Fifteen years ago today Sony entered the video game arena — a new unproven challenger — and changed the face of gaming forever.

I grew up playing my dad’s atari 2600 on an old spare black and white TV. We had it set up that way, because at the time, being only four and five, I didn’t have a TV of my own. This was the late 80′s. Things were a little different. By 1990, I had my own TV and a shiny new Nintendo. Gone were the simplistic dots of Pac-Man and Space Invaders and in were arcade style game ports. The Ninja Turtles could be played.

In my bedroom!

At any time!

But within a few years I had moved on from even that to its bigger older brother. The Super Nintendo. Lured in by the shiny pretty of Super Mario World and the ability to play these massive new big budget games (Street Fighter II! Mortal Kombat II!), the SNES was, for the early to mid 1990′s, a kid’s video game dream come true. Here was perfection, right?

About the same time, I started becoming aware of rivalries. I’m a Yankees fan and I’ve been one my entire life so I know all about a good rivalry, but at the time had been blissfully unaware that they existed anywhere else but sports. But, as I flipped through each month’s issue of Gamepro, there it was in pure black and white. Nintendo vs Sega. The commercials at the time pushed forth the same message. You’re either with one, or you’re with the other.

Yet with the exception of a few inches of space in these magazines (remember: pre-internet), I was blissfully unaware of what was happening behind the scenes of the industry. Nintendo, trying to ride the same wave as Sega with their Sega CD attachment, had contacted Sony (a megacompany in all other fields but the video game industry) to build a game add-on. But the partnership collapsed when Nintendo flirted with Philips — one of Sony’s chief rivals. It’s like a bad love story of cheating.

Having invested the money and the resources in this project, Sony decided to go for broke. What many didn’t really know at the time, and still don’t realize, is the Sony of the early 90′s was ever expanding. They purchased a Hollywood studio at the beginning of the decade (Columbia Tri-Star), which had been a bad decision for most foreign companies. They were angry, and aggressive and they had just had a bad break up.

So they entered the video game world.

Now, like I said, at the time we were still dumb and naive, but we were also skeptical. All we had to go on was the screen shots of games like Ridge Racer and Battle Arena Toshinden. There was no YouTube to check out game trailers or preview sites with developer walkthroughs. Sure, these tiny screenshots in Gamepro looked impressive, but the magazine was full of the carcasses of other video game systems that looked impressive. And the two pillars of the video game industry still had their own surprises. Sega had their own Saturn in development. A 32-bit monstrosity to match heads with the PlayStation. And it was from a trusted known brand!

Faithful Nintendo, meanwhile, was going to skip straight to 64-bits! That was twice as much as the PlayStation. How could this upstart Sony even hope to win? Hope to compete with these beasts?

Oh, but how it did.

In the fifteen years since it came out, there have been a lot of comparisons between the PlayStation and it’s rival systems. People have noted that the Saturn was able to do certain games better and picked at the PS1′s flaws. But what it did get right…

The 2600 and the NES and the SNES all captured the games in the arcade at the time. They put power in your hands. The PlayStation did more than that. You weren’t just playing arcade ports or multi-hour adventure games. You were playing epics. You were in the action of sports games. It wasn’t just about saving the princess or saving the world, it was saving YOUR princess and saving YOUR world. For the first time, games were immersing you in to their world. They continued seemingly without end, unspooling dazzling stories around you. Voice acting and cinematic cut scenes brought people to life in ways that bare on screen text had failed to do for so many years.

Before I owned one, I was addicted. Tekken, ESPN X-Games, NBA Jam (with stereo sound)… These were experiences. Hours lost at friends’ houses, playing until the wee hours of the day. My own SNES collected dust.

Within a year of the American launch, I had my own, and I never looked back. Nor did millions of others world wide. In 2005, the PlayStation crossed the 100 million console barrier. The first of it’s kind to do so. Sony continued to make the PlayStation until 2006, nearly six years into the release cycle of the PlayStation 2. It was on the market for roughly 11 years.

It was such a success that it helped define the end of the cartridge. Games were on CDs now! Not as a gimmick, but for good! And they were in 3D! Gamers talk a lot about the greatness of Super Mario 64 or Ocarina of Time, but those early PS1 Madden‘s and Tekken were just as important in establishing the legitimacy of 3D games. In many ways, even more important as they had to take into consideration multiple players on multiple planes.

And it became a success because people wanted it. This wasn’t a toy. This was a system that could look good on your shelf, next to your receiver and your VCR. It was the first system to be grown up. It was the first system that lured adults and college kids back to gaming. Those strays were back in the fold.

Lastly, and most importantly, it brought big budget gaming to American Prime Time. The ad campaign for Final Fantasy VII — paid for by Sony — was a behemoth. Prime time commercials that lured you in to a movie, double page spread advertisements in not just comics and gaming magazines, but in real magazines.

The video game industry is often said to now be the largest entertainment industry in terms of profits. Modern Warfare 2‘s launch, just a few weeks ago, was the largest launch of any entertainment product in history, and it wasn’t possible without this.

On December 3rd, 1994, against the seemingly better judgement of experts at the time and against massive odds, Sony released the PlayStation into the wild.

And like nature, gaming evolved.

Make sure to visit the official Sony anniverary site here (Warning: It’s in Japanese, but definitely worth a look). http://www.scei.co.jp/PS15th/