The PlayStation 2 is celebrating its 25-year anniversary today, October 26, 2025. Below, we remember the diversity of its library, the qualities that have lived on beyond it, and the ones that were exclusive to that moment in time.
In a certain light, games are more expansive than they have ever been. Forums like Itch proliferate game jams and niche sub-cultures, and give aspiring developers a place to share their work. Steam is home to a wider catalogue of games than has ever been available on any home console. The diversity of the games in these places is under direct threat, but is by no means defeated.
Yet, if one wanted to experience the medium of video games in all its breadth on just one platform, a PlayStation 2 might still be the best bet.
The diversity of the PS2 forms a striking contrast with its counterparts released during the same period. The Nintendo GameCube has more than a few bonafide classics, but the majority of them were developed in-house. You will always know Microsoft’s original Xbox better as the source of Halo-fueled college LAN parties and Xbox Live hangouts for any other game you could play with it.
The PS2, on the other hand, is host to a set of video games that stretch beyond their borders and feel, somehow, barely associated with the console that first housed them. It carried Grand Theft Auto to becoming the biggest video game franchise on the planet. The console is tightly tied to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater in my mind, even though those games also came out on the GameCube and Xbox. It was the origin point of Kingdom Hearts. It kickstarted Persona’s explosion of popularity in the US and Europe, paving the way for Metaphor: ReFantazio. It is hard to understate the PS2’s role in popularizing the medium of games and setting the course for what it would become.
It also was host to the unusual and unique. Rule of Rose is still one of the strangest and most profound survival horror games ever, and stands up strong against the competition of the time, which includes unassailable classics like Silent Hill 2 and Resident Evil 4. It was home to Drakengard, a still disturbing and grueling journey through dark fantasy hell. Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are still stealthily influential, shaping The Last of Us and God of War (2018) alike. Yet, they have a grandeur and a magic those games cannot capture, a poetic spareness that feels tied to the PS2’s architecture. If you play Shadow of the Colossus on an original PS2, you can feel the console straining against the ambition on display. That fact enhances its majesty, it does not strangle it.
On the PS2, Katamari Damancy–a gonzo, existential toy–could find a massive audience, while Silent Hill 2 and Fatal Frame III: The Tormented pushed the medium towards a maturity it still struggles to find. Games like Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty questioned the foundations of the medium well before BioShock and Spec Ops: The Line tried their hands at metafiction. Of course, the PS2 was a product of all that had come before. Still, the breadth of what it sets up and anticipates is astounding.
All this, though, takes for granted the distance I have now from this time period. I am not reading about interesting games from Japan that will never be ported over. I am not strolling down to my local store, only to find the shelves populated with cheap tie-in games and money-grubbing sports titles. I am not an aspiring game developer, attempting to make my way into the industry and discovering how hard it is to make something that is truly yours. I am someone who has played most PS2 games by borrowing them from friends, picking them up on the cheap from a mom-and-pop game store, or through extralegal means. I can now play English translations of those games that never made it to America. My wistful utopian gaze at the PS2 is a side-effect of revisiting it now. Plenty of my grips with the video game industry have their roots on the PS2. As I am typing this, unique and startling visions are just a click away. Why feel nostalgic at all?
The PS2 was far from the last time video games were good. But it was the last time mainstream games felt like they were actively and collectively pushing new ground beyond pixel counts.
One reason is that the PS2 represents a time when few console games were aspiring to take over your life. The lack of ubiquitous internet connections on consoles meant that only a scant few could offer continual online updates. Massive online sagas like Final Fantasy XI and Phantasy Star Online were exceptions that proved the rule. Even they did not have the innumerable hooks into your wallet and your life that are commonplace across free-to-play online games now. The roots of that are, of course, in PC gaming. But now it is everywhere.
The PS2 also got way cheaper over its lifecycle. For a time, the PS2 was cheap enough it became ubiquitous. It is still the best-selling console of all time, still selling over a million units in the fourth quarter of 2012, just a few months before it was discontinued, at the very end of its life. For years after, games like FIFA and Final Fantasy XI were still regularly launching new entries on the PS2. It is still one of the most popular consoles in Brazil, when modded models running pirated games reign supreme. That fact makes Sony’s pivot into expensive, premium hardware with the PlayStation 3 all the more baffling and heartbreaking.
In short, the PS2 was a device that was relatively cheap, had a gigantic and diverse library, and existed on the cusp of a new online era it both predicted and eluded. The PS2 was far from the last time video games were good. But it was the last time mainstream games felt like they were actively and collectively pushing new ground beyond pixel counts. For much of the PS2’s lifecycle, even mainstream games felt expansive, strange, and daring. That’s worth celebrating, and worth mourning.
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