Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 172: PlayStation 2

Episode Date: October 1, 2018

We at Retronauts regret to inform you once again that something is very old. (Hey, we're just doing our job.) That's right: The PlayStation 2 turns 18 this month, and to celebrate its passage into adulthood we've put together two whole hours of podcasting fun about Sony's market-dominating beast of a console. Just how important was DVD support? And will any console ever outsell the PS2? On this podcast, Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, Henry Gilbert, and Matthew Jay rev up their Emotion Engines and attempt to describe just how indescribably huge Sony's sequel system was in its heyday. [Note: All of the music in this episode is from the PlayStation 2 game Shadow Hearts: Covenant.]

Hey folks, it's Bob from Retronauts, and I'm here to let you know that Jeremy and I will once again be at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo this year in Portland, Oregon. It's happening this Sunday, October 19th at 21st, and on the 21st, that's a Sunday, at 3.30, we'll be doing a panel on full motion video games. This will be our sixth year in a row at the show, and we really hope to see you there. And if you're a fan of Talking Simpsons, I'll also be doing two live shows with my pal, Henry Gilbert, in Portland that weekend. On Saturday, October 20th, we'll be doing two live shows at Kelly's Olympian in Portland, Oregon, and that'll be happening at 426 Southwest Washington Street. We'll be covering the greatest hits of the Simpsons Halloween episodes with a 2 o'clock show and a 5 o'clock show, and our 5 o'clock show we'll have as a special guest, Bill Oakley, former Simpsons writer and showrunner. Tickets are going fast, so if you want to attend either of the Talking Simpsons live shows, go to tiny URL.com slash Talking Simpsons, how. That's tiny URL.com

slash Talking Simpsons Halloween. Once again, you can see us Sunday, October 21st at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo at 3.30 p.m. And you can see Talking Simpsons Live on Saturday, October 20th at 2 o'clock p.m. And again, go to tinyurl.com slash Talking Simpsons Halloween to get tickets. That's three big live shows, and I can't wait to see you folks there in Portland. This week on Retronauts, I second that emotion engine. Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody, hope you enjoyed my little joke.

I am Bob Mackey, one of the hosts of Retronauts. I'm hosting this episode, in fact, and today's topic is all about the PlayStation 2. Before I begin with this topic, let's see who else is here today in the room with me, as always, across the table. It is the one and only. Jeremy Floating Rubber Ducky Parish. That's right. We're going to be talking a lot about those soon, and we'll tell you why it's relevant to all things, Sony. Who else is here with us today? Ken Kuduragi's employee of the month, Henry Gilbert. Wow. How many, how many, how many, So you are on the take.

How many consecutive months, Henry? I guess two. That's it? For PlayStation 2. Oh, oh, okay. Okay, get it. Okay. And who else is here with us today?

Matthew, the Bouncer J. Well, a classic of the PlayStation 2. So, yes, today we're talking about the PlayStation 2. And if you have a sharp memory, you might remember that I did one of these a long time ago, like in my second month of Retronauts almost seven years ago. Wow. And then it was sort of novel. like, hey, the PlayStation 2 is, it's like 10 years old now.

But now it's much older than that, and I feel like it's more than appropriate to do an episode about the PlayStation 2. I mean, we've done lots of these podcast episodes in the past about things like the GameCube, the Nintendo, the Super Nintendo, the N60. Mainly Nintendo systems is what I'm saying here. But I decided the PS2 should be an episode

because notably it is the best-selling console of all time, period. And in my humble opinion, in terms of not just opinions, but in terms of pure statistics, I don't think anything will ever sell more than PlayStation 2 just because of where it was at that point in time and what it delivered to its audience. I feel like nothing will top the 150 plus

million consoles. It's sold. I think Uya is poised for a company. Ooh, hoo. O no. Was that a joke anyone ever made? I think in a post phone gaming world, I don't think

it ever really will be topped. Nothing that is traditionally referred to as a console could sell more than PlayStation 2 with the number of choices you have for gaming right now. Can I watch the Matrix on the Switch? I don't think so. You can watch it on

an illegal YouTube stream. No, you can't watch YouTube on your Switch. Oh, you can't do that yet? What's Nintendo doing? It won't be as good as the PS2 until I can watch the Matrix on it. You can watch Hulu. You do have that on it. The Matrix is not about watching the Matrix. The PS2 was about plugging into the Matrix.

Jacking in. Through the a motion engine. Why did they make that metaphor? It was bad to be in the Matrix. Because that was it was a clueless executive who was like, I saw something vaguely and thought it was cool and futuristic and the kids love it. He was in the bathroom

for the third act of the movie. I think so. Wait, everyone's made of meat? You just saw that lady in red. Oh, that's right. Yeah. The Matrix put her there, right? Is that how that works? It was a mistake. Okay. I know the stakes taste better in the Matrix, but you know, fuck the Matrix. Talking about the game system here. And I want to say like,

It's hard to, it's hard to like, I can't even put in the scope how big the PlayStation 2 is. We all live through it, and it just seems so ubiquitous. You live with it, not through it. We live through this era, is what I'm saying. And it just, it's hard to just put this into the pure scope of just how huge this was. I mean, 150 million consoles worldwide. The Wii was like 100 million. If you look at consoles you think were big, they are nothing compared to the PlayStation 2, including like Nintendo, even the Wii and things like that.

Like, it was just enormous. And I think because of that, there's a certain bit of ubiquity where people just take it for granted. You know, it was just like, oh, yeah, we had one of those and now we don't. I couldn't find a lot of info on, like, people celebrating this thing or talking about the development or, like, an oral history of the PlayStation 2. People have not really looked back at this thing, perhaps because it was so ubiquitous. I think it helped. I think another reason nothing will match it again, too, is that it was the dominant system in three markets, like Nintendo never got Europe and the PlayStation started that of being the dominant system in the three major console buying markets, but it fully got Europe, America, and Japan at the same time.

And I think, too, like now Japan just doesn't buy, like the PS4 is number one in Japan, but I mean, you're not getting a lot for being number one. Just 10 times as many as Xbox 1. Yeah, so it's sold 50. And I think it's hard to do a retrospective for a thing where we still feel it so much today, where, like, the PS4 is the leading console and a lot of our major games now, like, you know, your God of War or you're even uncharted or such, you know, in some capacity started on the PS2. So I think a lot of what you're, or even like Western RPGs as we know them today. So I think if you're doing those retrospectives, you're still talking about, like, it's a lot of the stuff we're still playing.

I joined the Games Press midway through the PS2's lifecycle. And for the first like three or four years that I was reviewing games, unless I actively sought out, you know, like the GameCube version or Xbox version or deliberately played a handheld game, I was reviewing a PS2 game. It was just like that was what every one was publishing on. That's where all the games were. There were so many PlayStation 2 games. So I want to get into the whole PlayStation 2 thing. But before I start, I do want to ask everybody what their experience is and their personal history is with the PlayStation 2. like, when did you get it?

What was your, did you enjoy it? What were your memories of that system? Jeremy, I know this was like, like you said, you were entering the Games Press in the middle of this, like, very long life cycle of the system. Yeah, as soon as pre-orders went up in, like, Babbage's, I went to the store and paid in advance for my PS2. So that was like six months in advance. And at the time, people really didn't do pre-sells that much.

So it was kind of like a foreign concept. but, you know, when the game, the system actually launched, everyone wanted one. Oh, yeah. I was, like, way ahead of the curve and just walked in. And, yeah, I woke up, like, one morning at 5 a.m. and went out to the mall, and we stood in line, and the guys who worked Babbage's, like, came along, and it gave everyone a donut. Oh, wow.

Went home with my PS2 and a copy of Ridge Racer 5, and the copy of Ridge Racer 5 didn't work. And every time I played it, it would take longer to load a level. Was that the disc or the system? It was the disc. Okay, thank God. After, like, I tried to load, you know, the third track and it took five minutes, I was like, I don't think this is right. I think something's wrong here. So I went back and took it back and, you know, whatever.

That's just kind of like my launch day memory. My launch day memory is actually that I used the PS2 to review Mega Man Legends 2 for PS1 on the PS2 because it had the upscaling and the fast loading. That's how I played that game. The texture smoothing and the fast loading. I reviewed the game for Gaming Intelligence Agency. That came out the same day, right? It did. Amador's mask.

So I was the weirdo who was playing, you know, like I bought a PS2 so I could play a PS1 game. But, you know, of course, I played tons and tons of PS2 or PS2. I played 120 hours of Dragon Quest 7 on a PS2. The wrong way. And it still didn't look good. No, even with the texture. Made everything all wet and smeary. Some of the, some PS1 games really did benefit from.

texture up smoothing. Klonoa. Like, I always found on PS1, Klonoa sprites are indecifurable. Like, what the hell are these things supposed to be? But when you played on PS2 with the smoothing, you're like, oh, it's a little guy, and here's a little dude, and like, everything makes sense.

It's great. So that was one of the sort of, I think, side benefits of the PS2 that people don't really talk about that much, is that it really did improve PS1 games a lot. But you didn't really need the backward compatibility after a couple of months because the PS2 library, like hit the ground running, and, you know, within a year, it was amazing. You had, you know, a year later, you had Metal Gear Solid 2 and Grand Theft Auto 3 and Final Fantasy 10.

It was like... Fall of 2001 was amazing. Crazy. First, we had 9-11 and then amazing games to make them seem even better. So, in 2000, I had already become the real, like, contrarian root for the underdog type game buyer by that point. And it also me and my little brother were very spoiled. And so we had the N64, we got a Dreamcast on launch day. And whenever we saw the previews for PlayStation 2 games, you're just like,

we very much listened to what they were saying on the, on forums as well, which is these aren't good games. These are not worth it. I'm going to keep playing the great games that are going to be on the N64. They call this anti-aliasing? In the Dreamcast, yeah, it was like, this Fantavision looks like bullshit. I'm going to keep playing fantasy series. star online or

Majoris Mask or I'm going to be waiting for Paper Mario to come out in a year. I got an image of like Henry Gilbert walking into like a Babbage's with a Fathism is bullshit t-shirt on picking up a treat cast. Flipping cases off the wall. Fuck this and this. Also I wasn't ready for

the idea of pre-ordering a console either and it was just hard to you couldn't just buy it off of the shelf which is what we did with the last two consoles I got it in 64 or in a dream cast. And so when we couldn't just do that,

it became even farther away for me and less interesting. And in 2001, I still didn't have it. I would play my friends. And, I mean, I got to see Metal Gear because they were playing and I would play it at a friend's place. But I was happy with getting a GameCube on launch day and then Halo a month later because I had a job then and all my friends were playing Halo who used to play GoldenEye with me.

And it wasn't until, I think, 2002 when it was readily available and priced down and some of the games I'd missed out on and become greatest hits that I finally bought, or me or my brother bought a PS2 and started playing it more regularly. And I definitely missed it because it was also the RPG machine, and I was either, to fulfill my RPG needs, I was either playing the lesser games like Tales of Symphonia that came to GameCube. That's a really good game. It's the best Tales of Game. I said it, that's right. Or I was just playing Game Boy and Game Boy Advanced RPGs, which, you know, scratched an inch for sure. Yeah. Matthew, how about you, your PS2 experience?

I got one really late. I actually, I didn't get a PS1 until the PS2 came out. That's how my family were, I think we thought we were poorer than we were because they thought that's how you saved money. Like, oh, well, the old one just had a new upgrade and it's cheaper, so we'll get that. Like, the new one's not that much more. Did you get like the tiny PS1? Yes. The PS0 and E.

I love it. Yeah. It's, and then I got a PS2. I believe the first game I had for myself, because we had a PS2 for the living room, which we got in probably like 02 or 03. And then I got my own when Return of the King came out. So what year was that? 2003. Three?

