Venturing into console gaming!

Well I know it's been a while since posting on TechSpot, but in between looking for a new place to live, meeting with potential new land lords and the drive times, doesn't make for a lot of free time. But during all this chaos I broke down and purchased myself a Sony Playstation 2 "fat boy" at Gamestop for $49.99!

It's a pretty sweet older system, came with one dual shock controller and the store even threw in a free 16MB memory card. I figured that with facing a move, I need to keep all my money right now, I was wanting a Playstation 3, but the cost just couldn't be justified. So I got a older Playstation 2, not a bad little system, I've been tinkering with it for two days now and I'm quite impressed with even the so called "older technology" of it.

I purchased their 1 year protection plan for $4.99, covers the deck, the memory card and one controller. At the same time I payed for another matching used dual shock controller for $14.99 and about 25 used pre-owned games to kick things off. I picked up a Tony Hawk skateboard game, about 4-5 various racing games, Soul Calibur II & III, Smackdown Vs. Raw 2006, WipeOut Fusion, Wipeout XL, Ace Combat 4 & 5, Midnight Club 3 "Dub Edition Re-Mix", Virtual Fighter 4, Gran Turismo 3 & 4, Kenssen II, Star Trek Encounters, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005, All the Mortal Kombat games for the playstation 2, Flatout, Need For Speed Underground 2, AG III, Onjmusha 2, Harvest Moon, Katamari Damacy, Tenchu "Wrath Of Heaven", Supercar "Street Challenge", Greg Hastings Paintball Max'D, R:Racing Evolution, Power Boat Racer and several other old titles.

Also I know the old Playstation 2 online stuff is over, it's not supported anymore, but I went ahead and purchased a network adapter for $12.99 anyways, for it was needed to make my system act like it was on steroids. With the network adapter I was able to install an old Maxtor 500 Gig hard drive to the Playstation 2! The Playstation formatted it for me, took about 45 minutes and installed HD-Loader 0.8c and set up the hard drive to have a 5 gig partition where all of my game stats and game saves can go. The rest of the hard drive is for copying the games I get to barrow from friends and family that might still have old Playstation 2 games just laying around and play those games without the need of a game disk.

My Son loves it, right away he likes the console gaming much better than PC gaming. We have had hours of good Father & Son time together, to be honest the kid is pretty damn good.

I know I didn't purchase the "latest & greatest" here, but this was within my current budget and to be honest I think I made a good choice, for this thing is real fun to play. So what if I cant watch Blu-Ray's on it, so I'm stuck with good ole DVD's, I can live with that. So what if I'm not linked to the Playstation online network, with the problems they have been having with their network and privacy issues, thank gosh I'm not hooked up, stand alone will work just fine for me.

The last thing I purchased is a cooling stand that the unit rests on and the stand blows cool air into it's vent ports. The cooling stand is at a Gamestop in Oakland California, I paid for it here in Sacramento and they will be doing a store to store transfer of it for me, when it comes in I can pick it up.

Well I'm off to try my hand at a little Soul Calibur III think I will choose to play Nightmare, kind of a freaky evil looking dude, but he is powerful!

If anyone out there can recommend some good Playstation 2 games "I'm all ears"!

That's very cool, my son and I spent a lot of time on the Nintendo and original Playstation when he was young. Looks like you've got a pretty good start on the library, one game we really enjoyed (PS1) was Rally Cross ... still have it and we fire it up every once in a while just for grins.

Speaking of Rally Cross, I always thought the Colin Mcrae rally games made a good showing for the PS1.

For the PS2 though, no doubt that the better quality games all arived at the latter end of its life time, in my opinion (maybe with the exeption of MGS2 and a few others though). One of my favorite PS2 games was Max Payne; if you like a good story line, Max Payne doesn't let you down there.

That's cool Zen, Got The slim one right now! It's broken though... don't have time to have it fixed.. missed playing Guitar Hero...dang was I good during those days.... *sign.....

Well hope to get it fixed really soon!

For fans of the series, there's Resident Evil and Lara Croft Tomb Raider for PS2. My PS2 slimline is semi-broke too, doesn't want to play DVD's anymore but will still play most games.

I'm pretty much a fan of just about anything racing but really like rally style racing best, more diversity and challenges.

I always thought well of the Gran Turismo games. The graphics on Gran Turismo 1 for the original Playstation were some of the best it had seen, in my opinion.

