For almost two weeks, I’ve been living life like it was 1994 thanks to Sony’s PlayStation Classic(opens in a new tab).

The $99.99 system, like Nintendo’s NES(opens in a new tab) and SNES Classic(opens in a new tab) before it, is yet another miniaturized game console pre-loaded with games from a bygone era.

Sony’s tiny console is a fraction of the size of the original (and unfortunately doesn’t play original PS1 CDs) and comes with two faithfully reproduced controllers.

It’s one of the nicest throwback tech products in years and made me nostalgic of the early days of games with 3D graphics, while simultaneously making me realize I'm now old. I was six when the PlayStation launched in Japan in 1994 and eight when my childhood best friend got one for Christmas two years later and we got to eventually play classics like Rayman, Crash Bandicoot, and Final Fantasy VII in his attic.

The PlayStation goes down in history for popularizing 3D gaming and lighting the path toward more mature titles with the likes of Grand Theft Auto and Resident Evil. Still, all of us spoiled by today’s lush and photorealistic graphics often forget just how ugly most games on the console were.

Unlike the timeless, colorful 2D sprites of Super Mario Bros. or The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past that still look as beautiful today as they did 35 and 27 years ago, respectively, many of the once cutting-edge 3D graphics from the 20 included games on the PlayStation Classic simply don’t hold up in 2018.

The PlayStation Classic’s also missing many of the original console’s greatest hits. Don’t get me wrong, Final Fantasy VII — a game that took up three discs and defined bleeding-edge 3D graphics when it came out in 1997 — rekindled fond memories of Japan’s then-rise as a technology powerhouse and is worth the price alone.

But many people might look at the list of games and be disappointed by the omission of console classics such as Gran Turismo, Spyro the Dragon, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2.

If you're just getting here, retro games have had quite the revival over the past couple of years, so you can't really blame Sony for jumping on the bandwagon. Consumers (myself included(opens in a new tab)) have jumped through ridiculous hoops to secure an NES Classic and SNES Classic when those throwback consoles were released.

It's not like Nintendo has been the only one, and retro tech hasn't been confined to classic game consoles. HMD-owned Nokia drummed up quite the buzz with a revamped version of the iconic 3310(opens in a new tab) "dumb" phone, complete with Snake(opens in a new tab) and then again with the 8810 “banana phone.” TCL’s been busy trying breathe new life(opens in a new tab) into BlackBerry(opens in a new tab) phones, and even the Palm brand is back from the grave with a tiny Zoolander-worthy phone(opens in a new tab).

Wait, there's more. Vinyl saw a 19.2 percent jump with sales hitting 7.6 million records sold in the U.S. in the first half of 2018, according(opens in a new tab) to Nielsen Music.

Similarly, Nielsen’s data also reported cassette tape sales grew by 35 percent in the U.S. and a staggering 112 percent in the UK in 2017. This unexpected growth is no doubt one reason Crosley’s selling boombox-style cassette players(opens in a new tab) (albeit outfitted with a few modern features).

With the nostalgic tech trend already underway for years and the PlayStation brand the strongest asset in Sony's portfolio, the PlayStation Classic was perhaps inevitable.

Dec. 3 marks the 24th anniversary of the original Sony PlayStation and the official launch of the new PlayStation Classic. It’s just one year shy of the PlayStation’s 25-year milestone, but it’s close enough. Besides, if we’re being technical, the PlayStation launched on Dec. 3, 1994 in Japan, even though it didn't arrive in the U.S. until September 1995.

Back then, video game console releases came with epic stories of corporate backstabbings. While the PlayStation wasn’t the first home console capable of 3D graphics — Nintendo’s SNES sorta did 3D with the Super FX chip(opens in a new tab) built into some game cartridges like Star Fox and the Sega Saturn also supported 3D graphics — it was the first to be architected with polygonal graphics at its core.

I could sit here all day and unpack the story of how Nintendo had originally partnered(opens in a new tab) up with Sony to release the PlayStation as a disc-based add-on for the SNES before the deal fell apart and Sony, betrayed, decided to release its own console and send Nintendo into the dark ages for two hardware generations. But there are plenty of gaming publications and YouTube videos that have covered(opens in a new tab) that fascinating piece of videogame history in great detail.

