Console - PS2

I know, I know, I'm showing my age with this post, that I'd gotten the PS2 console back in 2001, after saving enough cash from my then-job.

PS2, or Playstation 2, was a console that was quite popular in its days. I chose it because of my faithfulness to Sony products, its price was affordable at that time, and most games I wanted were released on it - sometimes exclusively. 


This console allowed playing the previous Playstation (= One) games,  for which I needed to get the original controller. Let me link to wiki's page, as they say a lot more than my entry here. 

Sony released controllers for their playstation consoles, calling them DualShock, and carry numbers as each generation of console evolves them. To avoid plagiarizing, I'll direct to wiki's page about dualshock. 

I never bought the vertical stand featured in the official image promoting this console, as I never thought it'd remain stable, nor trusted my own ability to insert discs in this manner onto the tray. 

For several years, the PS2 was also my DVD player, but this turned out to be a bad choice, as I weakened the laser lens. My particular version from the first line, 30000 series of this console has 2 distinct lenses, and I cannot reach the bottom one to clean it - which prevents me from playing any game that comes on a dual-layer disc. 

Originally, the PS2 allows only 2 players to play together or in VS modes (depending on the game), but multitap adaptors allowed to connect a lot more, as each such adaptor could be hooked on each of the 2 original ports. I never played enough games that would require over 4 players at a time, but this was made possible with the adaptors. 

There were quite a few official and a lot more unoffocial accessories, including the eyetoy motion camera to dvd remote controllers, game controllers in many colors and functionalities, microphones for karaoke games, and even drum or guitar controllers for specific musical games, and speciality controllers for fighting/adventure ones, such as light guns, pistol, katana...

The ones that I bought were an unoffocial dvd remote controller which was far too basic, several PS2 and a PSone controllers, prolongators for those controllers so I could sit farther away from the console, and off course, memory cards, both official and unofficial. 

Indeed, this old console like many others before didn't come with an internal memory. You needed memory cards, which could get full quite fast, especially if you save data from several games. 
If you play VS or cooperative mode multi-player games, each memory slot needs a card for individual data. Thus, your games can have each 2 cards, and get full slowly or very fast in lowest capacity ones. 
Back then, Sony official cards were quite expensive, so I had opted for unoffocial, and in both cases had lost data many times - either as accidentally hitting erase, or files would get corrupted. This is important to know - you may have to restart a game on occasion. 

PS2 also allowed using a usb mouse, even a basic PC one, contrary to the PS (one) which needed the official mouse. I never used any. 

I didn't even know that I could connect to the internet, and I still don't realize how to do it, nor am I really interested because I tasted a faster speed on the PS3, which is already quite behind the PS4. 

As there are still PS2 consoles out there for the nostalgic, available in second hand stores and websites, you have access to the host of 2502 games that were released on this platform. Here's their list on wiki and since this console is backward compatible with the first generation, you can also add the list of PSone games with another 2502 games!  Many of these are quite cheap to get, but some are on the contrary huge rarities and cost a lot. 

If your console is like mine, you'll need to find out beforehand if the game is on single or dual layer. 

Articles to see : 

How to connect PS2 to TV  
PS2 to computer screen  

In short... 

Pros ? 

• Console and games are usually easy to find, with the exceptions of obscure or rare collector games. 
• Huge catalogues with back-compatibility to PSone games. 
• Cheap accessories 
• a certain nostalgic charm to some of the old games

Cons ?

• Slow console load, and slow game load, saves. 
• limited memory, having to use several cards, corruptrice files & have to re-start. 
• On modern tv's, you'll notice the low image quality a lot more than the old days. I'm not sure that adaptors improve much. 
• not easy to keep the lenses clean, and if one doesn't function properly, you won't be able to load any dual-layered game discs. 
• doesn't always detect discs, even when new. 
• noisy and gets hot faster than other consoles