardware they played on. Some would argue that in later sequels the pendulum swung too far back the other way, as the game itself took a backseat to thinking up ways to push more and more polygons for purely aesthetic reasons. In Final Fantasy VII, though, Square got the mix of story and gameplay just right, and fans everywhere are thankful, even as they clamor for a modern remake.

1. Dragon Quest V

Topping the list is, surprisngly, another remake. Dragon Quest V first appeared on Nintendo’s Super Famicom in 1992 before popping up again on the PlayStation 2 in 2004. The revamp adds polygon graphics but retains the epic storyline that begins with the main character’s birth, shows how he grows into a powerful champion, and eventually sees his adventurer children following in his formidable footsteps.

So, in a way, it’s sort of like the story of the multi-generational PlayStation family itself.

Source: Jin, PlayStation official website
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