PlayStation 2 turned 20 today.

[Wolf Kanno]

The PlayStation 2 debuted in Japan this day, twenty years ago. So what are your thoughts on the system, favorite gaming moments,or other nostalgia bits you would like to share?

[Big D]

My old PS2 is from 2004, and it's still going strong. It was a great console during its time, and it produced a slew of games that are still genre-defining favourites to this day. My trusty console helped get me through university, and early years of employment, by keeping my spirits up with games and DVDs.

[Psychotic]

Metal Gear Solid 2 blew my mind and Metal Gear Solid 3 broke my heart.

Oh, and Grand Theft Auto. All three of them. Wow. Just, wow.

Shadow of the Colossus was something else.

[Mr Gashtacular]

i remember being unduly excited about mgs2 you could shoot the bucket of ice in the bar on the tanker, and ice cube would fall out, and you could watch the ice melt! that was insane! ps1 was my first but i had the most fun of all on ps2. so many things there were part of my teen years.... ffx, all the gtas, tony hawks 3,4 and underground! i feel old but happy

[Lone Wolf Leonhart]

I have both the original fat one and the slim one released later.

I don't know if there were others before it, but this was the first console I remember having a stand. I thought it was so cool to be able to put the disc in sideways. Backwards compatibility was great, too. One of the reasons I ended up getting the slim version later on was because the original stopped being backwards compatible with certain games after a time.

Final Fantasy X is always the first game I think about when I remember the PS2 days. There's a motocross racing game called Freekstyle that I associate heavily with the PS2 days, as well. I'm not really a sports guy but the memories I have chatting with friends and family while we'd race is what made that game memorable.

Shout out to the games with blue discs.

[Lord Golbez]

Best console ever which is why it's also the best selling one ever. I think PSX library edges it out but as a console PSX had performance issues. PS2 has the next best game library and it plays the best console game library better -with few exceptions, none of which I ever found - than the console for which they were originally created. Games that started skipping and becoming unpassable past certain FMVs on which they would freeze on the PSX worked fine once I started playing them on PS2.

Highlights of the console:

FFX was an early highlight of the console and the last FF game where I still considered FF to be my favorite game series.

Suikoden series still going strong. The best was on PSX, but S3 and S5 were great.

Metal Gear Solid series reaching its prime here. MGS2 had the best (read: most hilarious and ridiculous) story of the series, while MGS3 had the best balance of story and gameplay.

Katamari Damacy was a great fun. Like capturing the simple fun of classic arcade games in a modernized form.

Persona series truly coming into its own. In the late stage of the PS2 console life this became my new favorite series with tye quick succession of P3 FES and P4. Remains my favorite series to date.

[Wolf Kanno]

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.

[Lone Wolf Leonhart]

Uncommon opinion but I found my love of Suikoden through Tactics. After that I went on to play 4 because it had the same characters. As much as I've enjoyed those two, I never went back and played old ones.

[Lord Golbez]

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.

Hopefully, that doesn't happen again with the PS5, because the PS4 was a solid return to form.

[Wolf Kanno]

Uncommon opinion but I found my love of Suikoden through Tactics. After that I went on to play 4 because it had the same characters. As much as I've enjoyed those two, I never went back and played old ones.

Honestly,my main issue with Suikoden Tactics is that it had so much potential that it never achieved. I mean when the good elements work, they are phenomenal but the bad elements just rub me the wrong way. Same deal with Suikoden IV.

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.

Hopefully, that doesn't happen again with the PS5, because the PS4 was a solid return to form.

Yeah, I have no regrets with my PS4, unlike the PS3 which I never felt I justified the purchase for it. I feel the PS4 succeeded because Sony approached this system as more of a gaming platform as opposed to the PS3 which was being touted in the early years as a swiss army knife entertainment system.

[Lone Wolf Leonhart]

Honestly,my main issue with Suikoden Tactics is that it had so much potential that it never achieved. I mean when the good elements work, they are phenomenal but the bad elements just rub me the wrong way. Same deal with Suikoden IV.

