No Wonder This Was The Best Selling Console of All Time

It's 2025. Console and game prices are more expensive than ever, at $80 a piece. But somehow, everyone is talking about a console that came out 25 years ago. The PS2, also known as the PlayStation 2. This thing has sold over 160 million units worldwide, which makes it the best-selling gaming console in the world. And somehow, I've never used one. Growing up, it seemed like everyone was obsessed with their PlayStation 2s. Talking about Tony Hawk, this, Kingdom Hearts, that. However, the only console I ever owned was the Game Boy Color. Sure, I had all the Pokemon games at my disposal, along with some Zelda games, but that's not what people are talking about. So it feels like I've missed out. I don't just get excited about PS2 games, or the startup sound, or even how sleek it looks, how other people do. It's like they all light up with joy, and I, I don't feel anything. But is it possible, at 31, to dive into the many magical worlds of PS2 games decades after its release? So I decided to go find it. To search for the experiences that make up everyone's nostalgia. To finally try the PS2 myself. Yay, video games! So the first thing I needed to do was purchase a PS2. And surprisingly, it wasn't as expensive as you'd think. Apparently, GameStop has launched a retro shop, where people can buy and sell their used retro consoles for some extra lunch money. I thought it would be hundreds of dollars, like Sony Walkmans, or even some old cameras. But I was able to find this one for just over a hundred dollars. Honestly, that's a steal compared to its original launch price of $300 in the year 2000. And with a massive selection of games under $10 a piece, I figured I should ask my co-workers which games to pick. I was met with a wide range of excited responses like, oh yeah, get Tony Hawk, or you have to get Kingdom Hearts. That game is pure and magical. And one does not simply experience the PS2 without playing Lord of the Rings. I also scoured the internet for the top games list too, but it was the same as their recommendations anyways. And after narrowing it down to five games and the console itself, I pressed checkout with anticipation. This is going to be the moment where I finally understand what the hype is about. After a few short days, my PS2 arrived and there it was. Everyone's favorite childhood console in all its glory, just sitting inside a cardboard box. I wonder if this thing was sitting in someone's garage somewhere, waiting patiently for the day that someone decided to open it up and play it again. That's sort of sad, but somewhat bittersweet too. I took it out of the box and I was honestly shocked by how small and lightweight it was. It looked like it was missing a piece of something off the back, so I hope it still works. But I mean, this is the best selling console ever made. And it's almost surreal holding it for the first time. It's like how the first person to have ever recorded music into a record must have felt. Just amazed and shocked by it all. This is actually the original fat model of the PS2, which is barely fat. But apparently there's a slim model that came out a couple years later that's crazy thin. Overall, I think the design holds up well. It doesn't look like an old console with some wacky color scheme. And you can even rotate that tiny logo based on the way you want it to lay down. How cute. With my hands shaking in anticipation and my brain neurons going on hyperspeed, it's time to get this bad boy hooked up and find out if GameStop sent us a working console. Inside the box was something else. Something I haven't seen in a really long time. Since the time of VHS tapes. And those were the red, white, and yellow cables of the olden days. The RCA cables. This was the first thing that made me realize just how old this thing truly is. Clearly, I can't just jam these three cables into my monitor, so there's got to be a better way. And looking online, you can find a ton of adapters that will convert these analog connectors to an HDMI port. Something that I can actually use. After some more digging the popular consensus on Reddit, was that the best adapter is the RetroTINK 2X Pro. However, that one would cost $20 more than my PlayStation. How ridiculous is that? And like any other average person, I said no thank you. And decided to go with a cheap one off Amazon and take my chances. Hopefully, this one works just as good for a fraction of the price. Since the PS2 is 25 years old, for perspective, that's five years older than YouTube itself. I don't think the graphics will be all that impressive to begin with. And the other accessory was a controller. Not just any controller, but a wired one. With a very long wire. Honestly, it looks like a huge trip hazard. The PS2 supports up to two controllers for some co-op play, which seems really cool to me. I wonder if I'll eventually pick up another one, so I can have some split screen action. But for now, that was everything that was in the box. The console, the controller, and some cables. Time for the moment of truth. Would this 25 year old piece of hardware still work? Can I finally experience the magic of PlayStation? I do more than gaming on 25 year old hardware though. I also game on PC. And for that sort of thing, I recommend today's sponsor, Innocent. Innocent sent over their GA27W1Q 4K OLED gaming monitor. And to be honest, I haven't even heard of them until now. So why am I telling you about them now? Because the second I plugged this thing in, I immediately got what they were going for here. The display packs your usual crispy 4K resolution, sure. But it also manages to cram in every other gaming feature you could possibly imagine. 