PSP Follies

Okay, something a little lighter today. Lets talk about the PSP, the new portable video gaming device that I will be getting up at 6AM Thursday morning to purchase, even though I have no real desire to ever play it. Now, I understand, this begs a number of questions, chief among them, 'why?'.

Well, I'm not buying this device for myself. No, I'm buying it for Tom, the son of my oldest friend in the world, Tony. Tony lives in New Zealand. You see, video game devices have different release dates in different parts of the world. There's your Japanese release date. There's your North American release date. There's your European release date. And there's your Oceania release date. After that, there's the Burkina Faso release date, but by the time the PSP gets to Burkina Faso there'll be a democrat back in the White House. In this case, the PSP gets to Oceania seveal months after it gets here, so I have been enlisted, as it were. There were phone calls and wire transfers and everything. I'll be hitting the road at about 6.10 and driving to Circuit City, which I have carefully selected as the store least likely to be overrun by hysterical gamegeeks. In a situation like this, going to Best Buy is suicide, and the old geezers at Target probably won't get the devices on the shelves for three days.

So, what gives? Why is there so much buzz about a portable game-playing device? Well, there's two main reasons. Firstly, they're cool. Come on! I mean, if you're an eight year old with the ability to play Metal Gear Acid in the backseat on a car ride to Waukesha (or Wellington, in Tom's case), thats pretty cool. Me, I'm not as attracted to that because if I play games, I wanna play games at home. If I'm in a car bound for Waukesha, I'm probably driving that car, so it's best my distractions get limited to the stereo. Secondly, this isn't just a video game machine. it's also a music player, a wireless communicator, it shows movies on itty bitty discs, and does your homework. Okay, it doesn't really do your homework. I made that up. But the itty bitty disc thing - straight up. This is a powerful, multi-purpose device in a very small package. And it plays games like the dickens.

This thing is gonna be a phenomenon. I've always thought that as a member of generation X, I was the ground zero audience for video games. I was there at the start. I got blisters playing Space Invaders. I stole milk money to play arcade games of Defender. I remember thinking the original Doom had incredible graphics. This new generation, however, doesn't really care about that stuff. They take incredible graphics more or less for granted. They just want it made more convenient. Pretty soon there will be a device the size of a penny that projects hyperspatial illusions straight into your eyeballs. I'm sure I'll be there to buy it for Tom on opening day, too. The postage will be quite reasonable.