Okay. So that's the first game that I remember like, we went to the store, we bought it and they were like, this is yours. Your brother can't touch this. And I put it. And then we put it. it in in my room. And that's the first game I remember sitting down and being like, wow, I'm finally in the next generation, even though I'd

been playing like, you know, your Boudicay's and things like that before then. It was the Return of the King game? Yes. Okay, that might be 04 then, or unless it launched with the movie. The movie was 0.3, like, December it could have been 04. I think that one did launch with the movie. I think they weren't able to with the first two. Okay. Yeah. By the third one, EA

knew they're like, we got to get this out when the movie comes out. And then from then on, like, even after I got my GameCube and starts, the PS2 was like, it's, like, you're saying it's just, it's just a part of your house. It's just like having a TV or having a cable box or having a DVD player. Like, it's just a thing that everyone had installed in their homes. Oh, yeah, for sure. It was very ubiquitous. As for me, I reserved one. And I feel like this was the first era in which the reservation beast came into life, came into being and where

that was like the focus of the GameStop Empire. Like, we need to get this money. If people don't pick up things, we earn interest on the money they'll never see again. Like, it's all a big scam, folks. I remember, I couldn't, my local haunt was software, et cetera, where I later worked, and it's still there to this day, and they never changed the carpet from 1987. It's disgusting. But my local haunt could not reserve me one because they were all taken up, and I believe I got one of the last slots at Funkoland, which was in the strip mall. And I, this was like June. So it was months and months before the console came out in October. And I used all of my money I got from graduating high school earlier that summer to, uh, to, to,

pick it up in October, and I remember just, we'll get to this later in this podcast, but there was a shortage on these things on par with the Wii shortage. Like, people don't remember. You kids don't remember. Like, sometimes you couldn't get a console for a year after it came out, or 18 months, or sometimes even two years, depending on where you lived.

And I was like, oh, my God, I could sell this for like $800 on eBay, but then I wouldn't have a PS2 and I couldn't gloat to my friends. So I got it. It's worth so much more. It really is. It's a better kind of currency. But, yeah, so I got that. And oddly enough SSX. I could not see myself

before that buying a snowboarding game, but it kind of really is the best PS2 launch game. But I reserved it because A, I was like way into PlayStation. B, I was super a hardcore weave, even more than today, believe it or not.

Oh, God. And I was like, all the best games are made in Japan by Japanese people and that's going to be true for the PlayStation 2. And I think it kind of was. So I had to be on board with Sony and PlayStation 2 and all the brands that were coming like Metal Gear and not Dragon Quest but Final Fantasy and everything I liked on the PlayStation

was going to be on the PlayStation 2 and that's why I was on board from the very beginning and I just remember I didn't, I sat out a semester in college because I didn't know what I wanted to do so I basically just worked at a grocery store and then would play PlayStation 2

and video games for the other part of my life I was not going to school until the following winter so it was a lot of video games and no friends and no girlfriend for me that fall yes so very fond memories I guess I'm going to be the I'm trying to

I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to be I'm I'm you're going to be

I'm I'm So I want to get into the whole pre-launch era of the PlayStation 2 to see why it was so big. The landscape it was dropped into, we can talk about what happened with the previous generation. I'm sure you guys have a lot to say about this. So here's a brief overview of the previous generation in terms of the different companies and what they were doing.

So Sega, they failed to regain their Genesis foothold with the Saturn, and there are lots of problems with that system. Have we ever done a Saturn episode in this new run? I don't think we have. Not in the new run. Yeah, it's been a good decade. Don't forget my number when that time. Oh, that's right, yeah.

I only got one later because... 8675309. That's Jenny's number, guys. But it only sold, so talking about numbers here, again, PlayStation 2, $150 million. Let's talk about other systems, what they sold. Saturn, $9 million. So we're seeing the difference in scope between the impact these systems had. That may as well be zero in the console game.

Nine million may as well be zero. Is that less than Wii U? Yes. I think we used like 13, 12, yeah, something like that. But yeah, like, can we talk for like a minute about like the Saturn, it never even had like a dream cast moment in the sun? It was sort of D-O-A because of the surprise launch, no Sonic. I mean, they missed anything else.

Games were broke where they launched, too. Just the hardware itself was turned into this impossible hybrid that developers had trouble working with because Sega really expected to just, you know, the evolution of games to continue the way it went, you know, with 2D. Which is really weird because they're the ones who created the Model 1 hardware. Like, they did 3D in the arcades. But then on the home front, they were like, we're going to keep making cool sprites. and then the PlayStation was announced, and they, oh, my goodness, we need polygons. So they slapped together two processors and said, we can probably make some polygons with this.

Well, that's so weird to me that they got surprised by that because the Virtua Series was killing it for that with Arcades. I don't really follow. My theory, it could be wrong, but it's like, do you think they didn't want to cut into their arcade business? And they're like, no, you still go to the arcade for the superior experience. But the home experience will be, as it was in the past, a lesser. That didn't make any sense to me because, I mean, they're. their previous pipeline was to take great arcade games and turn them into great console games. Yeah, I guess the early years of the dinosaurs were built around.

Yeah, now that I actually have voiced it out loud and know more about Sega's history, I really find myself questioning that line of historic, like, explanation of why the Saturn was the way it was. I would believe that multiple departments weren't talking to each other or were talking to each other and out of spite made it worse. Like, that's a feeling I get a lot of this. That happened with Dreamcast where you had, you know, the Durall versus the black belt or Katana. And that was like one American, one Japanese developed system. And, of course, Japan said, let's go with the Japanese. Maybe it was just like an upfront pricing thing where they were like, well, it costs this much money to make 3D stuff.

We might as well put that in a thing that people pour quarters into, whereas putting it at home where it costs $45. I mean, the Hitachi chip they used could do 3D just not well. And so they bolted two of them together and said, this is not a sadden episode. No, we'll get to it. But basically, like, it was this hodgepodge hardware that was complicated to program for and still very deficient technically compared to Playstation on the 3D front. And the U.S. library was just terrible.

Like, in Japan, it's pretty good. Sega of America did not localize much good stuff from Japan. They had a bug. They didn't need it. By the time, yeah. Clockwork night. I love that. It launched at 400, PlayStation launched at 300, and by the time Sega was, like, now it's 200, and here's three games, and, you know, everything is cheap.

It was just too late. Like, they were just trying to make as much as they can before they inevitably knew it would die. But that's the Saturn. Sega would rebound a bit with the Dreamcast. We'll talk about that because, like, the PlayStation 2 basically just assassinated the Dreamcast. He just, like, appeared behind it with, like, a piano wire and just dragged it away. So Nintendo, in the past generation, they had a respectable base, but they pretty much lost their steam after the two most impressive games of all time on that platform. And for a lot of people in the 90s were, Mario 64 and Zelda 64, Ocarina of Time, those were hugely important games for polygonal games and very impressive and sort of like must-play games.

But after that, they didn't have really much to offer. I mean, there were your odd Star Foxes, there was Majors Mask, but it was it was, it was, it was. It was really just, like, rare keeping the system aloft every three or every, like, six months with a game. But they had stuff worth playing, but there was not a lot of support there. And that's basically what happened to the N64. And it was a definite image thing. Like, I remember being a tiny child as I was at this time.

I definitely did. I had no idea about the numbers or the bits or whatever, but I definitely knew this one looks like VHS and this one looks like DVD. This one's cooler. So N64 was like the washed out, like, third generation VHS tape. Yeah, I was like, you know, there were these little gray, and they were gray and weird, and the N64 wasn't very cool looking, but the PS2 was this sleek hip thing that I wanted to play. Also, the N64 in that generation, it proved like how much Nintendo counted on third party more than ever. Not that the Genesis sort of did that, but once gamers could realize they weren't going to see a real Castlevania on the N64 or that Metal Gear Solid had left, that all these Capcom games were appearing.

On all these other systems, it's when you realize, like, you had to get a PlayStation just to play those games. You didn't have to love Sony more than Nintendo, but you just knew that's where the games had to win. It did break my heart as a kid who grew up loving Nintendo, like, oh, I guess I don't get an N-64. I guess I get the PlayStation, and that really hurts. I had room enough. My parents had money enough for both. We all know about Henry's past. The Gilbert Fortune.

Henry Rockefeller over here. So just going over to the numbers again, so sad are nine million. million, N64, 33 million. So pretty good, but in the scope of things, it's surprising just how small that is compared to the PlayStation 2. Just like, I thought there'd be more out in the wild. So in terms of what Sony did beforehand, in the generation before, the PlayStation just dominated the market with 102 million units sold.

It was huge. It was the cool thing. It was like, what basically they were, they were sort of just like, that's what you graduated to. Like, you play games as a kid. now you're a cool teenager and you play with the PlayStation and it's the cool thing for cool teens. You're feeling things for

sexy boobs and so we've got all the triangle boobs you could want right here. Every game full of triangle boobs. And I shouldn't even have to say this, but everything else that wasn't those three systems were just like, who gives the crap. I mean, there are reasons to care about these things, but in terms of sales and competition

the 3DO, CDI, Jaguar are just all obliterated. I don't have numbers on those, and they're all out there. What's the reason to care about CDI? What's the reason to care about CDI? Shelly Duval. I want to keep her I mean she's having problems lately So no way that's

Oh that is Shelly Deval Never mind So I don't even bring us down here But yes So that's what was happening In the generation before And it drastically informed Why the PlayStation 2

Would be so successful Because a lot I mean most of the PlayStation 1 Owners would be like Yeah I'm getting a PlayStation 2 And then even more people did that You know that was an impressive naming thing too Of just like you

You had been raised to think Well they'll call this a different thing it's not a direct graduation. Like the megastation. Yeah. Yeah, it'd be like the, yeah, you would think on this, Nintendo becomes a Super Nintendo. A Genesis for some reason becomes a Saturn.

And you would, or it's more, even an Atari, just like double the number. But this is a PlayStation and a PlayStation 2. Only a 2. But man, that, that logo still looks so good, you know, how the S and the two are very similar, you know? I really like how that looks. But wouldn't it be better in Spider-Man? I hate that gaudy-y-ass Spider-Man I mean, just, we know

you own Spider-Man for a decade, it's fine. We don't need to put that on our consoles. So it was first unveiled at the Tokyo Game Show on September 20th, 1999. Not everyone was online back then to see the news or hear it reported. It would eventually make its way into magazines, you know, before the holidays.

But I honestly feel that if you were on the fence about the Dreamcast, this announcement probably was, I mean, for me, that's what it did to me. It's just like, well, I'll wait a year, and then I'll get a DVD player with the thing I want. Sony knew they were killing the Dreamcast with that, as is their job in capitalism is to win and kill the competition. Drink the blood of your enemies.

They made, they also, wasn't Sony the ones that put out the GD ROM burner, the one that burned the proprietary disc for the. Oh, my God. They made a piracy machine for the Dreamcast. And we learned you can just burn CDs and put them in the Dreamcast. And about two days later, Sega, announced that, yeah, we're bowing out. It's been 18 months, we're out. I don't think it was a correlation there, but it was definitely, like, very symbolic.

Yeah, Sony had just finished digging the grave. Now you can burn your own Dreamcast games. Why buy them? Yes. So, yeah, September 20, 1999, that is a couple weeks after the Dreamcast American launch. So I was one of those people. Like, I don't really like Sega because I'm a Nintendo kid, but, man, these games look cool. And Sonic Adventure looks so cool.

Maybe I'll get one of these, but it's just like, no, I'll save my money. All the dudes, Babbage's loved Lizard, man, so much. I was like, I need to get this. What's Lizard Man? Lizard Man, Lizard Man, and Lizard Man. Now, PS2 wishes it had something as good as Soul Calibur. God damn. That's true.

So good. Your name tech and tagged tournament doesn't do the trick? Certainly not. There's no power stone on the PS2. God, the Dreamcast was so much better. Now I'm getting heated and angry again. Yeah. The best version.

Just that the rumor of a PS2 killed the Dreamcast before it even started. Yeah. I would tell, I definitely had that experience of telling a friend who even was at my place, at my parents' place, and we were playing Soul Calibur all day. And I'd say, yeah, pretty great, right? I bet you should get one of these two. And he's like, I'm waiting on PS2. Shake my fist, like, no, you don't understand.

I was one of those people. I was content to play my aging-looking PlayStation 1 games until PS2 came out. There's no VMU on there. I don't need a thing beeping at me all the time, all right? Pocket Station just didn't cut it. I've got an alarm clock. I'm I'm

a Yeah I'm I'm I'm I'm Thank you. So let's talk about the hardware, which is very important and very impressive specs for the time.

So we have the famed 300 megahertz, a motion engine. My favorite name for a CPU of all time. Can we think of a better one? The emotion engine. It's going to make you feel shit. Blast processing. Blast processing. It was not a processor.

