Blast Off & