Dominica May

My husband Jeremy has long wanted a PS3, since even before they were released in Australia. My attitude was more “too expensive yet” and “you don’t even play the PS2!” For me, a PS3 was not something I really thought I’d want at least until Final Fantasy XIII is released. Having said that, I haven’t even played Final Fantasy XII since May (or any PS2 game for that matter) because I’ve simply been too busy with other things. It’s been even longer since Jeremy played anything on it.

With all this in mind, I’d like to say I was surprised when I logged into Internet banking yesterday and discovered there’d been a charge to the credit card made exactly the amount of Kmart’s PS3 bundle special. I might’ve hoped Jeremy was joking about buying a PS3 as early as this week, but certainly not surprised that he wasn’t.

We’ve unpacked the console now and done the obligatory signing up to the Playstation Network (me being surprised I actually got ‘dominica’ as my user ID for once! Jeremy’s first choice of ID for himself was already taken, however) so we could download some free game demos and a trailer for Ratatoille, before finally testing the two games we got in the bundle, MotorStorm (a racing game) and Resistance: Fall of Man (a first person shooter game).

I am pretty sure MotorStorm is the game I saw being demonstrated on Today Tonight around the time of the PS3 release that I thought looked pretty cool and I wanted, despite not being too much of a racing game person. The graphics certainly don’t disappoint. Resistance, on the other hand, falls into a category of game I’m not particularly interested in. It’s also frustrating for me that the camera angle doesn’t continually change for me when I move, which I am so used to PS2 games doing for me. At least it’s a type of game Jeremy likes, I suppose. I doubt this means he’ll be using the console more, however. He’s still too busy with his thesis.

Although it is all very exciting to have a gaming console that finally hooks up to the Internet, I still don’t think I feel like we can justify the cost. And the timing is all wrong, particularly when we have a holiday that still has expenses to be paid for. I guess I just have to hope Jeremy ends up with his dream job soon after he finishes his thesis so we can afford to move into a bigger place, thereby giving us more room for the PS3 and any other accessories we might want to go with it later on, such as movies on Blue-Ray Discs. We don’t even have room on our shelves for the games as it is.

Then there are the other gaming consoles I own that remain in Rockingham while our two bedroom unit is too small to house them. That’s another thing I’d like to be able to use if we had a bigger place. I was basically raised a Nintendo girl. I still have the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), followed by our Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), and then a Nintendo 64 (N64). I got my Gameboy Colour probably shortly before Gameboy Advance was released (though we had an extra bit of hardware that let us play Gameboy games on the SNES), much like it took us a long time in our family to get any gaming console. It wasn’t until 2001 that my brother convinced us to change console company to PlayStation with the PS2. My mum and I agreed, mainly because it would let us watch DVDs and we hadn’t yet a DVD player. Mum bought it for the family for Christmas that year.

I suppose nearly six years is a long time between upgrading gaming consoles. But I’d really love also to get back to my Nintendo roots. Be it with getting a place big enough to house all the consoles we already have, or Jeremy letting me get a Nintendo Wii and/or Nintendo DS. After all, they’re cheaper than the PS3! And there are actually games on them I want to play (admittedly I wouldn’t mind the Sonic game for the PS3, but Jeremy doesn’t want us to buy any more games just now).

My anti-Microsoft stance has always kept me away from XBOX (though my brother wanted one of them, too, for Dead or Alive 3 and a Buffy game), but I played Sonic on a couple of Sega systems before those consoles died out and they just made games for other consoles instead.

I do very much prefer consoles to computer games, but when I have a baby to raise, I think it’s extraordinarily hard to find the time to play the games I have. After all, it has been more than two months since I’ve played the PS2!