My PlayStation 2: The Definitive Review
Notes on an attempted podcast
I think I’ve already mentioned my Free McBoot1 PlayStation 2 and the luscious sense of serenity it brings me to witness the list of games I’ve installed on the HDD within. Being ruthlessly stupid, I’ve eschewed the modern knock-off HDD adapters, with their allowance for modern SATA drives, and instead took a donated original Broadband Adapter and genuine IDE drive with the whopping capacity of 170 Gigabytes. My softmodded PlayStation 2 is period exact, thank you very much. I even play it using component going into a bulky, ageing LG 60-incher2, which grants a graphical quality one might charitably describe as delightfully fizzy. I did get an OSSC to take component to HDMI but on these older flatscreens I struggled to see much improvement in quality, so in the interests of running one less box I put my faith in 2010s tech to do the digital rescaling. I stress again - it’s about being period exact. After all, the ambience is everything and I’m pretty sure the signal does benefit from some free analogue anti-aliasing along the way. Naturally, a setup as objectively correct as this demands a host of games to play on it and thus, we come to the reveal that this is actually a list article.
The games I have installed3 are as follows (with indisputable rankings where appropriate):
0Kami (AA - put in the ‘0’ by accident when entering the game title during ripping)
Strikers 1945 1 and 2 (A)
Blood Will Tell (Could be SSS if I play it enough?)
BUJINGAI (SSS - AFFECTIONATE DISCOURSE SPIRIT ANIMAL)
Burnout 2 (S - best Burnout)
Burnout 3 (C - best Renderware tech demo, pure Journo-bait onboarding)
Burnout Dominator (A)
Burnout Revenge (A)
Deus Ex (X - amazingly, it seems to play OK?!?)
Devil May Cry (S - it defines the PS2’s signature genre)
Def Jam Fight For New York (XXX - beyond reproach, unrankable due its sheer magnificence)
DoDonPachi Dai-Ou-Jou (S - there is a marvellous anecdote about how I came to own this)4
Earth Defence Force 2 (AAA - the framerate drops are simply delicious)
Fantavision (C - it crashes! This may be a bad rip, but I cannot be bothered to redo it)
God Hand (SSSS - the peak of the peak and one of a few games on this HDD that I’m terrified to write about, as I worry I simply cannot do them justice)
Gradius III and IV (A) (C)
Gradius V (S - Great work from Treasure in sensible traditionalist mode, but one does wonder what would have been possible if the gloves were off)
And that’s just page one of three. It’s easy to forget that the largest PlayStation 2 disc was, I believe, only 4 GB, so you can get a surprising amount of games into 170 of them. Eagle-eyed readers may spot some appalling omissions in this segment. For that I wholeheartedly apologise, but in a sense they could be deliberate. Hence, we must press on regardless:
Gran Turismo 4 (SS - I mean, how can you take yourself seriously and not include a Turismo in a PlayStation list?)
Grand Theft Auto 3 (SSS - Indescribably important, utterly revolutionary and yet the series’ greatest crutch)
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (01110011)
Ibara (AA - I was never as enamoured with the Gareggas as I was Batrider, but this simply has to be present)
Katamari Damacy (SSSSSSSSSS - perhaps the greatest idea in the history of videogaming. Like God Hand, I may never write about this because of gross inadequacy)
Killer 7 (S for Style, S for Suda, S for singularly the only Suda51 game worth actually playing? Feel the controversy!)
Makai Kingdom (SSS rank as a stand-in for Disgaea, which inexplicably I do not have)
Manhunt (D for gameplay, SSS for ultra-early VHS fetishist aesthetica)
Mobile Light Force 2 (B - Shikigami is always a bit sub-par, despite the stylistic links to Tohou)
Mushihime-sama (SSS - the Cave shooter I fantasise about 1CCing after DoDonPachi)
NiGHTS into Dreams… (A - somehow, this exists)
No One Lives Forever (S - much-missed IP struggles on PS2 but gets an S for being brilliant on PC)
Oni (C - Bungie’s third best game!)
