Just download the most recent/updated for each of the regions (JP, EU, USA), although you’ll almost certainly only need the US one.

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I skipped the PS2 gen entirely when I was a kid (went from PS1 to X360), so I don’t have fond memories either, but I have a few titles in my bucket list that I’ve played/been wanting to play for a while now.

• Since you liked Shadow of the Colossus, you should try Ueda’s other PS2 game, Ico. It’s very sweet.

• As a huge Ace Combat nerd, I also recommend the PS2 trilogy (Ace Combat 04, 5 and Zero). My favourite of the three is 04, which has a more grounded and somber story and consistently good gameplay. 5 is like a Tom Cruise action movie, but I find the gameplay subpar compared to the others. Zero is like the MGR: Revengeance of Ace Combat lol

• Zone of the Enders 2 is my favourite mecha game ever, with exhilarating battles, an awesome soundtrack and great set pieces (the Crevasse battle is absolutely humongous and I still can’t believe that nothing similar was ever replicated on consoles that are thousands of times more powerful than a PS2).
  The game’s got a re-release on modern consoles and Steam, and you can mod it to have Jap dub (which you probably want, the Eng dub is atrocious) with Eng subs, which for some reason is still not an option in the official release.

• If you like mascotte platformers, I’ve heard great things about Ratchet and Clank, Sly Cooper, Jax. I’ve only played a few levels of the former and it gave me huge motion sickness, though :/
  There’s also Klonoa, but i think that one’s got a remastered version on modern platforms nowadays.

• People mostly remember the Final Fantasy titles, but there are a LOT of JRPG games on PS2, although I haven’t played them myself and I can’t attest to their quality (sometimes people’s nostalgia is just… Off the charts lol).
  Star Ocean: Till the end of times is consistently praised among both the Star Ocean community and the larger JRPG crowd. I can’t attest to that as I don’t have nearly enough time to play a JRPG title nowadays, but I liked the PS1 title (2nd story), and I’ve always heard people putting it above or slightly below that one, so it looks like I’m missing out.
  I’ve also heard good things about other titles such as Rogue Galaxy, Ar Tonelico, Grandia 3, Legaia 2 (I’m very fond of the first one, although the story was nothing to write home about), Wild Arms, a few Tales Of titles, and probably many more I’m forgetting about. Maybe look out for some of those if you’re into the genre.

Both Duckstation (PS1 emulator) and PCSX2 (PS2 emulator) are quick and easy to set up nowadays, but you have to download the bios file, which I guess is the “super illegal” file you were talking about.

It’s as easy as typing “ps1 bios download” on Google though.

Oh yeah, that makes sense.

Same in Italy. I’ve seen police/army booths in all gaming conventions I’ve took part in, even years before the the Ukraine war.

Maybe it’s an unpopular opinion, but I’m not particularly offended by it. I think it makes sense for cyber security/high tech jobs to look for recruits in a place that’s full of nerds that could fit the criteria. And I also know that there are many train/aviation/weapons enthusiasts in the gaming world who could do that shit for a living.

That being said, I don’t think that a recruitment booth in a gaming convention is particularly effective at reaching potential candidates. If somebody wanted to join the army, they probably already did. I don’t know anyone who was on the fence, and decided to enlist after visiting the army booth in a gaming convention lol
I suppose, if they keep doing it, that it’s somehow more effective than I think it is?

Following gaming news has become increasingly exhausting in the last decade. GamerGate has never truly ended, its shadow’s been pervasive of the entire discourse on videogames for years. Every AAA game is an excuse to rant about the (perceived) political agenda of its writers or the art team or whatever.

I disagree with the final take of the video, though. While moderation and companies taking a stance is certainly necessary, the main problem is that the social media algorithm feeds on this kind of discourse and amplifies it because it increases engagement. There can never be enough moderation to silence these trolls because you cannot moderate all platforms and all places, and the trolls outnumber the developers (and with AI on the rise, the numbers are even more stacked in favour of online trolls).
There will be no solution to this problem for as long as social media is run the way it is at the moment.

I got the base game for free on GoG after playing it once on Gamepass a few years back, now I get the two expansions + remastered as well lol

Child me would be amazed at how easy it is to play AAA games without spending a dime nowadays. I grew up with a dozen or so games and that was it because my father didn’t want to spend more money on videogames lol

A huge and influential name in the gaming industry.

But the game business has changed and it’s just not as much fun for me anymore. Plus there’s a new generation of developers coming up who deserve their time in the sun.

I recently had the opportunity and honor to talk to another name from my childhood (Martin Edmondson), and he told me the same thing: the gaming industry is too alien to him now than what he experienced a few decades ago. More complex, less wiggle room, a lot to take in account for even for smaller scope games.

I like the hopeful tone at the end of the message, though.

To all of you reading this I want you to remember that games are not a solved problem yet – there is, I hope, plenty of experimentation and innovation to come. And to all you young developers out there, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, your job is to make people forget people like me ever existed.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget him and many like him, but I hope the new generation of developers will be up to the task to experiment and innovate even in an industry that has been suffering so much in the last few years.

To the people who want to buy a game on GoG that is included in the 2nd class citizen list, it’s worth messaging the game’s publisher. I did that when I wanted to buy I was a teenage exocolonist, and the publisher responded almost immediately, and in less than a week it was updated on the store to the same version as Steam.

YMMV of course, but it’s worth the try.

Also, the GoG team is aware of the issue, and they started an effort in August (EDIT: May) 2026 to tackle it and reduce the length of the list. It’s a shame that’s not been included in the article, because they’ve been making bi-weekly updates since and they’ve been pretty consistent so far.
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/from_good_to_great_improving_our_games_together

https://addons.mozilla.org/it/firefox/addon/gog-2nd-class-helper/

Had a friend unironically trying to convince me that Palworld is evil because it brainwashes people into liking human enslavement and shooting at civilians.

His favourite game is Pokémon, a game where you bond with your fire lizard by pitting it against other animals in a government-sanctioned tournament.

Of course he’s also one of those people who spends hours lamenting the state of current Pokémon games, while also buying both versions of each game at day 1.