Two PS2s, one gamer.

My PS2 is now permanently retired, lying disconnected in the study, as it appears it actively damages my discs. In some cases unto death - such as with Final Fantasy XII earlier and Xenosaga more recently - in some cases the game survives but with visible scratching along the outer ring, like Disgaea. It still worked okay, but made a lot of noise while being played, which I suspect meant the disc was being ground further and would have died soon enough.

Instead a friend let me borrow his old NTSC PS2 - which was collecting dust - alongside his still-fine copy of Xenosaga, and I'm back in the game. (And my Disgaea disc plays noiselessly again, too.) Meanwhile, I managed to pick up a pre-owned but unplayed fat PAL PS2 here, for a pittance, and confirmed it worked before putting it away again. Now I just need to import an NTSC PS2 of my own, not all that expensive these days either, will just involve a little shipping. And there's no rush, since I can borrow the one I'm using right now indefinitely. Just prefer not to.

I again reflect on the fact that if Sony had continued to support PS2 BC on their PS3s, I'd have one for certain, probably picked it up years ago, just on the weight of my PS2 backlog at the time. And once I had it, I probably would have delved into its RPGs as well. Not to mention I'd have been in a much more likely position to be interested in the PS4 when *it* came out. But Sony lost that opportunity with me, so instead, I'm buying preowned consoles from auction sites, playing games they've long forgotten about, and they haven't earned a dime from me in a long time. So I hope for them that their strategy earns them lots of new fans, because I doubt I'm the only veteran they alienated.

Peter Butter

Starting out as a small time reviewer and FAQ author on GameFAQs, my writing has been even more tilted toward the old school than my gaming. I enjoy games of many eras, but I always found it more compelling to write for something that hasn't been done extensively already, which often ruled out the more modern games I played as I tend to run at least a couple of years behind the facts. My Honestgamers catalogue was initially just copying over much of my old GameFAQs work, and then for a time dual submitting to both sites. But over 2015 I posted my first HG exclusives, with hopefully more to follow.

Comments 3

honestgamer Staff Dec 7, 2015

I bought a PS3 back when it actually DID support backwards compatibility, Sash, and there may be a few used ones still on the marketplace. However, mine gave up the ghost about a year ago, and I bought a newer PS3 model. It broke almost immediately, but was obviously under warranty, so I sent it out for repair and got another one. Which was good, because when the other one came back from repair, it almost immediately broke again. And had to be repaired again. But now I have had two working PS3s for the better part of a year, and I am happy. They make great Netflix machines, and the other night, my wife even played some Family Game Night 3. We had fun.

joseph_valencia Dec 7, 2015

Damn. It's bad enough when a console breaks, but it's even worse that it took some of your games with it. Had something similar happen with my 360.

sashanan Blogger Dec 7, 2015

It only took a few, would have been fewer if I'd figured out sooner what the problem was. But all of it was in the end just an inconvenience thanks to having a serious game collector among my friends. He has it all. My borked Persona 4, I could borrow his Vita and Persona 4 Golden for, my FFXII I could finish on his copy, and now doing the same on Xenosaga.

Replacing the PS2 is likewise cheap enough now. I paid all of €25 for a fat PS2 that was in fact unplayed until I fed it LotR: The Third Age to confirm it worked. Now just an NTSC one - and I really only need the base station, as my wires are fine, and the PS2 I just bought came with its own set. And two more controllers, so have four of those now, too. Now that the rest of the world is two generations ahead of me, it's all dirt cheap.