Outrun 2006 Coast to Coast (SSSS - Ashley Day was so correct. A glorious, glorious game)
Psyvariar (AA - renaissance cerebro-shmup that really likes bullet-scraping your hitbox)
R-Type Final (SSSS - Esssssential climax-cum-funeral for the series. Drama and pathos somewhat undermined by it getting a sequel with a very literal title)
Raiden III (A - pacey late-era update. Pure Raiden, but lacks the heft of the Fighters/Jet sequels)
The Red Star (A - I couldn’t connect with it but people I very much respect love it so why not give it an A?)
Rez (S - iconic summation of everything the first generation of Edge stood for)
Ridge Racer V (Perhaps the best, perhaps not, but a PlayStation without a Ridge Racer is a tragedy)
Despite some shocking omissions, you’ve probably noticed by now that not only is my taste in PlayStation 2 games simply exquisite, but that this PlayStation 2 is precisely the machine I should be embedded with in a nursing home when I’m incapable of doing anything other than lying in a bed for 23 hours a day5.
Samurai Western (SSS. Bailey - Cult brawler where yes, you are a cowboy samurai)
Sega Ages Golden Axe (? - have never even played it. Simply here to make me look really cool)
Shinobi (B - generation-defining scarf physics fail to prevent my frustration at this being a bit too beyond my abilities and patience to master)
Shinobido (S - ultimate Tenchu assassination stealth action, super-late era)
Silent Scope - (B - janky as fuck arcade port)
Sky Gunner - (? - never played it, got it off a ‘hidden gems’ video but failed to give it a go)
SNK Arcade Classics Volume 1 (C - turns out SNK didn’t have that many classics)
Spy Fiction (? - never played it, also got if off a ‘hidden gems’ video, but heard it had great stealth)
Steel Dragon Ex (B - slightly middling shmup. Kinda vibing with Dragon Blaze et al)
Stolen - (SS - widely forgotten flawed stealth masterpiece with ultra-brutal consequences for getting caught. Terrible controls)
Taito Legends (NTSC-U) (A - so good I added it twice)
Taito Legends (PAL) (AA - turns out Taito had a lot more classics than SNK)
Tekken 4 (S - my fighter du jour prior to the godly VF4 Evo. Fond memories of being battered against walls thanks to one D. Holloway. The best Tekken if you’re as cool as I was in 2002)
Thunderforce VI (C - surprisingly disappointing late sequel, especially as IV and V are really nice)
Triggerheart Exelica Enhanced (B - fancy pants post-renaissance shmup with a name far better than its gameplay)
Twinkle Star Sprites - (SSS - Port of the Neo Geo cult Vs puzzle-shooter hybrid. Deliriously good fun)
Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution (SSSSSSSSS - The fighting game to dedicate your entire life to. Just avoid trying to master Akira and go for Lau. He’s not for scrubs, honest)
Virtua Fighter 10th Anniversary (SSSSSS - here as a mark of respect. Nothing more, nothing less. GYM NO RESPECT.)
Zone of the Enders - (A - The only Kojima game on my machine?!?! Surely not!!! How could I make such a mistake?!?!?!?!?)
That lot leaves me with some 15 GBs to fill, which could mean 15 more games if I stick to 1 GB, though hilariously Silent Scope was a meagre 256 MBs, so we could balance the teeny ones with the big monsters that are *mysteriously absent*. And why is that? Well, here comes my copyright claim; I plan to do a podcast centred around my PlayStation 2 and its contents. Guests will come on, we’ll talk shit about games and careers maybe? You know, those formalities you need to waffle about before getting to the meat of it. I’ll then nominate a game from the HDD that we can discuss and the guest can pick one from the list too. But then, crucially, the guest can also nominate a game to add. I will patiently listen to the arguments and then capriciously decide if it gets ripped to the HDD or not. We then sit in silence for 30 mins, performatively waiting for it to get to 96% ripped before stumbling on a fucked sector. I’m slightly tempted to fill the drive before having guests on, so they also have to punt a game off and we can agonise at length over that decision, which will add even more drama and place personal and professional relationships at risk. Applications are open6.
