I am totally stealing someone elses blog and bringing it here. Godmodeenabled from GS made a PS1 blog. I will post it below with my response to follow. Just comment with your own memories.
This is GME:
My very first experience with the Playstation was renting it (remember doing that) from the video store (and these?) with my brother. We also rented Ridge Racer and I think The Bouncer. We were both pretty impressed with the game (Ridge Racer not so much Bouncer) and the system overall.
A few months later one of my best friends was first to get the system, it wouldn't be until a year or so later that I got mine and man did we play a lot Of Kings Field. Kings Field was a first person rpg made by From Software that would spank Demons Souls upside down and sideways and then teabag it. I still remember getting murdered by living trees and to this day I keep my distance from all trees. Coniferous? Mo like conspicuous.
Here are some of the games I remember the most from the PS1 era:
Resident Evil
Remember the PS1 longboxes and the badass artwork this game had? Chris Redfield on the front cover has like the angry rrrr Doom guy face and it looks nothing like him, but it's still awesome. Ahhh man Resident Evil, god this game was so good back in it's day!! I remember the classic running down the long hallway... "there sure are a lot of windows here" *CRASH* *eaten by a dog*
YOU ARE DEAD.
lol WTF just happened? My controller is on the other side of the room and I may have peed myself a little. Ooooh dirty Capcom. I remember just being terrible at the game for several tries at it, running out of ammo, getting stuck forever on a puzzle. So many great memories of this game. The sequel of course was even better, and a game that was played in our circle for years. I still remember running to the police station without killing a single zombie in order for the special helicopter zombie guy to appear (and he had a key or something) Tomb Raider 3
Tomb Raider 3 was one of the first games I ever owned for the system (renting and borrowing from friends was big), and man do I fvcking hate that game. This was the first Tomb Raider game I ever played, it was a popular series and I got it as a gift from my dear old mom for a birthday a think. You pop the game in and the first damn level literally has you sliding down a hill, you have three seconds to press jump or you fall into a spike pit and die. lol. WTF. I just pressed start and now i'm dead. This sets the precedent for the rest of the game too. Prepare to leap blindly off cliffs to your imminent demise as the camera dances around wildly like a drunk zebra on fire.
Final Fantasy 7
I remember my friends older cousin being the first to have it and WHOLLY SH1T 3 DISCS THIS GAME IS AWESOME. We sat floored by the cinematics, excited by the gameplay and generally enthralled. We took turns playing the game into the late hours of the night gettiing out of Midgar on our first go. I still remember the laughs we had during the crossdressing part with cloud. FF7 isn'y my favorite RPG (or even my favorite FF hello 3) but it was a magical game for its time. It is up there with some of my favorite jrpgs.
Metal Gear Solid
I first got my hands on this game from a demo disk that came in an official playstation magazine. The demo only let you play up to the point to where you get into the facility but man I must have played it hundreds of times. I was all over this game the first chance I got to have it and it is still a masterpiece and one of my favorite games. This may come as a surprise to some as I hate the modern Metal Gear Franchise a lot, but the early ones were perfection. This game... DIS GAYME.
It had this engaging storyline, that at times a little crazy played out like a great action movie. You had so much innovation and love in this game. The boss battles are still talked about today. Everyone remembers their first time against Mantis and what no internet? Man you were stuck on him for a while! I remember sneaking up to guards and planting c4 on their backs and then randomly blowing them up... ahhh this game.
Driver
I played this one before Grand Theft Auto i'm pretty sure. And man does this game really feel like realistic driving. The car chases in this were NUTS. This game was soo much fun. This was one of my favorite games for the system I played through it so many times. Sometimes when you got going at really high speeds the physics would go crazy and you had this "record" option to record part of your runs or whatever for fun. I remember the last level is driving the president to a safe spot in his big ass clumsy limo and secret service coming at you at 400 miles an hour, sometimes the physics would go nuts and they would hit you juuuust right while you were full speed going down a hill and you would catapault spiraling into the stratosphere and reappear like two dozen blocks away upside down. MISSION FAILED.