Yeah. That was a lie. That was Yuji Naka. That was Uji Naka's fingers moving. That was basically what blast processing was. But like what... something like an amazing What are other CPU?

I know they're like I know the cell chip cell chip but what a what a bomb bat I mean it was made to say like we're going to make graphics so good you're going to cry and weep and render garments and curse the

curse at the skies but yes the emotion engine and I think they shut it off initially by saying we're going to take the Final Fantasy 8 Waltz scene and make that in real time and that was very impressive for the time

I remember seeing that video a lot or maybe just watching it a lot of downloading it. Many square soft lies related to PlayStation. It was the Agnes' prophecy of its day. Yeah. Yeah, like the PS3 one where they just did the train sequence again from MFF7. And that just tricked people to think, like, well, we're definitely getting a remake, and you're still not

getting one. Now they're just graduated to actually lying. Just like, yeah, it's coming. This episode won't go live for months, but I bet we won't see a frame of that by that time either. So other specs, 32 megs of system RAM, four megs of video RAM, for the first time in a console, I believe, although I could possibly be wrong, Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1. I don't think there were surround sound, at least 5.1 surround sound systems before the PS2. I don't believe so.

Yeah, but that was, I mean, I had a good setup then, and man, that was impressive for a game system. Eight megabyte memory cards, so a huge upgrade from the PS1's, 128 kilobite cards. And the PS2 ones, I mean, I did fill mine, but they were relatively hard to fill. Like, it was not like, I played one game of Monster Hunter and now I need to buy a new memory card. Sorry, Monster Rancher. Yeah. I still have two of mine from the day. And they still work fine and they still have some of my, they still have over 200 hours of Kingdom Hearts 1 on them.

I think I only bought one card. I did too, yeah. That I used, like, as a reviewer and an avid PS2 enthusiast and it never filled up. The last time I used my PlayStation 2. Truly a magic gate. It was a very magic gate. The last time I used my PlayStation 2 was probably a few years ago, but my PS2 memory card still worked. My PS1 memory card still worked in that slot.

And I have a lunar sticker on my PlayStation 1 memory card from PSM magazine. My PSM lid has a PSM, like their pirate smiley-faced guy. The greatest, they really knew what they were doing to sell themselves as the top PlayStation magazine in the U.S. And then I worked at the company that owned that when they bought, they were able to get the official license after Zip, let it go. Let it go. Yeah, right? They released it into the wild.

When they were shot in the head and their corpse let go. But they all thought it was internally, like some of the bosses were like, we got all the official magazines now when the rest of us were like, you deleted the character of PSM. every cover has to be a screenshot instead of, you know, hiring Adam Hughes to draw a girl in a bikini. Right.

Yeah, I mean, Chris Slate is behind the Nintendo Iron Curtain now and he's got his own podcast, but I really would like to talk about PSM and ultra game players with him at some point. I floated the idea past him, so the offers out there, Chris. But yeah, PSM was great.

I feel like there's a lack of stickers in society these days, and I really miss stickers. But so in terms of hardware, let's talk about one of the more important things and it's been mentioned before, but backwards compatibility, The PS2 is compatible with like 99.9% of PS1 games and most hardware that work with the PS1.

I think there are a few exceptions. I'm not sure if the gun con worked. Maybe you needed to get the new gun con, but most things worked. I remember not using my gun con on the PS2. Yeah, I don't think it did work. I think there was some difference that made you need to buy a gun con too. But there was not really this idea of backwards compatibility. At this time, for systems outside of the, the 80s had some degree of that.

But in the 90s, it was not really a thing. I think Super Nintendo got us into the idea, like, yeah, you just buy a new console. It took a lot of people a while to get over that. And people considered that a ripoff at the time. Like, well, I got to buy a new thing. But at this point in time, this was a huge, not just a novelty, but a huge selling point for the system. I grew up with no expectation of backwards compatibility. I definitely thought it impressed me when a Game Boy Color came.

I was like, oh, it still plays Game Boy's. Yeah. But Game Boy is in the title, so you, that's believable. It was not, that's why I really appreciate that Sony made backwards compatibility just the expectation more so than the exception. They gave us the expectation only to just rip it away from us in the PlayStation 3 era. Man, ah, that makes you so bad. They ruined everything with that machine.

They tried for a second, a hot second where you could play PS2s on your console. that we'll break in two months. Well, on the PS3, it's like, we'll make $1 more per system if we don't put in backwards compatibility, and by gum, we're going to do it. I mean, it's the same reason you can't, you have to download an app to play Blu-rays on your Xbox because if it came with it in the box,

then they'd have to license it for each system when they make it, instead of licensing it for every app, it gets downloaded. And that's why you had to buy a remote on the Xbox original to, in fact, just unlock the DVD playing capabilities because it's like, we don't want to pay for the, We pay for the license, but we want you to pay for it for us per system. But, yeah, this is a huge thing because it was a great selling point to the 100 million people who bought a PS1, because this was just like, yes, you can just replace your PS1 but still access all of your games,

not just that, but access your progress in those games. So it was like you would not need to have another system hogging your entertainment center. You could just rip it out of the wall and throw it in the garbage because it was just trashed by then. Or give it to your little brother or sister. They don't deserve it. Yeah, and it allowed for some. interesting continuity. Not a lot of developers did things with it, but, you know, Swigod and three, you could carry forward your save progress from Swigid in one and two. So you were able to

bring in PS1 game data into a PS2 game. And it really did feel like, oh, there is like a lineage here. I feel like there is this consistency, this continuity that really feels like they're looking out for me. Yeah, it was very consumer friendly. And you can even do things like you could actually back up PS1 saves on a PS2 memory card. You couldn't access them. in-game from that card, but it was a way to, you know, just keep things safe. And I did that in the past, too.

Or to offload, you know, if you're 15 meager slots on your PS1 card filled up. That's more the thing, yeah. It was fun to just test out old games you loved on the PlayStation and see how different they looked or not with the screen smoothing. I'm just like, well, what does Middle Gear solid look like now? Or what does Final Fantasy 8? Yeah, what happens when I turn on fast disc loading?

Oh my goodness. Final Fantasy 8 does not respond well to that. What's the, like Final Fantasy 5 is one of the games that has problems with the PS2, right? Yeah, I believe so. Like Namco Museum Encore, there's like a dozen games. A weird selection, like completely random that don't work well. I'm sure it had something to do with the way they were like writing to the metal or something. Could be, yeah. But yeah, the backward compatibility features mostly improved things.

Like having fast disc loading was great for games with long load times, but games that relied on asynchronous loading for content for data would get really messed up so like Final Fantasy games they would have the FMV spooling while you could control your character

your polygon characters over top and that did not play well with the fast disclosing but you know you kind of had to turn it on and off per game and for the most part it was it was a huge boost like I said with Kloa's sprites which are just an indecipherable blur on PS1 all of a sudden they became like

really nice and they looked as good as the rest of the game on PS2. And I think that backwards compatibility but compatibility helped the market as well in that games would, PlayStation games would stay in print longer because they knew

they could sell them to people who owned a PS2 as a greatest hits one. So when you would think, I remember when I worked at a Blockbuster video in like 2005, they still had brand new like greatest hits copies of Symphony of the Night or

Final Fantasy anthology on the shelves, and it was because you could count on it playing on your PlayStation, too, so you can still keep selling. Or even some, like, games that took a while to localize, you know, like, maybe, like, Dragon Ball, what is it, Ultimate Battle, 22 is that? Because, like, Dragon Balls League had really taken off when it wasn't as popular when it came out on the PS1 in Japan. Yeah, and also Dragon Quest 7, which I mentioned previously, that was the November 01 release on the PlayStation 1. That was the worst time they could have put it. that's the one play I didn't beat that game until it came out on 3DS

because when I played that PlayStation 1 it literally made me ill like I got dizzy playing You need to have some drama mean before you play that game But yeah Like spinning the world around

Around your character Yeah It just made me dizzy Another reason why this was such a great feature is that I think like it was Like as Matthew said It was hinting at

Like I think O2 Maybe even O3 Those were still pretty good years For the PS1 A lot of lower budget titles were coming out because it's like, oh, people are still buying these games, like Incredible Crisis was just a weird game that never would have come

out. Team Buddies? Didn't that take a while? I don't know what that is. Team Buddies was, does no one know what team buddies? Team Buddies is one of the rarest PS1 games now. It's very difficult to find, but I think I had it or I just rented it many times. Was that one of those games that came out at the very end? It was just like a generic title. It was like

$10 and you'd see it sitting on the counter. I think so. I think that's how I got a hold of it because I... Or game Top Shop or whatever. Star Shop. But it's a great almost Valkyria Chronicles-esque weird like turn-based action military game

but you play as these little guys who look like they look kind of like pills they're little weird or do you ever play Hogs of War I have not Oh wait I'm thinking of the gameplay of Hogs of War Team Buddies is more frantic but is still based around that kind of turn-based thing

They're both very ridiculous games that no one else has played because they were put out in such small quantities I think after the PS2 came out We'll do it micro about Team Buddies because now I'm very I'm very interested Little oval weird guys

That is bizarre But yeah It's almost pickmanish It kind of looks like pickman But yeah There were still games coming out After the PlayStation 2 But as somebody

I was born in 82 So I was becoming I was an adult when the PlayStation 2 came out And that meant I had a job And money I didn't have as a teenager So I was just going back Through the PS1 library

And buying old games Like oh I never played this Because I didn't have the money for it Or oh this is really cheap now So I was just rediscovering PS1 games via the PS2 Because it was the thing I played PS1 games

on. Yeah, me too. So backwards compatibility is one thing. And I believe we talked a bit about this on the GameCube episode, but I'll bring it up again because it's very, very important. This system played DVDs, and that is why it is the best-selling game system all the whole time. Not the games, not backwards compatibility.

The fact that it played DVDs in the year 2000 for the price of a mid-range DVD player. And I looked up prices because I bought a DVD player the summer before the PlayStation 2 came out. It was a refurbished one from like TriStar or Gold Star or whatever, some horrible brand. I got it for $289. Like a third rate DVD player in 2000 that was refurbished was almost 300. Just to watch movies? Just turn on Netflix. There's a billion of them on there.

I didn't have a Netflix streaming account then. Probably because it wasn't invented. But yes, I looked up prices of DVD players just to be sure in the year 2000 in the fall. They were around $350 for like my pioneer off the shelf. like just, that's all it does. Like, they were, they were an expensive item. And they were going down, they were like $700, $800 when they launched in like $97,

but it was still a very pricey item. But to have a new game system that not only played all the new games, all the old games, but also played DVDs, I don't think there was a more convincing sales pitch at any point in time for a game system. It was just unbelievable. And it was the only one that did it.

That is like, if only an Xbox one had Netflix on it and none of the other ones did, even that is totally similar because you could still, like, a DVD was so hard to get. I remember feeling like the king of the castle when I finally got my DVD player in, like, late 2001. And I put in that Fight Club DVD as I was forced to do as a white young man. It made me feel ways about stuff. No, but I was just seeing DVD menus. I was like, oh, my God, this menu, it's interactive.

Remember the X-Men one menus? Oh, yeah. You fly through the danger room or on Wolverine's motorcycle. Oh, those are so overwrought. I kind of want, that needs to be like a YouTube essay or something on the overwrought DVD menus

of the early 2000. But yeah, DVDs, if you don't remember, like, it was, everyone was buying DVDs. You're laughing, Jeremy, but like, the DVD section in any store or even Blu-ray is just like a creaky bookcase with like spiders all over it. That's just pushing them out.

In case you don't remember, that's the part that kills me. But some people, I mean, I mean, it's conceivable that you could have been too young to be, consumer in the era of, like, DVD craziness. I remember I was reviewing anime DVDs at the time. That was my first writing job and just going into Best Buy almost every day.

Just like the ocean of DVDs in front of you. Everything was being released. Just like stacks and stacks of DVDs, a bargain bins full of DVDs. It was an insane time for physical media. The last real, it was like a peak almost for physical media. Yeah, I was, I was working full time, and I was single, so I would just order tons and tons of DVDs. like every week I would get DVDs from mail order, I think DVDNow.com or something. Like every Tuesday, I'd go to my mailbox and have like three or four DVDs that'd come in.

