A gaming console that completely changes gaming culture

It was Christmas morning, I was nine years old, sitting on the living room floor in the outskirts of Melbourne, Australia as a child. Even an abstract concept, Japan does not exist in my young mind. But as my brother and I unbuttoned the brand new PlayStation 2, shock and excitement ignited our faces and suddenly, even if we weren’t aware, there was a little bit of Japanese in our home.

By removing this mysterious black box from the package, we couldn’t set it up fast enough to run through the three-layer head of the AV cable in the living room cabinet and into the back of the TV. As Blue Hues’ geometric startup screen sings with a synthetic prosperity, we cheer it up and sit down in awe. We pick up the controller and become a one-way ticket for lifelong gamers. Twenty-five years later, I live in Japan, but I am still on the same game journey.

The secret to success

First unveiled at the Tokyo Games in 1999 and released in Japan on March 4, 2000, Sony’s PlayStation 2 (PS2) is a force that cannot be ignored for some good reasons. Thanks to the Emotion Engine, it was a collaboration between Sony Computer Entertainment and Toshiba at the time, and the game developed for the system looked and performed better than anything else on the market at the time. But Sony not only has to consider the future of its products, but also makes clever decisions to adapt to the past by making the PS2 backwards compatible. This means that not only can it play games from its predecessor PlayStation, but the controllers of the original console are also compatible, making it easy to transition to new hardware and appeal to their existing audience. In terms of multifunction, the PS2 is also the first video game console to play DVDs, which is becoming more and more popular at about the same time. Combining all of these features, it’s no surprise when the console sold 1.4 million units in its first year alone. But the hardware is only half the story.

Through the popularity of PS2, Japanese video game development features have been fully demonstrated and bound by TVs throughout the planet. Selling millions of copies each, homegrown heavyweights Square Enix put the JRPG world on notice with the stunning visuals of Final Fantasy X, Sony-owned Polyphony Digital delivered a new installment of their critically acclaimed racing series in Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec, and with Hideo Kojima still at the helm, Konami published the stealth-action classic, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, To only a few. Many other successful video game series, such as Ratchet and Clank, Kingdom Hearts and the initial releases on War of War of War of War of PS2, further cemented its legacy in the long and long history of video games.

After more than twelve years of production, the PS2 finally stopped in 2013. During this time, the console saw many iterations, including the slick version and a variety of colors, which were limited in different regions, perhaps the most iconic, with the most iconic of which was the “’sakura pink” model, found only in Japan. To this day, about 25 years later, the PS2 remains the best-selling console of all time, with Sony confirming it sold more than 160 million units worldwide.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdsah6srisc

Bold brand

On the surface, there will never be any questions about the success of PS2 During his reign. These numbers speak for anyone who cares about watching. But if the numbers speak, then the advertising campaign will scream. There are few campaigns showing consoles that almost always shock or confuse viewers with images that will never be green in the modern media landscape.

From print ads depicting the raised veins of the gamer’s arms, button markers shaped like controllers, to a man whose head is a cube with exposed muscles and mismatched facial features, Sony does not back down, it’s a spiraling way to tell the story of how big it was at the time. Making bold decisions to advertise without actually showing the product is a luxury that only applies to the marketing department of a company that is too big to fail.

But perhaps the most impressive aspect of the PS2 ad run is a TV commercial called “third place,” and more specifically, the fact is that it is directed by the late David Lynch. According to the rest of the Sony PS2 campaign, the ad never shows the console, but instead puts the audience on a brief journey of black and white flames, floating heads and talking ducks, revealing only the stylized PS2 logo at the end to reveal the film’s meaning.

A point in time

Naturally, a lot has changed in the decades since the PS2 came and went. My back hurts now, I won’t hold the controller as often as I used to, and the development of the gaming landscape goes far beyond what anyone dreamed of at the time. Since then, the number of iterations of PlayStation has been undergoing many iterations, encouraging some considerable competition with competitors at home and abroad. But beyond that, the PS2 is probably as good as the game gets for at least many gamers of our generation, not only because of how successful it is, but also because of when.

Despite being able to have a basic internet connection, the PS2 still existed in an era before online store cutting-edge and digital downloads, and the world has become accustomed to today, which brings people together in real life in all respects. At this time, like-minded enthusiasts will stay warm with community excitement, bravely bringing elements and building camps on the sidewalk outside the local game store so that they can be one of the people who will play the first to play the newly released champions when midnight is available. The same lack of online connectivity also means that multiplayer developers are still using split-screen capabilities to build them. While today may be considered a clumsy or even meaningless feature, once you make sure you are playing with someone or sitting in the same room with you. Finally, when a game is finished, rather than sitting in a digital library sitting uninstalled and forgotten, its one-time use, the disc it has released can be used to friends and family like a good book, allowing for a shared experience through exotic media.

Of course, these natural interactions are not honored by Sony or any of its competitors. They were merely by-products of the technical limitations of the time. But by one of the greatest periods in video game history, Sony and its console’s legacy surpasses anything you’ll find in print, arguably a contribution to culture. At the last moment, the game literally, by many metrics, PlayStation 2 does a great job. 25 years later, I was lucky enough to witness everything, even when I didn’t know where it came from.

Related Articles