Vacuosity

Game day

Jordan and I were rewarded today for our patience and diligent saving. For quite a number of months, we have been saving up all the loonies, toonies, and other change we have gotten, with the single-minded goal of buying a Playstation 2, and the Zelda-styled RPG Dark Cloud.

Sure, we could have splurged, gone and dropped the $600 it would have cost us a few months ago. But it seemed hard to justify with so many other financial priorities, a new baby among other things, and all for an item that is bound to be little more than a time glutton; especially when time is already at a premium.

Last week we were more than halfway there, closing in on $400, almost entirely in coin. Then came the big news, the price had dropped. What? This was unexpected. The system seemed still months away, but all of a sudden, the price was down to $299. We had our money, including tax and cost of the game. Glory be. It was a gift.

On a more sobering note, I'm worried that I might be coming down with something: maturity. While I'm happy that we got the system, I'm not beside myself with excitement, as I might have been a few years ago. In fact, as I went to Toys R Us to pick it up, I didn't feel even one twinge of giddiness. That's frightening.

I had also held off on buying a DVD player since the PS2 can double as one as well, though I have heard complaints about the playback quality on large screens. It works fine, though, on our 27 incher. We watched The Man Who Wasn't There as the inaugural movie. (It was quite good too; another fine mix of Billy Bob and the Coen duo). The picture was crystal clear, there's perfect freeze frame which is great if there's something you want to look at in detail, and at long last our movies play in surround sound, a tad better than our mono VCR.

As always, the sale of support products for the thing is a racket in itself. I actually was thinking ahead about all the pieces that I would need in addition to the actual console, in order to hook it up and to be able to watch movies, etc. I bought an adapter to hook it up to single cable style TVs (for an extra $20), which it turns out I didn't need, as well as the DVD remote (another $40).

You're supposed to be able to use the game controller to operate the DVD mode, but I thought the remote would be handier. As it turns out, you need the DVD software that comes only with the remote before you can watch anything. Before you can load the software onto the system, you need a memory card, not included with the remote, but do you think anyone told me that? These days, that's pretty much par for the course as far as customer service goes.No matter; in he end, it's here, it works great, and Dark Cloud is shaping up to be the epic RPG of all time.

Sometimes, life tosses you a bone.

posted by David @ 11:42 p.m.