My dear PS2 happy 10th birthday ( but you're technically 9 and some months old)
I saw this on Kotaku.com and they were discussing their Playstation 2 systems along with the good times and bad times with it. I wanted to share my experience with my beloved PS2.
My PS2 is one of the first ones, I remember getting it for Christmas in 2000, my family was one of the lucky ones I guess since my older brother had connections because he worked at Toys R Us then. Yep had that fat bastard since 2000 never got the slim or colored versions. only once did it stop working, but it was fixed.
Our first PS2 game was Extreme G Racing, which is a futuristic motorcycle game, as well as a demo. I still have that game and that old fart is in better condition than the younger games, what a trooper. We just played all of our Playstation games on it for like about 1-2 years. At that time my brothers and I were just noob gamers I guess. It wasn't until we got rid of our stupid AOL broadband internet and moved on to DSL wireless internet that we started getting more into gaming. With internet we got free access to game reviews and I guess videos too, but mostly written reviews.
After we got bored of our Playstation one games-we purchased Twisted Metal: Black, DDR Max, Final Fantasy X, Grand Turismo (something), and Need for Speed (something). TW: Black scared my panties off, but my brothers somehow managed to make the game more fun than fearful (I'm sure 9/10 year olds are not supposed to play M rated games but what the hay). We got DDR Max when its popularity was starting to peak within my grammar school community, ahhh funnnn times I've only made it to Standard mode, but since I haven't played it in so long, I'm back on Light mode -_-. DDR had some of the best songs I'd have to admit. I didn't really play Grand Turismo and Need for Speed much, that was college boy's territory. I truly sucked at racing I was soooo bad. I remember that At a point in time I would always race in reverse in Grand Turismo since I was just sooo bad at racing properly, I crashed every 5 seconds, so I had to rely on finishing in reverse, weird right? I still lost every time though. Now it leaves us to my joy of joys FFX. I was sooooo delighted when that game came out. It was my first encounter with Square Enix and RPGs in general. First impressions are the best right and sooo far because of FFX RPGs remain my favorite genre of games, took the spot of fighting games.
Enough of the games, I haven't really discussed my relationship with my dear PS2. For the most part that old bastard was good to me. Sometimes when games wouldn't work, we would position the PS2 either vertically (standing right up) or horizontally (laying flat). It all depended on the game, and it worked!
There was lots of pressure from the cousins to get a Dreamcast, but we stuck to Sony's side cause it was just better and the Dreamcast controller looked god awful and complicated. Sony to the end!!! Actually we had a Gamecube for a bit, well it was borrowed but still...
There was a time when my mother took the PS2 away because our grades were slipping. What game cause this problem...Sonic Heroes but it could be one of those RPGs. What she did was take the PS2, all the controllers and all the wires and stuffed them under the guest room bed. When my brother got caught red handed secretly playing she took it away and hid it under her bed which was worse since her bedroom door had a lock and guess what room was always locked when mommy's away? We eventually got our darling PS2 back after the grades when back to where they were supposed to be.
Another time that mommzy held the PS2 hostage was when we were supposed to finish our summer homework and we didn't. She wanted us to finish early so instead of taking it away she taped up the whole system and wires as well as television wires to the television ( that's one sick punishment to take away a child's game someone call a social worker!!! j/k)
A few years ago our PS2 stopped working, It was due to collective dust and overheating most likely. Well it's understandable we abused the shit out of that old bastard,leaving him on overnight sometimes for more that 2 days at a time as well as not cleaning the area constantly-we clean once in a blue moon to my parents dismay. So college boy did some crazy risky shit and fixed it. It required opening the PS2 and tinkering with it. He swears he did not know what he was doing, but...
Now the old bastard is sitting next to the basement television collecting dust, poor guy got little love since the PS3 came along, I played FFXII on him last weekend though ( more like turned it on loaded my data then didn't touch it at all and turned it off cause the background music was annoying.)
List Of PS2 Games played
Extreme G racing
Twisted Metal: Black
Disgaea
Disgaea 2
Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasy X2
Final Fantasy XII
DDR Max
DDR Max2
DDR Extreme
DDR Extreme 2
Kingdom Hearts
Kingdom Heats 2
Kingdom Hears Re:COM
Gran Turismo 4
Need for Speed (something)
Need for Speed Underground 2
Ratchet and Clank: up your arsenal
Ratchet and Clank: dead lock
Naruto (something)
Sonic Heroes
Soul Caliber 2
Tekken (something)
Dynasty Warriors 4
Dynasty Warriors 4 Legends
Dynasty Warriors 5
.hack// infection
Devil May Cry (more like watched someone play)
demos,demos,demos
That's all I can remember for now. There where many other games I wanted to play, but they were unavailable to me.