Polygon Racer

I think the PlayStation One is a deeply unappealing piece of technology. It’s an extruded plastic brick tinted the shade of grey I associate with aging egg salad sandwiches left to moulder at the back of a fridge. But the PSOne is where my gaming history starts, which means it is my extruded plastic egg salad sandwich console.

I came to the PSOne, as with every 90s consumer innovation, late. Everything was expensive in a single parent household. You want moon shoes, new gel pens, or video games? Better pack in some extra babysitting gigs. I don’t remember the exact finacing mechanism my brothers and I used, but by some combination of birthday funds and small town side hustles we collected enough cash to buy a PlayStation One (with five bucks to spare!) in 2001. It was a year after Sony released the cheaper and smaller version of the original PlayStation, but we didn’t care. We had a PlayStation! Luxury was ours!

Mention PlayStation and the games that come to mind are icons like Crash Bandicoot, Tomb Raider, and Final Fantasy VII. I played none of those games. I was fishing in the bargain bin with our five spare dollars and managed to dredge up a heavily discounted copy of ATV: Quad Power Racing.

My first memory of playing a video game is trying to pilot a stack of polygons around a blocky course engineered to induce motion sickness. I had sweated to buy this video game and soon I was going to puke for it, too. When my nausea threatened a critical breach, I would tag out with my little brothers and sip Canada Dry on the sidelines. We took turns trying to master the physics of our first drifts and drafts, screaming with frustration at the clunky mechanics and dopey computer opponents.

At the time I thought it was my own lack of experience and poor hand-eye coordination that made playing so hard, but reviewers at the time noted the same problems I had. A steep learning curve, erratic opponents, and a limited choice of track environments amounted to a stunted playing experience. ATV: Quad Power Racing is a terrible game, but I played it until I bent the mechanics to my will. Thanks to that game I developed an unholy sense of concentration I would later apply to marathon lap challenges in Need for Speed: Underground and epic trick combinations in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. It taught me how to tamp down on my motion sickness long enough to finish a race, a priceless skill when I finally got around to playing Portal. I consider this a reasonable return on my $5 investment.

I never did puke while playing a PlayStation, but the sight of that grey plastic block still summons the smell of rubber and rotten eggs.