PlayStation’s 30th anniversary is here, and in addition to running over 500 sales, Sony is celebrating by giving PS5 owners a little bit of nostalgia.
As part of an update released yesterday, PlayStation 5 owners can now customize their home screen, menus, and system sounds to resemble the interfaces of past PlayStation consoles instead, all the way from the original to the PS4 (portable consoles notwithstanding).
It’s the system’s first real go at “themes,” which are a standard feature over on Xbox, but sadly, the changes will only work “for a limited time,” with no announcement yet on when the fun will be over.
Personally, my husband and I are running the PS3 theme on our PS5, since he’s got a soft spot for the old XMB menu. It doesn’t quite replicate that, but we do get the old “soft click” sound when moving between games and apps, and there’s a PS3-style abstract background that now sits just under our app bar. Putting the PS5 to rest also now sees our console thank us for 30 years of play (they don’t know I personally skipped the PS3), which you’ll also see regardless of how you customize your UI.
The PS1, PS2, and PS4 all have different menu effects (personally, I’m partial to the PS2 cube background), and there’s also a general “30th Anniversary” theme that highlights the classic PlayStation shapes. Regardless of which option you pick, they all share one especially neat trick— powering on a PS5 running the anniversary update, regardless of which console you’ve chosen to apply as your “theme,” will run the original PSOne boot screen, complete in all its compressed glory.
Again, there’s currently no word on when the anniversary update is set to expire, or if enterprising gamers will be able to keep their hands on these themes somehow. Regardless, here’s how to get the anniversary themes and the PS1 boot screen on your own PS5.
Boot up your PS5. You should be prompted to download the anniversary update, but if not, go to Settings > System > System Software and select System Features Update.
Download the update and restart your console. You’ll see the original PS1 boot screen and get a few pop-ups introducing you to the feature.
Click through the pop-ups to be taken to a page where you can select one of the available themes. Click Appearance and Sound and choose your desired theme.
To change your theme again after your initial boot, simply navigate to Settings > PlayStation 30th Anniversary > Appearance and Sound.
