We continue our look at two decade's worth of PlayStation commercials by fast-forwarding to 2000, when Sony was gearing up to release the PlayStation 2 ...

After dominating throughout the late 1990s, Sony was finally in a place where they could experiment with their commercials. With only a limited amount of consoles hitting retailers, the PlayStation 2 was guaranteed to sell out through the 2000 holiday season. This afforded Sony the opportunity to think outside the box. The result is one of the most memorable video game commercials of all time.

For nearly a minute, this commercial sold gamers on the PlayStation 9, a console decades away from release. With improved retinal scanning, a mind-control system, holographic surround vision and telepathic personal music, the PlayStation 9 is everything you could possibly want in a game system. Unfortunately, it doesn't come out for another 65 years. In the end, it's all a rouse. It's a flash-forward to get you excited about buying the PlayStation 2.

"The beginning," this commercial confidently posits. How did we let Sony get away with this tagline? By that rationale, Back to the Future Part II might as well be the beginning. It makes no sense. The PlayStation 2 will never be the beginning as long as the 1995 original exists. That's like Microsoft calling their third console the Xbox One ... oh wait.

Think the PlayStation 9 commercial is out there? Then you clearly haven't visited The Third Place. With nothing to lose, Sony hired cult director David Lynch, best known as the creator of Twin Peaks and the man responsible for Blue Velvet, Lost Highways and Wild at Heart. The result is every bit as weird as you might imagine.

The Third Place is basically a greatest hits album of David Lynch cliches. We get abrasive music, an industrial setting, a nightmarish hallway, a floating woman, claustrophobic paranoia, smoke, creatures from other worlds sitting on a couch, floating heads and a cryptic message from a duck. Fans of the Elephant Man director have seen it all before, while everybody else is left scratching their heads in utter confusion.

As a fan of Lynch, I find this commercial endlessly frustrating. Believe it or not, these elements work in context. The floating head is genuinely frightening when it's connected to Eraserhead's premature baby, but comes off as silly in commercial form. Even the couch scene, one of the strongest visuals in Twin Peaks, is only played for shock value in this sixty second spot. What should have been that generation's most original commercial comes off as little more than a masturbatory exercise.