This applies tenfold if you lived in a country where the are only pirated copies of games and all consoles come pre-modchipped (especially if your game was a multi-language copy with a built-in selector/launcher). I assume the modchips had shit timing, so when the chip was having a bad day I would sometimes have to restart my PS2 for 10-15 minutes straight until it loaded. Sometimes I gave up and came back later to repeat the cycle.
Bonus memory: PS2 is supposed to play PS1 games. So when we got a PS2, on the first day I tried one of my bootleg PS1 games and it loaded fine. After that, it never loaded another PS1 game ever, showing the “please insert PS1 or PS2 disc” error.
Thankfully there was a magazine here that wasn’t afraid of talking about chips, which ones were good, which ones enabled ps1 games too, etc. It’s why I purposefully asked for a matrix chip for my fat ps2.
This reminds me of the story behind CD Projekt RED getting started in Poland. The only way for them to bring games to their community was basically bootlegging them, so that’s where they began.
That’s rough. :(
As kids we didn’t realize it could be any other way, so we didn’t suffer. Much… :)
I can hear this meme so hard. Even the spool down and spool up of the CD drive in this situation is burned in forever. It’s been more than 20 years but it feels like yesterday
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Some PS1 and 2 just had shitty laser assemblies that had trouble reading even non scratched discs.
You know, I remember that. My PS1 never had an issue, but I know a few people who did.
My PS2 would randomly decide not to read the disc sometimes. IIRC, we were pretty careful with both the disks and console.
From what i remember, the issue was the laser was either dirty or otherwise shotty and sometimes wouldn’t read the disc
I remember opening my PS2 to clean like a quarter inch of dust off the laser. And then losing money when trading it in to GameStop because the seal was broke
Rentals and used games had no such guarantee.
I think that’s even more so a problem these days for people getting into retro consoles because many of these discs are more than 30 years old, the disc drives too are getting up there in age. Many of them are starting to fail or become unreliable from dust and wearing out with age since the laser assembly is rather fragile.
It’s one of the reasons why ODE and SD loader mods have become popular lately, as well as Homebrew game loaders on the newer consoles which can support them (PS2, PS3, Wii, Wii U).
This reminds me of my X-BOX for real. Absolutely amazing console. (I still miss those “Duke” controllers).
But the most common disc reader was terrible. Over time games would just stop reading. Halo: Combat Evolved, I kid-you-not, would start to load…and then load BACKWARDS, usually (but not always!) resulting in “Problems reading disc.”
Crimson Skies too, I remember. I took great care of my discs but I guess the drive would just scuff them up over time.
Gotta flip it upside down.
Man this takes me back, I used to have a faulty LAPD: Future Cop disk, which happened to be my favourite game, me and a friend used to sit in front of the TV saying “pls pls pls pls” and cheer when it worked.
LAPD: Future Cop
Oh man, I had a demo of this game, this brings back memories.
Oh, man. This brings back memories. I did this every time I loaded any game into the system. My PS1 had issues with the balls on the disc spindle that locked the disc in place. I had no idea and had so many issues with discs not loading until I discovered it. Then it became the disc equivalent of popping the cartridge out of the SNES and re-seating it until it worked. Eventually, I had to replace the balls as they fell out but as a broke college student, I just crumpled small bits of aluminum foil into similar sized balls and stuffed them in there. Worked great after that.
I will never forget the boot up sound of the ps1 lol. That shit is a core memory
That was borderline orgasmic. I hadn’t heard that intro in a very long time
I have all of the retro consoles boot animations that people were cool enough to switch up into a Steam Deck boot animations I also have the plugin for deck tools that allows you to get a random one after each reboot. Needless to say, I never get tired of hearing the old OG Gameboy, PS1/2, GameCube, etc. boot animations and sounds. Core memories indeed!
I do this too with my Steam Deck!!!
It never gets old! I have to boot into Windows partitions for some few things, so coming back to these retro boot animations reminds me that SteamOS is home. :P
How did you get them? I would love that for my deck lol.
Here you go!
Animation Changer (I recommend just following the install guide for Decky Loader, opening the plugins shop from the side menu, and then finding the Animation Changer plugin. I just included this link so you would know what to look for, and to see some of the dope ass animations people have been kind enough to share.)
Happy hunting! If you don’t know, you can also install CSS themes, change the background noise and UI audio elements too! I’ve got mine with a Fallout (Blue) theme, sounds from the Pipboy for navigating the menus, and most of the retro console boot animations. :)
Nice!! Thanks! I have something to do Saturday morning before everyone gets up lol.
“Praise The Omnissiah!”
Cut scene skips a frame
Nice comic.
Used to have a copy of Wild Arms on the PSX, and there was a scratch so deep that stopped progressing past Cecilia’s intro, but man we tried.
God, Wild Arms was so good. I miss 1+2. 3 to a lesser degree.
The worst was if it was a multi disc game and the broken disc was the last one. You’re invested, excited to see how the story ends, ready to smash Sephiroth’s face in, and it all grinds to a halt.
I knew on your first sentence you were talking about FF7. Had to borrow a friend’s third disk.
Meanwhile, this sound is gut-wrenching:
Thanks now I have ptsd, worse sound every. I hated that when it happen. Question how come we never see this happen with PS3 snd above? Did they fix something or disk just made better?
It should be upside down.
My first ps1 needed to be upside down to play, ahh, the good ol’ days. Where you needed the console oriented a certain way, but at least games were a full experience and a flat price.