I bought it the morning of October 26th. This was the PS2 launch date, and thanks to Sony goofing on the manufacturing, these were the only PS2s anyone in America would see for many many months. Some stores had pre-orders, which locked up all their PS2s with people who plunked down five bucks last April. Other stores had no reservation policy, including big discount chains. When the PS2s came in, theirs would go to the first people in line. This would assumedly be the hard core gamers. And me.
The last video game system in my house was a Genesis. I had the occasional PC game, which had a 50/50 chance of working on my ancient 100 megahertz computer. I didn't buy a video game system on purpose, since I'm walking a thin line of being an apartment hermit already.
I was making an exception for the PS2. It's backwards compatible with original Playstation games. They're all new to me, so instead of having to throw $60 bucks per game, I've got hundreds and hundreds that are in used games stores for 10 bucks. It's also a DVD player. Figure $200 for a cheap DVD player, $100 for a Playstation, and I'm getting the PS2 part of the $300 PS2 for free. It also plays CDs, which you can probably pick up for $20 at a garage sale, so that takes care of sales tax.
The Target in Edgewater opened at 8:00. It was just built a few weeks before, so I was hoping some people hadn't noticed. My clock radio was set for 4:30. Jeff was rather insistent that we woke up that early to get one. I figured playing video games and waking up early don't go hand in hand, so this was probably just sleep deprivation. We pulled into the parking lot at 5:00, and fifty people were in line. Yikes.
The earliest people came as soon as the Yankee game the night before ended, and had been waiting since 10:30. Others came by throughout the night. As the sun slowly rose, the line grew.
The atmosphere of the line was exactly what I thought it would be. Three quarters people with actual jobs who could afford $317.99 on themselves when there was Christmas shopping to do, and three quarters immersed video game geeks proud to be standing in line. I know that adds up to 150%, but half the people in line qualified for both categories. Maybe 10% were under 18.
Target employees were in line, so we found out how this sale was working. The store received 90 units, and was selling 87. Three were being held in case a defective unit was returned. If an employee bought one illicitly without standing in line like the rest of us, he was fired. Gotta respect Target.
87 was the key number. If we were among the first 87 in this line, we'd be getting a blue box. A careful count came, and I was around #50. Safe.
A cop car lazily drove by us, then parked. Good: that'll keep people from cutting in line. We all had a fear of being #88 because of some van that would pull up five minutes before and the eight guys inside who would strong-arm their way to the head of the line.
The guy behind us seemed to have bought every system and every game I could think of. He was spending thousands and thousands a year on video games, when he could rent them or borrow them for far less or wait for their prices to drop or flat out not buy every video game on the planet. This was the portrait of the game freak. Some time after sunrise, his father took his place in line, and the son went to work. A scheme was planned that, after buying his son the PS2, the father would dig out the ancient 8-bit Nintendo box, put it in the Target bag, and tell his son that the big new video game was sitting on his bed. I really wish I knew the end of that story.
The Target people treated everyone fairly, but certainly not swiftly. At 7:00 we were given numbered tickets, like at the deli. I got #56. The previous count was a bit off, but so long as I was in the 87 person comfort zone, I was smiling. Everyone stayed in line, since now that we had tickets, the line was now to exchange the tickets for a PS2. Even after 8:00 and the Target opened, we were still in line, since only ten PS2 buyers were let in at a time.
At 8:45, Jeff and I finally got our rewards. A big blue box, plus a free vertical stand thrown in by Target. I had been eyeing the McDonalds across the street as a nice after- purchase breakfast, but we came out of Target with just enough time to hit work by 9:00. I could eat breakfast another day.
It was exciting, and it resulted in me getting the most treasured item of the holiday season. Now all I had to do was open it. I didn't. I put it in a corner of the apartment, and left it there.
Jeff opened his up, and hooked it up to his TV rather immediately. He borrowed Quake II so we had something to play. It was an adventure just figuring out the controller. I hadn't really played video games since the 8- and 16-bit days, so there were at least 9 buttons that I didn't know what to do with. There were four buttons on my right when before there were two or three, three buttons in the center when before there were two, and four by my index fingers that came out of nowhere. Not to mention the two mushroom sticks that were growing out of the front.
