Within the next few days, I’m planning to buy myself a PlayStation II. (The PS2 and PS2 have a lot of games that I’d like to play, but the PS3 doesn’t have enough games that interest me to justify the additional cost at this point.)
I’m leaning toward picking up a used one but haven’t really decided between the original and thin models and was wondering what advice I could get. I like the look of the original, thicker design and the fact that it opens forward rather than having the hatch top because I could sit my Wii on top of it rather than taking up the extra shelf space.
Are there any specific advantages to the Slim PS2 over the Original besides the smaller size? Is there anything else I should know?
The last place I lived, my roommates had an original one. About a year ago I bought a slim one used (and cheap), and it’s worked fine. No differences between the two have jumped out at me besides the obvious physical difference.
Having said that, I’m planning on getting a PS3 in the future and getting rid of my PS2. If you’re interested in mine, I could pass on the great price I got mine for to you. My e-mail is in my profile.
Looking at Wikipedia there’s no real advantage other than size/weight. In fact the slim version is slightly less compatible with PS1 games and has no expansion slot for a hard drive. Neither of which are major problems, but as you’d prefer the original anyway. The only slight drawback is that some accessories may only be easily availible for the slim edition, wikipedia mentions the multitap, but there may be others. Of course i’m sure the original versions are availible on eBay.
I have a used thick PS2 and a used thin PS2. I started with the thick PS2 and it was fine although it failed to read the game disks for some games. This is evidently a well-known problem with the old thick PS2s but I didn’t know it before I found out the hard way. Usually the disks can’t get read because the laser is out of alignment. There are a lot of MacGyver-like fixes proposed for getting the thick PS2s to read disks.
So I got a used thin PS2 to replace the thick PS2. This also had disk read error problems but because the design is different, there are no fixes for a thin PS2 disk read error.
You could get a great used PS2 and have no problems but what I have learned is that the thick ones have disk read errors from wear and tear but they often can be solved (not in my case though). The thin PS2 ones have a better design for the laser but they also can get disk read errors and there are no quick fixes for those.
PS I’m waiting for the price of PS2s to come down below $100 or some other appropriately-priced bundle deal and just get a new one.