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Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Good night, sweet cheap-ass Sony prince


It is with a heavy heart, and a mouth full of curses I announce the death of my fourth PS2. After owning it for a mere four months, it has bit the dust. I bought it used, with a bunch of memory cards, two controllers, a few random DVDs and a (useless) remote for $40. It worked fine, and I barely found time to play it. We put in maybe thirty hours, tops, then ended up unplugging it to make room on our teensy TV entertainment center, and insure its slender, delicate carriage would not be crushed.

But, alas - I hooked it back up this evening, and as I plugged its power cord into the surge protector the prongs gave an ominous spark. I frowned at that, but figured it was just static build-up or some other physics crap I'll never try wrapping my mind around. I popped in ICO, intending to FINALLY beat it, pressed the little red-lit power button, watched it turn green, then nearly instantly turn back to red. I watched my TV for a flicker showing it was receiving a signal. No sign of life.

More button pressing, more red-to-green flashing.

Unplug the cord from the surge protector, plug it into the wall. No improvement.

Jiggle the power cord in the back of the PS2. Nope.

Blow frantically into the open disc drawer. Cross fingers, press the button more.

Resist urge to bring a Fist of Doom upon the cheap, plastic goblin. Kick heavy entertainment center instead.

Get another power cord from one of the other unfortunate PS2s; doesn't magically fix itself.

Look up symptom online, find a half dozen potential problems, half a dozen urges to call Sony. Somehow I doubt they care very much about a broken second-hand PS2 in the light of the humongous angry mob the Playstation Network debacle has created.

Just how in the #$%& does something break when its just sitting on a #$%&ing shelf anyway?!

That brings my tally of dead consoles up to four PS2s (two original fat models bought new, two slims, one new, one used), two dead PS1s (one original used, one new slim), one dead Xbox (left behind by a roommate), and two Dreamcasts (one bought new that was purposefully destroyed by an asshole stepbrother, and one bought used). Consoles I've owned that NEVER stopped working - NES, SNES, original Sega Genesis (had a cheapass Genesis 3 that broke), Sega Saturn, Nintendo 64, Nintendo Gamecube, Gameboy (I'm convinced nothing outside of total water submersion can kill these), Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, and finally, a launch day Nintendo DS that has sustained tons of abuse, which I wish would die, so I could finally justify buying a DS Lite.

I could build a mountain of dead consoles, how about you guys?

16 comments:

  1. I fix all my dead consoles :P

    That is unfortunate though, sounds fried :(

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  2. Our dead consoles are all broken. As in pieces (like when the TV fell on the NES >.>).

    We've had two PS2s for god knows how long now, 5 years at the least. We had an xbox once, almost caught fire D:

    We also have two PS3s, but that's because after we bought one our friend gave us an offer of one for 120$ or something new.

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  3. that sucks - bad luck with PS2s you've got, mine is still kicking and I got mine back when it first came out

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  4. Maybe something crawled inside and screwed up the cables. That sucks though.

    As far as consoles that failed me, my NES died about in 1988, my Saturn died literally 6 months after i bought it at launch, and i had a Gameboy Advance just stop turning on.

    Other than those, most consoles pre 2004 were pretty good. I did have a few problems with the old PS2, but Sony fixed it due to a certain game causing the problems. Then i've had 2 more problems with my 360 RRODing, but they've all been free so i can't complain too much.

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  5. rest in peace, beautiful console

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  6. when my PS2 broke i didn't have one for about a year. then i got a PS3 and it still works.

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  7. Console gamers 0 PC 10

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  8. I feel for you :( I was so sad when my first ps2 died

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  9. Not good :( think my ps2 is still going strong, its years old! its the silver one that was released.

    I still have my old sega mega drive in a box somewhere! loved that thing so much

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  10. I've had my PS2 since it came out and it still works perfectly. I'm on my third 360 though :/

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  11. That sucks, electronics are made so cheap... it's shameful. I've gone through 3 Xbox 360's (I'm a very light gamer), and always am reading about stuff dying. It used to be you had to drop something or severely physically damage it for it to break, now everything seems to break on it's own. Lame!

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  12. That's a shame. I have been lucky with my PS2, had it since 2002 and it's still working.

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  13. David Harris: I've had FAR more PC components fail than consoles.

    Also, I've had the worst luck ever with Sony products. My PS2 was iffy, my PS3 is on the verge of failing entirely, and every smaller product from a Walkman MP3 player to headphones all either broke or were malfunctioning from the get-go.

    Needless to say, I probably wont be getting a PS4.

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  14. get a ps3 :P

    I got mine since release day and it's still good as new. So yes, it's still the fat, 60gig HDD model

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  15. the longer something goes without a supply of power and the more advanced the technology involved the more prone to failure it will be or this has been my experience
    btw I saw you were looking for some new x-com style game that is true to the original, check out this post
    http://jonslostcorner.blogspot.com/2011/06/xenonauts.html

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  16. That really sucks, such a shame that you had so little use out of it as well. Electronics never seem to last these days (here's me sounding old), i have a theory that half of that stuff is designed to give up just after the warranty runs out, after having numerous stereo systems where the cd players stopped working after about 13 months.

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