A Zombie, a Hooker, and Tiger Woods walk into a bar.

Part Four of a Series entitled All Your Free Time Are Belong To Us

In this, my fourth entry on how I've found ways to waste time and money, I've decided to condense the Fifth through Seventh generation consoles into one entry.

Around 1995, I was just beginning to get ahead of the curve in college. I spent my first semester at Coastal Carolina University which offered beaches and parties always at an arm's length. While, I may have had my share of wild nights, I did manage to land on the Dean's list that first and only semester of enrollment. For whatever reason, I decided to transfer from a institution that had 5000 students enrolled to one that had just around five times that amount. To say, I experienced a little culture shock is an understatement. I wound up sliding into academic probation and had to dig myself out over the next four and a half years, just to graduate with a B average.

While on that road to redemption I met and befriended a man by the name of Ray. He and I were both active in the Theatre Department. Discounting the fact that Ray was not a Theatre major, he was a hell of an actor and all around show man. Hailing from the Philadelphia area, he fronted a band called Open Cage which, like so many other great bands, never got its just deserts. Perhaps it was by design. Maybe they didn't want the success of their 90's counterparts. Regardless of their success, Ray once again, proved that there was more than meets the eye with him. As much as Ray could act, the man could sing as well, if not better. He lived in the Litchfield Towers until graduation, as did I, and along with another friend, Jeff, we burned the midnight oil on his Sony Playstation.

Until this point, my experience with gaming consisted of five consoles, the Atari, ColecoVision, Intellivision, NES, and Sega Genesis. I also spent time gaming on a computer but until that point, my biggest accomplishment was staying up all night in a campus computer lab playing Doom II. Ray, who lived one floor below me was in one of my classes, a real doozy called Magic, Medicine, and Science. It was taught by this George Plimpton-sequel sounding professor with some sort of tic that caused him to continually tug at his shirt as he spouted off about Saturn being a cube. I don't know. It had something to do with Kepler and Play-Doh. Don't ask.

While, I can't remember which planet was a dodecahedron or a tetrahedron, I do remember going down to Ray's room to study for one of our loopy tests. When I entered his room, I saw it, the Sony Playstation. Immediately, the books took a backseat to gaming. Who needs cubes or octahedrons when you have triangle and circle buttons controlling your every move. Shortly thereafter, Jeff came knocking and the three of us settled into position to tackle Sony's new escape from reality.

In the past, gaming had been more about racing each other or bashing each other on screen, the Playstation offered us one player titles with multi player roles. Ray manned the controls while Jeff navigated keeping maps of the areas we had already conquered. I was given the moniker of Chief Science Officer responsible for coming up with solutions to problems we faced such as puzzles in a game. In one particular instance we had been racking our brains over a newly acquired bow and arrow in Kings Field. Jeff and Ray went round and round on how to operate this thing. Every button Ray pushed would simply drop an arrow right off the front, wasting it. Out of nowhere, I suggested holding down the button as if to pull the bow string back. Voila! Now we could take out pesky guards and monsters from a distance.

That's how it went for a few weeks. We'd find some obect like a key in the game, Jeff would remember that it went to a door way back on the other side of the map, and on occasion, I'd offer up some "outside the box" logic into how to solve something. One of our biggest freak-out moments came when Ray started playing Resident Evil. Up to then, my scariest gaming experience came from having the volume turned up way too loud while playing Friday the 13th on the NES. I walked into a cabin and Jason came out of nowhere. With the sound at a ear shattering level, his appearance brought with it a freakishly loud music cue that made me wet myself. Resident Evil offered the survival horror genre a shot or adrenaline. Granted, maneuvering through a darkly lit mansion littered with zombies with very little ammunition to defend yourself presented a challenge. However, nothing was as jaw dropping as walking back into the monster free mansion, recently cleared of zombies, only to find a new threat facing you. Because of the camera angles we could only hear the footsteps approaching. Just out of sight the menace lurked and then suddenly, the footsteps quickened and a hunter appeared. With a shrill scream, it leapt into the air and decapitated our protagonist in one fell swoop. The three of us let out a collective, "AAAAAHHHH!" as our headless Chris Redfield slumped to the floor and the blood stained words "YOU DIED" appeared on the screen. Ray quickly bought a game shark and we pretty much coasted through the rest of the game until May. Even with the game shark, the game was still hard to beat.

