I was a big fan of 3 and 4, but I quickly fell out of it with the over-saturation of the franchise at the time. However, since the release of the terrible THPS 5, I had an itch to play those games that I skipped. What's generally the best platform to play the ones from THUG onwards? I mainly ask this because of games like Proving Ground and Project 8 which were both on both generations. In that case, were the 360/PS3 versions vastly superior? Because they're also a lot more expensive on amazon than the dirt cheap PS2 versions...

I would imagine the Xbox 360 versions are the way to go as they are with just about every multiplatform release. THUG and THUG 2 should also be playable (although I'm not certain on the state of the game in terms of emulation on 360, I know THPS 4 works really well) on Xbox 360.