I respect your opinion too much to let this tear our friendship asunder

[Lord Golbez]

Suikoden Tactics was better than Suikoden IV, because it was fun to play at least, but good grief that story. It was like they doubled down on the worst parts of S4's story (which wasn't particularly good to begin with) to make the most absurd episode of a saturday morning cartoon plot imaginable. The gameplay was at least good standard tactics RPG fare and, while I don't remember it too well, I seem to recall there were some interesting gimmicks.

I definitely had a fun time playing some games on PS3, but looking back the games mostly fall into one of two categories: 1) digital versions of some PSX and PS2 games I missed in their original run and 2) games that have since been released on PS4. The other problem was the dearth of good RPGs.

[Scotty_ffgamer]

My ps2 is still going strong that my parents got for my birthday on release day; though, I haven’t used it in quite a while since my main tv only has hdmi. My wife has the slim ps2 which is nice, but I’ve always preferred the bulky original with the slide out disk tray.

I remember being somewhat blown away about having a DVD player on my console, and I used to think movies looked so good on it as I only had a vcr in my room before that. Many fond memories of watching Lord of the Rings on that thing. I did mess something up and somehow activated parental control though, and I never could figure out how to undo that.

I remember excitedly awaiting FFX when adds for it started playing on Toonami all the time. I thought it looked so cool, and I did actually enjoy it quite a bit. Kingdom Hearts was my main go to game though, and it’s still kind of a comfort game for me if I’m ever feeling depressed or something. I also have some pretty fond memories of my cousin bringing Vice City over which my parents never knew about. We’d spend hours just driving around and listening to the radio or playing around with some of the cheats.

The big standout series for me was Xenosaga though. I didn’t know what to expect, but I loved the characters and the story. I was actually all for the super long cutscenes. It was also the start of me disliking game preorders as I preordered Xenosaga 2 through Gamestop pretty much as soon as I could. I was so excited for the game despite the weird changes to character design, and I was really anticipating the promised preorder bonus of a dvd that contained cutscenes and (I think) begins the scenes stuff from the first game. Gamestop told me they didn’t have the disk though, and that I could check the one across the street. That Gamestop said they did have disks but it didn’t matter because they only had enough for the people that preordered and kind of hinted that the employees may have just taken the bonus disks for themselves if they ran out. I didn’t shop at Gamestop again for years after that.

[Lone Wolf Leonhart]

The big standout series for me was Xenosaga though. I didn’t know what to expect, but I loved the characters and the story. I was actually all for the super long cutscenes. It was also the start of me disliking game preorders as I preordered Xenosaga 2 through Gamestop pretty much as soon as I could. I was so excited for the game despite the weird changes to character design, and I was really anticipating the promised preorder bonus of a dvd that contained cutscenes and (I think) begins the scenes stuff from the first game. Gamestop told me they didn’t have the disk though, and that I could check the one across the street. That Gamestop said they did have disks but it didn’t matter because they only had enough for the people that preordered and kind of hinted that the employees may have just taken the bonus disks for themselves if they ran out. I didn’t shop at Gamestop again for years after that.

Oh man, I loved Xenosaga. Cutscenes and all. I played all three pretty much back to back. I was invested in that world for so long, I really embraced the characters and the setting was so believable to me. In the first game when they're flying around on a ship surrounded by nothing but space, I genuinely felt the isolation. I love when games make me feel immersed in the universe.

I played Xenosaga before Xenogears and various Gundam games, so I think this is my first game where characters could fight not only as themselves but giant robots. I remember accidentally getting into fights where I was too small and getting crushed easily.

You're really able to empathize with the villains by the end. To this day Virgil may be one of my favorite video game characters. I heard there was originally going to be more games, but that got cut short so they had to fit a lot in Episode III.

I also got invested in the symbolism and started reading Nietzsche afterwards.

Don't even get me started on the amazing soundtracks.