Playstation 2: 20 Years Later

[ggallegos1]

As the PS5 is about to drop, let's remember that the PS2 was released 20 years ago today in North America.

It was the first system I bought with my money, along with Crazy Taxi and Final Fantasy X. I can't imagine how many hours I put into the system through JRPGs, the EA Sports Big line, and platformers. What are your opinions?

PS prices for PS2 are skyrocketing. I was gonna pick up Silent Hill 3 and saw it was going for triple digits now.

 

[BlackaneseNiNjA]

Fantastic system with way too many great games to list, though I think this one probably has always received the most playtime on the console from me:

 

[roker]

Great system that changed gaming forever. These days when I do fire it up I'm usually playing 2D arcade ports and such that were released on it.

 

[neo_mao]

I think I like the PS2 more than the PS3. Everything just felt so new and fresh then.

I think I started getting bored with Sony by the time the PS3 came out

 

[Burning Fight!!]

PS3 was ok but came with the era of brown corridor shooters. Everything was BROWN and had this nifty new effect called Bloom which made people feel they had cataracts looking at its overusage.

Very few games stand out to me as worth playing and those were all "remastered" (more like repackaged) to the PS4 and even PC sometimes. Still worth owning for MGS HD Collection though --- why the fuck hasn't Konami hire bluepoint to port it again to modern systems, we'll never know. They're leaving money on the table.

 

[NeoSneth]

Never owned a PS2.
I imagine the collecting scene is going to boom as it hits the nostalgia era. Not my scene, but you cant deny how ubiquitous this platform was worldwide.
I'm certain this is still the main gaming machine in some homes.

 

[bubba966]

I owned a PS2 for about 5 hours as I recall. I'd pre-ordered it 7 months before release before the launch lineup was announced. And at release they were unobtanium. So a guy I knew in IT that had shit tons of $ to burn begged me to sell it to him for $800 (they were selling for $1,200 at that instant). And when it was released there turned out to be nothing I felt the need to play on it. I figured why not make 5 hundo, I could always buy another one later when there was something I wanted to play on it. Right?...

And I never bought another PS2.

Can't believe it's been 20 years already.

 

[max 330 mega]

Thanks for killing the dreamcast, you big ugly black block of shit glorified dvd player. Lol

 

[Burning Fight!!]

Thanks for killing the dreamcast, you big ugly black block of shit glorified dvd player. Lol

I find funny that 20 years later SEGA fans are still seething about the "glorified dvd player" with one of the biggest game libraries ever. The sooner you accept that SEGA killed SEGA, the better.

Never owned a PS2.
I imagine the collecting scene is going to boom as it hits the nostalgia era. Not my scene, but you cant deny how ubiquitous this platform was worldwide.
I'm certain this is still the main gaming machine in some homes.

If it does then the bubble is going to pop real soon. A library that is too broad with unreliable hardware that already can play games "ode style" without needing anything but a retail Network Adapter and a HDD... I always found PS2 to be a very boring platform for collecting. It's fun to own hardware but software... meh

 

[Gentlegamer]

PS prices for PS2 are skyrocketing. I was gonna pick up Silent Hill 3 and saw it was going for triple digits now.

Fortunately, PS2 emulation is progressing nicely.

 

[ChopstickSamurai]

Jesus Christ I’m getting old.

 

[munchiaz]

Remember having to wait a bit to get it. First games were CvS 2 and FF X. This was during that damn memory card shortage too.

 

[HeavyMachineGoob]

I used to greatly dislike PlayStation and Sony as a whole, but I've since come to appreciate both the PS1 and PS2 for their massive horror game catalogs.

As someone above said, there's no good reason to be buying PS2 games much anymore since the advent of homebrew and softmodding. All you need for the best PS2 experience is a phat PS2, a Freemcboot memory card, the official PS2 Network Adapter (which has a HDD connector) and a big hard drive or SSD, then just proceed to fill the drive with games. It's kind of a pain in the ass of Windows-only software and drive adapters to manually load in games, but once you have it all set up, it's not too bad. My favorite method is using HD Loader on the PS2 to dump retail PS2 discs, really handy if you already have a bunch of games and don't want to piss around with finicky Windows software. Only downside is HD Loader is old and considered obsolete in favor of PS2 Loader which does not do disc dumping which is bullshit.

My only gripe with PS2 homebrew is it's way more janky, weird and picky than the Xbox and Wii which are similarly softmoddable systems. The Wii is by far the best, just get a big USB drive, install the homebrew channel by SD, internet, game or bluetooth exploits, then install cIOS for USB loading and finally USB Loader GX and Nintendont, that's all you need for basic Wii and Gamecube loading from USB. The best part is USB Loader GX has Wii and GC disc dumping built-in, no need for old obsolete software like on PS2. Oh and my other favorite feature of the Wii, it has USB 2.0 support, whereas the PS2 only has USB 1.1 which is slow as hell.

 

[roker]

I owned a PS2 for about 5 hours as I recall. I'd pre-ordered it 7 months before release before the launch lineup was announced. And at release they were unobtanium. So a guy I knew in IT that had shit tons of $ to burn begged me to sell it to him for $800 (they were selling for $1,200 at that instant). And when it was released there turned out to be nothing I felt the need to play on it. I figured why not make 5 hundo, I could always buy another one later when there was something I wanted to play on it. Right?...

And I never bought another PS2.

Can't believe it's been 20 years already.

Cool story bro and it contributes so much to this thread.

