h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ridge Racer 5 (Japanese) running on an imported PS2 does have impressive animation in the intro, and the game looks smooth in terms of movement, but there are nasty jaggies whenever the edges of large textures are nearly horizontal, and the white lines on the track flicker badly as the camera viewpoint moves.

What kind of hardware support for graphics is there in the PS2 - how much does the (admittedly rather powerful) CPU have to do everything in software.

(I'm currently getting 'page not found' from the hardware specs link given in the article)

Sorry about the bad grammar in the second paragraph - forgot to check after editing.

How good is the DVD playback? As I am weighing up whether to get a DVD player at the mo.

According to my mate with the machine, it looks OK (on a small screen TV at least), but from what he's heard from other people, they didn't rate the quality particularly highly.

If you're concerned about multi-region playback, from what I've read so far, I understand that changing the allowed region is currently fairly straightforward, but that Sony will be modifying future machines to make it difficult (or impossible). I guess that will probably be done before the UK launch.

Also, Sony has been saying that some of the old PSX 1 games will *not* be compatible on the PSX 2 machines. But from what I've read, they're having to go back and play each game to see which ones won't work. Some sort of glitch...

More likely the programmers driving the hardware raw to get the best possible out of it (make it go faster etc) and so the newer hardware doesn't work in quite the same way so the optimisations aren't valid or the progam tries to do something which the new hardware doesn't like (ileagal instructions etc).

The DVD playback, is regrettably bad, if you want to buy the machine because of this feature than don't, but rest assured that as a games machine it will excell at an extraordinary level.

Is this a software or Hardware problem? And are they going to put it right by the time we get to see it?

I will buy PSX2 whatever - but I am reluctant to buy a DVD as well... I guess I'll just have to wait and see - Cynical me thinks "Maybe Sony are deliberately making DVD playback bad so people will buy PSX2 & some DVD titles - see potential for DVD and buy another 'Real' DVD player (hopefully Sony) so they can watch the DVD in its true glory".

Also do you reckon they are really going to release modems etc for it? As I seem to remember similar promises made fro original PSX a few years ago (when I bought mine) when PSXs had Serial & Parallel ports and what looks suspiciously like a USB port.

Presumably, DVD players are still getting cheaper, so the main risk you run if you wait to buy a standalone player until later is that means of bypassing regional-coding or other restrictions may be harder to come by the longer you wait. If that's not important to you, waiting should be OK.

There was the intention to use the serial port for head-to-head gaming on the original PlayStation, if I remember correctly. Did anything ever come of that?

I would have thought they would release a modem, if only because the internet is a good way of slowly extracting money out of people, in addition to the large wads taken when they buy games.

Still, if it *is* all vapourware, it would hardly be a novel ploy in the industry. I remember a couple of decades ago, in the *original* home computer boom, that it seemed that every single games-only console launched in a blaze of publicity, claiming that keyboards, BASIC interpreters and cassette interfaces would shortly follow to turn the game box into a 'proper' home computer. Few ever did. In fact, I'm not sure *any* ever did. Plus ca change...

According to CNN, Sony announced to its stockholders that US PS2's will ship with a modem.

And DVD playback looks fine to me.

And I read in the paper today that they have restricted export of more than 2 PS2s at a time without a license. This is because of the computer chips are very powerful.

Yup. It is, technically, a supercomputer. So is Macintosh's G4. They'll (hopefull) update the laws...

Supercomputers aren't what they used to be.

Thay have apparently relaxed this restriction.
Was it just a subtle marketing ploy by Sony I wonder.

The problem whit ridge racer is that Namco wanted to be the first one that had a race game one the psx2. So one off the obviuos effects whas a badly produced game not completely there own fault. Sony japan ceped the specefications for the psx2 secret for to long(possibly afraid for the dolphin fron nintendo). One off the things that amaze me is the fact that everyone is expecting a miracle from the psx 2 concerning the gravics. A machine that is producing realtime image's whill have to compremise in order to have a reaseneble frame rate. The best thing about the psx2 at this moment is that it is so powerfull that it put most pc's on the dinosaurs list and it supports dvd. All of this at a reaseneble price some where about the 250.00 euro's. Strangely the whill keep producing the old psx and game's for the old console.

It was similar when the original PlayStation was launched - some early games were badly written, some were just bad conversions from other formats, but things improved once programmers got familiar with the hardware (and once the game development software improved from the initial debatable quality)
It just seems a little odd to me that this time round, Sony couldn't have got together with developers and made sure the initial games were seriously good. (Maybe they did for some others, but I can only comment on what I've seen)

Given that, as a result of Sony's publicity, you evidently think the PS2 will put most PCs to shame, I'm puzzled at your suprise that *other* people seem to be expecting something special on the graphics front.
Graphics is what the PS2 is supposed to be about, and if it can't do a noticably better job than a good PC and graphics card, there are going to be people who feel misled.

I think personely that the biggest pro for the psx isn't the great grafics but the great gameplay what put any console on top of a pc.
Some thing that whas for me a reason a few years ago to buy the psx instead of a pc whas the fact that it is easy in use and has a perfect reputation towards crasing while playing.(lets see windows do that). If i see some recent game's(lets say driver)the grafics arn't what you would expect altough they arn't that terrible.The best game for the psx gt2 isn't that much approved in the grafics way but the game play is still the best there is.Lets hope the psx2 can make true what they are prommising for gt2000.To come bake at the point feeling misled by the psx2 i dont think any person who prevere console gaming whill ever feel misled because the dvd player is off better qaulity then a mid class player at this time, most games whill be of better qaulity than at this point.I don't say that you have no bad game's today but the abillity off the emotion engine is that strong that if you put six hundred horses(kessen)in one shot everybody is impressed.When you are a game critic you would still have to say that they move as if they have a broom up there a**.

I read something in the States a couple of days ago saying updated PSX2s will ship with a 30-40 GIG 3.5" hardisk!!! and broadband ethernet card - wasn't sure this was possible yet (the HD not the ehternet).

This is not completely true. The PC Card (aka PCMCIA) slot is removed from the US PS2, which makes room for a special connector for an external HD & ethernet connector. Neither will be built into the console, but rumors were flying that they would be around the E3 timeframe.

They have announced a very similar product for Japan that plugs into the PC Card slot.

I haven't seen any capacity numbers for the HD yet, but 30-40 Gig is rather large for a console part. To put it in perspective, this is seen mostly as a response to Microsoft's Xbox which will ship with an *8* Gig drive and ethernet built in.

Take a look at http://ps2.ign.com/news/20604.html for some info on the announcement in Japan, and a couple of pictures of the addon.