One of the key games used by Sony to demonstrate the graphical prowess of the PlayStation 3 prior to its North American release, Majesco’s safari simulator Afrika came out three years after the console launched and wasn’t very good. It’s dynamic theme, on the other hand, is exquisite.
This was originally to be a post about dynamic backgrounds and themes, a feature that only existed in the PC realm before this generation. The ability to customise your console desktop how you want, when you want is a feature many of us take for granted.
Then I began flipping through some of my dynamic PlayStation 3 themes, and realised that, for the most part, they’re generally horrible. Half-naked, chest-heaving demons, barely animated scenes from big-budget games, anime girls that look like they were drawn in a middle school art class.
Maybe I didn’t love themes at all. Maybe they were the greate plague of this console generation. I turned to my PlayStation 3, and saw this:
Ah, there we go. It wasn’t themes in general I loved at all. It was these zebras. They’re the theme on both of my PlayStation 3 consoles. Apparently I am a huge fan.
All-in-all, I suppose Afrika wasn’t quite the failure it seemed. It was meant to show off the PlayStation 3’s graphical prowess, and here it is, still going strong today.
Last-Gen Heroes is Kotaku’s look back at the seventh generation of console gaming. In the weeks leading up to the launch of the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One, we’ll be celebrating the Heroes — and the Zeroes — of the last eight years of console video gaming. More details can be found here; follow along with the series here.
Comments
9 responses to “Zebras Made My PS3 More Beautiful”
I’ve been less than impressed with the themes on offer and outright horrified at the prices they charge for them.
Makes me wonder how hard it would be to mock one up myself. I mean… do they charge some stupid insane fee for the software or something, some reason to justify the otherwise-unjustifiably high pricing? This isn’t the 90s, no-one pays four bucks for horribly-animated screensavers anymore. Er… I hope.
Edit: Oh! That actually looks quite easy! Now, to submit some truly awesome creations to the store at half-price and make a killing on the theme market.
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2008/06/06/how-to-make-your-own-ps3-themes/
I’m still upset that they changed the title of the game. The Japanese release was named Hakuna Matata.
I’ll only download themes if they are free. I remember getting the Zebra one. It’s probably one of the better ones out there. I hope they do something better on the PS4.
I’ve been using the Heavy Rain theme that came with my copy of the game since release day.
Dark alleyway type thing, and constant rain.
Perfect.
I agree, that theme is great; shame that it doesn’t have a background rainging sound effect though!
God, sounds would make it so much more useful to me. It’s something the theme system is really missing.
Just went on a search trying to find if PS4 will even have a customizable theme; can’t really find anything on the situation 🙁
Can’t beat Sackboy running, day and night.
Have you people seriously not figured out that you go into the ps3 browser type in ps3 themes and click the first link on google, all the user made dynamic and normal themes you want for free, I cant believe people are paying for the crappy official ones
I have to say the best looking and just best all round theme is the Flower theme in my opinion, had it running on my PS3 for over a year now haha. But I am a picky type; I like my dynamic themes to go from day to night.
I’ve browsed the themes on the US store (it’s larger than the AU one) and my god, there’s some rubbish there at obscene prices. Always regretted that I hadn’t set up US/Japan (forget which) account to grab the Afrika theme when it was free (and hey, it’s a beautiful game to wind down to after an evening shooting people).
Flower dynamic theme is my fav :3