Skip to main content

Long read: The beauty and drama of video games and their clouds

"It's a little bit hard to work out without knowing the altitude of that dragon..."

If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy.

Frankenstein's Console: The PS2's utterly essential rotating logo

This week we're stitching together our ideal console.

Chris Tapsell avatar
Feature by Chris Tapsell Deputy Editor
Updated on
20 comments

Which console features from yesteryear are you super fond of? Given that there are new machines out soon - and given that it's almost Halloween - we thought we would spend the week picking and choosing our favourite elements from our favourite consoles and stitching together our perfect Frankenstein's Console. Inevitably it's going to look a bit like that car Homer Simpson designed, and equally inevitably it's going to say Giga Power Pro-Gear Spec when you boot it up. Anyway - join us! And have a think about what your own Frankenstein's Console might look like. If you dare...

There are many things people consider to be 'essential' for a new console. Things like 'backwards compatibility', or a 'disc drive', or 'having any new games to play', but these things are all, I feel, somewhat secondary to another: a logo that you can rotate so whether you turn the console horizontal or vertical, it's always the right way up.

I have very little more to say about this, but I'll try. First, how things look in people's homes matters, actually, and to borrow a phrase you might have heard just once or twice recently: now more than ever. And second, I don't know - but stay with me on the first. The average home is getting smaller, and the average person is there, after this year of all years, more and more of the time. I am at home all the time - all the time - and so I spend my days, increasingly, just looking at it. I look at its walls and its ceilings, the cracks along the frames of its somewhat poorly-mounted doors, the little smear of paint someone managed to get in one corner of the front window, that one just barely noticeable gap between two floorboards.

I've noticed one of the bulbs isn't as bright as I'd really like, that paint flakes in a certain spot, despite no measurable issues with damp, that certain corners and crevices seem far more prone than others to collecting dust. I've noticed everything, I think, about every inch of the flat where I've spent the last six months of my life. And I will absolutely notice, let me tell you now, that my new console's logo isn't always the right way up.

Read this next