Disc Read Error: The Life and Death of My Playstation 2
Written: Aug 24 '04 (Updated Aug 24 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great controller, fantastic selection of games, plays DVDs, brews gourmet coffee...
Cons: Load times, DVD Compatibility, DISC READ ERROR!
The Bottom Line: Buy a Playstation 2 for the great games and fantastic playing experience, but a) be nice to it, and b) be prepared for the inevitable...
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| shilmafone's Full Review: Sony PlayStation 2 Slimline Console |
Ahh, the Playstation 2. My baby, before I had real ones.
My journey with the Playstation 2 began in early 2000 with my wife's college loan check. I wanted new video games. She wanted a DVD player. "Honey, I know how we can get both." "Okay, let's find it online!"
And so we searched.
And searched some more.
And searched some more.
Some of you may remember the vast PS2 shortage that happened around that time--Sony managed to release a few PS2s in time for Christmas, but the amount they made didn't come anywhere near meeting demand. Here we were, in January, fighting the recipients of gift certificates and the angry throngs who'd pre-ordered the machines hoping to get one in time for Christmas. Finally, we found a site online that specialized in Japanese Imports that had a few USA Playstations for sale. We bought a bundle that included the Playstation 2 itself, Ready 2 Rumble Boxing Round 2, SSX, and the Saving Private Ryan special edition DVD (which to this day remains in its original cellophane). Price? Something approaching $600, including shipping.
Now, did I get fleeced? Sure I did. Totally and utterly ripped off, even. But do I regret my purchase? Absolutely not.
The Playstation 2 is a completely bad*ss gaming machine. And I loved every minute of my time with it.
It's Like Christmas Dinner...
There are so many reasons to own a Playstation 2, I'd be hard pressed to name all of them, but here are my favorites:
GAME SELECTION! The games you can get on the PS2 are bar none the best set of titles currently on the market. The Grand Theft Auto series, the Metal Gear Solid series, the Final Fantasy series (plus the excellent Kingdom Hearts), Gran Turismo, Crash Bandicoot (so sue me, I'm a Crash junkie, even after the piece of sh!t masquerading as a game that was The Wrath of Cortex), plus all of the major sports franchises are all here. The games that cross platforms might not be quite as pretty as their XBox (or sometimes even GameCube) counterparts, but they're here, they're playable, and they're certainly not inferior by any sort of major degree.
CONTROLLER! Maybe it's a stupid reason to love a game platform, but the Playstation 2 controller, functionally equivalent to the original Playstation's controller, is perfect for me. Maybe it's the similarity to the 8 and 16-bit system controllers of yesteryear, maybe it's the fact that I don't need a manual just to figure out how to hold the damn thing, or maybe it's just that it fits nicely in my relatively small hands, but I love the Playstation controller. Every button is extremely accessible, switching from analog to digital control can be done without moving my hands all over the place, and the trigger buttons on the top of the controller are in spots where pretty much any combination of them can be pushed with little-to-no adjustment on my part. It's a great controller.
DVD PLAYBACK! I know people have gripes with the DVD Playback on the Playstation 2, but I've never had any problem with it--on the contrary, the DVD player generally works better than my actual DVD player! The quality of playback isn't quite as solid, but it skips less and, at least for me, the DVD remote I got for 10 bucks extra for the PS2 is more intuitive than the one I got with my DVD player. Perhaps this says more about my DVD player (and, in turn, what I'm willing to pay for a box that plays movies) than it does about the PS2 itself, but the DVD playback feature has come in handy more times than I can count. Plus, when we first got the machine, it made a great first DVD player to give my wife and I an excuse to start our burgeoning DVD collection.
PS1 COMPATIBILITY! OK, you got me--One of the reasons I love Crash Bandicoot so much is that it's a game my wife will play with me--she used to play Crash back in the day, so it's a control scheme she's used to, and hey, it's fun playing games with my wife. Knowing now that we can get secondhand versions of those old games for 5-10 bucks and getting as much play time out of those as we do the state-of-the-art games for the Playstation 2, well, it almost makes buying the new games seem silly. At least, it would if I weren't such a tech-geek who loves his up-to-date toys.
So there you go. There are plenty of reasons to buy a Playstation 2.
...But There's Nasty Fruitcake For Dessert
A couple of things have bugged me since I bought my Playstation 2:
DVD COMPATIBILITY! A couple of DVDs I really wanted to watch on the PS2 (before I got, you know, a real DVD player) didn't work. This was, to say the least, a total bummer.
LOAD TIMES! I'm not entirely sure this is a problem exclusive to the Playstation 2, but I've got to say, when you spend as much time watching some banal loading screen as you do playing the damn game, there's a problem. Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex was notorious for this, and generally scorned in the gaming community for it. Still, even some of the most highly respected games for the system suffer from painfully, abnormally long load times (I'm looking at you, EA Sports). I realize loading the information before you get into actually playing the game increases the game's performance while you're playing, but isn't there something they could have done to load just a little of it on the fly? The last thing I feel like doing is dropping dead of boredom waiting to play a great game.
And last, but not least....
DISC. READ. ERROR. The three words all Playstation 2 owners dread.
Astute readers may have noticed that as I introduced this piece, I referred to my ownership of the Playstation 2 in the past tense. You see, a few weeks ago, I noticed that some DVDs and games were being identified a little slower than they usually did by the machine. A click here, an extra whir or two there, but they were still working, so I didn't think much of it. The machine was over four years old, after all. But then, something happened: Games stopped loading. The Playstation whirred, clicked, clunked, and spat out that dreaded error message: Disc Read Error. Thinking my game must be scratched, I gave a different one a try. Same thing. After another and another, it was obvious that something was terribly, terribly wrong. A lot of blowing, dusting, and a can of compressed air later, the Playstation 2 was back in working order.
Until two nights ago.
Fresh off the surprise of Madden 2005 landing in my lap after my wife bought it for me on "a quick run in to the toy store to get a kick-and-play piano" for my son (yay for surprises), I plopped it in the PS2, expecting hours of gaming goodness. Instead, and say it with me now, DISC READ ERROR.
AAAAAAAGHGHGHGRHGPFUGPU(RY$#@&R$($#!!!!
A little research later, and I see the PS2 is notoriously fragile, breaking under even the most careful conditions. Dusting and compressed air no longer helped. While opening it and attempting a fix myself, I fried something (though I don't know what, when, or how), sending the poor machine to its final resting place.
So Now What?
I've got enough invested in the Playstation 2, and I like it enough as a game console, that I'll be buying it again this week (assuming I can find it...apparently Wal-Mart's hoarding them for the Christmas rush and waiting to stock any of them until Christmas shopping season...bastards). It's a great system with lots of great features and lots of great games. Still, to anyone who doesn't yet own it, anyone who's looking to give the PS2 the time of day, I ask, nay, I implore you, make sure you can keep it in a place where it will never get knocked around, and be prepared for the inevitable day of its demise. If you can keep that in the back of your head and still bring yourself to buy it, enjoy it.
I know I did.
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I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE FRYING OF YOUR PLAYSTATION 2 VIA THE FOLLOWING LINKS:
How to fix Disc Read Errors:
http://faqs.ign.com/articles/390/390535p1.html
http://www.getskinned.org/forums/index.php?s=e0b7fc8a4c83e2a3cd229fab0d4057dd&showtopic=1001&st=0&#entry15790
Good luck.
Recommended:
Yes
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shilmafone
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Member: Just Another Mike
Location: Buffalo, NY
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