Off the Shelf Media

I’ll never forget the moment I first laid eyes on my PlayStation 2. My older brother held up the box on an early Christmas morning, 2001, in sheer excitement and joy. I looked at him, confused. Little did I know that gift would change my life forever and introduce me to a lifelong passion for videogames. 

Over 20 years later, the passion for videogames is stronger than ever. As the PS2 turns 25 this year, this is a perfect time to reflect on a great era of gaming, say thank you to a console that gave me countless hours of entertainment, timeless memories, and pay homage to a legacy I try to keep strong to this day. 

The Console

The PlayStation 2 was released by Sony on October 26th in the year 2000. It’s sold over 160 million units to date, has over 10,000 titles, with over 1.5 billion discs sold to date. My brother and I owned over 50 of those titles, including one of my favorite games of all time, Sly Cooper and the Thievious Racconus, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, MVP Baseball 2005, Simpsons Hit and Run, and many, many more. 

I still have my original PS2 system, and it still works! The controllers are over 15 years old, and they still work. The vibrating component broke when I threw it off a wall a few times, but the controller itself works. The longevity and durability of this device are insane. Sure, the disc tray opens a bit slower, but it never gets jammed, and games still run as smoothly today as they did in 2003. 

Not only did it have free online gaming as long as you had the official adapter, but it was one of the first consoles to have a built-in DVD driver. That’s right, it acted as a gaming console for the kids and a DVD player for the whole family. And it had backward compatibility. That’s right, your old PlayStation 1 games didn’t need to go in the trash or to GameStop for pennies of store credit. You can pop that bad boy into the PS2 and play until the next game comes out. 

Nowadays, each console acts as a home entertainment device. It connects to the internet, you can add Netflix or other streaming services to it, and it inches closer and closer to becoming a PC with every update. The PS2 was decades ahead of the game. Did you know you could install Linux on a PS2? I had no idea until I did some research for this article. After reading the Wiki, I don’t know why anyone would want to do this, but it’s foundational to what we see today, nevertheless. 

The Memories

I had a Game Boy Color along with every new model growing up, and while that shaped my love for games as well, the PS2 hit differently. Game Boy was used for Pokémon, and that’s about it. The PS2 was for everything else. The stories, the graphics, the platforming, the first-person shooters, the sports games, the single-player, the co-op, and everything else. 

My first games were The Simpsons: Road Rage and Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3. I remember my dad coming home with a memory card, which I still have to this day. Yup, remember back when 8MB was considered a lot of storage? I was 6, so I didn’t understand the concept of saving games or digital storage units, but when I was able to unlock a new character in Road Rage and keep it, my little mind was blown to space. 

Fast forward to February 2002, when my brother got me Sly Cooper for my birthday. It was the perfect game for a 7-year-old. Colorful characters, fun platforming that wasn’t too easy or too difficult for a young kid, and an engaging story that I still enjoy today. I still go back every few years and beat the game, even though I can easily do it in a day.

Since I was a kid and my parents were smart, they didn’t let me play Rated M games. That means I missed out on some of the best and top-selling franchises of the PS2 Era. We’re talking GTA, God of War, SOCOM, Metal Gear Solid, and Devil May Cry. I remember watching my cousins play Vice City one time, and it was like nothing I had ever seen. The open world, the chaos, the violence, and, for some reason, the inability to swim. I wanted it. Badly. And when I went to my mom and dad, I knew the answer before I asked the question. Absolutely not. I don’t blame my parents for not letting me play. It was inappropriate for a 9-year-old. I won’t let my kids play those games until they’re 15 either. However, there was this one time I managed to sneak an M-rated game past my mother’s watchful eyes. 

One summer, my friend Matt was sleeping over. My brother was out of town, so we had the PS2 to ourselves for an entire weekend. My mom took us to Blockbuster and we rented a game. That game was a SOCOM game. My mom saw the M rating and was hesitant, but we told her it was just violence, and it was like watching Saving Private Ryan. “We’re 10, Mom. We can handle it.” She let us rent it “this one time,” and we played it all weekend. The game wasn’t that fun, but the excitement and thrill of playing something I wasn’t supposed to be playing was well worth it. 