Breath Of Fire 3
Fishing! This game had the best fishing minigame ever! I literally put 50 hours of my life into just fishing with this game. It was awesome. They sold for lots of money and healed you if you ate them so it gave me quite an edge to have so many tunas. Another fun thing about this game is that at the very end you are wandering around the same three areas over and over stuck inside your characters mind and there was only one solution to progress to the end of the game. Are you ready for this? You had to set the controller down for five minutes and not touch any buttons or literally do anything, and an event would occur that took you to the end. It took me and my friend over a year to beat this game, remember pre internet and we knew noone else who played it. I gave up completely, but he would try playing it a couple hours a week to try and figure out what to do. One day he says "fvck this game imma take a dump" and throws the controller in the corner and leaves the system on. After the time elapsed the character started talking and was teleported so I was like "umm your game just played itself and you are in a new area wtf" Cue my friend running out of the bathroom pants down tripping over himself to see. Almost a year of playing the same three screens and all you had to do was nothing for 5 minutes..
They don't make games like this anymore! 
I'll end this here cause I don't want this to get too long but there are so many games I missed its ridiculous. I could talk about how fun playing horse in Tony Hawk was, Triple Triad card game in Final Fantasy 8 that I got every card for and spend 100 hours on, Suikoden 2 and it's great story, Burning sheeps bums in Spyro The Dragon, impaling fools in Legacy Of Kain: Soulreaver, that godamn saggitarius puzzle in Silent Hill that I was stuck on for months and soo much more.
The PS1 is probably the most legendary console of all time, I would argue only the SNES has the balls to stand next to it. So how about it, were you a PS1 fan? What are some of your great memories surrounding the system? Will there ever be a system this good again?
My response to that:
This sounds so much like me, except for time traveling and playing Bouncer on PS1.
I was a Sega fanboy at the time so I had zero interest on the PS1, I was getting a Saturn. Luckily for me my brother wasn't an idiot and wanted the PS1. So before christmas he rented the PS1 and we rented Ridge Racer and some WWF game. So just like you GME RR was my first real PS experience (Galaga during loading!!!). Oh during this time MK3 was coming to PS1 but not Saturn, I was devistated but so I was pretty excited for my brother getting it cause of that.
So Christmas comes and I get my Saturn with Panzer Dragoon and Sim City 2000 and my brother gets the PS1 with NFL Gameday and some demo disc with Destruction Derby, Battle Arena Toshinden, Jumping Flash, amoung other. I loved Panzer but I found myself playing that PS1 demo disc a lot. My brother gets a few more games like this game called Chronicles of the Sword which was a point and click adventure in King Arthur times, cool game.
One day we are in a store with some game magazines and we see this preview for a horror game called Resident Evil. My brother is a huge horror movie fan so this catches his attention. I just thought a zombie game sounds cool plus it looked like the most impressive game graphically. So March comes around and RE is coming out, my brother gets it and a game called D on the same night. We decided to wait till midnigh to play RE so we played and finished D before. I had my friend over for a sleep over so we could all try out RE. Finally it was time for RE and my brother went first. I sat there in awe as this incredible FMV intro started. Then the game began and it was just like being in a movie, THERE WAS LITERALLY NOTHING LIKE IT (Alone in the Dark is nothing like it in terms of cinematic quality). Resident Evil changed my view of what games could be, no longer just fun toys, these can be full movie like interactive experiences and at that point seeing that would be the future I knew I was not going to stop gaming.
So my brother takes control of Chris and the tank controls were so hard, I remember him running into the dinning room table. We get to the first zombie and my brother had no clue what to do. We were all screaming as the first zombie slowly came at Chris, my brother fumbling with the controls, and he died. So I was next, I chose Jill (and my love for Barry began right there) because I read she started with a gun. So I got to the first zombie and shot it. Woo. So i went on and got to explore this full 3D mansion, my mind being blown the whole way. I ended up in a corridor with windows which I have seen before in a magazine, I knew the dogs where coming. Still when they broke through I threw the controller in the air, by the time I picked it up I was dead. We played all night, still the best gaming memory ever.
I was cured, RE single handedly removed my Sega bias, I wanted my own PS1. For the time being I practically lived in my brothers room playing RE non stop. I had no memory card at the time, I beat RE without ever saving the game. So beating it under 3 hours with no saves was super easy for me, I loved that rocket launcher. I eventually did get my own PS1, Legacy of Kain was my first game for it, so damn good.
97 was the year of FFVII, my first ever RPG. I instantly fell in love, the game was such a masterpiece. That year I also got the demo disc of Metal Gear Solid which I was following very closely. That demo was the single most impressive piece of gaming I had played to that point, I played it over a hundred times too. I had gotten RE Directors Cut for the RE2 demo, played that a ton of times as well.