The PlayStation 2 is more than an arbitrary choice. Thanks to my irrepressible obsession with generational differences, it’s the console that both Millennials and Gen-X have decent experience of, whilst likely freezing out those pesky Gen-Z upstarts. There’s something quite unique about the PlayStation 2’s position as a fulcrum between the 20th and 21st century and that transition from classical to modern game design. While we can consider that completed during the Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 era, there are titles on PlayStation 2 that function perfectly as contemporary games, despite being over twenty years old - and that’s not including the games that saw release across both generations. Likewise, the PlayStation 2’s early-years curios of continuity from the crazed 1990s pin the console as almost a central point around which we can examine the grand sweep of videogames in their entirety. A point zero that stretches that vital distance further than the Dreamcast in terms of hosting the tropes and features we recognise as essentially modern gaming standards. The Dreamcast, eternally special and romantic as it is, can be understood more clearly as an answer to the Saturn’s near-withering failure under the blazing white heat of that PlayStation debut. The Saturn was always a compromised reply instead of an emphatic declaration, and while the Dreamcast righted so many wrongs and blazed unimaginable trails (yes, Phantasy Star Online and, as we all know, Blue Stinger), it never gathered the catalogue of comprehensive breadth and depth that the PlayStation sequel can deploy. And hopefully my steadfastly idiosyncratic list of titles goes some way to illustrating just how bonkers the PlayStation 2 catalogue is. So that’s why it deserves a podcast where it’s the starting point for babbling on about videogame stuff. And you know what the best bit is? If I get bored of talking PlayStation 2, I can just softmod my PlayStation 3 and we’re off on a whole new generational adventure!7
[21]
Memory cards with the Free Mcboot exploit, plus all the apps you need to rip and play PS2 games, are easily found on popular online marketplaces for very reasonable prices. Such as ones named after rivers. The other essential items are, funnily enough, available in the same places.
I did have a stupendous Sony Bravia 60in (yes, with the cross media bar wotsit OS like a PSP or PS3), but this mysteriously stopped powering on after more than a decade of dutiful service. Big shame, as it had the multitude of legacy inputs alongside a seemingly infinite array of HDMI ports, two USB ports and an RF tuner, meaning it can display ANYTHING.
I got these games onboard in two ways - obtaining ISOs (cough cough - there are three mindfucking torrents out there with great seeds - cough cough) and adding them via a special Windows app to the HDD while plugged in using a USB adapter and by ripping the discs manually using a loader app on the Free McBoot memory card. Google Jan Beta’s softmodding tutorial for the PS2 for additional help.
I was saving this but fuck it - So I was working for a client with immense notoriety who had started licensing Japanese PS2 titles. We went for a meeting at his office and aside the game we were supposed to be contracted on, he showed us another title he was thinking of taking, which turned out to be Shikigami No Shiro. He was quite a serious gamer and gave the shooter a decent fist of it, so I suggested he checked out DoDonPachi Dai-Ou-Jou as I remember it had just been released on PS2 in Japan. Fast forward two years and he’s moved offices and we’re in for a completely unrelated game when I spy a copy of Dai-Ou-Jou on a random shelf. We work on this account for a good six to nine months and having befriended a few of the the office crew, right near the end of the project I ask if I can borrow that copy. Sadly, with great remorse and regret, it seems I forgot to return it. This was by far the longest con of my PR career (aside actually pretending to be a PR).
I mean, I could quite happily do this right now. Especially if I can blag the good meds.
Or alternatively, I'll just beg people and then take ages to record anything and even longer still to edit it, have a massive crisis of confidence, refuse to release any episodes and then close the whole Substack in shame. PM me?!?!? Can readers do that? What about finding me on Twitter or Bluesky or LinkedIn? OH GOD I’M SUCH A FUCKING AMATEUR.
What I mean is we're playing nothing but Tokyo Jungle and talking about Tokyo Jungle and how great it is. We'll occasionally mention Gran Turismo, but only in the context of how bad it is that it doesn't have a track set inside Tokyo Jungle.