Journal

When the chips are down

Last week, after over three years of flawless service, my PS3 developed the heat cycle fault that has ended the life of many of the original versions of the console. Luckily it wasn’t immediately terminal, so I managed to get the save data copied off of it in the short time it would stay on before powering down due to system failure.

That done, I had two options; pay £75 to get it repaired “professionally” or attempt to do it myself. The former came with a three month guarantee, the latter came free but with a chance I could do more harm than good. I decided it would be hard to trust a repaired system anyway, as it could go down again at any time, so decided that I’d crack it open and try to extend the life of it long enough to do a system migration.

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Game On

Old Grandfather Turismo

The first game I picked up with my original PlayStation, back in late 1998, was Gran Turismo. At that time it was a showcase for the power of PlayStation – so much so that watching the gloriously captured replays was as much a part of the experience as actually playing the game.

Buying and playing Gran Turismo 5 feels heart-warmingly  familiar. Like an old friend has come to visit after a long absence and we’re recounting past glories together.

“Remember that time I nailed Trial Mountain in a 3000GT and blew away the field by so much I started to lap the back-markers?!” I’ll say.

And yes, Gran Turismo does remember. Essentially, he hasn’t really changed at all since the last time I saw him.

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