PlayStation 2 Is Now Officially 20 Years Old (givemesport.com) 42
The PlayStation 2 is celebrating its 20th anniversary as it launched in Japan on March 4, 2000. "It was released in the U.S., Europe and the rest of the world a year later and would go on to become the best-selling console of all time," reports GiveMeSport. From the report: To put this into context, its main rivals at the time, Microsoft's Xbox and Nintendo's GameCube, would sell 25 million and 22 million consoles worldwide respectively on their first release versus Sony PS2's 155 million! It certainly helped that the PS2 was able to release such memorable games like RockStar Games 'Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas', which sold 17.3 million copies. Other games included 'Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater', which was part of PlayStation's iconic series that was set in the 1960s during the Cold War. Not to mention there was zombie filled 'Resident Evil' franchise and the terrifying 'Silent Hill'.
The success of the PS2 was widely due to Ken Kutaragi. His big idea in the latest round of console battles at the time was to add in a DVD player compatibility with the PS2. DVDs were the latest new format to view movies on at the time and an entry-level price for a DVD Player was $700. The other unique selling point was the backward compatibility; with some exceptions you could play your favorite PlayStation games on the new PS2. Kris Naudus from Engadget writes about how the PlayStation 2 was the first game console she ever bought -- "a big deal at a time when I was only making $135 a week," she. says. Her favorite feature? It could play DVDs.
The success of the PS2 was widely due to Ken Kutaragi. His big idea in the latest round of console battles at the time was to add in a DVD player compatibility with the PS2. DVDs were the latest new format to view movies on at the time and an entry-level price for a DVD Player was $700. The other unique selling point was the backward compatibility; with some exceptions you could play your favorite PlayStation games on the new PS2. Kris Naudus from Engadget writes about how the PlayStation 2 was the first game console she ever bought -- "a big deal at a time when I was only making $135 a week," she. says. Her favorite feature? It could play DVDs.
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Pit would crowdfund really well as a "modern" indie card game. Fantastic little game with any energetic, competive group. My copy is only 40 years old with a nice orange bell.
Working part time I presume? (Score:2)
a big deal at a time when I was only making $135 a week
While minimum wage was only around $5 an hour back then, even that would top $200 per week at 40 hours per week (ignoring taxes of course). Technically inclined people - without post-high-school qualifications - could pull $9 per hour pretty easily back then.
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Is it just me (Score:3)
or was anyone else surprised that it's only 20 years old? Seems longer ago to me.
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Reminds me how relatively long the gap between the Dreamcast and PS2 was. I preferred the DC.
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Soulcalibur on the Dreamcast (with VGA output) was amazing.
(PS2 had great games too.)
-- :-)
Only dumb fanbois argue over which console was "better." Besides, everyone knows PC Master Race is far superior.
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Soul Calibre is my favourite 3D fighting game. Used to love playing team battle against my brother.
Crazy Taxi was pretty great too. And Ikaruga. My TV wouldn't balance on its side so I had to buy a new one for that game.
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Don't forget chuchu rocket!
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Oh yeah, I used to have 4 player fun with that, and I think it was free from memory too!
Actually Toy Commander was good for multiplayer too. Marvel vs. Capcom 2 as well.
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What are you dissin the saturn for? It is one of the most underrated consoles there are.
Almost everybody in the know agrees now that the saturn games have aged much better then the PS1's.
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Guardian Heroes [wikipedia.org] was a blast on the Saturn. Co-op, beautiful sprites with transparency, red-book audio. Would love to find a modern remake.
PS1 games haven't aged well due to the crappy affine texture mapping -- don't emulators fix this?
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The Saturn was a cool console, but Sega delivered very poor developer support for a console that was very hard to develop for, and which cost a hundred bucks more than the PlayStation. And many of the best games never made it to the USA, which was the world's largest market for video games. Sony's decision to make a console with a proper GPU with hardware transparency and simplified development turned out to be the right one. As I've mentioned before, that makes their decision to make the PS2 so weird confu
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Was it unoffically 20 years old before? (Score:3)
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Otherwise that is a poorly written title. It's just 20 years old.
No, it was officially not 20 years old before today.
Furthermore, all consoles under 16 years old (Score:2)
are now... 16 years old!
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are now... 16 years old!
Or, they are all still under 16 anyway. Nice try.
Old Man (Score:1)
coolman (Score:1)
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they will play board games because we won't have electricity except on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
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Only if Bernie is elected, which seems unlikely.
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Obscure 2003 article on UK politics [theguardian.com]
And rolling black outs to avoid power grid collapse [nytimes.com] has been going on in South Africa for quite some time. [nytimes.com]
Bernie, Biden, or Trump. It won't really matter. If our infrastructure gets to the state that we're seeing in other nations, we'll have unreliable power. Expect this to be normal in California and the Gulf in the near future. It will be especially bad when they shut off power right when a hurricane is about to hit.
It's a consequence of avoiding long term management of
stream (Score:1)
Cell processor, baby! (Score:3)
Emotion engine processor, baby! (Score:4, Informative)
The PS3 used Cell. PS2 used the MIPS-based "emotion engine".
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I remember the breathless BS about the Emotion Engine when it launched. As usual Edge magazine was the worst for it.
They were claiming that it could use procedural generation for everything. Every brick in every wall would be unique.
Still it had some decent games. Katamari Damacy, Tekken, Hokuto no Ken, Gran Turismo... Although I always thought the Dreamcast was the better machine. It seemed to be easier to get good results on the DC and it had a lot of very slick arcade ports.
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And then there was breathless BS about Cell, how you would buy a PS3 and a Cell-based DVR and a Cell-based TV and a Cell-based toaster and then they would all be networked and used to make your games better and then none of that happened, either.
It's almost like Sony is always full of shit.
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It wasn't just the cost of a DVD player, although the cheap ones did suck compared to the PS2 for image quality (this was long before HDMI of course), it was the fact that you only needed one device in your stack.
As well as saving space and being more convenient than a top loader it also meant you only needed one input on your TV for both games and DVDs. SCART sockets, especially RGB capable ones, were in short supply on most TVs.
PS1 backwards compatibility was also very handy for that.
DVD players may have
I Still Have One (Score:2)
Haven't fired it up in 8 years, and it may not work, but I still have one. I came to it pretty late - 2008, maybe? But played the heck out of it.
Two of my favorite games of all time were on that system:
Gauntlet Dark Legacy
Dynasty Warriors 3
I still miss them, and kind of hope some day to be able to get back and play them again.
99 problems (Score:3)
But fill rate ain't one.
48GB/s to fill a 512x480 frame buffer is just insane, and it's no wonder ports from games of this console to other systems always have some sort of cut on the particle effects, like the fog on silent hill 2, smoke on Shadow of the colossus, several effects on Metal gear solid 2...
I seem some development documents where sony just straight recommends you layering 16 color textures using transparency to save on memory because "the system just can do it".
SubjectIsSubject (Score:2)
Supercomputer (Score:2)
At launch, the PS2 was considered a supercomputer in Japan and as such exporting it was not allowed.
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