The other night I dusted off the old PS2 so that my friend could watch a movie on the living room TV. After the show was finished, I decided to take a trip down memory lane and dust off some of the games that I have for my PS2. I noticed that of the consoles that I have from that generation of consoles, all of them, the PS2 had the most games. It's rather interesting, as for most of my gaming career I had been strictly anti-Sony.
I didn't own an original Playstation. Instead, I had the N64. The Playstation was such a foreign thing to me. Only a few of my friends, whom I didn't get to see that often, had a Playstation. As a dedicated Nintendo fan, I was opposed to this new brand of console trying to take over a market that was already a tumultuous battlefield between two giants. The age old battle between Sega and Nintendo was a heated one, and having a new challenger step in would only muck things up, and muck things up it did. As my fanaticism of video games grew, so too did my library of consoles.
A friend of my brother's brought over his Sega Dreamcast and my mind was blown by the cutting edge technology. Graphics and sound that I couldn't believe could come from a video game were on full display with the Sega Dreamcast. A short while after, the Playstation 2 was released, and me, my brother, and his friend were none too impressed with the new console from Sony. It had about the same amount of power, and the game selection was nowhere near that of the Dreamcast, or so we thought. Shortly after the release of the PS2, the Dreamcast went into a downward spiral of sales. The PS2 killed the Sega Dreamcast.
Some say that it was the console's ability to play DVD videos, others say that it was its superior library of games, all I know is, gaming lost one of its finest consoles. When the Dreamcast was officially declared dead by the gaming public, I hated the PS2. I hated Sony for stepping into a ring where it had no right to be in. This was a travesty, that a once great and fun loving company should be shut out by this newcomer. I swore that I would never get a Sony Playstation 2.
At the end of the school year in 2005, I had just finished the worst year of my life. Everything about my Freshman year was awful. On the last day, I came home to a big box that game in the mail from my grandpa. It was a belated birthday present. My birthday was over two months ago from that day. It didn't matter though, I would have taken anything after that year. In that box was the Playstation 2 that I still own today.
The PS2 quickly grew to be the primary console that would occupy my living room with many nights of playing games like Guitar Hero, DDR Max 2, Ratchet & Clank, Jak & Daxter, Metal Gear Solid, Shadow of the Colossus, and quite a few more. Sony may have killed off the console with some of the most imaginative games that I've ever seen, but to its credit, the PS2 did have a few games that stood out as rather artistic.
During that time, the debate of whether or not games should be considered as an art from was rustling about the internet. This very notion shook my world as a gamer, and helped me to understand games in the way that I do today.
Shadow of the Colossus, Metal Gear Solid 3, Katamari Damacy were all great games that did things differently from what was generally considered a game. The Playstation 2 library was expansive and diverse with many great titles that left their mark. These games have not, and should not, be forgotten. The Playstation 2 was a great console because of the games that it had available to it.
While the Playstation 2 may have killed off my favorite gaming console of all time, and may have beaten out Nintendo two generations in a row, as it outsold the N64, Sony has a place in my heart. Even with today's generation of consoles, or rather the last generation of consoles, my PS3 may have a smaller library than that of my Xbox 360, but it does have games which matter more. These games have a certain specialty about them, and they are unique. These games matter. Not just for Sony, but for the gaming industry as a whole. Games need not be defined by the standard formats of win/lose scenarios, or boss battles at the end of each level, or fighting the bad guys all the time. Games can explore so much more than just those basic concepts, sometimes they even use those concepts to explore them. Sony, at lest in their ad campaigns, understands the greatness that exist within games. How, games can turn players, into legends. How games can help us explore dark places, and come out of them stronger people. How games can encourage us to keep moving forward. How games can teach us that if we fail, we should try again. How games can help us find within ourselves, the strength to overcome that which we thought was impossible. So, here's to Sony, and here's to video games. Cheers.
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