The PS2 and I had a rocky start, but I feel it eventually grew into one of my top favorite consoles. I found FFX and MGS2 a bit disappointing, though I grew to love MGS2 over time. I don't feel the console really started to wow me until I got Suikoden III. Ico, DMC3, BoFV, and all that DDR.

I feel the PS2 was a great system for Konami, as I feel MGS, Silent Hill, and Suikoden all had pretty strong showing on the console and I'm actually amazed how many titles I own by them for this particular gaming generation compared to others. I was really hardcore into Dance Dance Revolution around this time, so I own pretty much all of the western releases for this console.

Atlus and the MegaTen team also broke serious ground this generation. I'll let others wax on the greatness of Persona, but I honestly feel the real treats were games like SMTIII, Digital Devil Saga, and the Raidou Devil Summoner entries just for showcasing the franchises sheer variety along with Persona.

Capcom had its ups and downs this console generation. Overall, I feel DMC was a good new IP, but it was sad to see the MMX series crash and burn on home consoles. I take solace in the MMZ series on handhelds though. I got a lot of my fighting game collections on this system, and finally got the underappreciated SFIII finally, but I am still annoyed Capcom never released an arcade perfect port of Marvel Vs. Capcom 1. I did get Onimusha though.

I feel Square had one of the more disappointing fronts here. You can tell the movie/merger fiasco made them lose their footing this generation and so I guess I shouldn't be surprised they delivered more misses than hits. For them, I feel the real highlights were FFXII, KH1, DQVIII and probably Front Mission 4. With that said, its my goal this year to tackle a lot of games I missed from them this generation, so I'll finally see if Unlimited Saga and Dawn of Mana are really as atrocious as people say they are. Not to mention I still have the Bouncer somewhere...

Bandai-Namco also really started to show up on my radar. Partly for the underrated Xenosaga series I still enjoy, but also for more experimental titles like .hack:// and of course I got sucked into the hype surrounding Soul Calibur 2.

I feel my favorite part of this gen was just the rise of really good Rhythm games. Rez, Gitaroo Man, Guitar Hero, DDR, Amplitude. It was a pretty stellar generation for Rhythm Games and come to think of it, survival horror as well when you think about Silent Hill2-4, Fatal Frame, and Siren.

I also enjoyed Sony's odd mascot war between Jak, Ratchet, and Sly Cooper. I was in the minority with Sly Cooper, but it was cool to see the last hooray of Son'y mascot characters. Speaking of Sony, Team Ico really hit it out of the park with both Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. Two stellar titles that really made strong arguments about gaming as an art form.

For the most part, I felt Sony had a pretty stellar time with this behemoth of a console, I simply wish its success had not gone to the companies head cause I feel the PS2 was followed up by a dud.