I'd be like, yeah. We buy DVDs stacked up so fast. You'd get them of things that you heard were good. You'd purchase the thing you'd never seen before. Well, yeah, for me, when I was buying the most DVDs and really getting into it after in 2002, after I finally got my own player, it was because it was. It was also because the Internet had really come up around the same time. And so I was reading all these blogs of like, this movie is finally coming out on DVD.

I only got to saw it 20 years ago on Super 8, but now it's finally coming out on DVD. I'm like, well, then Ain't it Cool News says I got to buy this. I'm buying this DVD. And that was the magic of it then. It didn't feel the same when there were tons of rare movies that came out on VHS, but they never made a dent in my memory that it wasn't a thing of like it's finally come to VHS

like finally released this. It made everybody into somebody who would just build a library of content like my friends and their parents weren't necessarily collecting VHS tapes outside of a few like Disney movies or whatever but I think everybody became a DVD collector because it was just

so easy. Special features and thing like you really broadened your mind of like what you like these things that of course people took film seriously and stuff before that but me growing up as a film nerd in the age of DVD it really helped me see the shape of like what it is to make a thing because I was just devouring commentaries and special features and behind I think I'm legally obligated to mention the criterion collection of every podcast I'm on so like that also started coming out and showed me these movies that yeah like would never

come out of VHS like that's you know they like some weird Italian movie would like that's when it became cheap enough to make media like that and charge me more for it that's when I could see those weird movies. Yeah, I mean, ultimately, the lie of the DVD age is like, you'll watch this again. And, like, how many of those did you ever watch again? And I think I've liquidated most of my DVD empire. But now it's just like, I have Hulu, I have Netflix, I have Amazon Prime, I have YouTube Red, I have Funimation, I have Crunchyroll.

I have 30,000 lifetimes worth of content, and I can't watch any of it. So, like, it's such a different time to be alive in the post-d-d-D-D era. It feels wrong to put a disc in a machine and watch something now. I've been doing that lately. We've been talking about the Futurama on the show Talking Futurama and, like, putting a TV show on a DVD where I'm like, there's only three episodes in this disc. I feel weird. Yeah, those old-ass menus. But, yeah, so the last thing we'll talk about before the break is one thing I think people tend to forget about with the PS2 is the massive full-scale hardware issues with the early PS2s that I think affected everybody I knew.

And that was the famous, so it was sort of maybe even grander, but on the scale of the Xbox. 360 red ring issue. It was the disc read error issue in which it would stop reading discs. Most of the time, it would stop reading the blue bottom discs that were not the DVD ROMs. They were the CD ROMs that certain games like Eco came on, things like that. But my PlayStation definitely experienced this problem. And I had to buy a new one in 2002. Mine lasted two years before it was inoperable because of this problem. Did anyone else like, all my friends had this issue? And it was widely reported on websites. It was a serious issue. I didn't have that problem, but my, you know, it had the disc tray that inserted, like, came in it out.

Mine got jammed for no reason while Zeno Saga episode one was stuck inside. What's the only game you need? What is this hell that I've been trapped in? So I had to go, and I was out of work at the time, so I had to go and spend 75 precious dollars to have them make that thing working with him. But I was like, I, this can't be the only game I can play. You should have new game plused it, Jeremy. No, I didn't have that error. None of my friends did either.

I got red-ringed as well, but I think it was that nobody I knew bought a PlayStation 2 that early, so maybe we just got lucky with later machines. I think they're lucky it didn't get as much bad press as the Red Ring of Death got. It's true. And I think that maybe shows you how much positive emotion there was towards the PlayStation, that there wasn't some sort of consumer revolt or whatever. But I also think that the Red Ring thing was, so here's what happened with the PS2. There was a class action lawsuit, of course.

And it wasn't until 2006 that Sony had a, you know, we will repair your crap program. So they were very slow to act. And I think that's because compared to the Red Ring problem, social media was a major thing in everyone's life when the Red Ring thing happened. So people could be very vocal about it. So Microsoft, I got the Red Ring. You got that Red Ring, Henry. Oh, yeah. Are we all red ring?

I didn't get the red ring. And I used my Xbox 360 as my main console. Damn. Well, I got it, but it was just like Microsoft will send you the coffin immediately. You send it back to them, and then they'll send your system in like a month. It was like very super well done in terms of making consumers happy. And it cost them like tens or perhaps even like $100 million to do all of this work. But Sony...

I think even close to a billion. Yeah, a lot of money. I could be underestimating it, but man, they just bled money everywhere. I worked at the UPS store in 2010. And even then, it was still like, at least once a week, we'd have, we'd be shipping one of those out. And my boss was like, you should have been here a couple years ago. It was like several times a day. We were, because it was in Philadelphia, so it was also a very populated area.

Oh, yeah. Mine was in 2008, but yeah. I remember the year the Halo 3 came out that they said, like, we would have had a real profit this quarter, but all the offset of the red rain. I can't finish the fight. Dear God, yes. But yeah, so they eventually got rid, or sorry, not got rid, but they eventually addressed that problem. But it took them very long to act. And I never.

Lawsuit. Yeah. But I never took advantage of that because it's like I don't have my receipt from 2000, the year 2000, and I got rid of that console. That fat, the one I replaced it with was fine, and I sold it to my friends when I bought the very adorable PS2 Slim. Yeah. But, um, yeah. That's the one I bought. I never, so my brother bought a PS2, and we would play on his friend, uh, whenever we got it in 2002 or three, but then when I moved cross country, 2006, I, uh, I had had a, I had a 360, but I also,

wanted to finally play the PS2 games that I had been missing out on, so I got a when it was like 130, I think it was, down to, and it's such a cute little machine. It's so adorable. Nothing will be smaller. Though it didn't have the turnable PS2 for when you stand it up or not

PlayStation logo. I love that logo. But then they say you're not supposed to do that. It's true. I totally forgot about, because I mean, I worked in retail at this time. I forgot about the completely pointless vertical stand for like $20. If you wanted, but you could at least turn that PlayStation logo. So it was the right I would sit there and just fiddle with that.

Like, if I'm sitting near my TV for some reason, I would just flip it back and forth. So we're going to take a break, and you can fiddle with your own PS2 while you listen to this great song. Pluto TV is the leading free streaming television service. Watch more than 100 TV channels and thousands of movies on demand all completely free. Pluto TV never asks for a credit card.

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each with unlimited gigs for just $100. a month. Plus makes it easy to switch. Switching makes it easy to save. So we're back, and I want to talk about the launch of the PlayStation 2 in both Japan and the United States. So it launched in March of 2000. Wow, very early in Japan at $39,800,000, probably around $400 back then, I'm guessing, give or take. Close to it. And 2000's money, so probably like $500 something today, I guess. I mean, usually the rule of thumb is $100,000.

Yen to a dollar. Yeah. So, yeah, 400. Let's just say 400. And I asked on Twitter because I guess it was really hard to find the launch lineup, surprisingly, for this, but someone linked me to Japanese Wikipedia and they had all the information. A lot of weird games. Ten games at launch, the one standout is Ridge Racer 5 in Japan, but there was like a rhythm

games and like just a kind of like. They're going to be a Mahjong game, right? Later that month, I think there was a Mahjong game. But, yeah, it was not, it was a very weak launch in Japan, and I really honestly think it wasn't ready. Patchy slot. Patchy slot. Yeah, and maybe it was like, well, Sega's got their thing. We need to destroy them.

So, let's just release this. The sooner or the better. The only thing I'd add to the Japanese launch is that hearing stories about it gave me a inflated idea of what I'd get to do with the Games Press. Because on old EGM podcasts, I got to hear, I forget who exactly was, but editors who were on there were just like, I remember the PlayStation 2 launch. I flew over to Japan and stood in line. I think that was James Milky and Sam Kennedy. That sounds like that.

Yeah, that sounds like that. It was someone. Maybe John Ricardy. I don't know. But yeah, there were definitely some people who flew to Japan to get a PS2 at launch. I mean, if that's how you could count on getting a PS2 six months before America got it, just for content reasons, that's worth the expense. Or at least you would think it would be, I don't think any executive would pay for that now.

Yeah, it was not region locked as well. Right? Was the Japanese one? It was? It was. Yeah. I mean, I feel like they, I mean, you. Of the PS3 I'm thinking of, sorry.

You pretty much would have to fly to Japan to get one on launch date. Their online retailing was not as advanced, especially online importing. No, NCS was around. They, they had it. But when they just sit on the box for a month and then send it to you? No. Okay. But it would still be.

But it would still be like. Put a markup on it, but they weren't that bad. But it would still be, I don't know, a week or two or whatever before you got it, right? Something like that. Sometimes. Yeah. But, yeah. I mean, that was just what they had to do.

So let's talk about the U.S., the best country on the earth. So at launch, I'm being, I'm being sarcastic, I don't know. Launched on October 25th, 2000, sorry, 26, 2000, the same day Major's mask launched. So, man, Sony was just taking them all out and Mega Man Legends do. Not a good, get out of the way, guys. Get out of the way. It's a big day for games, but you're not part of it. So, yes, it launched at $300 retail.

And the launch was, frankly, huge. 30 games. And I picked out some highlights. Maybe you guys have your own. So time splitters, the first one, not great, but it scratched that FPS golden eye-style itch before Halo came around and showed people, really. This is how you do it. SSX, I mentioned before. I'm so sad that series is dead.

The whole series is frankly fantastic, especially three. But, yeah, that was the strongest launch game, in my opinion. Tech and Tag Tournament, Ridge Racer 5. And I've a big maybe next to Fantavision because I think history has changed its mind about Fantavision. I think former or friend of the show, Michael Rappares, he is a Fantavision defender. I remember when it was just the 10th anniversary of Fantavision coming out, which was also the 10th anniversary of the PS2. He wrote an article defending like, it's better than you think, guys. Like fireworks are fun.

I mean, ultimately it was like particle effects, everybody. Check them out. We got lots of them in this thing. I got it for a dollar in like 2010. And I don't think I ever even put it in my PlayStation. Yeah, the price on that thing, as someone who worked in game retail, the price on that thing dropped like a rock, even knew it was just like, get this out of here. If it had been better advertised to me that Times Splitters was from the Golden Eye guys,

I would have bought it. It would have hastened my purchase of a PS2. Yeah. Though it wasn't until Time Splitters 2 that they really discovered, like, no, no, no, we need monkey cheese British humor in this. The best humor. Yeah. You know, you...

Boy, might have a monkey cheese. You overlooked a very retro-notts-ish PS2 launch title, which was Gradius 3-4. You added that to the notes. I definitely appreciate that. And there were a few other games that were pretty big, ready to rumble. And Dead or Alive Extreme, or DOA2 Extreme or something like that. Not the beach volleyball game, but a fighting game. In both of those cases, those were lesser to me because they were Dreamcast ports.

Like, I was not as excited for them. Sure. from software had Ever Grace. Yeah, I mean, a lot of these... There was orphans sigh on a sorcery. Based on an anime, I saw Olive and reviewed all of. Orphan, yeah, there was a lot of... But the RPGs were actually pretty bad.

I tried to play Ever Grace and was like, the bouncer. That was not a launch game. It wasn't, no. I think it was later that year. I can understand that it looms large in your mind because it has a character name a kidna. Akinna. And also, basically, like, the main character is

basically the love child of Titus and Sora as a teenager. Oh, Sora is going to come back. We were talking on the break about JNCOs. I think there were some JNCOs featured in this game. Off-Brand Jinkos. But yeah, there was something for everybody. This is a, I mean, all the killer apps would be in 2001,

a year from this time. But there was something for everybody. There was a lot of bad RPGs. But they were like, I've never seen a console launch with like, We have Eternal Ring, Ever Grace, Orphan. We also have Summoner, and I think there's one more, but like four or five RPGs at a launch. Dark Cloud was at launch. Dark Cloud was a bit later.

Yeah, I think it was 2001. The Zelda killer, guys. I don't know who said that, but God, I hope they hid. Who is Zelda? Like some girl named Zelda. Zelda's the star of the game. He killed Zelda Fitzgerald. He's like an elf.

He has a green hat. Yeah. So it's not really a launch game, but it is worth mentioning a really. a really huge title for spring 2001, you know, people were still just acquiring or trying to acquire PS2s at that point, and that was Zone of the Enders, which was not only a really interesting and unique mech combat game, but also came with the Metal Gear Solid 2 playable demo disc, which people played probably more than Zone of the Enders. Yes.

