Of all the retro consoles that you can buy and still enjoy today, the Sony PlayStation 2 is arguably the most influential and important. The successor to the original PlayStation arrived in Japan in early 2000 and made its way to the rest of the world over the following months in time for the holiday season. It completely demolished its competitors, with the Dreamcast, GameCube, and Xbox all failing to match it in terms of units sold. In fact, the PS2 went on to sell over 160 million consoles during its 12-year lifespan.
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Building on the success of the PlayStation, the PS2 concentrated again on 3D worlds and advanced high quality graphics, made possible through the powerful Emotion Engine. It had countless brilliant games, many of which are simply not available elsewhere. This is largely a result of the PlayStation 3 not being fully backward compatible. So if you want to play some of the very best games of the sixth generation in all their glory, an original PS2 is the only way to do so.
Those who want to pick up the PS2 will like that it is backward compatible with the original PlayStation, allowing you to use the gray DualShock controller and play all previous PS1 games. Throw in the 4,000 games that were released for the PS2 and you have an almost unparalleled library to play through on this platform. Thankfully, the fact that the PS2 was produced in such great numbers means it is easy to pick one up used, often for well under $100.
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