It's an Ace. Or a Birdie. Or something good.
By Koworld

We were going to write an 'our year thus far with PSP' feature this month - as a clever combo Euro-Launch piece. Instead I've wasted the time playing Virtua Tennis and Everybody's Golf. Thing is, we accidentally took a shit load of ace pictures on Oxford Street on the launch night so I've got to find a way to shoehorn them in somewhere and I’ve decided here is a good option.

But first the Virtua Tennis review: it's fantastic. Especially multiplayer - easily the best handheld multiplayer experience ever. It is Dreamcast Virtua Tennis 2, looking sharper and wrapped to-go and it’s brilliant as a result. If you have either an interest in sports games or mates with PSPs buy it. Instant classic. I’d genuinely love to see more DC greats reach the PSP: Shenmue, Jet Set Radio and Phantasy Star Online would be prefect.

"Gnuuurrah."

Anyhoo: launch night – amateur reviewers tend to love wanking on about how they walked down the shops to get the game, got on the bus and came home, expectantly removed the cellophane wrapper before booting-up their Dellschmell 3000Killah and blah, blah, blah. We try to rise above that here at Rodent but this time we're not going to because, diddddddd drum-roll... this is the story of how four pissed-up Rodents stumbled along London's Oxford Street (the UK’s premier shopping street for some reason) at 23:50 on August the 31st so that we could settle a pub bet. The motley crew in question consisted of TT, Matt, Rockwaldo and I, and earlier TT and Rock had come to verbal blows over whether a person could visit a PSP launch store, at Midnight, and get in without having a mythical 'special piece of paper'. Given that all four of us in that pub already had PSPs the question was worse than irrelevant. We decided though to put the question to the test anyway, and besides there were kebab shops shops in the same direction.

So, the Oxford Street PSP Launch Night Line-up included: 2 x GAME stores, a HMV, a Virgin Megastore and, to our surprise, a mystery forth company…

Right, on to our photo-story of tech love and laughable corporate rubbishness:

There were certainly queues:

Look at the little happy faces crushed up against crowd control at Virgin. I bet they will cherish those PSP balloons:

And ‘yes’ people in these queues all appeared to have their special ‘pieces of paper’. We asked a few randomly and got the same solemn answer each time ‘yeah mate – we’re on the list’. Some we spoke to had pre-ordered many months earlier and today was queue-up dream come true.

And then. As midnight fast approached, an Oxford Street miracle: Matt selected the doorway of Dixons in which to nosh down on his fine Ginsters’ pasty (or it could have been a breakfast slice – bit hazy on the detail). And it was only then that we noticed there were staff inside and that they were in PSP T-shirts. But surely it must just be a stock-take or something - otherwise there would be a massive queue outside the store, just like the one outside GAME not more than twenty yards away:

Look! Game have got a police van and a fucking ambulance for blimin’s sake. Dixons have just got Matt eating a pasty:

So we hammered on the glass and rather than the expected ‘fuck off or we’re calling the rozzers’, we received the international hand gesture for ‘give us a second’. And then, very shortly after: the nice security chap opened the door and let our entire rowdy queue of us four in.

Having proven the bet that we could get into one of the stores we thought we really ought to show willing and buy some stuff. TT asked for a Freeview box and was told ‘no’ – so PSP software it had to be then.

And that’s how Rockwaldo became the lucky man who made the very first purchase of anything PSP on Oxford Street that night (the other stores still didn’t seem to have let the punters in at that time).

And then, still stunned that we were alone in the shop we had our own little feeding frenzy. TT bought Virtua Tennis and Everybody’s Golf, I bought Everybody’s Golf (Play.com having broken on-sale dates yet again in posting me my Virtua Tennis two days earlier), Matt had himself an Everybody’s Golf too, and even Rocky had another bite at the UMD cherry and went back to the till for a, yes, Everybody’s Golf.

Once we’d finished, well by then Dixons was…

Still deserted.

Although this man did appear a short while later and make Dixons’ first actual PSP sale:

We told him his picture would be in Way of the Rodent and he just looked at us like we were mental. Which is fair enough.

So, armed with our bag loads of PSP goodies there was only one thing left to do: go and taunt people still queuing at the other stores:

When we reached GAME and did the same thing, the GAME corporate film crew mistook us for their customers and made Matt and I do on-camera interviews. I really, really hope that they still haven’t realised that the purchases we were raving about were in Dixons’ carrier bags.

Goodnight.

September 2005

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