You've gotta give it up to Sony, when they say 10 year cycle, they mean it!  Probably my favorite console that I've ever owned, the PS2 was (and still is) a source of many good times for me.  It had some of the greatest games ever made, and there were TONS of them. 
 
Me, i got my Ps2 in spring of 2002 for my birthday.  After two years of drooling over the new console in issues of PSM:100% Independent Playstation Magazine (the greatest game mag evah!), i had saved up enough money to pay for the new console.  For my birthday, I asked my parents for a copy of Jak and Daxter (I had fell in love with this game through PSM). instead my parents, in one of those moments that make you think your parents are actually kind of awesome, they bought me a PS2 bundled with a copy of a Jak and Daxter, two controllers and a memory card. A pretty kickass birthday, especially since they told me to go spend the money I had saved on a few more games.  Jak and Daxter blew me away with it's fun gameplay, huge world and...holy crap... no load times what!? Plus it was the best looking game I had ever seen. I remember looking at the character swim for like 10 minutes straight.
 
I spent the next few weeks spending my PS2 fund on some of the awesome games I had been missing out on - Twisted Metal Black, Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec, Red Faction, and Onimusha. Awesome, Awesome stuff.  But then I bought two games that changed it all. The first was Devil May Cry.  Sometimes I forget how incredible the first one really was. There was nothing quite like it at the time, and all other action games were tame in comparison.  The horror themes, the style, the enemies, and the swordplay all seemed so...perfect. Then, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. I. Love. This. Game.  i know people are always like"Wuuuuaagh, but Raiden!!". Don't Care. I really appreciate what Kojima did with MGS2. There were just so many holy shit moments, (Fortune being shot was one of the coolest). I finished both DMC and MGS2 feeling like I hadn't just played a game, but had an experience. 
  
Since then there have been so many memorable games.  It's been a lot of fun seeing how a console progressed over a decade.  Seriously, the leap from early PS2 games to games like God of War 2 has made Playstation a fascinating system. So, being all nostalgic for the past ten years, thanks Sony for a great console. Heres to ten years for the PS3...especially since it's strangely harder to save up for a new console these days.