Probably no consumer product in recent history has been more eagerly awaited than Sony's newest generation PlayStation 2. An instant hit in Japan when it was introduced last year, the PlayStation 2's U.S. launch was marred by the announcement that due to component shortages, only half as many units would be available for sale on the launch date as were originally promised. Much of the demand is attributable to the PS2's amazing specifications. Sony co-developed the 128-bit "Emotion Engine" CPU used in the PS2, and it is capable of truly amazing graphics performance. Figures such as "66 million polygons per second" or "floating point calculations of 6.2 gigaFLOPS/sec" don't mean much to the average game console purchaser, but they boil down to the fact that the PS2 can deliver graphics performance that's pretty much unmatched by anything near its price. To be truthful, however, you might have to wait a while to really get the benefit of this. We tested the PS2 on the week of its official US launch, when only a few of the more than 200 expected game titles were available. Some of these games were more impressive than others, but few provided the kind of jaw-dropping graphics that public demos of the PS2 show the console is capable of. The reason for this is simple--it takes a while for game developers to really learn how to use the new features and capabilities of a new console. Don't get us wrong--graphics on the games we tested were at least as good as those on the Sega DreamCast, and in some cases, noticeably better. As new games are rolled out, graphics should improve even more. Backward compatibility with the original PlayStation games is pretty much assured. The new PS2 uses the original PlayStation's CPU as its I/O processor. We played about a half-dozen PlayStation games on the PS2, and all played and looked pretty much the same as they did on our original PlayStation, though several seemed to be a bit more responsive on the PS2. The PlayStation 2 can use older PlayStation memory cards, but they only work with older PlayStation games. New cards are available that work with the new memory format the PS2 uses. The dual-shock controller also serves to control DVD playback--the drive in the PS2 handles standard DVD movies as well as games. Sony has built a lot of expandability into the PS2. There's a bay for a hard disk drive, two USB ports for future peripherals, and an iLINK IEEE-1394 Firewire port for future connectivity. The almost-$300 PS2 might be the most expensive game console on the market, but it's still a terrific piece of equipment and a Best Buy. Pros: Beautiful graphics; DVD drive plays standard DVD movies as well as games; can run older PlayStation games Cons: Game developers do not yet take full advantage of console's capabilities