So I have the other night a conversation on another forum regarding the first playstation release in Europe, namely the SCPH-1002, which as far as I know, was available from early September of 1995 till about mid-spring of 1996. The original package was the following one, an almost completely black box. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNp9KjAloMU If I'm not mistaken, in mid spring of 1996, Sony released the 50XX era of playstation and were in a yellow box, like the one bellow The 50XX series had that sort of package, until the 70XX generation, which had blue boxes like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inYqcn66c7o I bought my 70XX playstation series back in late 97, and was had replaced in most stores the previous playstation versions. Now, that guy claims that he bought a SCPH-1002 back in 1997, almost two years after the original release of the 1002, and sony had already released the more stable and reliable 50XX series. In the back of the box, you can see some late 1997 games, like Porsche challenge which support the timeline of his purchase. https://secure.flickr.com/photos/mortalkombat2/7228009288/in/photostream/lightbox/ So, does anybody knows the story of the late 1002 re-release? I'm really confused why and how sony chose to re-start the production of a problematic model, such as the 1002, or they co-reproduce both 1002 and 3502 back at that time? Anyone could shed some light on this mystery?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_models The SCPH-1002 is actually the same as the SCPH-3000 series. I don't believe a 3502 exists. If it does it's just a bundle variant i think. You'll notice it's hardware rev group B. Another thing to remember is that retail stock may be more fresh one place than another. As well as factory stock. So I don't think it is that strange that some stores would have the older model still in stock, even with newer packaging to show off newer games. I'm sure they weren't producing the old model still, it was left over stock. The 1002 was made as late as the beginning of 1996 for sure. So buying a new one in 1997 isn't that far fetched.
To make things complicated they released hardware rev A as SCPH-1002 as well, I have one that a friend gave me that he had since launch day. It lacks sprite flipping that you get on rev A for example. I don't know how common it is, but I suspect Sony decided to keep the same model number to avoid complaints at retail. The pictures could have been taken before the game was released. The SCPH-5502 rom has a date of 01/06/97, so SCPH-1002 would still be in the supply chain then. Could a console in a box with pictures from unreleased games sit around in the supply chain for many months? Sure, especially as most consoles would be bought in the run up to Christmas. In the mid 90's I bought an A1200 that had been sitting in the back of a shop for two years.
That would had been the case, if it's box didn't featured newer games than late produced 5502. I mean, if you look carefully the games on the back, you'll see that some of those games weren't even announced back in 1996, yet alone partially completed. So my guess would be that those late produced 1002 were either old hardware released in a newer fashion boxes, or sony for some reason decided to repackage a small number of 1002, two years later their production. I remember desperately trying to find a brand new 1002 back then, however the 50XX series had replace them since mid-end 1995, so they were nowhere to be found. The only two late instances of 1002 that I could dig of, were located in Southern Europe, namely Greece and Italy. I hope some Playstation enthusiast maybe knows more on the subject. Thank you for your answers fo far!
What games exactly? I haven't noticed any that it would be impossible for teaser screenshots to be put on the box. The PAL SCPH-1002 had a bios date of nearly the end of 1995. So the consoles were likely manufactured in the first half of 1996, the year many of the games on the box came out I believe. I've heard only US units actually have a manufacture date on them unfortunately. But the BIOS date can help us. What games do you think were too new to be on a box for a 1002?