It was like an hour and a half of a very hot upcoming game, and people would just play it and replay it and be like, wow, look at all the ways I can shoot the, the watermelons. I actually have that as my next thing to talk about because, no, no, it's cool. I mean, we're transitioning into this, but yeah. So, I mean, it was, there were a lot of games, no, no mega massive, you must buy, you must play the standouts like the next fall would have. But March of that year, what I was under the enders, an okay, unfinished game with the killer app, 20, 20% of Metal Gear Solid 2 is, is included in that, in that collection.

Boy, we did not know that was 20% though. But all the things you could do How are we even aware? I mean, I think we haven't done a Metal Gear episode, have we? We've done a lot of Metal Gear episodes, but No, not a single dedicated episode. I think it's worth it for sure.

That demo just was such an amazing playground. I didn't, like I said, I didn't have a PS2, but when my friend brought over his PS2 and showed me all the watermelts you could shoot or how every guy had his own dog tag or how, you see, I shot that bottle it broke that way. I shot that bottle. It broke a different way.

I was like, oh, my God. I slipped on the bird poop. Yeah. Sadly, the rest of the game did not have that level of obsessive detail throughout. But, boy. There were a few places where you kind of saw it, but not really. I mean, few games on the PCS2 look better than MGS2, even like late era games. Like the rain effects when you land on that boat in the beginning, just like, it really was a preview of like, okay, we got through the rough launch, but here's what's coming.

This game is going to blow your mind. Yeah, I still don't know how they pulled off some of that technical. trickery that early. Yeah. It's really amazing. Konami, yeah. They really... Well, I feel like Sony must have given them access to libraries or something.

Secret wisdom. They were like, this game is going to be really huge for us. Here you guys go. Here's everything you need. We will back you up. But yes, I mean, for my PlayStation 2 lifestyle was I got SSX when it came out. I played a lot of PS1 games. Then I got Zone of the Enders.

And then I got Klonoa, too. And then it was waiting for like the big fall. We'll talk about the fall soon. Actually, let's talk about it now. Fall of 2001 is what basically, I mean, you got it to get a DVD player for the most part in the beginning. But fall of 2001 were all the big games, including one game that no one thought would be big, but ended up defining sort of the PlayStation 2 library. Well, because they needed all hands on deck for Fall 2001 because they were facing the GameCube and the Xbox at the same time.

I don't think anybody felt threatened by the Xbox, and rightly so ahead of time. Like, who would have known that Halo would click the way it did? But they did need to be worried about the GameCube, at least in their territory. I think people in the industry were very eyes on the Xbox. That was Microsoft making an entrance into the games industry. And they had, you know, gotten there by basically stepping on Sega's throat as a foothole. Yeah, that's true. They used their WinCe embedded system in the Dreamcast as like a launching ground for their own console.

They were, sorry, I'm still going here. They started bundling up, you know, acquisitions. They bought Bungy, sorry. And they were, you know, the Odd World games, which has started on PlayStation, all of a sudden were Xbox exclusive. Rare? Rare. Well, that came later. Was that later?

But at launch, they did have support from Tecmo, Team Ninja. And, yeah, so, like, it was, they were making a serious bit. They had sneakers. I mean, my God. I will say from a... Huge a frenzy. Come on. From an otaku gamer perspective like Henry and myself, I'm lumping you in with me, Henry.

But you're like, only Japanese people make games and I don't want to buy an American console. So, like, that was my opinion at the time. I was dumb. Yeah. It wouldn't take until the Xbox 360, like, halfway into its life cycle where I was like, okay, I'll buy a non-Japanese console. See, I looked at the Xbox from the Apple Otaku perspective. and I was like, how dare they? They took Bungie away from me.

That's right. Halo was going to be my game, and they took it away, those bastards. Microsoft scorned us all for different reasons then, right? But yeah, fall of 2001, let's talk about it because we have all talk about all the games. Some of them are not big sellers, but they would help bring, like, prestige or some sort of hype to the console. So, of course, Eco. You're thinking about Mr. Mosquito, right? Mr. Mosquito, that's 2002. Oh, damn, sorry.

But it's still really good. So, of course, number one, Eco. That's Ueda's first directed game. It wasn't a big game, but it was one that everyone was excited about in terms of the critical reception, in terms of just like, what is this? It's kind of Prince of Persiae. It's kind of puzzly. It was a walking simulator. Yeah.

Well, it was a... You're walking through a castle with a girl. It was a hand-dragging simulator. But yeah, I mean, like, just what it looked like at the time, like, Bloomlighting was not as overdone as it is today or as it was last gen. But nothing looked like it, nothing played like it, and it was great. Yeah, I remember this, Eco, like, because I got one later, it instantly became, because I got a PS2 later, it instantly became the, like, secret hit that they would tell you. Like, I remember they would talk about on, like, Tech TV as like the PS2 games, you never got to play. And they'd be like, check out this game, Eco. You can find it for $5 in a bargain bin. And then eventually it was like $65, $75 for a little bit. Look for the angry kid holding a stick on the cover. Yeah, God, the worst cover. He's wearing a tarp.

Yeah. But, yeah, Eco, fantastic. It's aged very well. Hopefully they'll either remake that or bring it out on PS4. It really needs to be replayed. So, of course, Metal Gear Solid 2, it would go on to disappoint a lot of people, but I feel like pre-release, it was the thing everyone was waiting for on the PS2. It was just like, we played the demo, I want to play this entire Solid Snake Adventure. I don't know what a ride-in is.

No one tell me ahead of time. Isn't that the guy from Mortal Kombat? Wow, I can't believe. It's like a crazy crossover. He took off his head, and he's going to call this nice hair underneath. And the president grabbed his crotch. This is weird. It is really weird.

But next up is Silent Hill 2. Not a huge blockbuster in terms of sales, but it was like a fantastic looking game and in terms of its storytelling and in terms of just like how playing it just makes you feel sick. And character models too, yeah. Like the design and like texturing of the characters in that game are better than any other PS2, including its own sequels.

That's true. I don't know how, that's again, that's Konami doing like crazy PS2 magic right out of the game. I think Silent Hill 3, they may be a little bit better because they made everyone's skin like even more haggard and malnourish looking, but you're right. And also Sony, sorry, not Sony, but Konami was early in the bandwagon of mocapping cutscenes. So, like, these characters move like real people, too. So, I mean, I don't think mocapping is good for everything, but these are realistic characters. So I think it, no game really looked like this at the time, not even the first Silent Hill. And for Metal Gear and Silent Hill, they both showed off what you were graduating towards with games.

that you probably, that you definitely saw a debut on the PlayStation, now seeing that just number two, the first sequel they ever got, is such a huge upgrade. It's, it really makes you want to step up to the PlayStation 2 as well. Yeah, and rightfully, people do say it is the best entry in the series. I don't think that's very hard to argue against. Oh, Son Hill 2? Yeah, absolutely it is. But up next, we really need to do another episode about this series, but Grand Theft Auto 3.

Grand Theft Auto 1 and 2 in London stories or whatever, there were. They were just... 1969. That's right. Of course, it would be 1969. But, yeah, I mean, people would play

Grand The Thought I wanted to, but they were just like, these are kind of wonky and weird. You just run around and fart. Yeah. It's a game of the fart button. And it's this weird perspective that no game I like plays like.

So what is this? But Grand The Thought of 3, no one saw this coming, but it ended up being like the game of 2001, period. We'll do an episode about this, I think, in the future, but just like,

ban in Australia. Everyone's talking about it. What's the newest hottest game? It was not just in terms of content that it was pushing the envelope, but it was also like a world you could explore with no-loadings times, a radio station with actual songs on it. I don't think, were they making up their own music at this point? There were some songs that I think were from minor artists that were licensed in,

but they definitely weren't doing radio hits. But like a talk radio station where you could listen to... Laslo! Laslo, yeah. You could take any car from anyone. Exactly, yeah. just the possibilities of this world was like it really opened your eyes to think

like this is what the new generation of games will be like while I'll be in this world where I can interact in any number of ways with all these MPCs all of these items and cars and things like that but man nobody thought this game would be the thing and this series would be the thing on the PS2. Yeah it's

amazing to see how much Sony invested in all these other games and then Grand Theft Auto 3 just comes out with like I guess if you want to put it out whatever. These Scottish people made something let's try this on for size but once it finally arrived it was like it was like a bomb

that just dropped it was what everything anyone talked about the video games both good and bad like it and also as the otaku who love this game he's just like it doesn't have the polish of a Japanese game no

I definitely did not I mean compare that to Shinmu and it's like Shinmu is beautiful and polished and there's so much intricate detail but this game was just like I go do stuff, whatever. Yeah, it was a really rough-looking sandbox, but it was great. But what a sandbox. I mean, I think this is one of the few times a GameStop employee talked me into buying a game

because they're like, oh, have you played Grand Theft Auto 3? Oh, it got banned, and it's so great. You could do all this stuff in it. Yeah, it was one of those that I was like, I kept hearing people talk about it, and I was like, really, this game looks so juvenile and so stupid. And then I was at someone's house and watched them play it for like 15 minutes and was like, you know, from the very beginning of the game. And I realized, like, wow, there's.

just, it's just totally free form. You can just do whatever you want. That's great. So I immediately had to buy it. And, you know, I think the timing of this game, you mentioned 9-11 earlier. Yeah. Well, you can never forget it. Right.

But this game coming out. I like how Jeremy begrudgingly acknowledge that. Yes. We're just moving on. I'm reading your T-shirt. I know. Sorry, I wanted to drag things down a little bit. It's the crying eagle on my lapel pin.

No, the fact that this game came out. right around that time and was set in New York City and gave people like this way to misbehave. I don't know. Like it should have, it should have just been incredibly wrong. Like you can run around killing citizens of New York City and stealing money from their corpses. Like that's terrible timing. And yet it didn't really like it didn't resonate in that way. It was just like.

I think it helped us work through things. I think so. Yeah. Like you can go on crazy rampages and like literally. that's what they're called, rampages, and use a rocket-powered grenade to blow up civilians in the streets of New York City. Holy shit, like, the worst possible timing for a game like that to come out. And it didn't strike anyone that way. Like, they, you know, Metal Gear Solid 2 had to change, you know, the Arsenal gear crashing into lower Manhattan.

But GTA 3, I think they changed one thing. Like, they took out the remote control missions where you had to, like, send RC cars in and blow things up. something like that. I think in my research for the censored games episode, I think it came up in that and that it was not cut because of 9-11. It was cut because, like, these are bad. These missions are bad and we don't like that. There you go. So there wasn't even content cut. It's just, like,

I don't know, thinking about that, it's really weird because of just the open wound that was in the entire country at the time. And this just seemed like, you know, not so much pouring salt in it is like taking a salt brick and shoving it into the wound.

And it was okay. Yeah, that's great. Everybody was wearing their FDNY or NYPD and FDNY hats. And here's a game where it's like, yeah, just kill every cop you want. We're not stopping. Well, you could also steal a cop car and be a cop for a while or be a fireman. That's right, yeah. I, you know, like I wrote a web series, a blog series on like playing GTA3 and trying to be a force of goods.

Did you call it nice city? No, that was before Vice City. Okay. It was, I don't remember what it was called. It was like confession. of an incompetent criminal or something like that. But, yeah, it was like a multi-part series where I was just like, I'm going to write about me trying not to be violent in every way possible

and just like taking fire trucks from the fire station and putting out fires and things like that. I always try that in GTA games and it never really lasts. I'm like, I'm going to stop at the red lights. And then somebody walks into my car and it brings my star level up. And I'm like, why didn't do that? And then I just have to rampage everyone. There are like, yeah, sorry, I was going to say I remember hearing on the old podcast

GFW radio that there are. are like role-playing servers for Grand Theft Auto Games in which you just drive your bus on your bus route and you stop at lights and like everyone is just like living like a weird version of second life. Sorry, Jamie, please. Yeah, no, I was just going to say like the sort of side diversion that I think worked best in all the Grand Theft Auto games was delivering pizzas in Vice City. Oh, I enjoyed that. Like I would just go steal those little Vespas and drive around giving people pizza and I could do that for hours. That and driving a semi-truck in Grand Theftano San Andreas, just like driving around the back roads of rural California in the rain listening

to country music. I'm like, this is the opposite of my aspirations, and I'm really loving it. That's what I do in real life. I ran a car and go on a road trip for two days just through the wilds of California. I just did that up to the Redwoods, so I appreciate that. Driving a semi-truck to deliver lumber. I went to Hertz at the airport and I got a semi-truck. How many wanted stars did you have, Matthew?