When Ray graduated, the Playstation was gone and I was forced to actually do homework the following semester While, I wasn't exactly what you would call a hardcore gamer, I did really miss the late night gaming sessions with my friends. During the summer of 1997 one of my roommates at Cedar Point owned one and once again, I was able to spend mindless hours hacking, slashing, and shooting my way through level after level of the two games he owned. After graduation I focused on getting a job, so that eventually I could buy my own Playstation and get to gaming. In 1999, I found a used Playstation at ebgames for $125 with the purchase of three games. I couldn't pass it up. Two of the purchased games were titles that we toiled over before Ray graduated. I bought a couple of sequel games and rented others at the local video stores, finishing most within the allotted rental period. What I didn't know was that the following year the Playstation would usurped by its sequel. As frugal or cheap that I am, I was unwilling to pay the $300 sticker price and would be content with my original model for two more years.

Around Christmas of 2002, I was still plugging away at my Playstation with gusto. Renting games from the local video store and finding those rare classics on eBay became a thrifty way to keep my free time occupied. But then, it happened. The one thing that would shake the death grip on my wallet and force me to buy a PS2 came to pass. It was the release of one of the greatest games of all time, Grand Theft Auto III. I was sitting in my townhouse, watching television, one night when the Puccini aria O Mio Bambino Caro came on in the background of the trailer for GTA III. I was mesmerized. "Must buy a PS2. Must kill hooker with taxi cab!" I looked at my current financial status and figured there was no way I was going to be able to afford one. It wasn't a necessity, although it felt like it was. There are more worthwhile things to spend money on than a game system. After all, I was beginning to get hints that maybe I should think about buying an engagement ring for my then girlfriend. If I walked in the door with a PS2, I'd be wearing it. Even at $199 in 2002, it was still beyond what I wanted to pay for it.

Trailer for Grand Theft Auto III

I turned to the one resource I could count on to make the decision for me, eBay. After searching through tons of listings for PS2s priced around $199 to $225 with games included. They were games that I could care less about, but still, if I was going to pay near retail price for a PS2, I'd rather buy new and rent games. Then, I found it. There was a slightly used model with two controllers for $130 with little time left on the auction. I stood ready to snipe the auction at the last minute, securing my buy at a minimal price. Within two weeks, my game system was tucked neatly and discreetly into my entertainment center and I was off to ebgames to find a used copy of GTA III. That was my deal. I never bought games at retail price, I always bought used. There was no sense in me paying $49.95 for a game when I could find a previously owned copy for half the price. Usually, with pre-owned games, you got a better guarantee from the store which would switch out copies if they became defective.

There I was, ready to be blown away by a 3D game environment that offered little in the way of a moral compass. I ran over pedestrians and fled cops with total abandonment, stunned at the freedom to explore and wreak havoc with no real consequences. You didn't die. You simply were wasted and appeared at a hospital with a little less money and all weapons removed. The same went for being "busted." Even though most heinous of offences were relegated to removal of weapons and chump change deducted from your funds. With the lack of accountability and linear progress, you could literally spend days just making money from legitimate means such as taxi, ambulance, and fire truck missions or you could take money and weapons from gang members, pedestrians, and prostitutes just by killing them with as little as a few punches. However, it was hard not to break some laws, albeit traffic and some pedestrian deaths, in order to accomplish the legitimate methods.

The influence of Grand Theft Auto III's open-ended game style and expansive 3D environment on gaming created a whole new realm of escapism for me with new titles copying and improving on the model. However, nothing compared to the original and as the third title in the GTA III era was released, I was prepared to pay retail price for a brand new copy. When Grand Theft Auto San Andreas hit the market in October of 2004, I waited only a month to buy it. I was newly married and had just returned from my honeymoon when I walked into Best Buy and plunked down $49.99 for it. My wife and I opted to give each other $50 as a wedding present and mine was gone before it was able to get a single crinkle in my pocket.