60 frames per second? 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So I press the power button and immediately the green light turned on and you could hear the fan spinning as the console kicked into action. This is it! I'm finally experiencing what all my friends did when they were young. Is this what I've been missing out on? This low-pitched whoosh sound that has everyone flocking to the console like chickens? Honestly, I still don't see what the big deal is. So in attempt to change my mind, I decided to try out Tony Hawk first. Since it's an iconic game that defined skateboarding to an entire generation of players. And because Jake is always going on and on about how good he is at it and how he has his soundtrack on his first iPod growing up, like that makes him unique or something. Once I put the disc in, the game just immediately booted up on its own. No game installs, updates or tricky menus to navigate and definitely no internet. Is this why people love this thing so much? It just does what you want it to without shoving ads, subscriptions and upsells in your face. On the menu for Tony Hawk, it asked if I wanted to play a tutorial which no, come on, I'm a pro gamer. I don't read instructions, those are for lameos. So I launched off into the first map and the resolution doesn't look that bad or maybe it does and my expectations were just really low to begin with. Regardless, I was having fun, constantly falling over and over and not really doing any tricks but the controls felt natural as I moved the joystick to skate around the map. Although I had no idea what any of the buttons did. I went down some ramps, possibly even did a kickflip. Is that what it's called? It felt like I was becoming a real skater without all the fear of broken knees and scraped elbows. Now I could finally say I can do a kickflip. My life is complete. My two minutes were up and I had just set a new high score of 994. At this point, I was feeling like the Birdman himself. At least until Jake came in and destroyed my high score by like 50 times over. Oh, I see. Even though I'm experiencing the game, I'm still not part of the cool kids club. I don't have that muscle memory of playing these games. I'm brand new and I think it's time for a new game but not just any game. We're gonna play the most successful game ever sold on the PS2. Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. This game sold about 20 million copies. Dang, that's a lot of gamers. For comparison, the best-selling Xbox game of all time was Halo 2 and it only sold 8 million copies. So GTA had to be doing something right and I hope it's a lot like GTA 5 which I absolutely love. I love the story, stealing cars, driving against traffic. Unlike real life where I have to abide by traffic laws, GTA lets me unleash my inner driver. The one that wants to run through all the reds and mug people on the street. And unlike Tony Hawk, I've actually experienced GTA before. When the game booted on, one of the first things I noticed about it was their world building. Just in the intro, they took their time to showcase how big the world is and made it feel alive with random events like stoplights, people crossing the street. Just normal happenings in the background. For an old game, I didn't expect all these things to be there. I thought it would be my character, some boring blocks for houses, maybe my block of a car and that would be it. But it's a lot more than that. And this is stuff that you don't really notice too much in present-day games because let's be real, it's not that impressive anymore. But for games back then, this had to have been pretty uncommon. And what's crazy is that the game literally just looks like an older version of GTA 5. You can steal cars, mob the common passerby's and drive off into the sunset. All the same stuff. Now those controls on the other hand, that left a bit to be desired. Trying to ride that bike around was actually harder than riding a bike around for the first time in real life. The game at least gives you some tutorials as you're playing it. Tells you to press X repeatedly to ride your bike. But doing that does nothing. It got so frustrating that I just jumped off the back, hijacked some random dude's car and drove it straight into the ocean. At least the water graphics look pretty good as I drown to death. And ooh, there's that wasted screen. Now that, I've seen that before. And even though I haven't played this exact game before, I knew the feeling of familiarity that I have in a way played it before. Like how other PS2 users have connected through games like Kingdom Hearts and Tony Hawk. Wait, is that what nostalgia feels like? Next, I decided to try out NBA Street for a little friendly 1v1 competition. As a short person, I've never been good at basketball. But this was my moment to finally slam dunk on my opponents. However, once I put the disc in, nothing happened. Did GameStop send me a broken game? Or is there something I'm doing wrong? The other two games worked just fine. So I tried to restart the PS2 and see