 

[Heinz]

I got a PS2 christmas 2002 with Capcom Vs SNK2, Marvel Vs Capcom 2, Ridge Racer V, Final Fantasy X and probably a few others I can't remember now. Literally burnt out the laser it got that much use.

I actually bought a PS2 a few months ago, one of those HDD unit models from Japan and just boot games off the HDD. I did use my 20gb JP launch PS3 but that thing sounds like a rocket engine even though I changed the thermal paste AND delidded the GPU and CPU to replace the paste under the IHS. Still runs hot as fuck... but maybe it always did I dunno.

 

[100proof]

Bought a JPN PS2 around launch mostly to play Tekken Tag Tunamelt with the local fighting game peoples. Got Final Fantasy X when that came out and then sold the machine shortly thereafter. I've owned a few US PS2s over the years (and have a soft-modded machine currently with 300+ games) but the period where it was a thing was a stretch where I wasn't playing many games (finishing college, moving out of the parents' house, scraping by) so I have very little nostalgia for it and I haven't played most of the big releases from that era.

 

[neo_mao]

I deliddled a girl once and she also ran hot as fuck.

 

[roker]

I deliddled a girl once and she also ran hot as fuck.

Sick, bruh!!

 

[k'_127]

There are a handful of games that I hope would get ported to current consoles:

MGS 2&3 obviously
God of War 2
Dragon Quest 8 (I hate handhelds, so fuck the 3DS)
Contra Shattered Soldier / Neo Contra
Persona 3
God Hand (would rather see it remade)
Suikoden 5
Fatal Frame series
Shadow Hearts series
Ico
Viewtiful Joe
Onimusha 3
Klonoa 2

Fortunately, PS2 emulation is progressing nicely.

Still waiting for a proper emulator that is integrated into RetroArch. There is Play!, but no update yet since its announcement.

 

[BlackaneseNiNjA]

God Hand (would rather see it remade)
Viewtiful Joe

I'd definitely be on board to support either of these making a proper comeback.

 

[joe8]

As the PS5 is about to drop, let's remember that the PS2 was released 20 years ago today in North America.

It was the first system I bought with my money, along with Crazy Taxi and Final Fantasy X. I can't imagine how many hours I put into the system through JRPGs, the EA Sports Big line, and platformers. What are your opinions?

PS prices for PS2 are skyrocketing. I was gonna pick up Silent Hill 3 and saw it was going for triple digits now.

I liked how the PS2 could play all the PS1 games as well. The Playstation consoles should still have backwards compatibility. The PS5 can play most PS4 games, but none from PS3 and earlier.

 

[Burning Fight!!]

I liked how the PS2 could play all the PS1 games as well. The Playstation consoles should still have backwards compatibility. The PS5 can play most PS4 games, but none from PS3 and earlier.

PS4 not reading PS1 games at a MINIMUM was a travesty, after all a PS1 emulator will run on a toaster and Sony already had their in-house emu with ports to various architectures... I get the absence of PS2 and especially PS3 (which I can understand not even the PS5 supporting it which is a bummer), but PS1 is such a low hanging fruit to gain extra points with the userbase and future buyers! Of course, PS5 is in another league entirely. It's basically a mid tier gaming PC and yet they did not bother to include any emu-based backwards compatibility for PS1/PS2/PS3. PS4 probably got in only to ease the migration to the new generation and because they're both x86 (low effort backwards compatibility).

The OG XBOX tanked hard but you can still play Splinter Cell or Halo with a physical disc on an XBOX One. Props to Microsoft for actually valorizing their gaming brand history despite probably not being all that profitable.

 

[joe8]

PS4 not reading PS1 games at a MINIMUM was a travesty, after all a PS1 emulator will run on a toaster and Sony already had their in-house emu with ports to various architectures... I get the absence of PS2 and especially PS3 (which I can understand not even the PS5 supporting it which is a bummer), but PS1 is such a low hanging fruit to gain extra points with the userbase and future buyers! Of course, PS5 is in another league entirely. It's basically a mid tier gaming PC and yet they did not bother to include any emu-based backwards compatibility for PS1/PS2/PS3. PS4 probably got in only to ease the migration to the new generation and because they're both x86 (low effort backwards compatibility).

The OG XBOX tanked hard but you can still play Splinter Cell or Halo with a physical disc on an XBOX One. Props to Microsoft for actually valorizing their gaming brand history despite probably not being all that profitable.

I think if they include backwards compatibility (especially if it's hardware-based emulation), it can make it harder to make the PS5 as powerful as they want it to be, and it costs more to make.
But you'd think it would be easy to include software emulation for older and less powerful systems like the PS1 and PS2.

 

[Digmac]

My current PS2 is a phat DTL-H30001 debugging station with EA asset tags. Being able to play all regions and burnt discs of PS2 and PS1 games is a sweet deal. Before that I had a CIB gloss pink slim PS2, and a DTL-H70011S slim debugging station. To me, the PS2 is a must own because of its backwards compatibility with the PS1. My family had a PS2 growing up, and I remember we kept the PS1 titles we had since buying brand new games at that point was a bit of a rarity for us. At that point, renting games at Hollywood Video is how we played new releases. The only new new game I remember getting was Midnight Club 3 Dub Edition. My parents wrapped it in some gift wrap, and I’ll never forget how excited I was to have a copy of it. I played it to death, getting a 100% clear. Some great times can be had with the PS2.

 

[k'_127]

They can't add full BC for legal reasons. They need the ok from publishers before they make their games playable on platforms different from what they were licensed for.