Celebrating 15 Years of the PlayStation 2

15 years ago today in Japan the gaming community was introduced to a console powerhouse that would reign dominant over its competition for an entire generation, Sony’s Playstation 2. After already having wiped the floor with the Nintendo 64 and Sega Saturn with the PS One, Sony unleashed their sleek black box on the general public and reasserted the place at the top of the console mountain.

GameOnDaily celebrates 15 years since the release of the PS2.

[Gazondaily]

Thanks Sony for some of the best gaming years ever!

[hiredhelp]

Still remember when first bought mine rumble controller first dual shock wow.
One my first games by rockstar smugglers run visually wow, talking rockstar remember GTA3 omg.
Built in lan or online first console do true DVD format sony always knew how build slick looking consoles too.
Hundreds of memrable games killzone was born socom was born God of war was Born Jack and daxter was Born Ico sly cooper.

[Gazondaily]

Ah Smugglers Run....such a wicked game.

Please tell me someone played FreekStyle. That game was criminally overlooked. It was SSX with bikes and was just amazing.

I remember my dad's reaction to the MGS2 demo. He absolutely hates video games but even he had to nod in acknowledgement at how amazing it looked.

My PSOne memories are the best of all consoles but the PS2 comes very close.

[Elit3Nick]

Smuggler's run 1 was good, but the second was fantastic, I loved just going into freeroam and losing the patrols

[hiredhelp]

Yup loved freekstyle doing as many tricks as i could smuglers run 2 was a Deeper much better game for sure.
I belieave ps one still holds the most game titles as a console septic?.

[MaximusPrime_]

Still got my Silver PS2 and a network adaptor card on the back :)
PS2 was my first experience of playing online. Burnout 3. ahh good old memories.

[Volkama]

15 years? :(

Get off my lawn!

[SuperDan-Dare]

They should probably start thinking about making the next one of those.

[BitbyDeath]

Been a long wait but the successor the PS4 has finally arrived.

Ps3 not so much.

[Relientk77]

My PS2 is still plugged in to my TV, it always will be

[MaximusPrime_]

that's pretty awesome. unfortunately i had to replace my silver PS2 with PS4.(the other space already occupied by PS3) I put the PS2 away safely..

[KwietStorm_BLM]

Man I'm old -_-

[Gazondaily]

I feel your pain :(

[Bathyj]

Ayuh. I was already old enough to drink when I bought PSOne.

[StormLegend]

I still got my PS2! it's beside my Gamecube. I miss that Gen :(

[WizzroSupreme]

And what a great decade and a half it's been. Mine still works to. Been playing Persona 4 on it for months.

[Stringerbell]

As good as the PS2 is / was it really dropped the ball on HD gameplay. The Dreamcast,Xbox, GameCube (if you're lucky to have those component cables) all clean up nicely on an HDTV. The PS2 unfortunately does not.

[Gazondaily]

Back then, all this resolution stuff didn't even matter. I feel like we've become so obsessed with tech rivalries that its kind of veered a lot of the gaming community away from the essence of what really mattered and that is fun.

[Bathyj]

And it made such a big difference on our 480i TVs.

[Revengeance]

But it wasn't striving for HD gameplay. Not to mention GC and Xbox came out after the PS2. The games on those SHOULD look better.

[Stringerbell]

Yes and no. First off the DC came out before the PS2 and had no problem with outputting at 480p. Also ironically the PS2 did have some 1080i games. I think Gran Turismo was one of them.

[rainslacker]

There were 4 games that supported analog 1080i. HDTV was nowhere near close to the consumer level when the PS2 was released, and I don't think there was a single consumer level HDTV released while the system was being designed. HDTV wasn't even a big thing when the 360 and PS3 released, so don't think Sony dropped the ball. They kept the price low for 99.99% of it's customers.

The reason many PS2 games look bad on modern HDTV is two fold. First modern HDTV's are not CRT's, so they produce pixels differently, and they often look horrid when displayed with LCD/LED's. Second, the images are typically upscaled for modern TV's, which tends to distort the picture. If not upscaled then modern TV's are usually much bigger than SD CRT's from 15 years ago, so they tend to exaggerate distortions.

I've played almost every system ever made on an HDTV, and use whatever is available to make the picture the best. I can say that the GC and DC have their crappy looking games in HDTV. It's why I keep a big CRT SDTV in my game room.

[Stringerbell]

Well I agree with all of this. I'm just saying that besides component the other options you have for the PS2 are inferior to their contemporaries at the time. At leas the component cables are fairly inexpensive.

[FalconR289]

My launch PS2 still works like its brand new. The only thing I've had to replace was the controller, after so many 1000's of hours it finally gave out. Some of my best gaming memory's where on the PS2.

[Yaay4me]

a Job well done.