PlayStation 2 — the best console ever made

Do you remember the days of the 8MB memory card, wired controllers, and graphics so beautiful you wept at the sight of them?

Those were the days of the PlayStation 2, and it was a grand time.

The sliding DVD tray, the power brick, Kratos and TimeSplitters. The era of DLC-less titles, the era when you had to buy a special adapter to play 4-players games, and you had get to a save point before you could go to bed.

A time when you packed your memory card in the allocated PS2 box once you had switched off your console.

It was a period in our lives most of us will never forget, and do not want to.

To pay tribute to the days of the PS2, let us take a look back at what made the console great.

Birth and death of an icon

On 4 March 2000, the PS2 was unleashed upon the world. Since then, it has sold over 155 million units, 1.5 billion games have been bought, and 3,780 games have been developed for it. Sony also redesigned the console, as they usually do with their products, so it did not look dated.

The PS1 was undoubtedly a hard act to follow, but the PlayStation 2 become an icon in its own right. It changed gamer’s expectations, franchises were born, studios were opened, and we experienced interactive titles on a new level.

12 years on, late in 2012, Sony announced they had ceased production of the console.

The games

Just one year after the launch of the PS2, the games came flowing in – and these weren’t any old games, they were genre-definers.

*Scores based on Metacritic aggregation.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 – 97
Grand Theft Auto III – 97
Meta Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty – 96
Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec – 95
Devil May Cry – 94
Madden NFL 2002 – 94
SSX Tricky – 92
NHL 2002 – 92
Final Fantasy X – 92
Madden NFL 2001 – 91

2001 might have been the year of the “highly rated” games, but 2004/5 was the year Sony and publishers made some serious money. The console was on a roll, and the game sales ramped up quickly.

Here are the top 5 selling games from 2004/5.