JASON COSKREY

Staff writer

Ken Kutaragi is feeling a little anxious. He has already long established himself as one of the brightest minds at Sony, but today is like being a newbie all over again. That’s because on this particular morning, Dec. 3, 1994, the machine that’s essentially his life’s work, the Sony PlayStation, is about to be released.

Kutaragi spent the previous night with software creators and others at a pre-release party in the Tokyo neighborhood of Ebisu. Now, he and members of his team have spread out across the capital to monitor the PlayStation’s debut.

As the launch creeps closer, Kutaragi’s mind is racing. Would people buy the system? The electronic stores were set to open at 10 a.m., were PlayStations already on the shelves? Was everything going to run smoothly?

“We went to check and surprisingly there were already long lines,” Kutaragi, now widely known as the father of the PlayStation, tells The Japan Times on a windy September night at Sony’s headquarters 23 years later.

“The people waiting for the PlayStation weren’t elementary school kids, they were in their 20s, 30s and 40s,” Kutaragi says. “It was also a surprise to see couples there. Until then, games seemed to be only for boys. After the release of PlayStation, however, I saw more women. At exhibitions and events, there would be couples and also women who came alone.

“I had been hoping for that kind of result, but seeing it made me think this was going to be a success as a form of entertainment.”

Describing the launch as a success would prove to be an understatement.

The PlayStation was, for lack of a better word (pardon the pun), a game-changer, turning the video game industry on its head in the Heisei Era (1989 to the present day). Its 3D graphics, games and sheer cool factor took gaming worldwide.

“PlayStation was obviously super successful in bringing 3D home. Sega Saturn less so,” says James Mielke, creative director of game studio Tigertron and former editor-in-chief at Electronic Gaming Monthly. “PlayStation whet the appetites of everybody who wanted games.

“I don’t know if it was the timing or it was because of 3D in particular, but home consumers really wanted these new 3D games. It stopped being like a weird, niche, hard-core hobby and something a wider, more general populace could enjoy.”

The system’s broad appeal, from children to adults, was one of its strengths and had been a point of pride.

“I didn’t want to make games for a specific cluster of children,” Kutaragi says.

The PlayStation was among the first consoles to rely on 3D graphics, as did the Sega Saturn, which was released the same year.

Kutaragi was a film buff — he joked he might have been the seventh person in Japan to create a home theater — and had been partially inspired by advancements in Hollywood in the late 1980s and early ’90s.

“Nobody was really making 3D games,” he says. “Everybody thought it would fail. I didn’t think so. When computer graphics came to the movie industry, they were able to make so many amazing films. They were able to express things people hadn’t seen before. I thought we could create that in games. So I gathered a lot of Sony engineers and said, ‘Let’s do it.’”

3D revolution

In 1993, Sega released “Virtua Fighter,” the first 3D fighting game, in Japanese arcades. “Virtua Fighter” was a hit, and Kutaragi was even more determined to bring the 3D experience into homes.

“There were these big arcade machines, but (I thought) it’d also be fun if people could play at home,” he says. “They could practice at home and then go out and fight in the arcades.”

He looked for a gamemaker to help support the idea, but was initially rebuffed.

“Namco also said it was impossible, but at the same time said, ‘Let us see it,'” Kutaragi says. “They were really surprised. They said, ‘Is Sony really doing this?’ They stopped internal development and said, ‘We think this is amazing. We’ll make amazing games for it.’ That led to one of the PlayStation’s launch titles. The first one was ‘Ridge Racer.’ They later created ‘Tekken.'”

The PlayStation, after first duking it out with the Sega Saturn in Japan, would later become a smash hit worldwide. A 2017 report from gaming site “Gamespot” lists the system as the fourth bestselling console of all-time — the PlayStation 2 topped the list.

In 2004, Time magazine named Kutaragi in its list of the 100 most influential people in the world for his work on the first two PlayStations.

“If video games are the storytelling medium of the coming century, Kutaragi is their Gutenberg,” the magazine said, referring to the creator of the printing press.

“It was the shiny new thing, for sure,” Mielke says. “There was no denying the PlayStation could do actual 3D polygons, not like fake, funky polygons. It could do all these new things we’d never seen before.”

Mielke believes timing, coming along when 2D gaming had just about run its course, was also crucial.

“I remember one of our writers at GMR and 1up.com, back in the day we did an article about Japanese games that hadn’t been brought over to the United States,” he says. “He made an observation in the article that said, ‘This came at a time where publishers were more interested in poor-looking polygons than beautiful-looking sprites.’”