Yes, this is a real thing!
For those PlayStation gamers that don’t remember (or, perhaps, hadn’t yet appeared on this Earth), PlayStation Underground was a video magazine and series of demo discs which Sony Computer Entertainment America produced in the late ’90s. Now, we’re bringing PlayStation Underground back in the form of an online show about video games. We play for a bit, talk it out, and sit on a pretty sweet couch. Simple!
To celebrate the return of Underground, our friends at Harmonix brought an early build of the upcoming music rhythm reboot Amplitude for us to play. Spoiler: we got destroyed by Expert mode, but that’s okay because we tried our best.
We’re aiming to roll out new Underground episodes every other week, with a vision of a weekly broadcast in the near future. If you tune into Underground in the coming months, expect to see upcoming game previews, and hear insider details from the best and brightest in the gaming community.
Underground is just getting started, so you can expect a few things to change over the coming months as we fall into a rhythm of our own and tidy up the place. But for now, please sit back, fetch a refreshing beverage, and enjoy.
We have a lot more to show you.
Playstation Underground is back! .. It’s… Pretty much Qore with a new name.
Wow this was awesome. Cant wait for the next episode :) also Beyond! to Ryan. Fantastic episode of the blogcast last week guys, best part of my Fridays.
I know I’m not the only one who still has their Gamer Advisory Panel certificate still and that CD case. I remember the PSU, demos back in the day of PS1 were a hell of a lot different to come by than now and there was no better place to check out the new stuff than the PSU discs. Who else remembers playing Overkill and Re-Loaded, classic PSX games, those would be great to play again.
The deaths of Nintendo Power magazine and PlayStation Underground discs were the two low-lights of videogame journalism. I’m old enough to be there for the births and deaths of both.
It’s selfish I know but I would love if Sony would send out physical discs again. But we live in the digital age. Perhaps some kind of membership or something, to make it inclusive. I guess PS+ sort of fills in a gap of sorts for a kind of “club membership” that the old PS Underground and Nintendo Power used to bring us.
Oh man! Throwback time!
This brings back memories of those old flash videos and interviews.
I still remember the “why are PSone discs black?” video, and the registration cards, and the Gamer Advisory Panel.
I hope you guys bring back the big “U” logo.
Great! I’ll watch.
Now, bring back the GAP and let us back in, please!
So Stoked!! When I read the title of this all of the nostalgia came flooding back. I loved those discs and I still have most of them. Sweet!
Oh I forgot…BEYOND!
OMG, this brings back memories. Are there going to be easter eggs, that is what i remember the most about it and those exclusives bonuses. Looking forward to whatever you guys decide to bring us.
A blast from the past. … I’m all giddy hehe
Still havent paid that subscription to this day.
I think I still have a few of those disc stashed away incase I needed a coffee coaster..
:P
Was anyone a member of the Playstation Underground? You had to be invited to join. I remember getting a free day planner sent to me out of nowhere for being a member. That kind of dates me… a Dayrunner…remember those things?
With the new revision of having shows on the Playstation Network I think this should go on there. Has that not been a thought?
Awesome ! After reading this story I found my old disc of Playstation Underground Vol. 2 Issue 4. I love that Playstation continues to do things like this to embrace and celebrate it’s past. Now you just have to bring back some of the classic game series like Legacy of Kain, Dino Crisis, Spyro (not Skylanders), Parasite Eve and Jak & Daxter.
I remeber PSU very well. I used to buy the magazine ever so often right before I bought my PS2 back in the summer of 2002, receiving the second to last PSX demo disc, and then later on getting the 5th and 6th PS2 demo disc afterwards. I was also part of the subscription from December of 2002 to November of 2004, but had my membership provoked by my mother, because I started to get really rotten and mentally abusive by my early adolescences years. I kind of glad she did so though, because my last issue was supposed to be the infamous December of 2004 demo disc where booting up the preview build of Viewtiful Joe 2 would of reformatted two years of progress from my only memory card at the time. You guys should be grateful of your parents, relatives or legal guardians so you would not ended up where I am today, and yes I was affected by the Memory Card shortage back in 2002 so I went without one for nearly a half a year.
I used to love getting those PSU discs in the mail. I distinctly remember one that included a tour of the show floor at E3 one year.
Love love love this idea and I really hope the community and PlayStation MVP’s can all help to spread the word about this because it could be a very cool project that could be pretty big. I am very excited for this.
I still have my PlayStation Underground Jampack Summer 2003 demo disc that has a demo of the original Amplitude on it!
I was a member of the original PSU. Really miss getting those awesome double-disc pamphlets in the mail every other month. They had all sorts of content: exclusive videos of secrets in various games, the codebook section, the game save section, the exclusive developer interviews, the game trailers, the Threadz section, the “Cool Moves”, and of course all the awesome demos.
I guess such a delivery method would be obsolete today with the faster internet everyone has, but there was something special about getting physical content delivered to you like that.
That’s my childhood memories right there! I’m really happy to see PlayStation Underground return.