I even went as far to complete all of the endurance races for Gran Turismo 3 (PS2) when i first had it...then only to corrupt my save data a few weeks later

I like the Gran Turismo series, especially GT3 A-Spec which still had just a little arcade flavor to it. Thought GT4 was kind of tedious so my son and I tag teamed it to finish it. Still haven't pulled the trigger on GT5, was kind of ticked off about how long it was in development ... but I'll spring for it eventually.

I never got around to GT4 for some reason. I don't think i'll bother with GT5 because i've already found Race Driver GRID (which i might say, I love with a passion)

I'll always have a place in my heart for GT3 though...and maybe the Rollcage games

Devil may cry, Brothers in arm earned in blood, Need for speed underground 1,2, delta force black hawk down, Socom US navy seals, Tokyo xtreme racer, hit man, final fantasy series,

Well when I was grocery shopping I noticed a brand new Gamestop in the plaza. I went in and checked it out, and of course came out with some new pre-owned games. I grabbed myself Rebel Raiders "Operation Nighthawk", World Series Of Poker 2008, American Choppers, Kengo "Master Of The Bushido", Suzuki TT Superbikers Racing & Tony Hawk pro Skater 3! All these older titles came to around $14.00, can't beat cheap!

Also I have a question, is the Sony Playstation 2 backwards compatible, can it play Playstation 1 games? For the very attractive lady that was helping me at Gamestop didn't know, I guess her attractiveness made up for her lack of knowledge.....lol!

Yeah playstation 2 can play ps1 games!!

But you'll need a PS1 memory card.

Well that information about needing a PS1 memory card is good to know. I wonder if I even need it, seeing that I have that 500 Gig hard drive installed and I'm using 5 Gig's of the drive which I set up a file folder to save everything, the hard drives save file is emulating a stock memory card. But I might just pick up a PS1 memory card, just to be on the safe side. Gamestop discontinued all PS1 gear a long time ago, they don't even carry the games, so I will have to be resourceful to find that card.

Also I just spent 3 hours playing that Suzuki TT Super bike game, talk about a real kick in the pants of a good time. It appears that for the moment, I'm enjoying the motorcycle games a little bit better than the car games right now.

My eye's are fried, my mind is mush and my thumbs hurt, it's like after 2:00am here and I'm off to bed, maybe I will have dreams about racing around the Isle of Mann on a super TT bike!

Hey Zen, If your into any RPG games The Final Fantasy series was something i always enjoyed while playing on my Ps2. Most of them are a big long but still fun :]

I'll second that.

Final Fantasy 10 (X) was the bee's knees for the series when it came out. Final Fantasy 12 (XII), in my opinion, was one of the best games ever made for the PS2. It's like it squeezed every drop out of the console itself.

Thanks for the recommendations, I will have to pick up some Final Fantasy games, next time I make a run to Gamestop. I know I saw several Final Fantasy titles in their pre-owned section, a couple of them in their "under $4.99 & $9.99 sections"!

I will give it a look............

Showcasing My New Playstation 2 System...

I know most of you have already seen a Playstation 2 system, and already know what it looks like. But I figured I would show off my new/used system off anyways!

This first shot is a wide angle shot, showing off the system as a whole. The PS-2 is located on my living rooms coffee table, I really appreciate how the system blends in nicely with the color theme I have going on in the living room, almost is undetectable on the second black tier.



This shot is one of just the console, it's the "fat boy" deck, not the slim line version!



This is a real "no brainer" just one of two matching dual shock controllers!



This shot is showing off the sound systems sub-woofer, the sound system is made by a company called Harman/Kardon and puts out 150 Watts of sound.



And the last shot, I guess one can't have to many games for ones system. My new CD vault case is almost full, I only have like 7-8 more slips for CD's to call home, any more than that, I'm buying a new CD vault.



Thanks for joining me on this Playstation 2 showcase, I know it was probably nothing special to most, but it meant something to me!

Ratchet & Clank is good. Also if you can find any Army Men games, those are good.

Just got home from doing some shopping Picked up some more Playstation 2 games. I picked up 2 Final Fantasy titles meant for the PS2. Also I grabbed the original PS1 Jeopardy game starring Alex Trebeck and Wheel of Fortune starring Vanna White. To save the games proper, I stopped by a friends house, who sold his PS1 a long time go, but kept several old 8MB memory cards, he gave me one, as so I can save those PS1 "game saves" to. My friend also kicked down a free PS2 game, he gave me Monopoly.

Got to say that my game library is shaping up quite nicely, but there again we just can never have enough!

I'll second that, great game.