About Us

The PlayStation Museum is the culmination of years of research and dedication to the Sony PlayStation. It is intended to provide images and information on all areas of the Sony PlayStation.
 

Mission

The mission of the PlayStation Museum is to enrich people's lives by enhancing their appreciation and understanding of the history, design, development, and technology of the original PlayStation.  The Museum provides screenshots, movies, and other media for the education and enjoyment of the public and the development community. In support of this, we are committed to:

Recognition of the Development Community

The Museum is dedicated to the recognition and appreciation of the PlayStation development community for their outstanding achievement and perseverance in creating everlasting gaming experiences that have been enjoyed by gamers around the world.  The Museum acknowledges the hard work and sacrifice that goes into designing and developing a PlayStation game even if the title is never released.  

Research

The Museum provides screenshots and movies for the education and enjoyment of the development community and the public. Each year the museum provides experiences to thousands of website visitors.  Through research via the development community, many of these experiences would never be understood by the average gamer.

Collecting and Preserving

The PlayStation Museum collects and preserves artifacts and records that illuminate the history of the original PlayStation. The Museum owns and cares for thousands of software, hardware, books, documents, and other materials. These enable and support our educational activities and serve developers, gamers, collectors, and others who study the PlayStation.

A Bit of Background

What is the PlayStation Museum?

The PlayStation Museum is an online virtual museum.  It is intended to show hardware, games and videos and to inform the general gaming community of artifacts that are deemed important to the history of the PlayStation.

The PlayStation Museum website’s thorough cataloguing of NTSC games was used as the basis for the game material found in the book titled “PSX: The Guide to the Sony PlayStation”  A free downloadable version can be found here.

How the PlayStation Museum got Started

The PlayStation Museum was originally intended to pictorially showcase all PlayStation software and hardware in a simple navigation-friendly website.  In 2004 I initiated contact with a former PlayStation games programmer who recently lost his job.  He told his story of the long hours that he invested in programming and the many projects that were ultimately cancelled.  He had been employed at two different development studios both of which were purportedly mismanaged and went out of business.  His story of family stress due to extended work hours, little pay, and no recognition had an adverse affect on me.  From that point forward I invested time to get to know more people intimately involved with the PlayStation.  I started to document patterns of long hours and no recognition.  I decided to officially create a PlayStation Museum with the main mission to not only showcase PlayStation software and hardware but to tell the story of the people behind the game.  The Museum is more about giving proper recognition to those hardworking artists, designers, producers, and programmers who created such wonderful works of art.  With the support of the gaming community, the Museum has been able to preserve and showcase cancelled projects.

Industry Endorsements

"Things move so fast in the game industry that developers are always in danger of forgetting their roots. Thanks to the PlayStation Museum and other indie efforts to preserve our history, new generations of developers can learn from the experience of the ones who came before... and old gamers can enjoy reminiscing, too. Good work, guys."
- Ernest Adams, founder of the International Game Developers' Association