Monday, December 29, 2014

My Interesting Relationship with the PS2

The very first video game console that I bought myself brand new was the original Sony Playstation, and I loved that console with a passion. I wasn't against owning the PS2, when it originally came out, but I couldn't afford one and I honestly didn't see any reason for owning one. I spent a lot of time over at a friend's house playing all the various games we had rented for their PS2, so I knew what it was capable of, but still I wasn't convinced that I needed one.

By that point purchasing a brand new console was out of the question, so I spent most of my time playing NES, Dreamcast and Playstation. This was also a prime time for Playstation as there were copious amounts of titles being clearanced off store shelves to make way for PS2 games. So many good titles at such low prices, I was swimming in a sea of Playstation games and really didn't care to venture outward to anything newer.

It wasn't until 2005 that I entered the sixth generation of video gaming consoles when a friend gave me his old Xbox to repair. By this time there was already an ever increasing number of Xbox games that were getting clearanced off, so I felt right at home while also staying current. The vast difference between what I was familiar with (PS, NES and Dreamcast) and the Xbox was astonishing.

Titles such as Grand Theft Auto 3, GTA Vice City and many of the GTA clones were quickly added to my collection. With a perfectly working Xbox, why would I need a PS2? Most of the titles for the PS2, that I was actively seeking to play, were already on the Xbox, where most reviews said the Xbox versions were slightly better in most ways. This really put a damper on me wanting a PS2, which was already slim to begin with.

A few years later my friend told me his PS2 wasn't working and asked me if I wanted to take a crack at fixing it. Now that I finally had a PS2, what benefits did it hold over my Xbox? The Playstation 2 did have a good amount of exclusive titles as well as a huge library of RPGs, so needless to say this made me feel better about owning a PS2 and allowing myself the option to play these games.

Throughout it's lifetime, the only reason I really wanted a PS2 was to play Liberty City and Vice City stories, which were PSP and PS2 exclusives. Later on I was introduced to the game Bully, which was, at that point, also a PS2 exclusive. Slowly but surely the titles I had clearly overlooked were coming out of the cracks and onto my radar.

After a while I've actually collected a few PS2 consoles, as I find them unreliable. The list of games I own in my PS2 collection has grown beyond what I ever thought I would own, but that's not a bad thing. Right now PS2 games are fairly cheap and fairly common, so I think I got into the PS2 just about the right time. Sadly not in time to collect many of the exclusive RPGs I'd love to collect, which are now hard to find and "worth" more than I'm willing to pay.

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