Only a few devices really redefined my life: that stent, a fire truck, the Ford Fairmont, and the PlayStation are a few that come to mind right now. Edge Magazine has a great look at the history of the PlayStation, from its humble beginnings as a SNES with a CD drive to the device that changed the gaming market forever.

And it’s a vision that rose out from the rubble of a very public disaster. At the Consumer Electronics Show in June 1991, Sony revealed to the world a videogame console on which it had jointly worked with Nintendo. This SNES with a built-in CD-ROM drive was a project driven by Ken Kutaragi, a Sony executive who had come out of its hardware engineering division. It was to be Nintendo’s route into a brave new world of multimedia, and a way for Kutaragi to show his company how important the videogame industry could be. But the very day after Sony’s announcement, Nintendo declared that it would be breaking its deal with Sony by partnering with Philips instead.

From the ashes of that partnership came Sony’s effort to rule the gaming world for all time, a noble and, some would say, lofty goal. The result? Sony opened the game platform wars to another player and the world is better for it.