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First, a big thanks to my mother for getting me my very own Playstation 2 for Yule this year. Yay Mom! Second, an embarrassed confirmation: Yes, I am 24 years old and my mother still gets me toys for Christmas. The ladies are lining up as I speak. Third: as a funny sidenote. It seems that Sony makes such good electronics equipment that the so called "Rogue Nations" of the world buy their consumer electronics and hack them together into military grade equipment. Case in point: several years ago the Japanese captured a Korean submarine spying off the coast of Tokyo. They pulled it up, wondering how in the hell North Korea could get so close when we had a tight as hell weapons embargo on them. Well, it turned out that those wily commies had hacked a state-of-the-art submarine electrical system and computer array out of WALKMEN! Anyway, it was further discovered that NK was using early prototypes of PS2s smuggled out of Nippon itself as guidance systems for ballistic missiles. Needless to say, Tokyo was miffed. Well, the funny part of this little anecdote is that Saddam was taking note of his pals out in NK and he commanded his minions in, of all places, Detroit Michigan (my almost-hometown) to go forth and buy as many PS2s as they could. Well, of course, as usual, Saddam should have considered hiring my Mom to do the work of his Republican Guard (I keep sending him FYIs on this subject, but he never answers) because his keystone kop minions failed in securing even ONE single PS2. But that isn't all. For fear of the wrath of their dark Overlord, the Detroit-Iraqi Ex-Pats DID manage to get their hands on something else. They nabbed 1,100 PS-ONEs from the shelves of our own Meijer's Thrifty Acres! (paying full price, of course). HAHAHAHAHAHA Even my Mom knows, dear old librarian that she is, that using a PSONE won't get your ballistic missile to the corner store, let alone Tel Aviv! Anyway, I salute you yet again Mr. Hussein. You may be out 110,000 USD, but at least the Children of Baghdad will not want for a Final Fantasy IX platform. With that out of the way, let's hit my brief, rambling review of the much vaunted, ever inspected Playstation 2 (or, as my good pal Jim Oliver insists on calling it: The Super Playstation). I'm sure you have all heard enough Emotion Engine Tech Hype that you needn't hear any more polygon calculating from me. Needless to say, this baby runs smoothly. The one game my dear old Maw was able to acquire for me was Armored Core 2. Let me say this: they could use the instant replay of one of my Arena matches as an action sequence in a movie. I haven't seen much human animation yet (haven't been able to afford a new game) but as far as giant killer robots go, this thing renders the graphics very well. I mean, the last time I saw two killer robots fight to the death in a burned out military factory on the surface of a recently terraformed Mars well, it didn't look nearly as real as it does in AC2 on the PS2. So, as you have probably heard, the graphics are pretty good. What's more, they say that this is just the tip of the iceberg, rendering wise... now, I'll believe it when I see it, but I hear good things for improvement, and seeing as how these images are great from the start I'm happy to wait and see how much better they might get. But, we all knew that, right? It's the other shoe that we are all worried about. The other shoe called DVDs. The pro side for this as a versatile piece of entertainment hardware is in the connectivity. Their are exactly TWO ports on the back: a Playstation out port (identical as far as I can tell to the out port on the back of a PS-ONE) and a digital optical audio out. The PSOUT has a wide array of adapters for it that allow for RF (standard cable), RCA (both composite video and the split color stream thingy--a technical term), and S-Video. The PS2 comes ready with the RCA adapter, and the RF adapter is about 20 bucks. I bought the RF adapter because I have a very old (but very clear) Sears TV from about 1988 (Sara and I inherited it from some old friends of her Aunt who always got top of the line TVs but never watched them... go figure). Anyway, long story short, the RF adapter is the worst of all of the options because you lose something like 60% of the video data. BUT, on the very best analog TV you will probably find, that 60% image loss is negligible at best. I hooked it up to my sister's TV which has the split stream RCA jacks (only inferior to the top of the line S-Video jack) and frankly I couldn't tell the difference as compared to my Old Sears Box. It is my personal belief that unless you have Superhuman vision, you will not know the difference unless you either have a very crappy TV (or a TV larger then 32 inches) or you get a Digital TV. Anyway, for that side of things (being the quality of the DVD situation) you have all the options you could want, even the retrograde RF option which many standard DVD players don't have. So, big points to Sony for backward compatibility (also, on that note, every PS-ONE game I have tried has worked fine bonus!) As a wonderful after thought I will just point out that the optical audio out is a dream. Plugged it into my digital sound system and I was in heaven. My only complaint here is the lack of any backward compatibility options where sound is concerned. You can run the S-Video cable into a surround sound tuner, and then to tuner into a TV, but only if the TV is also S-Video. And if the tuner already has S-Video, but the TV doesn't, the Tuner will almost assuredly have optical in anyway. All I can say is that any way you look at it, you need a brand new digital surround sound tuner if you want to get anything sound wise out of the PS2 beyond what you get from your TV. There is room for TV upgrading that grows with your PS2, but the sound system side is all or nothing. The sound is worth the expense, though. Now, my big DVD complaint. This is a consumer grade gaming platform. Therefore, it is built like a Fisher Price toy: all plastic, no LCD, only two buttons. Reset and eject. This is great for a toy you give to a nine year old. Virtually no learning curve where the device is concerned. But, as a DVD player this is kind of annoying. No counter display, no play button, no anything. Reset. Eject. Those are your immediate options. Everything else is controlled through the game controller, which manipulates a hard to see menu of picto-grams akin to the petro-glyphs of RIVEN. There is an optional remote that you can buy, and I bought it, but for the life of me I can't get it to work. And besides, its receiver plugs into a game port and after some tinkering I figured out that it was just poorly mimicking the controller anyway. The cords on the controller are very long, so unless you plan on controlling your DVD from the kitchen, the controllers are satisfactory. At the outset I will admit that using the game controllers to scan the scene selection of my copy of Blade Runner was a bit surreal, but after the third movie it became natural. All in all, the interface for the DVD player is pretty obtuse, though you will adapt quickly. Maybe I will tape an old digital clock to the front and pretend it has an LCD... sigh... As far as guiding ballistic missiles goes, though, I couldn't tell you... yet. Parma's civil defense authority is considering invading Lansing, though, so we may try that feature out soon.
Playstation 2
-Fritz Swanson
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