PS2's startup screen Easter egg is surprising players all over again

PS2 startup screen
(Image credit: Sony/Politoed on YouTube)

Gaming fans who were in the hobby in the early 2000s are having their mind blown now that an Easter✃ egg from the PS2 startup screen is🥂 making the rounds on social media.

If you remember the PS2 boot screen from back in the day (or you're an old-school type who still keeps old consoles at the ready), you might recall that a number of towers appear under the "Sony Computer Entertainment" text when you start the console. The number of those towers is de🔥termined by how many games you've played, and their height is determined by how much you've played of them.

(via ), but there's been some confusion over exactly how the size and number of towers ties to the games you've played. A popular said the towers were generated "according to the number of save files and the size of each file" on your memory card, but that's not entirely accurate.

According to community researchers at , a wiki "dedicated to unearthing and researching unused and cut content from video games," the towers actually appear based on each game you've booted, and increase in size based on the number of ไtimes you've started a given title. Onl꧙y a certain number of towers can be displayed, however, and the towers representing the games you've gone the longest without playing will start disappearing once you hit the limit.

That data is stored in a file on your m✃emory card, but it has nothing to do with the game saves on that card. You can delete all your saves without seeing a change in the number of towers, but putting a fr🐼esh memory card in the system will present you with a clean, tower-free boot.

If you're looking for some classics to enjoy, check out our list of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best PS2 games.

Dustin Bailey
Staff Writer

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly🎀 five years♒. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.