The Playstation 2 is the best selling video game console in history, with sales exceeding over 136 million units by the end of 2008 it also sports a library of nearly 2,000 games, it is the only last generation console that continues to see any sort of support or game releases. The console is in it's ninth year on the market and still continues to sell strong despite the release of newer consoles like the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. At this point in the console's life, you might think you'd be hard pressed to find a gamer that hasn't owned one at some point in the last nine years, but it might surprise you to know that I've missed out on a majority of the console's life.



My brother and I got a Playstation 2 for Christmas in 2001, I got Final Fantasy X and my brother recieved Half Life. Being a jobless high school student, it was tough for us to get any games so a majority of my time on the console was spent with PS1 games like Dragon Quest VII and Digimon World 2 and, of course, the occasional weekend game rental. As the year progressed, I eventually noticed that sometimes the system would load to the menus, even if a disc was inside, and would give me a disc read error. Not having regular access to the internet at the time, I just continued to play the console since I could usually get it to play the disc after turning it on and off a few times. That next fall saw the release of Kingdom Hearts, and while I couldn't afford the game at the time of its release, that certainly didn't stop me from renting it. While playing through Kingdom Hearts, the console suddenly stopped loading all together one day. With no way of knowing what was wrong with it, we assumed it was broken, and since I still had no job at the time, we were unable to afford repairs and the PS2 was sent to an early grave.

My anger with the situation over the PS2 caused me to want nothing to do with the Sony console for the longest time. I happily played the PS1 in the mean time and eventually ended up with a GameCube, which I still own to this day. While I was happy with the GameCube, being a gamer who enjoys RPGs and Fighting games, it was hard to own a console that had very few of either genre. Thanks to friends, and later roommates, I was still able to play some PS2 games, despite not owning one myself. Games like Persona 3, Digital Devil Saga, Kingdom Hearts 2, and Dragon Quest VIII were all games I would've missed out on if it were for the people I lived with since I moved out of my parent's house. Finally in 2009, I am in possession of a PS2, once again thanks to my roommate. I've already picked up a number of games for it and continue to get more on a nearly weekly basis, thanks in large part to the large number of quality titles on the console that are less than $10. Despite owning an Xbox 360, I have to say that thanks to its large library, low game cost, and with games still being released, I could see myself being quite happy with the PS2 for sometime to come.

Looking back on the years I missed with the PS2, I kind of regret not simply buying another console all those years ago. Of course, if I had, I wouldn't be experiencing all these great games that I had missed at a much more reasonable price than when they were first released. The PS2 really is a great system and with so many great games available at such low prices, I encourage anyone else who may have missed out on the system to  give it a look, as I'm sure every gamer could find something to like on the system.

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