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Three cities, endless possibility, and radio stations you'd sit in a parked car to keep listening to. The PS2 Grand Theft Auto trilogy — III, Vice City, San Andreas — turned the open-world game into a cultural phenomenon: a world that said, "do whatever you want," back when that freedom felt genuinely revolutionary.
Naughty Dog's PS2 platformer arrived in December 2001 with no loading screens and no seams — just one continuous world for a silent hero and his motor-mouthed otter-weasel sidekick. Critics adored it, and with Ratchet & Clank and Sly Cooper it formed the PS2's beloved platformer trinity.
The reboot that ditched exotic supercars for neon-lit tuner street racing — body kits, underglow, and a spoiler you could see from space. Every 2003 sleepover had a souped-up Civic saved on the memory card.
The buddy-platformer that paired Ratchet, a wrench-swinging lombax mechanic, with Clank, a small defective robot — and armed them with the most gleefully over-the-top arsenal on the PlayStation 2. Blowing up enemies with a Suck Cannon or a flamethrower was the whole point.
A drivable, explorable Springfield with missions, kickable cars, and the show's actual writers and voice cast — "GTA for kids" was the fan shorthand, and it was said with love. Over 3 million copies sold, no sequel, no remaster, and a cult that has only grown since 2003.
You and your sibling dividing a CRT in half, capturing command posts on Hoth all afternoon — split-screen, two controllers, no internet required. Pandemic's 2005 sequel added playable Jedi, space dogfights, and the 501st Legion's story, and when EA's 2017 reboot stumbled, a generation stampeded back to "the REAL Battlefront II."