Surely there were people who wanted this thing more than me. I would get a certain amount of joy from it, but some megageek would melt with joy with this (if he wasn't serving jail time after murdering his father for giving him a Nintendo). Maybe I could sell it to one of them.
That was my excuse up until Christmas. The PS2 was the It item of the 2000 shopping season, and since mine wasn't opened, I could make a profit. Jeff had the same idea, so we had two looking for new homes.
Placing an ad in the paper wouldn't work. Jeff got the idea to slip a classified in, and for $20 we get all the buyers we want. However, newspapers usually save a special horribly inflated price for ads that go to ticket scalpers and other dealers of questionably legal merchandise. The PS2 was on that questionable list. So the ad would be about $120. To make a cent, they'd have to be sold at $450. And with that price we'd literally be making one cent.
I had never tried eBay, but if the prices got high enough, I'd be happy to put mine up for auction. There were dozens of them up just a few hours after they became available, and the prices quickly went up to the $400s. My goal was $600. I'd quickly double my money, and for that price I'd be more than happy to work out mailing the system to a buyer. But the prices held at the $400s. A lot of postings didn't have a single bid. There were so few PS2 games, most gamers (who already owned the PS1 system) could hold off until they were at sticker price.
Rumors came to me. Someone in Connecticut was looking for one, then someone in Arizona. Never anyone asking to buy it, just people who were pretty sure they had a friend who was looking for one. They were as reliable as the story of the woman who swallowed the octopus eggs. Nothing came of the leads.
Christmas came, Christmas went. I got Final Fantasy VII, my first game. A week or two later, I bought a PS2 starter kit with a demo CD, extra controller and RFU adapter for crummy TVs (such as mine). I bought a PS1 memory card. And I bought a Castlevania Playstation game, one of the all-time best Nintendo series. (As much as I was looking forward to FF VII, I knew it would start out with half an hour of me walking through a town and buying leather armor and talking to palace guards.) If I ever opened this thing up, I'd be ready.
Jeff bought a Tomb Raider game, and I slowly began picking up the convoluted play control at his place. I could easily see myself enjoying many wasted hours a day with this stuff, get back into my high school mode. If I got mine set up.
December turned to January turned to February. Why wasn't I opening mine?
The PS2 was turning into a big Cadbury's Creme Egg. Before Easter a few Cadbury eggs always fall into my possession. Since they're just available this time of year, I hold onto them, try to ration them. But it's not rationing so much as it is putting them away for weeks, months after Easter. When I finally eat them, the chocolate's white and brittle, and the creme inside has crystallized. By postponing the joy, I've killed it.
Last Thursday I forced myself to open the PS2. It still wasn't really on any shelves, but it's not like I was actively pursuing its sale. There was a sticker over the cardboard flap that opened the box. I peeled it off instead of ripping it, just in case. The controller and cords were in plastic bags, but the bags weren't sealed, so no problem sliding them out and holding onto the bags, just in case.
For five minutes I was worried I had a busted Playstation. I hooked it up through the VCR, since my aforementioned crummy TV didn't have A/V inputs. The picture was all blue, and scrolled diagonally across the screen. But it was hooked up. Then I remembered my RFU adapter. I opened it, installed it, and the screen came through fine. The RFU adapter box got torn. I didn't care.
My first game was Castlevania. It was largely the same play control as the Nintendo games, only with much nicer graphics, music, and it was ten times as big. Every time I died, I checked the VCR clock, and I had spent another hour playing. I spent all of Saturday playing, and a large chunk of Sunday. And since it was President's Day, I played most all of Monday as well.
This was what I bought the PS2 for: flat out happiness. Yes, I can achieve happiness without one, but I have one, so I might as well use it. The purpose of life is happiness, at least according to Aristotle. Aristotle also taught of everything in moderation. Most people are heavy-handed on the instant gratification. They get burnt when they blow a paycheck on drinking one night. But there's some of us who are equally heavy-handed on delayed gratification. We get burnt when we squirrel away our joy, letting it all sour. What exactly are we saving it for? We're not quite as damaging as the paycheck-blowers, but we're just as far to one side of the moderation line as they are to the other.
Final Fantasy VII beckons now. It's one of those strategy games that takes 100 hours to beat, so I'll be playing it until Easter. And when I finish, I'll eat every Cadbury Creme Egg in the house. Maybe earlier.