At least four most of the time. I was really, I took one of those spinning pills. We're harboring a criminal in this studio now. And in later one, when my friends are talking about like, oh, I just shot a bazooka at a Jeep and blew it up, when I would try to tell them that Smash Brothers and Super Monkey Ball were really fun, they would look down on me. I didn't collect bananas. Guys, you've got to believe me about Billy Hatcher. It's so great.

Billy Hatcher would be in 2003, and we all remember when that launched, I think. Where were you when Billy Hatcher? its debut. I was nowhere around. So yeah, I mentioned it before, but we're still talking about the launch, by the way. But yeah, massive, massive, massive shortages, on par with like the Wii shortages in which everybody wanted one of these and they didn't make enough. And I believe it wouldn't be until maybe around 2002, in which they started appearing in stores. And I worked in gaming retail again. I've said this many times. But I believe that they were, we're getting like two a week or something like that at the most of the time. And yet somehow Saddam Hussein

managed to get tons and tons of them to turn into missile guidance systems. We got a weird memo about that. If people come in wanting to buy a lot of PS2s, you say no to them. It's just like, can we just please take their money? Like it's Tylenol? Yeah.

To make sure they only take two. You have to get your smurf to go in and get it for you. Well, Saddam Hussein, I wonder if he was playing that in a spider hole. Who knows? Playing some GTA. Let's talk about

We're going to We're going to be We're talking about what's inside the system. We talked about what's inside the system. But we could talk about the different versions of the PS2 in terms of how it was remodeled. My favorite, my favorite kind of, so my favorite model of console ever, I think, in terms of just smallness and cuteness. I love Super Famicom, and that's my favorite, like, looking system, but I love the PS2 Slim model. It came out in October 2004.

You don't think that the PS1 is the smallest, cutest console? Like, I love that little guy, especially with the little lid on it, the little clamshell. I like it, but the video screen. I do, yeah, I do like that. The PS2 Slim is just so, like, solidly build and compact. It's just, like, so perfect to hold. It's like that. It's like a book.

But it's like that. It's like a book. Yeah. Sorry, Henry. I like, yeah, I do like, I like to transporting it. I think of that one is a, is transporting it because it was one I moved with. But it, it was like nice and compact. And I liked having a top loading thing, too.

It just felt like enough of this trying to show off with a disc tray. Like, I just want to put a disc on a handle, though. The first PS2 model was huge, bulky, heavy. and this thing was like it was compact and it was you know very dense but it didn't feel unwieldy and it's it was kind of yeah like a marvel of technology like how did they manage to squeeze all of that yeah quiet a big clunky console into this little guy only three years later yeah like i still have mine and if i ever have room i'll hook it up again but man i love that but as usual for this era other territories got different color variations and we just got the standard black

PS2. But I believe there was a silver PS2 slim, but that might be the only other color variant that we got in America, but I know there was like a pink rose version I saw online. I was looking in all the different colors, but yeah, we didn't get any of that. I had a white one for

my import gaming. I think that, I always believe that rainbow of colors for Japan thing is just because if they did it in America, they'd have to ship it to too many places. It's just the shipping cost is much. much greater to just move it around

Ohio takes a lot more effort than it does for all of Japan and some of China. I don't care. I wanted that Hello Kitty Dreamcast. Bring it here. No, the one I really wanted, it wasn't on the PS2, the one I most wanted of multicolored PlayStation is

the PS1 colored or PSX colored PS4. That was so cool looking. And they made like eight of them ever and I regret not stealing one for my old game website when it got sent. because I think it just went in a corner and nobody did anything with it.

That's lame. Yeah. Did we get the orange GameCube or was that Japan? We didn't get Spite only, but we didn't get the orange controller. Yes, okay. But not the orange game boy player. You could mismatch your controllers in your system and be very goche. But other hardware things that came out, very important in terms of innovation and whatnot,

is the network adapter. I think we all forget about this, but it was released in August of 2002 alongside the first Socom game. and it would be So there was What the problem with this was Yes, it was really cool That there was online play There was a 56K version of this

And also a broadband version of this network adapter But there was no central service That you signed up for So it was all dependent on The publisher of the online game You were playing To build their own infrastructure

And allow you to interact with it Like nothing was on Sony for this But Xbox Live started later that November And they had like a games wide Systemwide login And you know all that stuff Like, they got it right, and Sony was just like,

eh, some games will be online, but you figure it out. Yeah, the only time I ever used the network adapter was to review the original Monster Hunter, and that was pure suffering and agony to get that one. You reviewed the original Monster Hunter? I did. Holy crap. What did you put in it? What?

Like what disc would you mess around with it? Was it Monster Hunter the one where you were like a Monster Rancher? Oh, Monster Rancher. Ah, sorry. Oh, monster. Oh, you're just talking about one of the biggest franchises of all time. If you put in a different disc, you're not. playing monster hunter anymore

that's what's all worse Bob just cut you out of his life I have to go back with Matthew ended now best friends with I have to go back and read that review

to see how wrong you were Jeremy like how did you don't see the brilliance of Monster Hunter where you've been erased I think he gave it like a 7-5 or so it was weird

you swung the weapons with the analogs yeah it was a really clumsy game it got a lot better once I went to PSP I remember looking down on these weaves

playing so calm as I was playing my mech assault and Halo 2 and just thinking like oh come on you losers I'll never I did not buy a network adapter.

I was quite content with Xbox Live. I have dot hack, which is like an MMO, but without other people. Yeah. Also, I played all those dot hack games. I could play two PSO games on GameCube with my broadband adapter. Did you play Card Revolution? I mean, we bought it. My brother played it just out of necessity.

They're like, well, we should do something. I love that answer. Well, we bought it. It was our responsibility to buy it. That goes for a lot of games that I own. It's like, you play it? No, I bought it. I did my part. I did that with the broadband adapter.

I bought it for Metal Gear Solid 3 subsistence. Oh, yeah, yeah. Was that the subtitle to the relaunch of MGS3? Yeah, that was the first Metal Gear Online launched with that. Yeah, and I think I never played it. I might have played it once. Like, by that time the broadband adapter was like $30, and I had like, I think I had my first game stop job or something. So I just bought it in.

I think it's still in the back of my PS2 at home, and I just never used it. I've never had any experience with this. If you have, please write in, I'd like to know what it was like because I have no idea how any of these games functioned or what the service was like or if it was laggy or whatnot. But very few games, so many games would have online modes, but I think they knew this thing was not going to be in everyone's home. So very few games were built around this functionality like Socom, that series, which I believe is now dead. That was all like, this is the online game for PS2. The other few standouts I can think of in terms of these are online games are Resident Evil Outbreak. There were two of those, I believe.

those were online Resident Evil games and also Ratchet Deadlock which was an arena-focused, Ratchet and Clink game. There's also, did you say Final Fantasy 11? I will get to that. Oh, okay. But because the next thing, Jeremy,

is the place is a two, hard disk drive. Wow. Released in 2004 for the USA three years after it came out in Japan. And it basically solely exists for Final Fantasy 11, Jeremy. So you're completely right about that.

And you need that and the network adapter to play a game you should be playing on the PC anyway because what are you doing with your life? Was it out on PC at that time, though? I believe so, yeah. I thought it debuted on PS2 only and then came to PC later. It took a little while.

I think it came to 360 and PC at the same time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what? I wouldn't put a pass in the launch it on PS2 first, but it just feels weird to play an MMO of that caliber on a PlayStation with a controller. It's just weird to think of a time when a hard drive on a system wasn't a given. It's not just like, no, you have to, I, it was different that the Xbox had a hard drive when you bought it. that they put that, they had that in there.

I mean, are we counting the built-in flash memory on Wii U as a hard drive? I mean, it's got 8 gigabytes that's not not a hard drive. I mean, I had the 8 gigabytes. Sure. Back in 1990, I had an 8-gigabyte hard drive, too. But this could have been more functional, but unfortunately, so, I mean, the Xbox and modern consoles are like, you install the game, the load times are better. There are some benefits to installing games, but you couldn't just install any old games, but you couldn't just install any old games. onto your PlayStation 2 hard disk drive

unless you use unofficial software. So it only existed for Final Fantasy 11. That's basically all it existed for because they just couldn't make it work without that hard drive. So yeah, that was the only thing. I never played this game. I know James Milkey, he's famous for playing this game a lot.

He played mostly a PC. I'm sure he played a lot of the PS2 version, but like the entire time that he worked at EGM and OneUp, anytime you would go to his office, like he would just be idling in Final Fantasy 11. Like literally every single day, he would just be standing around idling while he was off doing other stuff. If he wasn't working, he was playing Final Fantasy. I hope he's still paying for subscription because those characters should still be alive.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know how Square Nix would stay in business without him. 11 is still a game that's operating. It's amazing. Alex Ferrell still plays it. Wow. And talks about it. I don't know if he still is now, but recently on No More Whoppers, he talked about it a lot. So other accessories I wanted to mention, of course, I think this has been forgotten too, but the eye toy, October 2003, it sort of was our first taste of we slash connect fun.

And this is very primitive in terms of what it could do. But I played around with this a little bit, and it was fine. They're fine. I mean, Sony's been trying to make the eye be a thing for every generation since this. Did they give up in this generation with the eye thing? Yeah, I mean, you can just buy a camera for it. But mine came with a camera that I've never used for anything. Oh, yeah.

They never pack in the camera. You've got to buy the camera separate as well. I bought mine used. Maybe somebody would just put it in there. You need to have the camera, like, for, I betting it's used way more for streaming than it is for any video game. Oh, yeah, for sure. And it's, they keep trying to make it happen. The last time I laughed at it was the wishbook series.

They're like, oh, you'll be your own Harry Potter. Yeah. Oh, I was at that presentation when it was happening live. and I didn't know what the hell was going on. I have judgment was pretty cool. That was a PS3, I believe. And that was a pretty cool use of, like, the cards come to life. I was going to bring that up, yeah, because it seems like that was a cool thing that just never caught on.

And I think there were a lot of Japanese arcade games that are like that, where they're like card base with like a camera thing. Oh, my God, yeah. I've seen quite a few of those. They make a lot of money that way. They look so cool, but they're also in Japanese and probably you need to buy $1,000 worth of cards. So, yeah, I'm actually surprised doing research on the I toy in that they gave that thing a lot of support. It had games until 2008, and there were 20 proprietary games made for the eye toy. So, like, this was not a superscope or whatever.

They actually cared about this thing and wanted to support it. But they had, guys, they had a lot of money. They had so much money. Yeah. They also, in PS3, they tried to make it work by having their move controller work with it to let them do. Yeah. That's why it had the colored balls to watch it. Yeah, yeah.

And PSVR probably comes with an old eye toy because all that stuff is just like, It's what watches you. Yeah. It's like, well, dig out your old moves and your old eye toy. You've got your pocket station still? Throw that on there. My move controllers are leaking acid on me. That's part of the deal.

It's immersive. So are there any other standout accessories for the PS2? Yes. What are you talking about, Jerry? Well, from Namcoe, we had the GunCon 2, which was a better version of the GunCon. I love the Gunn. I love the Gunn. That was really great for the Time Crisis games and not.

so great for stuff like Ninja Assault, which just wasn't a great game. There was also from Namco, the Tyco Drums for Tyco Drummaster. I had those. Those were ripped off by, actually not ripped off, like turned into Conga controllers for GameCube for Donkey Conga by Namco. Konami had a microphone that you could use basically just to play the game Lifeline where you were giving voice guidance to an on-screen avatar, like a rescue, like a woman who was trapped in like a space station or something and you had to like guide her by voice,

which was a really cool idea. But apparently with the localized version, they didn't change how the pronunciation works. So you needed to pronounce words with a Japanese inflection in order for her to understand. I just watched the say, let's play of that. It's fascinating. Yeah, like all the reviews at the time were like, this game is pretty much unplayable because the woman doesn't understand anything I say. And later it came out like, yeah, like it was. programmed so that it hears Japanese pronunciation, so you need to put, like, extra vowels into things.

