There’s a very strong argument for the PlayStation 2 being the greatest games console of all time. I’m not going to get into all that now, as I don’t really have the energy to tackle questions like “but what about Mario and Zelda?” or “did Sony pay you to say this? Smells of secret sponsored content”. What I am going to reminisce about is that golden PS2 era, when the world felt bigger, the pace of change was startling, and the sense of discovery was closer to finding a message in a bottle than it was to watching the latest TikTok from an influencer. When Sony released the PlayStation 2 25 years ago the way we navigated our way through the console’s library of games felt like going on an adventure.
Listen, I am aware that the world in 2000 had some similarities to now. The internet and websites existed, sure, but a lot of people didn’t have internet access at home, and if they did it was incredibly slow and tended to be something you used for a small amount of time each day, while the rest of your family complained about not being able to make phone calls. It wasn’t something that was just there, always accessible, built into our everyday lives. Websites, including this one, were smaller, hobbyist affairs in the main (in fact we were only about a year old). Print magazines still ruled. And there were a lot that were dedicated to PlayStation.
One of the often cited issues with today’s internet, by contrast, is the sense of a relentless feed of information. Not just information you are actively seeking out, but information about everything, whether you really want to be seeing and hearing about it or not. We are full to the brim, bursting (and often struggling) with things we don’t really need to know. Of course, awareness isn’t strictly a bad thing, but back in 2000 you’d generally have to choose to find out about something, like how I chose to read as many gaming magazines as I could afford. Each issue, generally released every four weeks, I’d get a new wave of info to pore over and digest. I felt satisfied with what I knew, despite not really having the full picture at all.
Some websites were offering video – low quality, small, and usually short, which it had to be in order for our internet connection speeds to be able to cope. YouTube, a service that’s hard to imagine not existing, didn’t arrive until 2005, and even then it was a long time before it became what you think of it today. Let’s Plays, entire walkthroughs, tips videos, streams – these simply didn’t exist in a meaningful way. Those of you reading this who are of a certain vintage know this already, of course, but equally some of you might not remember a time before on-demand video. It absolutely impacted the way games were discovered and enjoyed.
A big part of my love of the PS2 is tied to my age at the time (18, with a part-time job and a reasonable disposable income for the first time) and the simple fact that physical stores and media were still very much how retail operated. Again, yes, online retailers existed, but digital games weren’t a thing, and big stores pushed video games like we’d never seen before. It is hard to fathom when looking back today, but I used to go into town to check out what had been released, not knowing exactly what my local Electronics Boutique would have on its shelves – every weekend a new little adventure all of its own.
For all the reasons above, it was entirely possible to buy a PS2 game having never seen it in action, perhaps never having seen a screenshot until you picked up the case, and in many instances from my own memory having never heard of the game at all. This sense of heading into the unknown, exploring a vast world of games, I’m sure others felt during at least some of the generation to follow, but it was a different world then. One full of more information, more ways to sell you things, and fewer risks.
Games that spring to mind when I think of those that I bought on whim, based almost entirely on the vibes I got from the box include: Gregory Horror Show (Capcom’s bizarre hotel-set survival horror), Ring of Red (alt history turn-based strategy with mechs), Mr Moskeeto (perhaps the oddest stealth game ever made), and Sky Odyssey (an arcade flight sim with a nice adventure twist). No doubt I probably came across some of these in magazines, but I’m 100 percent sure I’d never seen them running before I played them on my own PS2.
And these are great games, not the kind of pap you’d find today sold in bargain stores, aimed at shoppers who don’t know any better. Most importantly, these are all games I might not have bought had I known more, and I certainly wouldn’t have had my overall enjoyment elevated by that feeling I’d discovered something no one else had. It’s easy today to fire up a list of the PS2’s hidden gems, but we were figuring it all out ourselves back then. My fondness of Gregory Horror Show is in part due to the game just being great fun, but also the fact that it was all a new, unspoiled experience.
It’s slightly hypocritical to say this as I write an article to be published on a website that exists to tell you about new and interesting video games, but I preferred how things were. Can you remember the last time you bought and played a game not knowing what you were going to get, outside of a back-of-the-box overview? Without seeing any gameplay footage of it at all? Imagine playing some of today’s most wonderful games without years of knowledge having been built up, the core gameplay and mechanics largely unknown. This happened all the time during the PS2 era (especially in the early 2000s), and the result was a console blessed with so many games that seemed to pop up from nowhere.
Barring a near apocalyptic event, we’re not going back to that. We’re in an information age where we’re told everything in the belief that we need to know it all, in order to make decisions. Do you honestly think you’ll be taken aback, startled by what you’re seeing when you play GTA 6 for the first time? I’d be amazed if there isn’t at least an hour of detailed gameplay walkthroughs out there before the game is released. So thank you PlayStation 2, and that era before being always online. It was the best.
