This morning, PS5 owners booted up their consoles and (assuming they had auto-updates turned on) were greeted with a surprise: The original and iconic PlayStation 1 console boot-up logos and music. It’s all part of Sony’s ongoing 30 years of PlayStation celebration. And there’s more beyond the PS1 intro, though sadly, everything is only temporary.
On December 2, Sony pushed out a 30th anniversary update for all PS5 consoles. This update added five new themes for the PlayStation 5 dashboard, four of which are based on past consoles and one based on the PlayStation brand itself.
The themes are really cool. I picked the PS2 theme, and not only did it add all the abstract blue and green objects from the PS2 boot menu to my PS5’s dashboard, it also changed all the colors in all the menus and added PS2 menu noises to everything. I didn’t realize until swapping between the different themes how burnt into my brain some of these old PlayStation noises are and how much nostalgia I had for them all these years (decades?!) later.
However, the big star of this update, in my opinion, and why you should boot up your PS5 as soon as possible is the newly added OG PlayStation 1 boot-up video and sounds. When I restarted my PS5 console after confirming the update and installing it, I was greeted with the techno-operatic and very loud chime of the classic PlayStation boot-up logos, complete with the echo fade out of metal clinking.
Here’s what the logo looks and sounds like via a phone recording from me:
I half expected Twisted Metal or Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater to start playing after all the noises had subsided. Later, when I turned off the console to write this post, the PS5 had even updated that screen to add a little message thanking me for playing over the last 30 years.
Weirdly, while this stuff is rad and awesome, Sony says that it’s just temporary and eventually it will go away. I’m not sure why Sony would remove this stuff from PS5 as it’s a nice way to acknowledge the past and let people enjoy their expensive consoles a bit more. But what do I know? Anyway, if you want to get on this PlayStation nostalgia, don’t wait too long to boot up your PS5.
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