A massive boulder barrels toward the screen while you sprint directly at the camera, guessing at how much room is left in front of you. That is 1996. That is Crash Bandicoot.
By dropping cartridges in favor of CD-ROMs and leaning hard into showy 3D visuals — showy for the era, anyway — Sony’s PlayStation rewrote what gaming could be. It also gave the world a handful of franchises that simply never went away. Tomb Raider. Resident Evil. Both got their start on that machine.
Many of those classics shipped in 1996, so 2026 is the year they turn 30. A few of them came and went without much notice. Many more became the foundation of the PlayStation's legacy, and they are still going strong decades on.
Crash was plastered on every ad, and that sound is still in your head
When Crash Bandicoot showed up in 1996, he was pitched as PlayStation’s mascot-in-waiting. He wasn’t Sonic and he certainly wasn’t Mario, but he was all over PS1 marketing for the rest of the ’90s.
The PS1 by itself saw a string of sequels before Naughty Dog appeared to lose interest, shifting its attention to Jak and Daxter, Uncharted and The Last of Us. Not a bad swap at all, though Crash’s peak was the ’90s — and it all kicked off here.
Remember climbing onto a hog and blasting through the jungle? Anyone who touched a Crash game in that era can probably still hear the noise those Aku Aku tiki guys make. That sound-bite might be burned into my brain permanently.
This first game isn’t the strongest Crash Bandicoot out there. It’s the one that opened the door for everything after it, and the series is still beloved.
Lara Croft was just as lost underground as the rest of us
Strictly speaking, Tomb Raider hit the SEGA Saturn first, courtesy of Europe, but that’s not how anyone remembers it. It’s a PS1 classic, and it delivered a lead character an entire generation of players fell for.
Think Indiana Jones and James Bond rolled together into one woman. A long line of sequels, along with the Angelina Jolie movies of the 2000s, cemented the series in popular culture.
Who else wandered around underground completely lost on their first playthrough? Who else remembers the T-Rex simply turning up?
Three decades on, the franchise is in fine health: a couple of fresh Tomb Raider games are on the way, and Amazon has a TV show in development.
Raccoon City became a name everybody knew
Resident Evil, from Capcom, hit the PS1 in 1996 and rapidly became the console’s best-selling game of the moment. To this day it ranks among one of the most influential and popular games ever made.
Nor has the franchise it launched eased up. February of this year brought Resident Evil 9, and the series has spread into TV shows, anime and no shortage of films — including a new one from Zach Cregger arriving later in 2026.
Albert Wesker. Umbrella Corporation. Raccoon City. Every bit of it goes back to this single game.
Compared to the best modern Resident Evil entries, the original shows its age. Play it regardless if you have any love for the series — or for horror in general. Thirty years on, it remains one of the greatest games ever released on a PlayStation.