The PS2 era also had the movie tie-in craze, where every major property had a video game to go along with it. I’m going to write a deep dive on that era and its impact on video games as a form of media, so stay tuned for that. 

I bring this up because SpongeBob: Battle for Bikini Bottom was one of those games. The game is great. It deserved its remaster from a few years ago, but I will never play this game again. I will never touch it. I don’t even want to look at it. Hyperlinking it in this article brought back the hatred I feel for this game. Here’s the story. 

My cousin Thomas is a few years younger than I am, and he was struggling with a few levels in Battle for Bikini Bottom. I was pretty good at the game, so I beat a few levels for him. A few levels turned into a few hours, and a few hours turned into the end of the game. We beat the game. The mission was accomplished, and now the rest of us wanted to go play outside. 

Thomas, being an idiot, did not want to play outside. He wanted to play the game over again, so he started a new game and deleted the save file I just spent hours and hours beating. He asked me to play it with him again. I said no. He cried. I said no. He went to his mom, and guess who ended up staying inside beating it again? That’s right, me. I’ll never let Thomas forget that day, and it’s a PS2 memory that will live with me forever. 

The Impact

It’s hard to put into words what impact the PS2 has had on me and my life. Yes, it was a way for me to have fun with my friends, but as a kid, I didn’t think I’d still be playing videogames at 30. I thought I’d grow out of videogames by the time I hit 30. Yet, here I am at 30 writing these words about videogames. I’m sure that as my career advances and I get married and have kids, I’ll be gaming less, but what will I be playing?

What games do I still want to play? New games are a mixed bag, with major corporations’ pricing gouging or making the same game over and over again with micro transactions and pay-to-win schemes. It’s nauseating, but the PS2 era was never like that. 

The PS2 era was all about the videogames. It was about the characters, the gameplay, the moments you remember, and the people you create those memories with. The industry was in its golden era. The drive from developers was there, and the technology was finally catching up to what they envisioned.

So as I get older, I’ll have a choice to make. Do I get with the times and play some amazing modern games like Ghost of Tsushima or Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2? Or do I go back and relive the feeling of my favorite console with my favorite games? I’m leaning towards the PS2 games and the ones I missed out on as a kid. A lot of the games I’m reviewing for Off the Shelf Media are games I’ve never played before. They’re games I missed out on because I was too young or they were never on my radar. 

The impact of the PS2 and its era was the purest form of videogames. It was leagues above the 1980s and 1990s and ushered in a new generation of gamers and was the foundation of the billion-dollar industry we see today. 

For me, the PS2 is my favorite era in videogames. That impact hit me then, it hits me now, and I guarantee it will still hit me when the PS2 hits 50 years old, and I need a million adapters just to plug the thing into my TV. 

The Legacy

If I had to sum up the legacy of the PS2 in one word, I’d use “Transformational.” It transformed the gaming industry into what it was always destined to become: a billion-dollar juggernaut with no end in sight. There’s a lot of good mixed with the bad, but a lot of it stems from the work the PS2 put into the industry. 

It got the ’90s kids like my brother and me hooked on video games. So, when the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 were released, it was a must-have entity. Everyone wanted a PS3 or Xbox because of the success of the PS2. It’s hard to argue against the Xbox 360 and PS3 generation is the best generation in gaming. That’s a conversation for another day, but that statement would not be true if the PS2 didn’t transform an entire industry to say, “I’m here, look at me now. I’m undeniable, and you will show me respect.” 

For me, the legacy is the greatest console ever created. I owe a lot to the PS2. That’s why I exclusively write PS2 reviews for Off the Shelf Media. Yes, it’s a niche, and that’s important to growing in today’s algorithmic world, but writing about PS2 games is a way for me to say thank you. A thank you to the console that gave me everything. 

25 years is a long time, and as I look back, I can say I don’t regret a second of it. Thank you, PS2, I look forward to our next 25 years together, and I’m looking forward to showing you off to a new generation of gamers for years and years to come. 

I’ll see ya there, but until then, y’all take care.