🎮 Why I Love The PlayStation 2... 🎮 #Playstation2

Imagine there was a video game console that sold 157 million units...

Well actually there is a console that sold over 157 million units and its name is the Playstation 2.

This year the PS2 turned 20 years old and I have been thinking about how it influenced me as a gamer.

My PS2 was the most cherished purchase of my teenage years and it all began with that amazing video game Grand Theft Auto III.

GTA III was the biggest eye-opener since I played Metal Gear Solid on the PS1. GTA III made me feel like I anything was possible inside its open-world sandbox. It was like nothing I had ever experienced before and it was all I needed for months on end.

My friend Dean and I went out one night to a few pubs and then crashed back at my house at around 1 am. I went to sleep immediately and I thought that Dean did too. Little did I know that whilst I was fast asleep Dean had started a game of GTA III to see what all the fuss was about. When I woke up at 8 am he was still playing it from the night before and hadn’t slept at all!! 

The PS2 brought me and my friends together on multiple occasions and no game did that more than the Pro Evolution Soccer games.

'PES' was an obsession for me and my friends.

The PES series always seemed to improve with each revision and reached its peak at around PES 4 or 5 when the gameplay and fun factor seemed to combine to make the greatest game of console football that there has ever been.

Those PES games have yet to be bettered even with the likes of FIFA and the latest PES games from today’s consoles trying but they are so sterile now that the fun factor has almost been eradicated in favour of the most realistic representation of football. T

The PS2 era created these great PES games and these games meant that I was able to play the greatest game of 2 player Master League with my friend Fran. We’d always be Amsterdam (Ajax) as we had a fondness for the beautiful Dutch city.  We’d always look to sign our own cult heroes like Litros (the greatest slide tackle in football), Babangida (the fastest player alive), Caniggia (Ken Canigg From Connecticutt), Njord (Naughty Njord) and our favourite terrible but legendary player, Gary Doherty (The Ginger Pele).

To top all this PES amazement off I once ran a PES World Cup out of my flat that I shared with my mate Glen. We created groups of players based on friends circles and invited each group to play their group games on separate nights of the week. It was an epic tournament with prize money totalling around 100 pounds. The only problem turned out that I won my way to the final against my mate Gary but we never played the final match as most people weren’t interested once they were eliminated after a month worth of games. In the end, I just pocketed the prize money (I would have won anyway I’m sure :)  

Aside from the social aspect of playing PES I also loved losing myself into the solitary experience of playing Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 on the PS2. That stealth gameplay seemed to get better with every iteration and MGS 2 and 3 for me were the sweet spot of stealth games that to this day feel like the perfect mix of stealth and gunplay. 

I remember in 2005 I was involved in an incident that meant that I had 21 stitches put into my head and I was on pain killers for a month that meant I was unable to leave the house. My PS2 was my best friend for that strange month of my life and the game I played from start to finish was the LEGO Star Wars Trilogy. What a game that was! 

I picked it up just before my head injury and luckily it was ready for me to play whilst I had all this time off work. Oddly enough though, after completing it I never played another LEGO game again. I’m not sure why.

Then there was the DVD player that was built into the PS2! A DVD PLAYER just felt so exotic in the year 2000. You could easily spend £100 on a DVD player 20 years ago and now there was a console that had one built-in! My PS2 was my entertainment unit. I didn’t need anything else apart from my subscription to LoveFilm’s postal DVD service which I used religiously to work my way through some of the greatest films of all time!

When I think about it, the PS2 had it all. It looked amazing, it had amazing video games and it brought a generation together as the PS2 was the only console worth owning at the time.

Happy 20th Birthday PS2 I LOVE YOU! x

Rich