It was like saying blue into brain age. I was just thinking about the Taiko drums and everything, and I was a young man in my early 20s with a lot of money and no real, nothing to spend it on outside of garbage and games and stuff like that. I was like, what did my parents think of me playing the drum game at 22 or the buying Maracas at age 19? Like, what were they thinking? Like, what would become of this young man? He's going to be a musician. Yes, or in some sort of asylum. Also, well, speaking of microphones, I would be doing a disservice to our European listeners if I didn't mention Sing Star.

And before that, Karaoke Revolution. Oh, yeah, yeah. Also from Konami. Yeah, Konami was, I mean, and I guess people also bought DDR pads for this, but they had already been doing that on the PlayStation. But, yeah, that SingStar was so, so huge, like, overseas. In America, I mean, people. bought it, but it was not the, it didn't have as many

copies. Well, we don't have Eurovision over here here, so. Yeah, that is the difference maker. It was, it was before really American Idol had taken off either. But it did well enough that then, I mean, Microsoft by the 2000, by the 360, they tried to copy it.

But SingStar really got it started on the PS2. There is one major accessory we're forgetting about, but I do want to say for our talk about the games. Is that the GDR pad? No. there's the DDR pad It's called here The microphones for Karaokee Revolution actually

Like I had a press A games press experience with that At a Konami press event They were showing off this new game Carioquire Revolution And so they were like We want some games journalists to come up here And compete

And no one volunteer And so they were like All right, you, you And they picked me I was like All right so I had to go up and seeing Under Pressure against someone else Who turned out

How hard. Who turned out to be like a semi-professional singer, so of course I didn't win. It was McJacker. But then he ended up winning an iPod. I was like, well, I'm in the press. I can't take an iPod from a games publisher, so whatever. It was just a weird experience. I remember this era being when, like, branded controllers really took off.

Like, there were a couple of them before, like, the Donkey Kong 64 yellow controller and stuff. But, like, I had a Spider-Man PS2 controller. There was the Dragon Quest, the slime. The controller, there was the chainsaw, which was also a game. The tiny B's from Final Fantasy 102. Oh, you mean the guns? The guns. Yeah, yeah.

They had that control. I don't know. I think so, maybe. It was an Ebony and Ivory. That's a double-maicry. And there's one more I'm forgetting. I might just be thinking of the chainsaw again. But I remember that being more of a thing.

But before that, we had PlayStation 1 memory cards in the shape of Laura Crock. I have. I recently sold one of those. Laura Crop. People get angry if you say Laura. In the console. Lara Croft. Lera.

Actually, Jeremy, it's funny you bring that up. This is not related to playstation at all, but in the 2013 reboot, even the characters in the game can't get her name straight. No, people in the game call her Lara Croft. They see them in the new movie, too.

And then, yeah, people then get really pissy because for whatever reason, like, there are people who complain at me or about me because I call the character of what they call her in the game. Video game fans aren't patantic in any way. It's so weird. That's crazy.

Take a nap, folks. Time out. And so, you know, I'm going to be able to be. We mentioned a few of the game series before, but I do want to talk about the major series on the PlayStation 2 before we leave this show. So I looked this up. It was hard to find because there was a lot of derivative stuff.

happening in different territories, but the rough numbers for the total amount of games on the PS2 is what I came up with is 2,519 unique games and 3,874 if you count different releases in different regions, often with different names. So that is a huge library. Is that the most? Is that the biggest library of

a console? I think so. I think so, yeah. Wow. I mean, I maybe if you're only counting physical on-disc releases, I'm going to say yes, for sure. This has to be the most. I can't see even like Xbox 360 or PS3 competing with that? No way, yeah. Even

PS1 had fewer things. By far. Yeah, by far. iPhone maybe. This was like 10 years with iPhone. This was like peak. This was peak retail release video games. Yeah. I mean like just on the precipice of everything going digital or people getting pushing to digital sales. Remember we went to like a store

and like talk to a person? And they tried to sell you more things? They're all greasy and weird and smelled. They're making minimum wage. They can't afford water. So we talked about some of these before. Thoreto 3, of course, a huge system seller for the PlayStation 2. In fact, the Xbox would get these games, but much later. So if you want to be ahead of the curve on Grand Theft Auto, you would need a PlayStation 2.

I give thumbs up to whatever PlayStation exec jumped on it fast to see how big it was getting to make it a timed exclusive. Like, get Vice City. It even took like an extra year for San Andreas to go to the Xbox. So we have access to a dump truck, fill it with money, and drive it to Rockstar. But then on the Xbox, you could have custom soundtracks. That is true. That was like the one reason to not hold out just buy it now, but that was a reason to be glad you got it. That option has fallen out of every system, that custom soundtrack thing.

They took Spotify off the PS4. I recently tried to use it and it's not there anymore, I don't think. It might be an I don't know where it is now, but that was fun for a while. I didn't know that. You know what is also being cut out of games is actual songs from Grand Theft Auto Games. Oh, you're right. They keep updating it to cut songs out as licenses it. Wow.

I don't like that at all. Gt84 and 5, I think. Yuck. So we talk about Metal Gear Solid 2 and Snake Eater, fantastic looking games, playing games. So one thing I almost forgot about, and I shouldn't because it's one of the biggest game series of all time. Grand Turismo,

the heat is not on it anymore, but as with the PS1 generation, GT was huge for the PS1, 2, and 3 generation. And this was the first game to be bundled with the PlayStation 2. So, like, this was a pack-in game when I believe in 2002, that summer there was a GT. bundle with the system. Grand Tourismo is one of those series that

like Call of Duty, Madden, GTA. It's the kind of game that people will buy a console just to play that. It has an audience that, you know, at least in the past, would just play that game. It really appealed to people who didn't play video games but loved cars. And it was constantly in car magazines. Like, it probably got better press in car magazines than

games magazines. Yeah. And... It's a crossover hit, basically. I think three was the biggest game for the series at 14 million copies and that's a lot of that is because it was bundled in with probably a few million systems but it was huge like gt a one and two i sorry gt one and two were huge three was huge i think only with the ps4 generation it's sold it started selling like five million instead of 10 million so boo it's calmed down a lot but that's also because other other developers finally were able to get what it got which is the real cars and getting to actually getting all the physics rights and then getting rid of some of the bullshit

that GT just insisted on having because it had always been there, you know, that it took a long time for them to even add any car damage to Grand Turismo games. You're right about that, yeah. But it's funny, if you look at the top selling games, the PS1, 2, and 3, a GT game is always number 1 or 2. So, like, with PlayStation 1, it's like Grand Turismo 1, then Final Fantasy 7 or the number 1 and 2 slots. So, like, it's something I always forget about, but this series is so big and not as big anymore, but, man, it was, when it was huge, it was so huge. Yeah, I do not understand car culture, but it also should be mentioned to you that, like, they had Madden and Xbox didn't have Madden at launch as well.

Oh, yeah. I'm worried about that. Or, I believe, FIFA as well, made a big difference in it. FIFA. One of the things we need to talk about, I did not bring this up in the accessory section, but Guitar Hero. Yeah. Start on PS2. It was all okay covers of classic rock, but it was still the very beginning of the insane, just amazingly huge plastic instrument boom that would last, let's say, five years at most. It was a very beginning in 2005.

It was a weird fever dream for all of us. It was one of those late PS2 games so late, and that I remember playing it on 360 or PS3 more. Me too. I don't think of it as a PS2 original, you know. Yeah, Guitar Hero 1. and two were PS2 games and I believe exclusive to that platform. But yeah, I mean, I'm sure they sold well

but it would not be until you know the next generation in which it would be like every living room would be covered in plastic instruments and every gathering of friends would be playing guitar hero or rock bands. So yeah, that was a big series for the PlayStation 2. Yeah, I remember

going to a GameStop one rainy evening with my friends because we heard that they had a guitar hero set set up like a little kiosk you play on it. It was on an old tube, fat TV sitting right on the counter. That's how I play Guitar Era, too, like in E.B. Games. Yeah, and we three men and a comic booked it. We, four of us together, three of my friends and I each paid $20 to buy the $80

controller end game, and we just, like, passed it around each of our households. Wow, yeah, what a time to be alive in the plastic instrument days. You kids don't know. So other games, like, we're running short on time. I do want to cover a few things. So the sort of, like, tri-force of PS2 character platformer in games, which, which are, they're all very good series. I will say that.

Jack and Daxter, Sly Cooper, Ratchett and Clink, all from developers Sony would absorb, and then they would go on to make more, less family-friendly stuff, more like teen and adult kind of games. So, yeah, Jack and Daxter's Nottie Dog, Sly Cooper, Sucker Punch. They're making the Spider-Man game.

Yeah, no, no. Ratched Clink's Insomniac. Oh, okay. They made, didn't they make one of the, another superhero? Infamous. Yes, Infamous. Yeah.

Yeah, and Ratchet and Clank Insomniac, like all great developers, they've all done great things. I'm not a fan of resistance or whatever that game is insomniac made. The sad thing is that they all, like, when it came time for the PS3 generation, they all just let it go. They're like, yeah, look, you made your trolls you on PS2, do a new thing. Yeah. And it was to varying results, like, but they all, it's what really hurt something when they tried to do their own Smash Brothers because you just see their varying choices from year to year. Which, you know, that pays off in different ways. You don't, not every company has to be Nintendo and just like, no, it's always Mario, it's always Zelda, and have that consistency.

But when you're trying to have mascots in a fighting game, that does hurt it. That game is something else. Just to speed through this, okay, I put this on the list because apparently this series went on for so long, somebody has to care about it. If you do, let me know. People care. Killzone. It started on the PS2. Henry, I know from hearing stories from you at like working.

games radar like you guys were like all over kill zone two i think the entire like i remember just kill zone two being so huge in the press it was like don't understand it either i don't give two shits about kill zone like not at all they was the halo killer uh and for people who wanted to have halo but didn't want to buy an xbox and it's fine it's it's dark and grim and sort of fascist killery or whatever it's but anybody who talked about it was the same i got The same feeling I did when I played, like, Uncharted 2 multiplayer online with people, which was like, this is fun. You don't have gears, though. You're playing this because you don't have gears, which is the better, much better third-person shooter.

And same deal with this. I'm so glad they were able to break out of a kill-zone jail to make Horizon Zero Dawn. A game, I think, is not super amazing, but I'm glad they were able to make something different. And they finally made it to the Rise, and I was like, you guys can actually do something. Like, that Kill Zone, the Kill Zone game that launched for the PS-4, which... Shadowfall. Yeah. Thumbs up to them getting to kill.

It's a two out of a launch, but not a good game. You reviewed that, Jeremy? I sure did. You remember the score, so it must have had an impact on you. That and NAC, both of the games that I reviewed for the sports launch were at two out of five. Yeah, which would you play again? Probably Killzone. Nack was miserable.

Scooter Terry Nguyen would pronounce a Killzone in our office. That's all I remember about Killzone. So, Eco, Shadow of the Colossus. Go to our Shadow of the Colossus episode. lot about that. It was just, it was just remade on the PS4. Really good remake. What's that?

Art House Gaming. Arthouse, yes. Katamari Domesee, Jeremy, I command you. Make an episode about the series. I thought you were going to. Yes. Okay, I'll do it. Next session.

Don't forget my number for that one. Yeah, I've just been listening to the LP release of the soundtrack. Oh, yeah, that came out. Is the record made like a Katamari? It has to be there. No, it's not. But they really went all in. Like the gatefold vinyl is beautiful.

The records are like very colorful. It's like swirled pink and green and yellow records. But then the sleeves are vinyl and they have lots of little Keta Takahashi artwork all over it. Like printed white on clear. It's just like it sounds good. It looks good. The games are good. And I'm really trying to get my PS2 working with my capture kit, my retro capture kit.

I'm having trouble with the color issues right now, and I'm really trying to get that resolved because I have a copy of Kadamari Damasi for PS2. It's even signed by Keita Takahashi. Wow. I want to take off the shelf and play some more, but I've got to get it working right, the system. I mean, like, we'll have an episode about this

because these games are great. And the first two games... Within three months. Within three months. The first two games on the system in the series, rather, are the ones the creator worked on. Everything else was made in his absence. So I feel like these are the two strongest games in the series.

