If the internet has taught us anything, it’s that people love looking at boxes and the things that come out of them. Sony’s PlayStation Classic comes in a box, and so it provides the perfect opportunity to take photos of a box being opened. These are those photos, with some notes and thoughts and observations about the box and the process of opening it, and also with a little bit on the thing inside the box too.
And here’s a shocker: that thing inside the box IS ALSO A BOX. I mean, there’s also a videogame thing inside that box, but imagine our excitement when we opened the box only to find a second box. Two unboxings for the price of one? This is digital gold right here.
So this is the box. Technically only the first of two boxes nestled inside of each other, this is still the alpha box, the one you’ll see staring back at you from within the Target display case, and the first thing you’ll glimpse after tearing into that wrapping paper and discovering you got one of these little numbers on whatever upcoming seasonal holiday you happen to celebrate. This is the face of the PlayStation Classic, and don’t you forget it.
And this here is its profile. Or one of them, at least. As you can see, it offers up a nice little photo that gives a sense of how small this device is (barely bigger than a random white guy’s hand), an almost dismissive question about your level of preparedness for the 20 year old games inside, and then an incredibly bold claim about the 20 games that are included and the role they may or may not have played in defining an era. A couple of them might have defined the games world of the late ‘90s about as much as Seinfeld or The Simpsons did the larger pop culture, but most of the games on this list are closer to Suddenly Susan or Caroline in the City. (I’m talking about you, Jumping Flash.)
If you zoom in you can see screenshots of the 20 games included on this thing. There are some true stone-cold classics here—Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid, Rayman—and also, uh, some other games, too. Maybe you’ll dig ‘em?
Here’s another side of the box. We know you’re waiting to see what’s inside the box (and what’s inside that box), but it’s important to give you a full and well-rounded impression of what you can expect from these boxes. This second side panel is part of the box, and so it’s part of this unboxing gallery. I hope you appreciate it.
And inside this box is…
Another box. I’ve already mentioned that like four times, so hopefully you weren’t surprised. The PlayStation Classic is a box inside of a box inside of a box inside of a dream. So much cardboard.
Even when you open that interior box it’s still not really open. Or at least it is but it’s like a multi-layered box—a bunk box, if you will. On the top bunk you’ve got this adorable little bite-sized PlayStation, looking just like the one I had in my entertainment center back in the carefree days of the second Clinton administration.
And in the lower bunk you’ve got the controllers. These are some period-appropriate buddies, too, without the dual joysticks that arrived with the Dual Analog Controller and became firmly established as standard PlayStation gear with 1998’s DualShock controller. Also inside this Russian nesting doll of boxes you can find an HDMI cable and a USB-A power cord, which doesn’t come with an AC adapter, for some reason.
And now here’s what you’ve been waiting for: everything completely and totally outside of the box.
Consider this thing unboxed.
And what the hell, unwrapped, too.
As you can see, two controllers can be plugged in at the same time. No, it won’t accept original PlayStation controllers, but at least these babies have a longer reach than the absurdly short cables on the NES Classic’s controllers.
I don’t have an original PlayStation to compare the Classic’s size to (sorry, the PS2 was fully backwards compatible, so there was no reason to keep that thing around), but I can show you how it stacks up against what are probably the two most important games included on the Classic. These are the original cases for Final Fantasy VII and Metal Gear Solid from the ‘90s, and as you can see, they’re basically bigger than the entire microconsole. (And no, you can’t put an original PlayStation game disc inside the Classic—the thing doesn’t open up and isn’t big enough to hold a CD, anyway.)
Here’s what the front of the PlayStation classic looks like. The controllers plug into those two jacks right there. And no, you can’t plug PlayStation memory cards into those slots. Those aren’t even slots—they’re just designed to look that way. Your games get saved straight to the console.
And here’s the back of the thing, where the HDMI and USB power cables plug in. Exciting.
So that’s the PlayStation Classic, fully unboxed and exactingly photographed for you to pore over. Hopefully this will help tide you over until whenever you happen to get one of these things, assuming you even want one. If you’re still on the fence, Paste will have a review soon.