False. There was backwards compatibility long before the PS2. Just not in market-leading Nintendo's systems. Way back even before the 8-bit NES, the Atari 78

False. There was backwards compatibility long before the PS2. Just not in market-leading Nintendo's systems. Way back even before the 8-bit NES, the Atari 7800 was backwards compatible with Atari 2600 games. So was the ColecoVision, although through a hardware adapter that basically was an entire 2600 on a chip outputting raw video to the ColecoVision. And the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive had an adapter to play 8-bit Sega Master System games, running the SMS code on an auxiliary sound Z80 in the Genesis, so slightly hardware assisted but mostly built into the console.