memes

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.

Are we praying that the disc loads, or are we praying along with the holy sounds that were the PlayStation startup sounds?

"You can't hear a picture"

The picture:

As kids, we never had to worry, because pre-PS1, we were already bombarded with lessons on proper disc handling from our boomer parents when we learned how to play their vinyl/CDs. Kids who just threw their discs everywhere, stepped on jewel cases, and used the top of their console to rest drinks on are the ones that had to pray their games worked. I'm looking at a wall of 30 year old playstation games that are pristine.

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 will never forget the boot up sound of the ps1 lol. That shit is a core memory

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.

For me it's the "Seeegaaaa" and then a small prayer hoping that the Sonic cartridge is properly inserted.

Vegeta and Pikachu don't care

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."

Me and my co-op friend would be cheering it on like it was going for a touchdown LOL.

Crimson Skies too, I remember. I took great care of my discs but I guess the drive would just scuff them up over time.

The heavy bass effect that blew out my dad's surround sound subwoofer amp due to me maxxing out the low frequency gain from the PS1 startup tune lives rent free in my head.

"Praise The Omnissiah! The Machine Spirit lives!"

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).

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.

Meanwhile, this sound is gut-wrenching:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uHLQHjtPLE

I'm glad we have finally gotten to a technological point where games just go right to the god damn menu the moment you power on the machine (or at least, good ones without an hour of unskippable logos and disclaimers), since that was what I had originally, you know, back before the CD era and everything was solid state. You'd pop in an NES, Master System, SNES or Genesis cart in, power it on and BAM! the game is already going.

Not that I am not nostalgic for the PS1, PS2, Dreamcast and GameCube startup sequences.

I know why engiseers do what they do. I had to perform my own rituals to appease the machine spirit to run my favorite game on ps2.

Never had a problem with my PS1. My PS2, however...

Cut scene skips a frame

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.