There I was, midnight, in-line at Best Buy on October 26, 2000... no actually I think I picked up my PS2 from Electronic Boutique with my mom the afternoon came out BUT what counts is I was there on DAY ONE. And I got three games: Timesplitters, Smuggler's Run, and Summoner (I even rented the port of Silent Scope that first weekend).
It was a whole new experience, but nothing was quite as impressive as the first time I turned the key in Smuggler's Run. Never before had such a massive, open, no-need-to-load level been displayed before me. While Timesplitters was fast I guess (I don't think it counts as a video game though it's so detached) and Summoner was genuinely funny, Rockstar was the first taste of what the next-gen could truly deliver (which Smuggler's publisher Rockstar would come to full fruition with GTAIII a few years later).I played and enjoyed Smuggler's Run more than any of the games I first got with the PS2 and so it is my favorite PS2 launch game. THOUGH I love Gungriffon Blaze like a man loves his Colombian mistress, and I probably earned 230,980,800 "medals", but it will never be as "NEXT GEN" in my head as Smuggler's Run felt that tender night the PS2 changed the world (in other words, Smuggler's Run sure wasn't a Dreamcast game).
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