Once upon a time my PlayStation 2 melted and caught on fire.<\/p>\n
The story begins on October 26, 2000. At long last, the Sony PlayStation 2 was coming out.<\/p>\n
It was a dreary day that day. It was foggy. It was so<\/i> foggy. And I lost my way in the fog, and I ran my car headlong into a stone wall.<\/p>\n
On the plus side, I bought my brand-spanking new PlayStation 2.<\/p>\n
The PlayStation 2 didn’t mitigate the loss of the car, of course. What were the launch titles I bought? SSX<\/i>. Q-Ball<\/i>, a pool game. Probably something else as well. But at the span of over seven years, memories fade.<\/p>\n
Those first PlayStation 2 systems were notorious for their faults. That first Christmas? I’d say thirty percent came back defective. Talk about someone falling asleep at the quality control switch.<\/p>\n
The EB warehouse, by the way, had an area that was called “the Graveyard.” It was basically a giant mound of defective PlayStation 2 systems. Thousands upon thousands.<\/p>\n
Corporate didn’t believe that all<\/i> those systems could possibly be defective. They shipped them out to stores to resell. And those systems were, in fact, defective.<\/p>\n
As time wore on, those first release PlayStation 2 systems crapped out and died. The CD trays would jam. They wouldn’t turn on. They would stop reading discs; sometimes CDs, sometimes DVDs. I used to say that every day would reveal a new and unique failure mode for the PlayStation 2.<\/p>\n
But my PlayStation 2 soldiered on. I never had a day’s issue with it. When I wanted to play it, it ran. When I wanted to watch a movie on it, it was fine. But I knew that the clock would run out on the system. It was one of the first generation systems. It would eventually die.<\/p>\n
So when Sony announced the slimline PlayStation 2, I decided it was time. I would trade in my PlayStation 2, pre-order one of the slimlines, and I’d have a brand-new PlayStation 2, one that Sony engineers would have worked out all the kinks.<\/p>\n
I boxed up my PlayStation 2. Traded it in at work. Sold it to a customer wanting a used PlayStation 2.<\/p>\n
And when the slimline PS2 systems came in, I took mine home.<\/p>\n
The first thing I noticed was that it got really<\/i> hot.<\/p>\n
Well, it didn’t have a fan in it. Of course<\/i> it would get really hot.<\/p>\n
I bought the vertical base for it. It didn’t seem to run as hot once I put it up on its side. Better ventilation, I decided.<\/p>\n
Sometimes it would lock up. I didn’t like that, but I noticed that when it locked up, it was because I’d been playing it for a while, and because the system had gotten really<\/i> hot.<\/p>\n
Electronics don’t like high temperatures, I decided.<\/p>\n
But it wasn’t really an issue. I didn’t play my PlayStation 2 that<\/i> often. Some Champions of Norrath<\/i> action. Or Gauntlet<\/i>. That was really about it. More often than not, I’d play my XBox.<\/p>\n
One day I was playing my PlayStation 2.<\/p>\n
And I noticed something.<\/p>\n
I noticed a smell<\/i>.<\/p>\n
What was<\/i> that smell? I wondered.<\/p>\n
It was the PlayStation<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Something in that tiny little case had melted. Something in that tiny little case had caught on fire.<\/p>\n
The PlayStation 2 died that day.<\/p>\n
Eventually I used my warranty at work to replace it. But then I turned around and used the new system as a trade-in toward my Xbox 360.<\/p>\n
From time to time I think about buying a new PlayStation 2. I still have a few games for it. The Kingdom Hearts<\/i> games. Gauntlet: Dark Legacy<\/i>. A couple of others. Sometimes I feel the itch to play the PlayStation 2.<\/p>\n
But then I remember.<\/p>\n
I remember that acrid smell.<\/p>\n
I remember Sony’s shoddy workmanship.<\/p>\n
And I move on to something else.<\/p>\n
I used to play video games a lot.<\/p>\n
I haven’t touched a video game in at least a year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Once upon a time my PlayStation 2 melted and caught on fire. The story begins on October 26, 2000. At long last, the Sony PlayStation 2 was coming out. It was a dreary day that day. It was foggy. It was so foggy. And I lost my way in the fog, and I ran myContinue reading “On a Burning PlayStation”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[4093,534,4091],"class_list":["post-1693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-video-games","tag-life","tag-playstation","tag-video-games","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1693\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}