While, I continued to rent games every so often, I owned probably ten titles by 2007. My three biggest time wasters was The Grand Theft Auto, Star Wars Battlefront, and oddly enough Tiger Woods PGA Tour franchises. While not a big sports genre fan, I really got into golfing video games way back when NES Golf was one of the three games we had in my dorm room at Coastal Carolina University. During my second tour of duty at Cedar Point in 1997, we only had two games and one was a "pre" Tiger Woods PGA Tour golf game for the original Playstation. I had become a huge fan of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2002 after renting it on a whim. While every year brought with it a new title, I still relied on my 2002 copy to keep me occupied, even though I had maxed out every skill and beaten the game more than twice.

As game consoles continued to become available during the Sixth Generation era, I resisted the temptation to add a new system to my collection. Dropping hundreds of dollars on a system that had mostly the same game offerings across platforms seemed like a silly waste of resources. I would rather max out the gaming potential of my PS2 without maxing out my wallet. By 2006, I was aware that a Playstation 3 was in the works but couldn't see myself getting in line at midnight to buy one when it hit the shelves. Besides, the nature of the beast is that a new system gets released within weeks, maybe months, all sorts of bugs and technical issues crop up. Sony was nothing if not predictable. I had to eventually replace my original PS2 with the slim model due to the "dreaded disc read error" problem and I lacked the ability to fix the system on my own after several tries. Technical glitches aside, I was also not ready to drop anywhere from $400 to $600 on a system when I was about to lose the one thing needed to play, free time. The PS3 hit the American market on November 17, 2006. This was two days after my wife informed me she was pregnant. The news shifted my priorities as well as my stomach, directly into my ass. When little Bailey was born in July, I had no time to catch up on my DVR recordings let alone play my Playstation 2 games. This was my version of the video game crash of 1983. Whereas in 1983, an overabundance of console choices and lack of programming quality within the market led to the decline of the industry, my overabundance of responsibilities and lack of free time led me to the decline of my gaming.

During the last half of 2007 I spent most of my time at home taking care of my daughter along with other household duties. I didn't adopt the more outdated lifestyle of husband and father where I brought home the paycheck and my wife took care of the house and kids. I was a full time dad from day one, knee deep in 2 AM feedings and dirty diapers. The few times I was able to watch television while holding my little girl led me to drool as much as she did. I was constantly taunted by the commercials for Grand Theft Auto IV, which was to be released by October. It was fate. Three years after the release of GTA San Andreas, I was being mocked by the game controller shaped carrot dangling in front of me. Again, I would be victim to the tail wagging the dog. I wanted to buy a whole new game system based on the release of one game. After some quick math and the appearance of moths in my wallet I was ready to give up the ghost. That is until I once again turned to my old stand by, eBay. Listing after listing auctioned the PS3 at $300 or more. Even worse was the availability of different systems based on hard drive storage left me scratching my head as to which was the better buy. Then, I found one listing stating that I could get the PS3 for free. Knowing full well there was a catch; I humored the seller and at least looked at his auction. He wasn't selling a PS3 at all. He simply stated that I could go to a website and get one for free. I didn't see the harm in looking, so I took a chance and clicked the link. I had heard about these types of websites before but always dismissed them as scams. Yet, here I was doing more and more research into the company that hosted the site. Incentivized Freebie Websites, as they were called, were able to provide rewards for completing certain requirements. With this particular PS3 site, all I had to do was try out a service like Blockbuster.com or Stamps.com for free, and then get 10 people to do the same using my unique referral link. Once that was completed, the parent company would take the money they received from the referral sign ups at the retailers and use it to send me a brand new game system. I started doing some simple advertising on bulletin boards and even eBay, which was considered illegal as it was spam, and eventually started to make some headway. After joining a couple of message boards I found people willing to do the sign ups. What I didn't find was that it was going to be free. Technically, it is considered free because you can sign up for a free trial and get 10 friends and family members as referrals. This isn't easy and it is highly improbable since most think it is a scam. I opted to pay people online a small amount for each referral. This sped up the process tremendously. October came and went and the release of GTA IV was pushed back to 2008. This gave me more time to get my referrals and allowed me to finally complete the process by Christmas. In all, I spent four months gathering referrals and shelled out a total of $100. That put me at 25% of the cost of store bought unit and $25 less than what I paid in 1999 for my original used Playstation. It was my best deal ever. It even got the honor of being the subject of my first ever blog post. The only drawback was that I ended up with a 40GB model which didn't have compatibility with my PS2 games and the release for GTA IV got pushed back again until the end of April. Still, I finding ample enough amount of playability with my PS3, downloading demos, blasting away Lego stormtroopers, and surfing the Internet right from my couch.

