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When’s a button not a button? When it’s a really shitty joke based on dire wordplay. Moving swiftly along, the DualShock 2’s buttons really were more than that word beginning with B we’ve used loads over the last two sentences. Aside from making magical things happen in your TV with Yoshimitsu or that million quid dream machine in Gran Turismo 3 when touched, they could also be pressed slightly harder to make even more magical things happen in your television. Observe the wonder below.
This is a DualShock 2 button being pressed slightly hard…
And this is a DualShock 2 button being pressed even slightly more hard…
If that doesn’t induce some straight up monocle–dropping shock in you, reader, then you clearly have frozen water running through your veins.
Alright, so we can’t say the PS2’s pressure sensitive buttons really paid off. Hell, Sony didn’t even bother putting them back in for the SixAxis. Still, we’ll always have those wonderful memories of pushing the x button pretty hard in GT3 in the summer of 2001 for MASSIVE DAMAG… eh, we mean a bit more acceleration.
If there’s one thing Sony likes to do other than nick Spider-Man’s font forits console lettering and have car crash-esque E3 presentations, it’s redesigning the shit out ofits machines. In July 2000, they morphed the bulky PlayStation into the waffle maker-looking PSone. After all, folk will buy anything that looks like it could dispense tasty fired dough. And not to miss a trick with the PS2, the company put its 128-bit console on a crash diet.
Above: No, PS2! No dessert for you until you’ve thrown up your dinner!
Seemingly displeased with its work on the newly gaunt PS2 slimline, which launched in September 2004, Sony went about revamping their revamped console in drastic fashion. The results, we’ll think you’ll find, are simply staggering…
Above: As we said, simply staggering
2007’s even slimmer slimline shed a Kate Moss-worthy third of its mass, going from a bloated 900 grams down to 600. Obviously still worried the bigger kids would make fun of its bulimic console, Sony forced the PS2 to lose even more weight in a further revision made in 2008. Eventually the final SCPH-9000 slimline weighed a heaping 720 grams less than the original slim. And it even built the power supply into the console itself. Of course, it still did exactly the same thing the morbidly obese PS2 managed in 2000.
Lets not get bogged down with such thoughts, though. There are totally pointless new versions of the PS3 and 360 we could be buying this very minute. To the GamesRadar mobile!
Above: C'mon, you just know they'll pull this crap again with a PS3 slim 2
We’ve all been there. Forced into small talk with some game-peddling gibbon behind the counter at our local games emporium. No, we don’t want to pre-order any other titles. No we don’t want any shitting third party peripherals. Look, just take our bloody pre-order and give us our free demo disc/collectable figurine/complimentary bottle of video game vodka. There’s no two ways around it: the process of reserving an upcoming game is unpleasant in the extreme.
Above: Mmmm, there's nothing quite like a gratis quadruple video game vodka
Still, earmarking yourself a copy of Black Ops has got nothing on the near biblical ball-ache that was trying to pre-order a PS2 in Europe back in late 2000. Because there was such a limited initial allocation of consoles (the UK only got 200,000, while the US had to make do with a feeble 500,000), Sony ran a pre-order system that was stricter than the shoe-shining policy of the SS.
You couldn’t just walk into a shop and place a tenner down to reserve your PS2 in the UK. Instead, you had to get a form and then send it to Sony to confirm your pre-order. This excerpt from our esteemed (and really old) first issue of sister mag PSM gives you a slightly closer look into the fresh madness.
Above: Official Sony PS2 pre-order forms make Mr. Mishima mad
This writer remembers anxiously filling in a blue pre-order form and then waiting for the response from Sony weeks later, which would allow me to buy a launch day PlayStation 2. Someone call the Lucky Charms Leprechaun, back in 2000, I officially overtook the mantle of world’s luckiest man, when Sony granted me the privilege of validating my pre-order. Wooh!
