Sony PlayStation 2

Released in March of 2000, the PlayStation 2 or PS2 is the second 6th generation console after the Sega Dreamcast and launched at $299 USD. As of 2026, the PS2 is the best selling console of all time, having sold over 160 million units worldwide. The PS2 stayed on the market for nearly 13 years, being discontinued in January of 2013. 

As a gaming console, the PS2 had a massive library of games having over 4000 in PS2 exclusive releases, however this is greatly expanded by the console’s ability to play games from the original Sony PlayStation with full backward compatibility. Powered by Sony and Toshiba’s “Emoticon Engine” SOC, the PS2 had very impressive 3D graphics with notable titles being Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy X, and the Grand Theft Auto Trilogy just to name a few. One of the standout features of the PlayStation 2 was its DVD drive, which didn’t only allow for game file size increases of up to ~8.5 GBs on a dual layer DVD disc, but its ability to playback DVD movies without the need for any add-ons, being priced fairly competitively to standalone DVD players at the time. 

There were two main revisions: the standard launch model referred to as “Fat PS2” by the community, which was capable of using the Broadband Adapter giving it online capabilities and a slot for an IDE 3.5” Hard Drive, and the PlayStation 2 Slim, which was significantly smaller and incapable of using the Broadband Adapter, but included a built-in Ethernet and RJ-11 port. Sony also released Linux for Playstation 2, allowing owners to turn their PS2 into a full blown PC with a fork of Red Hat Linux.