2 is my favorite. We love Katamari. But yeah, give us HD remakes, man. Like, you can only, the only way to buy this game digitally, I believe the first one came out on PS3 as a PS2 classic. That's the only way to get it without just putting a disc in a PS2 in terms of playing it on a different

console. So yeah, this, we need HD remakes. A few more. God of War, Devil May Cry. Double May Cry should be first because it's sort of it pioneered the 3D character action game. God of War took that idea, ran in another direction. That's basically all Platinum makes now in terms of their game output. make a version of that kind of

game for everything. They do it very well. Yeah. And meanwhile, God of War, like, it's, God of War is just it is a ton of fun to play the original one. Like, it's just a fun combo-driven game. But also, it did bring in, like, a Hollywood blockbuster mentality

to game development for good and ill, but it was... You can knock that vase off of that shelf. And you can have sex off screen. Whoa. Like a real grown-up. So also, Final Fantasy, we know that's great, but one of the bigger ones, Persona, and it's funny that

these games help shape the future of the Persona Series and the future of Atlas. Not just persona, but Shinemagame Tensei. That's true. Nockern was the first big release for Shinemagame Tensei in the U.S. I added those to the notes. There were a lot, this is the peak

of SMT as a series for a lot of people, I think. I also had Devil Summoner, Kuzanoa Rydo versus the Solis Army and versus King Abidon. I will say that, and Digital Devil Saga, one and two. Even the, even SMT3 is like it was a niche RPG for a hardcore mindset but persona three and four really super late releases on the PS2 2007 2008 and persona 4 was like December 2008 I remember when P persona 3 was announced is coming out because I had never heard of it before and I remember on an EGM or one up podcast shade Bentenhaus and saying like the game where students shoot themselves in the head is coming out in America I can't I can't believe it.

Yeah, it was a crazy choice by them to bring that unexpurgated. Yeah, yeah, that was amazing. Because they'd always boulderized their series for so long because they thought, well, that's what Americans want. They don't want it to be hyper Japanese. They didn't realize that's exactly what we wanted, at least the people who are actually going to buy your fucking game. What do we want? Weeboo. When do we want it now?

But it really speaks to the quality of persona 3 and 4 in that it essentially sort of reconfigured the direction of Atlas was going. in terms of their series. But these games came out so late, they should never have had an impact. No one should have played them. They were released during the earlier years of the PS3, but Persona 3 and 4 are like, those are the games with spinoffs.

Those are the games with fighting games and dungeon crawling spinoffs and dancing games. These are the games that people love the most. And they got a couple shots. I mean, PS3 or Prisona 3 had three different versions. That's true. It had two different versions. They really pushed it.

But I think it was based on the success of these versions that they eventually got those spinoffs. Yeah, I don't feel like Persona 4's Vita port was necessarily the thing to push it over the edge. You don't think so? In terms of sales, doesn't everyone have a Vita? It's a good port. Sorry, Henry. No, yeah, 4 was, well, I won't say instant hit, but it was like a nice slow burn.

And I think it was the people, it was a word of mouth thing. I'm like, no, this is a great RPG. You definitely have a PS2, so just bust it out and play this game and get to get to know all the characters. like it, and it got to be cool. It was one of the first reviews I got to do, and I think there were probably other people like me who they got to review it and fell in love with it, and then, like, it was the big game they got to review

and really espouse how great it was because you were so, I was so new that I wasn't going to get to review the cool big games on PS3, but if a sleeper hit came to the PS2, then the new guy gets to review it. And it was a weeoo's dream, like to not change those, things and to even be like, I am a Japanese high school student. I'm holding buckets of water outside of my class. Both would know Japanese high school students. You get to live out the life of everyday life, like literally every day for more than a calendar year of a Japanese student.

Yes, I'll clap the erasers. It's been my dream. So the final thing I want to talk about is just like the PS2 was huge, 150 million units sold. There were thousands of games. The funny thing is, Sony has been kind of shy about making this amazing library of available. Of course, there's PS Now, is that the service, that I've never seen anyone talk about or tweet about or say anything good about. I assume a lot of these games are available there. But in terms of buying them digitally, I'm going to blame Shane Bettenhausen. But the curation of these games I find so odd. It's just like there are some good titles you can buy on PS4. Like, hey, I can't think of one offhand. But there are also weird. Rogue Galaxy. Yes. That's okay. That's good. GTA, Vice City. That too. But there are weird choices like Okage Shadow King.

It's like, can I play Dark Cloud 2? No, you'll play Dark Cloud 1. Like, I don't know. Just put them all on the damn thing. I mean, like, I feel like they're totally missing out on this era. And I feel like, I don't know, I just don't understand. I mean, I don't understand Sony's take on classic gaming this generation at all, period. But, man.

Yeah, weirdly Microsoft is the company. The company with the least legacy and also the best approach to preserving and, you know, maintaining a classic. library. I'll give it to Microsoft. They identified one area where they could beat Sony pretty handily, and they did it. And it's not because Microsoft's great at it. It's just Sony is like, who cares? Yeah, with 2,500 games, I feel like maybe 30 are available. And just like, what is stopping all these first party games from being on the system outside of maybe an HD remake or whatever? I mean, one thing that drives me crazy about it that I should have realized it was not going to happen. But, like, when I bought PlayStation 1 and 2 games on PSN for PS3, I was like, well, these will certainly be playable on my PS4.

I mean, I just bought them. Like, I was a fool then. That's why my PS3 is still hooked up to my TV. I can't lose all these things I bought. They're stuck here forever. I gave it up when I moved. I was like, yeah, I'm never plugging this in again. I guess I've still got to be Yakuza 5.

But, yes, thank you for joining us, folks. This has been a fun exploration of the PS2. I feel like we just scratched the surface, but man, what a, what a great system, what a long life. Like I, like, we talked about persona. I remember playing persona four in 2009 and loving it and I'm thinking like, damn, this system is 10 years old. How am I still playing an awesome game that I love on it? It just, it blew my mind then, and it still blows my mind now. And I think the last PS2 game was like 2012 or 2013, something crazy like that.

But yeah, we don't have time for final thoughts, but you'll hear those are my final thoughts. So I hope you appreciate that. Everybody just jump in with a sense. PS2, what does it mean to you? It was great. Its long legacy was pretty impressive, too. Just how long it got to be around. Like, it was a 10-year system kind of relevance.

And it filled Sony with the hubris to crash the PS3 directly into the Earth. Oh, yes. Jeremy. I like PS2. No, I have a lot of really strong memories of the system because, you know, it was tied to my professional development. And, you know, the very first paid review that I ever wrote, like freelance, was for PS2. And, yeah, like, just, I don't know. It was a really great system.

And I really wish Sony was better at preserving it, keeping it alive. And at the same time, you know, there was a lot of cruft on PS2 with 2,600 games. Can you believe it? Not all of them were gyms. and I remember the the enormous Ziff Davis oneup.com library PS2 games and most

of it, you know, as we started to the site started to shut down and people were like, oh yeah, go ahead and take games. There were so many, no one wanted. It was just like trash. I have a stack of 30 games from that library in my closet right now that I want to play but I need to hook up my PS2. Matthew.

Oh, you got all the good ones. I did. Well, you encouraged me. Like, just go get the games. It's just a console that I appreciate immensely in so many different ways, especially in the way that, like, the PS1 seemed like as far as an MO to be, to like make games cool, like make it cool to play games. And I feel like that had an uphill battle that it really did really well. And then the PS2 got to just start at the top of that hill and be like, hey, look at this.

Look at this cool black box. Games are finally really cool to have. It's just a normal thing that you do and you're not a weird nerd. And I like that they did that. Yes, I like it. Thanks for joining us, folks. This has been Retronauts. And I've been your host, Bob Mackie.

Let me tell you about our Patreon, which is wonderful and amazing. It funds our entire show. And the reason that we're here today talking to you is because of Patreon. So if you go to patreon.com slash Retronauts for $3 a month, you'll get every episode a week ahead of time and add free. And with a higher bit rate, it's the ideal Retronauts listening experience. So jump on board. It's three bucks a month, bro. That's like 50 cents a podcast.

You have 50 cents, if not steal it. I think that's about it for our Patreon. Everybody around the table. Who are you? Where can we find you? And what do you do for a living? Jeremy. I'm Jeremy, and you can find me on Twitter as GameSpite, and I do this for a living.

If you want me to pimp another Patreon, though, I do have my Retronaut's Video Works Patreon, where I am, you know, chronologizing. Is that a word? I am exploring the history of a number of classic video game systems game by game through their libraries chronologically, Game Boy, NES, Super NES. We're going to get to Virtual Boy. I don't know what else. And, yeah, if you would like to contribute to that project, I need that money so I can buy these games and photograph them so that I can publish them in great books that you can pick up through Fan Gamer. Let Jeremy live out of his dream of actually touching Fish Dude.

It's too late. It'll never happen. I want this to happen, Jeremy. I mean, that book is going to press before too long. I mean, I want you to touch Fish Dude after the fact. Just have that experience. So you really enjoy the shape of water, is what you're saying. Yes.

Oh, man. They should have called that movie Fish, too. What are they thinking? Oh, come on, Guillermo. Henry, please. Hey, I'm Henry Gilbert, H-E-N-E-R-E-G on Twitter. And if you didn't know, me and Bob do our own podcast. It also has its own Patreon. Well, actually, more than one of our own podcasts.

But Talking Simpsons is the top of it. That is where we go through every episode of The Simpsons in chronological order. We've been doing it for three years now. We are at The Tailin, Season 7. And if you want to hear every episode a week early and ad-free, you could listen to that on patreon.com slash talking Simpsons for just $5 a month. Or you can hear it on the free feed if you just want to give it a try-out. Same with our other podcast, What a Cartoon, where me, Bob, and a guest go through a different episode of a different cartoon every week in the same funny, in-depth style. And we have tons of extras on the Patreon at patreon.

At patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons, including Talking Futurama, where both Matt Jay and Jeremy Parrish have helped us go through the first season of Futurama. I forgot to give the, you are at love by Patreon for videos. Oh, do it. Patreon.com slash GameSpite. That's Retronauts Video Chronicles, something like that. And Matthew, we all have Patreon. Some of us have two, so, I know Matthew's got one.

I do. It's patreon.com slash Cartons 101. That supports my YouTube channel, YouTube.com slash Cartons 101, where I talk about animation history through video essays and the AV Club called them mini-documentaries. so I feel okay calling them that and also just dumb whatever videos I feel like making on there and on the Patreon you get a whole bonus

podcast every week I don't know about podcasts on Patreon being a higher bit rate that's news to me so you got another fancy great to hear podcast where the main through line so far has been I'm going through every episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion with a series of guests including you too

Bob and Hank and maybe someday Jeremy I'd love to ask you to do it I meant to do my own Avangelian analysis podcast like a few years back and never was able to get all the people together for it. So God bless you for making it happen. Oh, I scooped you. I've had other guests like to Alex and Ed from the One Piece podcast, Dawn from the anime nostalgia podcast, Tristan Cooper from Dorkley, Alex Fraoli, aforementioned from No More Whoppers.

We've had a bunch of really cool guests on there. I've also interviewed Bill Oakley, former showrunner of The Simpsons and co-creator of Mission Hill, Scott Gerdner, Dana Snyder. I'm going to talk to Evan Dorkin soon, the underground comics, a hero of mine. A lot of cool stuff on there for only five bucks. And a little bit more than five bucks, you get drawings from me and all kinds of cool stuff. So check it out. I'm a patron of Matthews.

So, yes, thanks for joining us, folks. We'll see you soon for a new episode. Goodbye. And caller number nine for one million dollars. Rita, complete this quote. Life is like a box of... Uh, Rita, you're cutting out. We need your answer.

Life is like a box of chocolate. Oh, sorry. That's not what we were looking for. On to caller number 10. Oh, shit. Bad network got you glitched out of. luck switch to boost mobiles super reliable super fast nationwide network and get four lines each with unlimited gigs for just $100 a month plus get four free phones boost makes it easy to switch switching makes it

easy to save the muller report i'm ed donahue with an ap news minute president trump was asked at the white house if special counsel robert muller's russia investigation report should be released next week when he will be out of town i guess from what i understand that will be totally up to the attorney general Maine, Susan Collins says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving of President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officer started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral. It's a tremendous way to bear knowing that your choices will directly affect.

the lives of others. The cops like Brian don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police say acted as his lookout have been charged with murder. I'm Ed Donahue.