PlayStation 2 - What's great, what sucked ========================================= I've never been much of a console gamer. The only console I ever owned was a Game Boy Pocket and honestly, didn't use it very much since the games I had (DonkeyKong Land III and Link's Awakening) frustrated me quite a bit. I decided that console games were not my thing and I gave up on them. I turned onto computer games which introduced me into RPGs, that's what I played mostly. The design ---------- I have the black PlayStation 2 Slimline (SCPH-75004, V14) available and while it doesn't look nearly as awesome on the press photos, it is indeed small and well, okay. I wouldn't give a design price for it, but it looks cool enough not to be ashamed of. Frankly, I don't care that much about its design. On the plus-side, it is rather light. I move it sometimes between my computer screen and the larger TV and have to carry it around a bit. All neccessary stuff is light enough so I can pack a game, the memory card, the power supply and the controller and carry it away. Doing that with a desktop PC or even a laptop is a bit harder. The performance --------------- On a console, where there are *no* variant parts, that is - everybody plays on the exact same hardware I am a bit disappointed. I have already seen scenes with many objects and effects in games that are sluggish, because the console is too slow. While I can understand that as a computer programmer, I have some trouble understanding why this has to be the case on a console. If the console is not powerful enough, reduce the computation load. The controller -------------- Admittedly, this is my favorite part. The DualShock 2 is, in my option a really awesome controller. It is cable bound, so it does not need to charge batteries (like the DualShock 3) and the cable looks sturdy, so it won't break easily. For me, it is the symbol of console gaming - no other controller before or after has made such an impression on me. The only thing that puts me off is the connector. It is *huge* and proprietary which is absolutely not neccessary, since the PS2 does indeed have a USB port. No, really, it has two ports (that's exactly as many as game ports) and USB does also support hubbing, so more controllers could be plugged in at the same time (if I remember correctly, it is possible to use four controllers on one PS2 at the same time). Why, Sony, why? After all, I bought a adaptor cable that lets me connect the DualShock 2 to my laptop, since I wanted to use the controller there, too. The adaptor uses a GreenAsia chip and Linux has a driver for it, so that was a piece of cake. Still, USB would be much better than these terribly large connectors. Sony apparently found that out in 2007 too, since the wireless DualShock 3 has a USB port as well as Bluetooth-support. Apart from that, the DualShock 3 has also motion-sensing, a feature that is available from third-party PS2 controllers too, so it is not that much of an improvement over the DualShock 2. The memory card --------------- This is probably the most annoying thing. These days, SD cards with a capacity of 16 GB are common and not prohibitively expensive, therefore I have really trouble understanding why the Sony MemoryCard for the PS2 is so expensive. Considering it can contain only 8 MB that is really a shame. There seems to be a market for cheaper, third-party cards which go up to 64 MB, but the reviews I have seen were mostly negative as they seem to have memory problems. To add insult to the injury one can also play PlayStation 1 games on the PS2 but only save on a PlayStation 1 card! I have really no idea why the Sony developers couldn't just emulate the PS1 card and redirect the data on the PlayStation 2 MemoryCard. I had to buy a 1 MB PS1 MemoryCard then, and, imagine my surprise when I found out that the 1 MB on the PS1 meant Megabit, not Megabyte as on the PS2. So I bought a chunk of plastic, capable of saving 128 Kilobytes for actual money! 128 Kilobytes seemed tiny even back then in 1997 when the PS1 was modern, so I can only shake my head at what they did. The cables ---------- The video --------- The software ------------ The games ---------