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The spinning, crate-smashing marsupial who became the PlayStation's unofficial mascot and Mario's cheeky rival. Naughty Dog's 1996 platformer sent Crash bouncing through jungle levels and dodging boulders — and defined a generation's PS1 afternoons.
The wisecracking, TV-obsessed gecko who cracked one-liners while wall-crawling through the 'Media Dimension.' In the era of mascot wars — Mario, Sonic, Crash — Gex was the snarky one, voiced by an actual stand-up comedian. It's tail time.
The buddy-platformer that paired Ratchet, a wrench-swinging lombax mechanic, with Clank, a small defective robot — and armed them with the most gleefully over-the-top arsenal on the PlayStation 2. Blowing up enemies with a Suck Cannon or a flamethrower was the whole point.
The PlayStation shocker that dropped you inside a zombie-infested mansion with too few bullets and a save ribbon to ration. It didn't just scare a generation — it named the whole survival-horror genre.
A cocky little purple dragon gliding and flame-breathing through bright pastel worlds with his dragonfly sidekick Sparx. Spyro was the PlayStation's other mascot platformer alongside Crash — collect gems, free trapped dragons, charge headfirst into everything.
The 3D adventure that sent archaeologist Lara Croft leaping across ancient ruins, solving puzzles and blasting wildlife. It made Lara one of gaming's first true icons.
Activision and Neversoft's skateboarding game, first released in 1999, about chaining tricks into massive combos and collecting the letters S-K-A-T-E across increasingly iconic venues. The punk, ska, and hip-hop soundtrack defined the era. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (2000) is widely considered the series' peak and one of the best games ever made.
The grey box that took gaming off the cartridge and onto the CD — and took it away from Nintendo and Sega while it was at it. Sony's first console arrived in Japan at the end of 1994 and in America the following September, and it made a generation fluent in memory cards, load screens, and demo discs. It started as a Nintendo project that Nintendo walked away from.
The cheat device of the PlayStation and N64 years: impossibly long hexadecimal codes, thumbed in one character at a time with the d-pad, in exchange for infinite everything. Codes came from magazines, a members-only newsletter, and a 1-900 number that charged you $1.29 a minute.