Platform: PlayStation 2

Following the PlayStation 2's success with non-gamers in the UK, the Official PlayStation 2 Magazine UK attempted a radical rebrand to appeal to more mainstream audiences, specifically members of the rowdy, irresponsible British "chav" subculture who bought the console primarily for its DVD functionality or a small sampling of titles. As a result, the magazine's content shifted into more lewd, violent, snarky, and misogynistic coverage, sometimes bordering on pornographic. The most infamous section in this magazine's history would come in a section titled "Rate Your Mate", where women (with an explicit rule against male entrants) would be asked to submit risqué photographs of themselves with the promise that their boyfriends would receive some kind of prize, and then rate their body based on "graphics, gameplay, and lifespan" as if it were a video game. The magazine would eventually revert to a more appropriate gaming publication by the release of the PlayStation 3 and its final rebranding to PlayStation Official Magazine - UK.

While DVD video playback was a major selling point for the PlayStation 2, Sony didn't plan to support the feature at first, as they were already intending to manufacture standalone DVD players through their home entertainment department. However, after seeing a demonstration for the Nuon, a DVD player by VM Labs with video game support, Sony Computer Entertainment head Ken Kutaragi demanded that a similar level of multimedia functionality be incorporated into the PlayStation 2. The move was met with resistance from Sony's home entertainment wing, who believed that doing so would cause the console to cannibalize sales of their standalone DVD players. However, Kutaragi won out in the end due to the clout that the PlayStation brand had given him.

When the PlayStation 2 was revealed in Japan, a demo was shown off of a fountain of spark particles. When this demo was shown to Jon Burton, founder of Traveller's Tales, he coded an identical tech demo for the first PlayStation as a joke. This tech demo would ultimately end up in the files of Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue!, unused, by accident.

The small PlayStation logo on the front of both the Fat and Slimline PlayStation 2's disc trays can be rotated 90 degrees clockwise to match horizontal or vertical console orientations. This is also a cosmetic feature in the original model of the PlayStation 3, but was cut from future models.

The Cross Media Bar seen on PlayStation Portable and PlayStation 3 systems was previously used in the Japan-only PSX version of the PlayStation 2.

The PlayStation 2 was designed with the ability to update its internal software by installing updates onto a memory card. Sony did not make much use of the feature, and it was eventually removed from later models. However, hackers eventually discovered the feature, and were able to use it to run homebrew software on the PlayStation 2.

In the year 2000, 4,000 PS2s had been bought in the US and shipped out to Iraq. Some US military experts believed that several PS2s could be linked together to form a "supercomputer", which could control a missile or an unmanned aircraft, and that Saddam's regime was doing just that with these consoles. This was before military intervention had occurred in Iraq, so it was not members of the US Army. This large purchase also exacerbated the shortage of Playstation 2s in America for the Christmas period of 2000.

The white towers in the startup animation vary in height and number depending on the number of games currently on your memory card and how many times you've played each game.