What did you do all day?

During my college years, if I wasn’t in class or at the CougarEat (I love you Subway, Taco Bell, and Teriyaki Stix, with all my gut), I was in the library. I did virtually all of my studying in the library, and virtually all I did was study (Sundays and church excluded).

In fact, for the first three weeks of my junior year, I didn’t have time for laundry, and I neither made new friends nor kept the old. Eight months later, after winter semester finals, things started to calm down. I then learned that my roommate of eight months owned a PS2, and so I decided to stay for spring and summer terms.

Okay, so I knew he had it the whole time. I might have even played it by that point. The take-away is that I had not yet become obsessed with it.

Yet.

That summer, I fell for the PS2, and I fell hard. And tackled hard. And jumped and slashed hard. Skated hard, too. I managed to keep my grades up, but I also developed the kind of emotional bond with “Devil May Cry”, “Tony Hawk: Pro Skater”, and “NCAA Football 2004”* that a fat kid develops with a Twinkie.

I also think I didn’t have a girlfriend that summer.

Eventually, I moved out of that apartment, and a few semesters later, to Texas. I was as far distanced from gaming systems as I had ever been … until That Night, That fateful, glorious Night.

(Aside) If nothing has ever convinced you that having friends is good, let me simply throw this out there: friends are good because friends own things that you don’t.

My landlord had a projector and a killer sound system. My other housemate had a friend at work who had an Xbox and a handful of games. One of those games was the very first Guitar Hero. So, That Night, we had a party.

“Iron Man” was the first, and therefore easiest song on the playlist, and I can count on five hands the number of times I heard it that evening. Some people picked up the game kind of quickly, and others were booed off the stage by the game. (I only booed out loud once.) I quickly discovered that I have a natural (albeit useless) talent for this sort of game. I even got 100% on a beginner difficulty song while people were still there to be awestruck by my magnificent ability.

I’ll skip over the details of the party now, partly because I don’t remember them, and partly because I was just anxious for everyone else to leave. And leave they did. So I played it all by my lonesome. I must have played until 1 AM. I even got pretty good. However, even an Iron Man such as myself has to sleep, and when I woke up the following morning (afternoon?), it was all gone.

“Why did you tell us that story?” you ask. “Us?” I respond, incredulously. “There are multiple people reading my blog?”

I tell you this story because the PS3 just went through another upgrade (slimmed down, quieter, etc.) and another price cut ($299, down from $399), and I was researching it. You see, I desperately want to get my hands on its luscious Blu-ray capabilities so I can watch Transformers and Live Free or Die Hard, which I already own in Blu-ray (I knew this day would come!). I also want to play the five PS1 and PS2 games that are sitting derelict on my dresser.

But it’s not backward compatible.

And I don’t have a job.

Kind of funny that one of the main reasons I won’t buy it is the principle reason I would have time to use it, no?



P.S. I actually wrote this whole blog for a far, far geekier reason: to make fun of the people who claim the PS3 had a 0.5% failure rate (it’s actually 10%, according to GameSpot), and the Xbox 360 had a 52% failure rate (only 23.7% fail within 2 years of purchase). I just couldn’t find a place to put that.

* I may have also played Halo all the way through with a buddy in the two days between winter and spring terms, but that could have been a frozen pizza-induced hallucination. Either way, it was totally awesome.