Camped out in a long line overnight in the Circuit City parking lot, re-reading Fellowship of the Ring. It rained, we all scrambled to our cars... when it stopped we reformed the line, I got in behind the same guy I'd been sitting behind for hours but some bitch pointed at me and yelled "THIS GUY JUST CUT!" Multiple people told her she was wrong. Early in the morning, a Circuit City employee came out and went down the line handing out wristbands saying everyone who had one would be able to buy a PS2 when the store opened. And of course, the guy ahead of me got the last wristband. I was the first one in the line to NOT get a PS2. That would have been Oct 2000, the NA launch. PS2s were so hard to find, I didn't get one until... pretty sure it was January 2001. I went into Best Buy for some reason and I saw someone carrying a beautiful blue PS2 box, so I went up to the first employee I could find and asked, "DO YOU HAVE PS2 IN STOCK RIGHT NOW?" and he said "YES." I vaguely remember Tekken Tag was the first game I bought for it, but I didn't like it and probably only played it for a couple of hours. I thought it was a major letdown after Tekken 3. I know I bought more games for it, but the real boon was finally having a DVD player. I think the first two I bought were Apocalypse Now and The Matrix and holy shit I remember how amazing they looked to me at the time. In my mind the"PS2 era" didn't really begin until July 2001 when I bought an imported PS2 so I could play FFX JP on day 1, rather than wait over six months for the NA version. The second half of 2001 was all about Ico, Silent Hill 2, Devil May Cry, and MGS2. God damn, what a year.