RE2 kicked off 98 and it became my favorite game cause it was simply better than RE1 in ever way. But this year was all about MGS (and Zelda but I had no N64) and when I finally played that game it was like this vision of gaming perfection. It easily became my favorite game ever. I cannot tell you how many times I played the game over and over, reliving this incredible experience, a game that basically create the template for the cinematic quality all big blockbuster games today. Oh and lets not forget Gran Turismo, the most incredible racing game ever at the time, I could not believe the graphics.
Other PS1 mentions, Tekken 2 and especially the incredible masterpiece Tekken 3. Tekken 3 was so packed with content, still to this day one of the greatest fighting games. The Crash Bandicoot games giving PS that platforming mascot. Spyro for being the that 2nd best platfomer on the console. FFVIII for being just as good if not better than FFVII. Tomb Raider 2 for being so much better than the original and still being the best TR game. Xcom cause I didnt play games on PC but I still got to experience that masterpiece. For this fun little game called Grand Theft Auto that at the time I thought would clearly remain a cult classic few people heard of.
Silent Hill for scaring the bejesus out of me in a way RE never could. Soul Reaver for being my Zelda substitute at the time and for having one of the most amazing 3D worlds in gaming. And there was so much more, it was the infancy of 3D gaming, every game felt like a brand new experience. So many devs trying out new mechanics, new presentations, it was like a whole new frontier in gaming and we were trailblazing the way.
Sigh... remembering those days when every game was something new, when I had no clue what to expect from any one game, makes it hard to get back to what I am playing now. I doesnt matter what unplayed game I pick from my collection, I know exactly how it will control and playout. I know every trick it will use, I know how it will be paced. Games now seem to be made from templates, its all the same. Almost nothing surprises me anymore.
Lets also do best music from the PS1.
(my personal pick for best track for PS1)
I was a Nintendo fan back then and was late to the Playstation party.
Got drunk one day, went out and bought a used PS1, Parrappa the Rapper, Sammy Sosa Softball Slam and Bust a Groove (oh and Hot Shots Golf 2).
And then somewhere in between then and now I bought 192 Playstation games.
Favorite memory with the system was probably Gran Turismo 2. While in the generation I think I ended up playing most games on the N64. Mrs. Aspro used the PS1 non-stop for RPGs.
I didn't have a PS(X). Played a lot of Tekken 2, Tekken 3 and Wipeout at a friend's. Have since gathered a small collection of games for the system which I played on the PS2 mostly: Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, Legacy of Kain, Soul Reaver, Vib Ribbon, Kurushi, Vagrant Story ...
Nobi Nobi Boy would cure what ails you.
Or Deadly Premonition. Or Endless Ocean
Or any of the cult classics everyone is always trying to get you to play.
I'm half kidding, because I don't like people bullying others, but maybe it wouldn;t hurt you to try something off menu every now and then.
Going into this year I did not give two fucks about Saint's Row, Mass Effect, LA Noire, Skyrim, Bulletstorm or Red Dead Redemption. In fact for each of those titles I had some small contempt for some reason or another. And I completely loved each and every one of them, in fact if gaming stopped today I'd have no problem going and replaying them.
So you know, if you are bored with what you've been playing, try a new direction.
Not going to help Aspro; he wants blockbusters that are doing something different, not random niche games.
P.S.
Some people need to have their balls busted.
Vader is one of them.
For the record, the Bounce was a PS2 game, so someone's memories are a bit hazy unless he's referring to Tobol #2, an early Square fighting game. But enough of me being a dick to someone who isn't even here....
I loved my PS1. It was the one and only console that was directly responsible for someone dumping me. Shortly after I got the system my then girlfriend felt neglected, and rightfully so. Serves the bitch right though.
For me the PS1 was all about RPGs. Square blew up that generation from being the niche RPG company to being one of the most dominant 3rd parties in the world and the PS1 was very much their golden age. FFVII, Legend of Mana, SaGa Frontier, Bushido Blade, Brave Fencer Musashi, and Chrono Cross were all games that were more often than not firmly sitting in my console. Plus this was the era that I learned about console dungeon crawlers - Azure Dreams and Torneko: The Last Hope were very much like crack for me at the time. And round that out with a few fighting games like SFAII and Ultimate MK3 and you've got a damn good idea of what I was playing at the time.