Old School

Bought a Playstation One today. I've been trying to play Final Fantasy Tactics on my Playstation 2 for the past few weeks. The first night it worked, then I could never get the disc to read again. It started getting to me. I'd hit the power button and it would start making a horrible grinding noise. After a minute it would go to the screen that said 'disc error'. I'd hit reset, eject, play with the disc a little--nothing.

So last night I bid on one on Ebay. I figured there can't be much competition, and the price was right--$5.00 bid with $10.00 shipping. I got sniped at the last minute so I had to make a stop to a local game store that I visited a few months ago called Game Trader, in Beaverton.

Normally I tend to go to Gamestop. I enjoy their magazine, Game Informer, and the people are usually pretty nice, if a bit geeky (sorry kettle, pot calling). I went by yesterday though, and they informed me that they don't sell the PSone anymore, and the guy suggested Game Trader.

Game Trader is a little skeezy. Well, it's in the Beaverton Mall which is a little skeezy. Actually it's a decent strip mall with major box stores, but there's a little section where you can go inside and somehow all the shops inside are these weird places that cater to specific types. There's a cowboy boot emporium, a Hello Kitty store, a pet shop, and Game Trader (though Powell's Bookstore just opened up a satellite store there, so maybe the place is on the rise).

Game Trader is great for its selection of old school gaming gear. I wouldn't say they had everything you need (I tried to find a copy of Ogre Battle and failed), but they had multiple PSone systems and games, N64, NES and SNES, NeoGeo and more. The guy working there was really nice as well and I'm glad I went. Maybe it's not really skeezy, it's just not polished and glitzy like the EB Games and Gamestop places with only newer type games.

Anyway, I went home and booted it up and Final Fantasy Tactics appeared on the screen and for the next hour (until the baby started crying), things were right with the world.