Over its long life span, with unprecedented sales and developer support, it’s not surprising the PS2 has seen its share of innovative and exciting accessories. From the standard to the outlandish and back, you could get lost in the sea of optional gadgets to buy for your PS2 console.

One of the major PS2 accessories to hit the market was the long awaited arrival of the network adapter, allowing online play between gamers across the globe. It eventually came built-in on newer models of the console, and though there was some grumbling about the general lack of support, was an extremely popular addition.

Along with the network adapter came the release of other accessories suited to playing online, such as headsets and microphones, as well as USB keyboards and mouses, allowing greater control and communication between players during online games.

Many PS2 accessories proved extremely popular and paved the way for many similar accessories on current generation consoles. The guitar controller for use with Guitar Hero is one of the most notable, with the music rhythm genre since taking off and seeing the continued development of many unique controllers and play devices for use with them. Other unique control devices on the PS2 include the Resident Evil 4 Chainsaw Controller and the Onimusha 3 Katana Controller.

One of the failed PS2 accessories was the HDD. As we’ve seen with most similar add-ons in the past, most notably the Sega CD and 32X add-ons, these devices tend to fail at retail for a variety of reasons, namely increased cost and limited functionality or developer support.

The HDD was most notably required for use with Final Fantasy XI, and in fact came bundled with the game upon its initial release, though it did provide added benefits to a small selection of other games as well, including SOCOM 2 and 3.

HDD support was quickly dropped by Sony, with the newer PS2 slim models not even supporting connectivity of the unit, meaning anyone who wants to play the PS2 version of FFXI must do so on an older model.