Video games love a good sequel. Last I looked I think we were up to Final Fantasy CLVI.
But way back in 2000, just when people were getting stuck into Final Fantasy IX, a video-gaming follow-up with a smaller number arrived: the PlayStation 2.
Following Sony's original, the first gaming console to ever sell over 100million units, the PS2 had a little bit to live up to.
The man steering the ship though, founding president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Chris Deering, had long had success in his sights, he told Eurogamer in 2010. "[Rivals] Nintendo and SEGA had never won two in a row.
We used to say it was like winning two gold medals in two back-to-back Olympics, it just never happened. So I set that as a personal goal."
Part of achieving that goal was getting everyone aboard the hype train.
Maybe in 1999 it was just that we were all in a weird millennial mood, but for whatever reason, Sony's objectively strange television advertisements (remember television advertisements?) for their new console really caused a stir, despite the fact they barely even mentioned the product.
To this day, if you would like to produce looks of bafflement and recognition from gamers of a certain vintage, all you need to do is say the words "PlayStation alien girl" to them.
The fact the PS2 was also a DVD player (remember DVDs?) was a big allure, or maybe we were all just really excited to play fireworks-based puzzle game FantaVision among what, in hindsight, was a lacklustre roster of launch titles.
Whatever the reasons were, anticipation reached fever-pitch. When the PS2 finally hit launch day in Japan in March, some of the 10,000 people in the Tokyo queue to get one had been in it for four days.
But they had still had it easier than poor old New Zealand, which languished PS2-less until November.
It might not have mattered much if we'd had earlier access though, as the units moved off shelves so fast elsewhere that Sony couldn't keep up, and had to institute a lottery system in which winners got the privilege of giving the company money.
And really, it just kicked on from there: Sony flogged something like 158m PS2s before finally finishing production at the end of 2013, winning Deering's second gold and then some as it became the world's best-selling game console of all time.
Globally, gamers snapped up 1.527 billion copies of more than 4000 game titles to feed into their disc drives (remember disc drives?), too, among them absolutely seminal, industry-agenda-setting titles like Grand Theft Auto III, God of War, Shadow of the Colossus, Resident Evil 4, Metal Gear Solid 2, Gran Turismo 3 and many more.
Cor, it's quite a legacy; one that's carried on to the current Playstation 5 (released in 2020).
But though it might boast more than 10 times the computing power of its ancestor, Sony's latest console hasn't even sold half as many units, alien girls are nowhere to be seen and the French have steadfastly refused to riot.
Sometimes, things really were just cooler in the old days.
