Outside The Club With The Velvet Rope

Ok so there I was as a kid, I was about eight maybe nine in the late 70's. My parents had just presented my brother and I with an Atari. The original system not the 2600 that came out a couple of years later.

The first game was Space Invaders! It was the hottest game in all of gamedom, the menacing doom, doom, doom noise as the invaders came one line closer to you. No it really didn't sound like that but if you were a kid with your very first game system it sounded like pure doom, doom, doom! I couldn't contain my excitement! I was the first kid I knew who had a brand spanking new system!

I put in the Space Invaders cartridge and started to play! Without exaggeration the screen went red about fifteen minutes into playing and the Atari quit working...for good.

It went back to Sears to be repaired and we got it back like six months later. Not kidding. Do you know how long six months is for a kid to wait on a system to be fixed? I'd draw the Space Invaders board on paper and pick off the aliens myself! It was miserable! Finally it was sent back to us and it worked well until it finally disappeared in a move.

Flash forward to earlier this week. My brother brings over a PS3. He had recently got a one hundred twenty gig size I believe and had no use for the forty gig that now resides on my living room floor. I was finally inside the fancy club that had the velvet rope up to keep me out!

I haven't been a console gamer in quite some time. Years in fact. I abandoned my Sega Genesis (and Sega CD. I did have brief flings with the Playstation, PS2, and Xbox before returning to my true love.) for the PC. I've been a PC gamer since as long as I've been online so going on fifteen years now and I've seen the 3D graphics revolution take over and push gaming limits again and again to new heights.

Meanwhile the console games have caught up to their PC brethren in terms of quality and immersion. While I lost myself in Everquest, Starcraft, and WoW, the console games have gotten better and better. It became a club I wasn't allowed to be in. I would walk the aisles of WalMart and skip the game aisle because I knew I wasn't allowed to be there since I was consoleless.

But that had now changed! A whole new world of the next generation console gaming had been opened up for me! I was gladly dancing down the aisles full of PS3 games! Gleefully reading about the latest and greatest game reviews! I had pre-ordered Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 so I could get the playable Juggernaut character! I purchased a used fishing game because I was so taken by the graphics at a friends house a few months ago!

I decided it was time for some fishing goodness on my new to me PS3 last night! I turned on the power switch in the back. The red light greeted me as I touched the front power button. It went to green, yellow, and started flashing red as it beeped at me!!!

It refused to turn on! It had been powered off since last night after I was done fishing, not just the front panel power, I mean powered at the main switch off! It hadn't overheated, it hasn't been roughed up, fallen over, or anything like that. It sat peacefully in one place just waiting to be played with...until last night.

It beeped at me!!!! So I call my brother and he looks up the warranty information online. I give him the model and serial number and it is out of warranty. It will cost about one hundred fifty dollars to get it repaired if I send it back in. I brand new one costs about three hundred and it is far bigger in storage size.

It is my childhood all over again! I'll be drawing Space Invaders at work today...