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PS2 launch date anniversary has gamers feeling nostalgic

By Robert N. Adams

The Ps2 launch date anniversary is here, and gamers around the world are sharing their favorite memories of this legendary console. The PlayStation 2 release date forever changed the world of gaming for the better, so let’s look back on some great memories!

Fond memories of favorite games

PS2 launch date playstation 2 release date GTA San Andreas Grand Theft Auto

A gaming console isn’t much without its games, and thousands of titles have been released since the original PS2 launch dates. Many of the biggest franchises today either got their start on the PlayStation 2 or went from lesser-known, smaller games to massive blockbusters.

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Grand Theft Auto is surely one of the biggest winners of that generation. GTA 3 changed the face of gaming, inciting a moral panic that would be repeated with the releases of GTA: Vice City and GTA: San Andreas. The vast majority of us who played these games, however, were simply enjoying an open world filled with action, gangsters, and drama.

These games provided countless hours of fun. Some people liked to go through the game fairly, but every now and then we’d like to push a magical combination of buttons and cause mayhem in the city.

“I will never forget you GTA San Andreas’s cheat sheet,” read a comment on the /r/gaming subreddit.

Some of the younger folks, though, never got the chance to play the GTA games, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t enjoy causing chaos in the city. While their parents might not have let them run around as Tommy Vercetti or CJ, they didn’t really mind them playing The Simpsons: Hit & Run.

I missed out on The Simpsons, but I had plenty of fun playing Vice City and San Andreas. I fondly remember buying it with my own hard-earned money, spending the entirety of a vacation week from school (and a few sick days after that) glued to the front of the television and rocking out to cool ’80s music.

The PS2 launch date was a game changer

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A key success for Sony on the PS2 launch date was the game library. Sure, the PlayStation 2 launch games only included a handful of titles, but that didn’t matter, as backwards compatibility meant that hundreds of PS1 games were ready to play on the PS2 on day one.

“This was also the first system I was able to play the PS1 Metal Gear Solid on (had only Nintendo before this),” /u/cmaxim said on Reddit. “[That] game changed my life[…] Ah, those were the days… I don’t miss those memory cards though[.]”

And that highlights one of the few flaws of this generation of games. While today’s consoles have terabyte hard drives, we had to fit our save games and custom data on tiny memory cards. Most of these cards would struggle to fit on two MP3s on them, but for us, they held the whole world.

Backwards compatibility aside, the PS2 launch date also meant that a much cheaper DVD player was available to the masses. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that this was the first console for many gamers simply because their parents didn’t want to spend $500 on a DVD player from another company — the ability to play video games was just a really nice bonus.

It’s twenty years later and many fans still fondly remember their fun with the PS2. Heck, some of them are still working — my PlayStation 2 certainly is.

The PS2 launch date was and still is a magical moment in gaming history. Somehow, I don’t think we’ll feel the same way about the PS4.

Robert N. Adams
Robert N. Adams

I've had a controller in my hand since I was 4 and I haven't stopped gaming since. CCGs, Tabletop Games, Pen & Paper RPGs - I've tried a whole bunch of stuff over the years and I'm always looking to try more!

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