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A Critical Look At the PlayStation 2: Part I, The Console
by Jeremy Horwitz for Gamers Today
Like many consumers, I was extremely excited by Sony's announcement of the PlayStation 2, and as a result of Sony's exceedingly shrewd media manipulation, I found it hard to find any critical opinions of the PlayStation 2 in the press prior to its release. But once the system hit shelves in Japan, and despite the fact that the nearly a million PS2 consoles instantly sold out, user complaints began to pile up: the initial games were purportedly unimpressive, memory cards were damaged, corrupted or erased, movie playback stuttered in some units that were placed in a horizontal orientation, and a surprising number of PlayStation 2 machines died after limited use. And rumors spread about a number of other design limitations that had supposedly not been disclosed by Sony prior to release: anti-aliasing graphic problems, bizarre button pressure sensitivity problems with the new Dual Shock 2 controllers, incompatibility with additional PlayStation 1 games, and limitations in the quality and nature of the machine's DVD movie playback.
Having heard all of the facts and many of the rumors, I found myself in an uncomfortable position as a journalist, I felt compelled to provide an objective look at the PS2, but I also knew that I was about to risk taking money out of my own pocket for a machine that might stop working shortly after I turned it on, or might have design defects that limited its usefulness for its intended purposes. On the other hand, as a long-time fan of the Ridge Racer and Tekken games, I was tantalized by the prospect of playing the latest game in each series, and as a owner of a small collection of DVD movies, I wanted to have a second DVD player for my apartment. One night, deep in a valley of gaming boredom, I decided to take the risk and place an order. Several days later, my PlayStation 2 arrived.
The system makes a few unique first impressions. Its Japanese packaging is a striking glossy blue box approximately the size of the box that contained the first PlayStation, opening to reveal a console that is jet black and noticeably heavier than its predecessor. It has a smaller footprint than the first machine, but is nearly twice the thickness. When I held the console for the first time, the words that came to mind were "big black brick." It's a striking contrast with the smaller, white Dreamcast, looking far more like an traditional Sony A/V component than a game system, but it still has a few toy-like facets (bright blue stickers and molded plastic ridges) that detract from an otherwise professional aesthetic. Unlike the Dreamcast, it is limited to two controller ports, and retains its memory card ports on the front of the system both ports are PlayStation peripheral compatible. Additionally, the front of the machine includes two USB ports and a i-Link firewire port, a Power/Reset button with a green and red alternating LED lamp, a front-loading disc tray, and a distinctive blue LED-lit button to open and close the tray. The back of the PS2 has a hard power switch, a double-height PC card slot (temporarily enclosed by a plastic molding that pops out of place with the depression of a button), and a rather large fan housing to keep the machine cooled. Each Japanese PS2 console also includes one Dual Shock 2 controller, one new PlayStation 2 Magic Gate 8MB Memory Card, and a composite video cable.
A few dimensions of the system's operation are somewhat surprising. First, the PlayStation 2 is turned on initially by its rear hard power switch, which in turn illuminates the red (sleep mode) power lamp on the machine's front. Pressing that button changes the lamp's color to green, illuminates the blue tray eject button, and brings up the PS2's operating system (if no disc is in the drive). To turn the system "off," you press and hold the front power button, returning the color to red and turning off the blue eject lamp. To reset the machine, you quickly press (but not hold) the front power button. The PS2's operating system is a second point of interest: Sony's interface shows an incredible level of visual class, evoking glowing balls of light and quartz crystals as design themes, using clean, elegant text and gentle fade effects to move around design elements and shift from screen to screen. Pretty though it may be, the operating system has its rough edges, in some screens giving little indication (either visually or audibly) whether your chosen options are being saved or ignored. And notably, the machine's OS didn't visibly recognize the USB device I attempted to connect, leading me to wonder how support for later devices will be implmented. A final point of interest is the system's physical orientation; it is intended to be used either flat or standing up like a miniature tower computer, and my unit, at least, runs as smoothly standing tall as it did in a traditional flat position. I have not personally, as of yet, experienced any of the horizontal-position video skipping problems some users in Japan have reported.
Regarding compatibility with PlayStation 1 games, my personal testing has been limited to the few Japanese discs I own, and though the PS2 purports to offer two "enhancements" (faster loading time and filtered textures) to PS1 games, these differences are negligible at best in the games I've tried. Soul Edge (aka Soul Blade) in particular proved disappointingly unenhanced from its original form, better in some small ways and worse in some others. It's probably most fair to say that the improvements to textures were modest, though the rare game will look a little cleaner than it would on an old PlayStation. Frankfy, the Bleem! PlayStation emulator does a much better job with games, running them at higher resolutions with superior texture filtering. It's an inescapable conclusion that Sony dropped the ball on implementing this 'feature.' Also note that a handful of mostly obscure games has proved entirely incompatible with the PS2 hardware, the only one of note being Namco's first Museum disc perhaps Sony will fix this for the machine's U.S. release, and who knows maybe Bleem! will, in the ultimate twist of irony, release their superior PlayStation emulator for the PlayStation 2. But I wouldn't hold my breath. It's sad that the best way to play old PlayStation games won't be available on a Sony console.
DVD playback limitations? The image and audio quality of playback is fine, not especially impressive or unimpressive by comparison with the standalone DVD player I previously purchased. In terms of functionality, I prefer my other DVD player the Dual Shock 2's control scheme for playback is entirely confusing, so poorly designed as to seem intentionally left threadbare. Sony may offer a dedicated DVD remote controller in the future, however, which would do a great deal to remedy this problem. But there's one reason some people might prefer a PlayStation 2 over a traditional DVD movie player not only does the machine play back Japanese DVDs, but as has been widely reported in the international media, Sony has been forced to recall its DVD utility discs because its software engineers somehow made the machine capable of playing back discs from other DVD regions such as the United States. This is a bonus only for the lucky few early PS2 adopters, as only version 1.0 Japanese PlayStation 2 DVD drivers will achieve this feat. Sony has made clear that U.S. PlayStation 2 machines (and later Japanese machines) will be prevented from playing DVD movies from other regions.
My next column will take a critical look at the PlayStation 2's first peripherals and software, namely the Dual Shock 2 controller, the PS2 8 Megabyte Magic Gate Memory Card, and briefly the first two big titles from Namco, Ridge Racer V and Tekken Tag Tournament.
