Common Loot

It was January 2005 and at this time I was working for a local video game store called Game Crazy. This was a place where folks could buy games and due to the literal connection to the movie rental place, Hollywood Video, it often attracted a lot of interesting people. One was a customer whose face or name never crossed my eyes before. He came in and wanted to preorder five PlayStation Portable systems. We went back and forth a bit and I ended up taking his preorders at $5 a pop. This guy was potentially a reseller but I was a meek teenager and this guy was a bulldozer of a man, one who I would eventually bulldoze myself. 

In this handheld series I am talking about the devices that changed my life one way or another. Even though the Nintendo DS came out months before my meaty hands wrapped around a PSP, it was Sony’s device that won the battle but not the war. So today, we are looking at my personal story about the PSP and how this device impacted my life. So come along and let’s revisit that guy we were talking about just before.

The Prelude

There was a time where electronics from companies that primarily operated in Japan would release devices there first and then bring them here second. That is if we were even lucky enough to have it survive over in the overseas markets. Devices like the PocketStation had promise but never made its way here. Funny enough, Sega made it an essential part of the Dreamcast’s ecosystem, calling it the VMU, but I digress. The fact remains is that we never had this level of polarity between the markets like we do today, time zones be damned.

Due to my skepticism of Sony’s weird past with supporting peripherals (don’t get ahead of me here), I was looking forward to the PSP. It seemed like a neat, promising device that would let me enjoy some of my favorite games on the go. Or more specifically, it would let me play games at my job because when we were dead, I could play games. 

Crazy for Games at Game Crazy

As mentioned before, Game Crazy was a video game store that sold games. It was a small shop that was surrounded by a chainlink fence. Portions of it would slide closed to prevent most break-ins but wasn’t fully proven to prevent the most dedicated lawbreakers from conducting their own brand of Mission Impossible styled burglary. That is it’s own piece there.

From inside the confines of the metal fence I was safe to do what I needed to do. I helped customers from around 2 PM till close at around 9 or 10 PM. Between that I would do my college homework, but I always made games my downtime activity. How could I resist? I was a youth working in the heart of a video game store! This was the only reason why I was even remotely good at Guitar Hero. 

I am not an assertive person. I like to work with people, not lay claim to the conversation. I don’t like interrupting folks and I do not like to push people to do things they don’t want to do. I only push the limit when things get to the absolute maximum amount of frustrating. Even then, I have always just done it myself and over time got used to the burden. Mix that with someone else who is a steamroller of a person and we have a recipe for disaster; complete shutdowns and disassociation where I dream of my reaction, but keep myself from following through. 

That was until this one guy showed up and made my life difficult for a sliver of time. Moments that have been ingrained in my brain that years from now I can tell the same story in the same exact way. 

Scalpers

I was given explicit instructions when it came to preorders; every game is $5 but every system is either $25 or $50. It went well with almost every customer I had, but I did have one that was rather pushy. I never saw him before and it was a slow day. He came in, we talked about the PSP preorders, and he threw down a bunch of cash. He wasn’t happy when I told him that he needed to drop $25 on each system though. Due to my overall pushover personality at that time, I did six units for $5 each. 

A few days came and went and this event would creep back up. My manager, one of the best I ever worked with, talked to me about the scenario. He was upset to say the least. He made me call the guy up to tell him he had to come in to put more money down or we would cancel the order. I got yelled at, naturally. 

Inside I was hoping he wouldn’t come in when I was around. He knew me, he knew my name, and there were only three guys who worked at this store. There was a 33.3% chance he was going to get me alone; transforming the fenced in shop into a true WWE cage match for a bunch of PSP systems and my right to work without getting harassed by assholes. 

The guy came in and he looked different than what I remembered. He had on glasses and a backwards hat. He held his belongings on a sling bag that he moved to his front when he cancelled his preorders. He was adamant about letting us know how he felt.

“This is unprofessional and ridiculous! I deserve respect!” He shouted as my coworker was processing his cancellations. 

