50 Fun Facts About PlayStation 2

What did University of Illinois researchers build by networking 70 PS2 consoles together?

A supercomputer took shape when the university's computing center ran the consoles as a single cluster for scientific work. Its director called the machine hand-made.

Japan put export controls on the PS2 in 2000 over fears its chips could power what?

Missile guidance relies on processing high-quality images quickly, the very job the console was built for. Shipping more than one machine out of Japan needed a government license.

In the PS2's Japanese launch period, the best-selling disc was not a game but a DVD of which film?

The Matrix outsold every launch game because many early buyers wanted the console mainly as an affordable DVD player. Launch software was thin on the ground.

Which demon-hunting PS2 series starring Dante began life as an early concept for Resident Evil 4?

Devil May Cry became its own game once Capcom's staff felt the project no longer fit their horror franchise. Its director based it loosely on the Italian poem Divine Comedy.

Kingdom Hearts began as a chance elevator pitch from a Square producer to which company's executive?

Disney and Square once had offices in the same Tokyo building, which let producer Shinji Hashimoto make his pitch between floors. The game reached the PS2 in 2002.

Which PS2 music game came bundled with a plastic controller shaped like a miniature Gibson SG?

Guitar Hero was made by Harmonix for publisher RedOctane, who wanted to bring a game like Japan's Guitar Freaks to American players. It arrived on the console in 2005.

Which Sega console was discontinued in March 2001, months after the PS2's launch crushed its sales?

Dreamcast sold 6.5 million units in 22 months, while Sony shipped 10 million PS2s in under 15. Sega then left the console business altogether.

Sly Cooper, the master thief of a PS2 stealth-platformer series, is what kind of animal?

Raccoon suits a thief, mask markings and all. PAL regions sold his first game simply as Sly Raccoon, and his partners in crime are a turtle and a hippo.

Which Spartan warrior, wielding the chained Blades of Chaos, is the star of the PS2 hit God of War?

Kratos begins the series as a servant of the Olympian gods, with Athena wanting him to kill Ares. His twin blades hang from chains wrapped around his wrists and forearms.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City recreates the neon-soaked 1980s of which real American city?

Miami was scouted on field trips by the developers, who also kept the TV series Miami Vice playing throughout development. The story is set in 1986.

Which extreme-sports series produced the first PS2 game to support online play, its third entry?

Tony Hawk's third game went online before Sony's own network adapter launched, so early players connected through a USB adapter instead. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 was also the final official Nintendo 64 release.

Before release, the press billed Sony's PS2 shooter Killzone as the 'killer' of which rival series?

Halo was the Xbox's flagship shooter, and several publications cast Guerrilla Games' Killzone as Sony's answer to it.

Which board game's PS2 edition, subtitled Unhinged, lets players bet on how their opponents will do?

Trivial Pursuit went Unhinged with board spaces that teleport a piece, spin the board or remove two wrong answers. A Classic mode plays exactly like the tabletop original.

Which Australian singer and former Neighbours star voiced the host of the PS2 quiz series Buzz!?

Jason Donovan voiced Buzz in the English versions. The games are played with a set of four buzzers, each carrying a big red button and four colored answer keys, to mimic a TV quiz show.

The EyeToy, a PS2 accessory that launched a wave of family party games, was what kind of device?

A webcam built by Logitech, the EyeToy used computer vision and gesture recognition, so players could control games by moving their bodies in front of the television.

Which studio, already famous for Crash Bandicoot, created Jak and Daxter for the PS2?

Naughty Dog conceived the game while making Crash Team Racing, its final Crash title. Daxter spends the adventure as an ottsel, a made-up cross between an otter and a weasel.

Tidus, the main character of Final Fantasy X, is a star athlete in which fictional sport?

Blitzball is an underwater minigame of strategy and tactics. One match is compulsory early in the story, and after that players are free to ignore it.

Which Rockstar Western series began in 2004 with a PS2 gunslinger game subtitled Revolver?

Red Dead Revolver began as a Capcom-funded project, was cancelled, and was revived after Rockstar acquired the rights in 2003. It is the first entry in the series.

What name did Sony and Toshiba give the custom processor at the heart of the PS2?

Emotion Engine was envisioned as a chip for more lifelike and emotionally resonant games. Sony promoted it as more powerful than most personal computers of the era.

What did the DualShock 2's face buttons gain that the first DualShock's on-off buttons lacked?

Pressure sensitivity came in 255 levels across the directional pad, face buttons and shoulder buttons, so a game could tell a light press from a firm one.

Final Fantasy XI could only be played on a PS2 fitted with which optional add-on?

A hard disk drive slotted into an expansion bay on the back of the original console. The thinner redesign dropped that bay, so it could not take one.

Which connection did the slimline PS2 build in, sparing owners the separate network adaptor?

Ethernet port included, the slimline model also swapped the motorized disc tray for a top-loading lid and moved its power supply outside the case.

PS2 games shipped on CD-ROM instead of DVD can be spotted by what color on the disc's underside?

Blue tinting marked the earlier CD-based titles, while most of the library was distributed on DVD-ROM. The console also plays audio CDs and films.

Sony's official kit for turning a PS2 into a personal computer ran which operating system?

Linux for PlayStation 2 came with a keyboard and a mouse, and it was one of the few ways to send the console's picture to a VGA computer monitor.

Which film director, known for surreal and dreamlike movies, also made commercials for the PS2?

