I bought this baby back in the summer of 2000. I've had it for a while now and I love it to death. The entire system is beyond belief. And to top it all off, it's only $300 now. This price should be down around $200 by the end of 2001.

I love the fact that it is backwards compatible. I have "Final Fantasy IX" and it's cool that I can play it on my PS2. No other game system has ever done that before. I haven't been this impressed by technology in a long time.

Another great feature is the DVD player. Now, granted it's not the most amazing DVD player I've ever seen, but it's still amazing that at $300, there's one in it. Sony has done itself a big favor by designing a DVD remote for it's system. Just recently announced, Sony will be selling it's own DVD remote for the system by the end of the year. This is a great bonus for those of us who like to stick with the main manufacturer, Sony. I try to only buy Sony accessories.

On to the graphics. The graphics capabilities of the system are unbelievable. I have played several games through for a while and the movies that are produced in the games are amazing. But the game play is at an all time high with near to movie or movie quality graphics. The game play graphics is one of the things that I noticed first. They are gorgeous.

The Dual shock 2 controllers are another improvement Sony has made between PSX and PS2. Eleven out of thirteen buttons (all except "Start" and "Select") are analog. What does this mean? It means that the harder you push on the button the faster you go in a racing game, or the harder you hit your opponent in a fight game. This makes game play even more to real life. An improvement I'm happy to see.

Finally, the memory cards are another improvement that I am glad to see. They are twice the size of an original PSX memory card. But, they don't save games the same way. Games are saved to the PS2 memory card like a computer saves to a hard disk. The game takes up the necessary amount of room on the card and leaves the rest of the room for other games. For those of you who play sports games, it only takes one card to save several seasons as well as other misc. info that you can save in you games. This is much different from PSX cards in the fact that one season could take up to an entire card.


Recommended: Yes