As I race headlong into my 30's with a daughter by my side, I am reminded at how when I was a kid I was a video game freak. I wonder if my child will embrace video games the way I did. If the future produces a son, perhaps he will, instead. Either way, I'm convinced that I will try and at least stay one step behind the current technology, always keeping a watchful eye on my pocketbook. By the time any child of mine is ready for college, I fear that I will be forced to buy an additional game system so that we can play together online. At the point, systems could run well over $1000 a piece and be made of some space age polymer instead of conventional materials. It's only going to be a topic of discussion, however, if my kid does well in school. While I don't want to pay $1000 for undeserved game system, something I'm sure my cheap nature will forbid, anyway, I don't want to give the child a reason to slack off in their studies. I felt the sting of being in a parent free zone in college and it was one of the factors that led my slide into the academic abyss for two semesters. I didn't have someone immediately available to ground or admonish me for my behavior. But, if I'm lucky and my kid does became a gamer like myself, I'll be able to frag them repeatedly in death matches if they get out of line. I don't care if they are 3000 miles away.

Mongo's Top 20 Games for Playstation 1-3
Again, I preface this like I did with the NES entry as I have never played any Final Fantasy games.

1. Grand Theft Auto series (PS2/PS3) What can I say about the series that you don't already know? The sole reason I've stayed with Sony.
2. Resident Evil series (PS1-PS3 titles) Survival Horror thy name is Zombies run amuck.
3. The Thing (PS2) Frightful and faithful to John Carpenter's movie, pretty much the closest thing to a sequel.
4. Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction (PS2) Lucasarts Grand Theft Panzer, awesome military 3D environment.
5. Star Wars Lego: Complete Saga (PS3) Nothing better than Star Wars Lego based death.
6. Kingsfield series (PS1/PS2) The series that began it all for me and Sony. Fully rendered 3D FPS environment.
7. Star Wars Battlefront II (PS2) 2 steps forward in game play but 1 step back with the loss of Bespin and Yavin levels. I still play part 1 for those.
8. Manhunt (PS2) Sick and twisted fun, another one of those games that has you playing with the lights on and the therapist on speed dial.
9. Tiger Woods 2002 (PS2) Still my favorite in the series despite the dated features.
10. Silent Hill Series (PS1/PS2) Where Resident Evil defined survival horror, Silent Hill removed the survival and just gave you the willies.
11. Monopoly (PS1) A Classic for a classic.
12. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PS1) Downloading from the PS Network, I finally get to play this gem.
13. Resistance Fall of Man (PS3) Wow! just freaking wow!
14. Castlevania: Lament of Innocence (PS2) Where it all began for the Belmont Clan, makes up for Castlevania 64
15. Hi Octane (PS1) While I owned it for PC, the PS1 version had more levels. Great racing game. Thanks again, Ray
16. Simpsons Hit and Run (PS2) Grand Theft Homer. Fans of both GTA and The Simpsons will love it.
17. Evil Dead Fistfull of Boomstick (PS2) I love me some Ash. Even better with one liners and a boomstick.
18. Crash Bandicoot (PS1) One of the originals and still a great title
19. Uncharted (PS3) Tombraider meets Indiana Jones in a lush environment.
20. Midnight Club II (PS2) Fast and the Furious by design but great game play.

The 5 Worst I've played

1. Space Griffon (PS1) Lame, just the suckiest suckfest that ever did suck.
2. Resident Evil: Survivor (PS1) While I included the entire series at number 2, this FPS offering just doesn't live up to the genre
3. True Crime: Streets of LA (PS2) Tries to be GTA, ends up DOA. Too vast an environment and the bullet time feature is a rip off of Max Payne.
4. Grand Theft Auto Liberty City Stories (PS2 port) While I could never say enough good things about a Grand Theft Auto title, this one which was ported from the PSP did little to offer a new experience with the series. The music was subpar, voice actors were unknown, and all the game elements from San Andreas were now gone. Vice City Stories made up for this ten fold.
5. Tiger Woods 08 (PS3) Jury is still out on this as I am having considerable trouble with hooks and slices. The ability to use your own face for your player isn't the only lifelike feature. Mimics my real golf ability, I guess