Remember the days when couch multiplayer gaming used to be the thing to do on a weekend? You'd gather your friends round your house and lock down for a night of hunching forward to squint at your quarter of the screen in a shooter, or intensely silent showdowns in a sports game. Your friends would provide the Coca-Cola and snacks while you spent all your 'hard-earned' money (from your parents) on the official PS2 Multitap. Man, it was worth it though. Even though the local multiplayer that defined the PS2 seems archaic by today's online-enabled standards, there was a kind of magic about it that no amount of technical prowess on subsequent consoles can replicate. Punching your buddy in the arm when he was ungraceful in victory, settling who gets the last slice of pizza through sudden death in Timesplitters, taking sneaky glances at other players' screens during shooters - it was intense, chaotic and incredibly fun. Amidst all the memorable local multiplayer experiences on the PS2, it's easy to forget that the console also flirted with online gaming, spawning a couple of incredibly underrated titles deserve a nod alongside the others. So go dig your PS2 out from the back of your cupboard, because it deserves better than that. Dust off that Multitap, untangle your DualShock 2 cables and dive into these multiplayer games that marked the pinnacle of a kind of console gaming the world has all but forgotten about.
Gamer, Researcher of strange things.
I'm a writer-editor hybrid whose writings on video games, technology and movies can be found across the internet. I've even ventured into the realm of current affairs on occasion but, unable to face reality, have retreated into expatiating on things on screens instead.