if that would fix the issue and still nothing. I wasn't sure if I should be sad about having an authentic PS2 moment when games don't work or if I should appreciate that. I had a look at the disc and it was pretty scratched up. I guess that is one downside to physical media. Speaking of, another thing that made the PS2 such a big hit back in the day was its ability to play DVDs. Long before streaming services ruled the planet, there were these things called DVDs. You had to physically go to a blockbuster with limited options and pick something to watch for the weekend at home. And if it sucked, nothing you can do about it. That's part of the experience. That's the joy. However, since DVDs were still a newer technology, to own a DVD player at home, it often cost you more than the price of a PS2, which made purchasing one a no-brainer. Maybe that's why they sold so many. Maybe half of those were just DVD player sales. Next, I went to Lord of the Rings, a game that was largely hyped up to me by many of the men here in the office. And I can't lie, I've not seen any of the movies. It's not my fault. They're three hours long. That's too long for my taste. So with almost zero background info going into this game, I'm not sure what to expect. Thankfully, unlike the previous one, this one started up just fine. And that's a win for us. However, it had a really long unskippable cutscene, which apparently shows you parts of the movie. You could say I was getting the premium movie experience without watching the movie. But I have to admit, that cutscene was looking pretty sharp considering this janky $20 adapter we had on there. But then something happened. The screen went so dark after it cut to actual gameplay. I couldn't even see my character. Maybe I should have splurged on that $120 adapter after all, hmm? But there were also some other settings I could change. So I hit the pause menu, went to settings to adjust the brightness levels. But that wasn't a thing. That wasn't an option on older games. Because all I had were the options to turn the controller vibrate on and off, or turn the sound effects volume up and down. And that was it. But maybe it had something to do with the monitor I was using. But GTA and Tony Hawk works just fine. So before trying another game, I decided to give this one another try on another monitor and experience Lord of the Rings the right way. And I was feeling rather hopeful. But again, after that long cutscene, the game went too dark to play. And at this point, I was worried that I had made a mistake But maybe I could just tweak the settings on my monitor. Just to make sure there wasn't some issue where I was trying to do some weird upscaling and tanking the image quality by accident. And after I tweaked a few settings, it didn't look perfect. But it did look much better. I can at least see my character now as I run around the screen aimlessly, mashing the attack button and feeling the controller vibrate. So I'm satisfied with that. One thing I realized with this game is regardless of my enjoyment, I'll still be missing that nostalgia factor that my co-workers have when they play it. And this one is a double whammy since I haven't played the games or watched the movies. But there's one more chance for me to truly experience the greatness of the PS2. So this next one is one that I actually remember wanting to play as a kid. I think I even saved up a whole $15 after seeing the trailer for it. And throughout the years, I've listened to its soundtrack several times. Maybe like a hundred times. I had an Utada Hikaru phase, don't judge. Anyways, now that I've got the best setup for the PS2, it was time to experience the game I was most excited to play. Kingdom Hearts. At this point, I was starting to give up. My games weren't working. I didn't understand the controls. Maybe this whole idea of fitting in with a generation of gamers just wasn't meant to be. But the moment the opening theme played, something clicked. This is the jam. The colors were vibrant and bright. The music, it was like something I'd been listening to my whole life. And it no longer felt like I was just playing an old game. And before I knew it, I wasn't thinking about the low resolution gameplay, the controller being wired, or even the cheap adapter I picked up. I was immersed in the story, listening to the music, and just downright enjoying myself. Finally, I think I get it. So when Sora was on Destiny Islands, at the beginning of the game, one of the NPCs asked him what he was most afraid of. And I jokingly selected getting old. But then I paused and I realized, yeah, I sort of am afraid of getting old. Because while I'm only 31, with a long life ahead of me, I don't have all the free time that I used to. Time that I could just spend enjoying games like this. Instead, I can barely carve out 30 minutes a day to myself. And I probably won't ever have all that free time again. So while I finally understand what makes a PS2 so great, and finally I can see myself actually sitting down and sinking some serious hours into some games, I physically can't. Maybe it's not the end though, because I can still find that feeling. And when my kids are a little older, they'll start getting into games and hobbies with their endless time on their hands, and I'll be there to share in that enjoyment. So maybe it's too late for me, but it's not too late for them.