David Lynch also shot adverts for Dior, Gucci and Calvin Klein, along with music videos for Moby and Nine Inch Nails.

Which Sony studio developed Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec, the best-selling PS2 exclusive?

Polyphony Digital's racing simulator sold over 14.8 million copies, with Kazunori Yamauchi, who made the first two games, again in charge.

Ratchet, the mechanic of PS2's Ratchet & Clank, belongs to which fictional feline-like species?

Lombax is the name of Ratchet's kind. He meets the escaped robot Clank when it crash-lands on his home planet, Veldin, at the start of the first game.

Which character, hidden from Metal Gear Solid 2's trailers, takes over from Solid Snake as the lead?

Raiden was hidden so well that preview trailers showed Snake in battles Raiden actually fights, such as one against a Harrier jet. Players only met him after buying the game.

Which Sony engineer overruled fears that a DVD-playing PS2 would hurt the company's DVD player sales?

Ken Kutaragi, called the Father of the PlayStation, had enough clout after the first console's success to win the argument. He reportedly began planning the sequel back in 1994.

The PS2 has only two controller ports, so which add-on did four-player games require?

Multitap is the common name for Sony's Multiplayer Adapter. Early reviews criticized the console for shipping with just two ports.

Which sports series supplied the last PS2 game ever released, over 13 years after the console's launch?

Pro Evolution Soccer 2014 reached British shops in November 2013, seven years after the PlayStation 3 had arrived to replace the console.

Which PS2 karaoke series from Sony's London Studio was sold with a pair of USB microphones?

SingStar plays each song's music video in the background while players compete, and wireless microphones were later sold for it too.

In which quirky PS2 game does a tiny prince roll a sticky ball over objects to rebuild the stars?

Katamari Damacy starts with thumbtacks and ends with mountains. The stars need rebuilding because the prince's father, the King of All Cosmos, destroyed them by accident.

In Okami, which Shinto sun goddess does the player control in the form of a white wolf?

Amaterasu saves the land from darkness in a world drawn to look like an animated Japanese ink painting, mixing woodcut and watercolor styles.

Which seemingly unkillable figure, armed with a knife, stalks James Sunderland through Silent Hill 2?

Pyramid Head later ambushes James and his companion Maria, who is killed while James escapes. Old prison images of hooded cultists who resemble it hint at the creature's origins.

In Shadow of the Colossus, what is the name of the horse that carries Wander across the land?

Agro was given unusually sophisticated artificial intelligence for a game companion, as were the towering colossi that Wander hunts.

In which PS2 game does a boy born with horns lead a girl named Yorda out of a castle?

Ico is locked in the castle because his village sees his horns as a bad omen. Yorda is the daughter of its Queen, who plans to use her to extend her own life.

Under which Latin title, meaning dog eat dog, did Rockstar release its school game Bully in PAL regions?

Canis Canem Edit came from Rockstar Vancouver and follows Jimmy Hopkins after he is dropped off at Bullworth Academy.

Which elderly sniper boss in Metal Gear Solid 3 can die of old age if the player waits a week?

The End can also be avoided altogether by killing him earlier in the story, or outlasted by moving the console's internal clock forward.

Which 2002 military shooter was the first PS2 game to use a USB headset for team chat and spoken orders?

SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs let players speak commands to their squad offline and talk to teammates online. It was among the earliest titles on the console's North American online service.

Prince of Persia's 2003 revival on PS2 let players undo a fatal platforming mistake by doing what?

Rewinding time is the power of the Dagger the Prince carries, which can also freeze enemies. The idea was one of four concepts the Ubisoft Montreal team started from.

Which Sega crime series starring Kazuma Kiryu began on the PS2 in 2005?

Yakuza casts Kiryu as a gangster who has spent ten years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Sega both developed and published the game.

TimeSplitters, a PS2 launch shooter, was made by former developers of which Nintendo 64 hit?

GoldenEye 007 veterans left Rare in the late 1990s to found Free Radical Design, and TimeSplitters was the new studio's first release.

Dynasty Warriors, a PS2 mainstay, sends players into the Three Kingdoms wars of which country?

China is the setting because the series spun off from Koei's strategy games based on the classic novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Which samurai action game became the first PS2 title to reach one million sales?

Onimusha: Warlords hit the milestone soon after release, and its sales eventually passed two million units worldwide.

Sony's Japan-only PSX of 2003 combined a PS2 with what other living-room device?

A video recorder sat inside the PSX alongside an analogue television tuner, and Sony marketed the machine as an all-in-one home media center.

Which manga artist of Dragon Ball fame designed the look of the PS2 epic Dragon Quest VIII?

Akira Toriyama was the game's art designer. It was also the first Dragon Quest released in English without the older Dragon Warrior name.

Which insect do players control in a cult PS2 oddity, feeding on the Yamada family all summer?

Mosquito life is the whole game: the title character must stock up on blood from the household before hibernating through autumn and winter.

Which Tekken fighter was the guest character exclusive to the PS2 version of SoulCalibur II?

Heihachi filled a slot first meant for Cloud Strife of Final Fantasy VII, whose licensing deal fell through at the last moment. GameCube owners got Link, and Xbox owners got Spawn.

Which Konami mecha game was first sold with a playable demo of Metal Gear Solid 2 in the box?

Zone of the Enders was judged by one reviewer to be worth buying for the bundled preview alone. Producer Hideo Kojima assisted the team during development.