At one point the guy left and headed over to the Hollywood Video side of things. In his absence, I felt empowered to speak out.

“Respect? He thinks he deserves it? Sorry, you earn that shit.” I said with this utmost confidence. 

From behind me, over the counter, I heard a resounding, “Oh is that how you feel!?” 

Turns out this guy heard me. To which I replied with an equally confident, “Absolutely!”

It was one of the rare times I actually stood up for myself in a scenario, which is both sad yet empowering. He didn’t say anything else to me. He took his money, pocketed it, and then walked out of the store never to be seen again. 

In My Hands

Launch day came and I got my system. They sent us a couple of extras, no idea why, and I just so happened to be one of the buyers. I remember the box till this day. A sleek black and white box that was reminiscent of that era of Sony’s marketing. I opened that box that included a slew of extras. 

There was a “Value Pack” that not only had the system, it also had the replicable battery (a concept now lost to time), a wired headset, in-line remote control for music playback, a 32MB Memory Stick, cleaning cloth, and a neat little slip-in case. This complete package gave you the necessities and it was quite awesome!

It wasn’t quite the 1:1 experience that a lot of fans were looking for though. Overall, the PSP had a standard D-pad, face buttons, one sliding style joystick on the bottom left side, and only left and right bumpers- no triggers at all. This lead to a really odd experience as titles released were very hit or miss. People were already used to the dual-joystick control style, which made going back to a single joystick, a la Nintendo 64, feel quite bad. Various 2D collections managed to do great thanks to the D-pad, but everything else required some vigorous work when it came to the gameplay. 

Song and Dance

There were 24 launch titles that released with the system, a good amount of them were sports titles. But I picked my ducks carefully. I started with Ridge Racer and Metal Gear Acid. I loved them both immensely but there was one title of that lineup that I still play till this day and that was Lumines. 

This unique taste of puzzle game had you make squares out of blocks that came from the top of the screen. Each block would be split into four quadrants and feature one of two colors in a variety of patterns. You could rotate and move the blocks to form these squares which would then disappear when a vertical bar reached the right end of the field. While this was occurring, techno music would be playing and each move you did had a sound effect that meshed with the song that was playing. It was a puzzle and music experience that hooked me so tight that I would make hour-long runs, pausing with a resounding groan every time a customer walked in. 

Lumines changed my brain chemistry in ways I couldn’t explain. I would eventually get to runs that were so long that the battery would need to be recharged mid-game. It was so good that Lumines 2 would officially release, and I have yet to see another entry in the series. Currently, I play Lumines on my Steam Deck and Nintendo Switch. I also have it for several of my other handheld devices. I even owned it on the Xbox 360 when it hit the Xbox Arcade back in the day. It was the only puzzle game that I could play competitively and managed to squeeze out a few wins.

There were other games on the console that I would love, like all the God of War, Grand Theft Auto, Killzone, Metal Gear, Ace Combat, Pixel Junk Monsters, and so many more to where you are shouting at your screen and shaking your head that I didn’t mention the game that you loved the most. 

The Impact

I loved the PSP. I felt like the UMV discs were hit or miss, but otherwise it was one of the first major steps into the modern world of 3D gaming in a viable handheld. The problem I found with it mostly came from Sony themselves who were very hit or miss about the sales performance of the system. It was amazing to see how the PSP was trying to break the mold and become the first “everything” device, one that would get multiple revisions as time went on including the very pocketable PSP Go!

It wasn’t just there for games, it was compatible with various headsets and had a built-in MP3 player. Movies and TV shows started showing up on the UMD format, but they were often truncated versions of what was available on DVDs. No matter what the game or movie was, the PSP was always something more than the sum of its parts; it was the central part of my life where I managed to stand up for myself for an ideal that I strongly held dear to me. It might not be the best system, we knew what would eventually happen there, but it was one that made me realize something new about myself that I didn’t know before; that I did have the fortitude to speak with authority. 

Did you have a PSP? What were some of your favorite games on the device? Let me know in the comments section! Next up, maybe we will tackle the Nintendo DS.