Dear Future Gamer,

Backwards compatibility on PS2. Will this just be limited to games? Or is there any possibility that my nearly-new Dual Shock steering wheel could plug straight in? (Please bear in mind that I am no stranger to throwing money at a lost cause - this was written on a P2 266 with a 3dfx card, costing me a fortune eight months ago and now given away with two tiger tokens and a 20 pence stamp... well, almost!!)

I know historically that joypads etc have evolved with each machine released, but surely Sony are not going to give us any more buttons (I only have eight fingers and two thumbs, there is a limit to how many buttons I can cover and still actually hold on to the pad). I imagine that the pads will merely be restyled to match the new machine.

I am wondering how hard it would be for Sony to keep the connector port the same as for the earlier machine, rather than just changing it for no real reason. Well that's enough dreaming for me, I'm off to have another go on Type-4, or maybe Gran Turismo and you can bet I'll be near the front of the very long queue when the PS2 finally does arrive on these shores...
... and I do play the odd game on my PC occasionally, but then it crashes and I switch the PlayStation back on.

Thanks for the mag.

Stephen Phillips

FG: Good point. I'm sure Sony have it covered though, it's doubtful they'd suddenly make everyone's controllers redundant. Surely. SURELY!