What made the original PlayStation so monumental was how forward-thinking it was. While stubborn Nintendo couldn’t see beyond cartridges for both the SNES and its next-gen console (which would become the Nintendo 64), Sony, bolstered by its booming consumer electronics business, did.

The PlayStation took all of the shortcomings of the consoles at the time and dunked on them. Sony went with CDs instead of cartridges because they were both cheaper to produce and provided more storage for developers to create larger, more robust titles.

CDs also allowed Sony to position the PlayStation as a 3D-first console. Despite 2D games hitting their prime with titles like Super Mario World and Mortal Kombat 3, advancing computer graphics from games such as Doom gave everyone a glimpse of more realistic gameplay.

The craving for realism gave Sony the opening it needed to create a platform for more mature, and at times violent, video games.

Without the original PlayStation, who knows what turn video game consoles and graphics would have taken. The Nintendo 64 probably might have had the third-party developer support it needed to continue dominating the home console race. Maybe the Sega Dreamcast would have had a longer and more impactful lifespan. And maybe Microsoft might’ve never felt it needed the Xbox.

I’m sure the increasing CGI advancements in Hollywood would have still inevitably filled game developers looking to up the level of realism in their games, but modern gaming might have been so very different had Sony never released the PlayStation.

The PlayStation Classic is a faithful plastic miniaturization of the original console. The little guy is 45 percent smaller than the original with nearly every little detail — from the gray color to the heatsink-styled sides to the LED light to the proportions of the buttons and their springiness when pressed — accurately reproduced.

Obviously, the top doesn’t pop up and take CDs (though how cool would it have been if it played mini CDs?), and the two memory card slots above the controllers aren’t real.

The two included controllers (non analog stick ones) connect via USB and plug firmly into the front. There’s almost no chance they’ll accidentally come undone if things get heated in a PvP match of Tekken 3 or Twisted Metal. It’s also really generous of Sony to make the controller cables 4.9 feet long. The super-short controller cables were a big complaint about the NES Classic, though Nintendo remedied the cable-length issue when it came time for the SNES Classic.

Some people have said the new controllers feel lighter and smaller than the original, but I dug up an original controller and compared the two. The original controller has a much thicker cable and the plastic case is shinier (probably from years of use), but besides these small differences, they feel the same to me.

If Sony could rewind time before production of the PlayStation Classic, I'd ask them to make one change: include the Dual Shock version of the controller, which comes with two analog sticks so you can better control 3D games and experience built-in rumble feedback.

On the rear of the Classic you’ll find an HDMI port for connecting it to an HDTV or HDMI-equipped monitor. A 6.5-foot-long HDMI cable is included and there’s also a micro USB-to-USB-A cable for connecting to power. Unfortunately, just like Nintendo’s mini consoles, there’s no USB power adapter in the box.

Fine, you probably already have a spare 5-volt power adapter from an old phone or tablet that’ll work with the PlayStation Classic, but can you imagine if a PlayStation 4 or Xbox One didn’t come with a power adapter and you had to buy one separately in order to turn the dang thing on? Yes, I’m aware those systems are way more powerful, and Nintendo doesn’t include an AC adapter with the New 3DS and 3DS XL because they’re betting you already have one, but still — shame on them for being so cheap.

I would guess Sony’s justification is that the lack of a power plug is one less cost passed onto buyers (who likely already have an adapter), or you might just plug the PlayStation Classic into a TV’s USB port for power. That may be true, but it doesn’t make it right.

On the top of the Classic are three functional buttons. Power is self-explanatory and turns the console on and off. Reset quits the game you’re playing, saves exactly a “resume point” from where you left off, and returns you to the game's carousel home screen. And the Open button changes the virtual discs for games that required more than one CD.

Sony even made a seemingly openable flap for the serial port that was used for debugging and appeared on the original consoles. But alas, the flap doesn’t actually open.

Unlike today where many console games are created using similar engines (the most popular one being Epic’s Unreal Engine) so there’s more consistency in the quality of graphics and physics, games from the PlayStation era pretty much all ran on their own proprietary game engines, and as a result spanned a wide spectrum in graphics and gameplay.

On the PlayStation Classic, all 20 of the included games are accessed from the home screen’s carousel. Each game comes with its own virtual memory card for storing game saves and has a shortcut to dive back into the last automatic resume point after you hit the Reset button.

And that’s kind of it. Besides two basic options for a screensaver (dims the screen after five minutes) and power saving mode (turns console off after 60 minutes of inactivity), there’s nothing in the way of display settings like you get on the NES and SNES Classic consoles.

Games load up in 4:3 aspect ratio with letterboxing (black bars on the top and bottom) and pillarboxing (black bars on the left and right). Unlike the Nintendo’s mini consoles, Sony has no settings such as a CRT filter that adds faux scanlines to make games looks a little better on an HDTV or monitor. And whereas the SNES Classic has settings to display colored backgrounds instead of black bars, there’s no equivalent on the PlayStation Classic. Nor is there a way to stretch the 4:3 aspect ratio to properly fill out a 16:9 display.

The software booting up the PlayStation games is also nothing special. In fact, if you go into the Legal Notice section within the settings menu, you’ll discover the the PlayStation Classic uses the PCSX ReARMed(opens in a new tab) open-source PlayStation emulator made to run on devices powered by an ARM chip (mobile chips found in everything from smartphones to tablets to low-end laptops).

Whether this means the PlayStation Classic can be hacked to load legal ROMs of games you own (Mashable doesn’t condone piracy) is unclear, but it leaves the door open than if Sony developed their own emulator and locked it down.

Technical capabilities aside, all 20 of the games ran perfectly fine for me. The emulator loaded every single game without fail and I didn’t see even one crash in any game no matter if I was playing the first minute or the first hour. The PlayStation Classic’s game emulation works flawlessly.

How the individual games themselves hold up after so many years is a different story. Naturally, what I like and what you like won’t be the same, and games I think look great or terrible may not to you.

The titles are far from the perfect list of PlayStation legends — it pains me these fan favorites like Crash Bandicoot, Gran Turismo, Spyro the Dragon, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and Wipeout XL didn’t make the cut — but at the same time I get that whittling down an enormous library of nearly 8,000 published games throughout the PlayStation’s lifetime down to 20 that would’ve pleased everyone is basically impossible.

These are my reviews of the 20 games first released some 20-something years ago that Sony curated for the PlayStation Classic. So take it easy and try not to bite my head off if you disagree. Ratings are based out of five 🕹️.

Dated as many PlayStation graphics look, if you grew up with the console — maybe it was your first one or perhaps it helped forge friendships — Sony’s PlayStation Classic has its charms.

The game lineup could’ve been better curated, but with the way all of the video game licenses have traded hands over the years, securing many of the original console’s beloved titles either wasn’t possible or would have required Sony to write big checks to third-party game publishers.

That Sony couldn’t be bothered to develop its own emulator sorta tells you all you need to know about how much the company was willing to sink into this throwback, I think.

Still, if you add up the value of all of these games purchased separately as digital downloads on Sony’s PlayStation Network (PSN), thirteen of the titles total up to $90, with the remaining seven not available for purchase. Assuming the average $5.99 price of many of the digital downloads (some of the titles are $9.99), the PlayStation Classic still gives you well over $100 worth of games.

Funnily enough, many of the titles I wished came with the PlayStation Classic are available on PSN. If the list of games for the PlayStation Classic don’t impress you, buying the ones you want à la carte via PSN (provided you have a PS3, PS4, or PS4) will save you some cash.

If you look at the PlayStation Classic as just a tiny plastic box running games using an emulator, the console’s entire reason to exist seems kind of like a quick cash grab since the games don’t really offer anything the PSN versions or an emulator on your PC running legally ripped versions of games you already own don’t.

But if you approach the PlayStation Classic as a retro toy — as a nice look at the early days of 3D graphics — and a game console that asks for your full attention for the sole sake of enjoying an expansive adventure, two-player brawl, or silly weapon-tricked-out-vehicle battle without the many trappings (Netflix, music, and messaging, etc.) of a modern internet-connected console, the thing is damn fun to play with, especially with a friend.

The poor graphics and game physics will make you laugh your guts out, but isn’t that what video games are all about? Too many games these days are too serious and complicated. The PlayStation Classic is a refreshing reminder of a simpler time when the only interruption to your gaming time was a bathroom break or snack run.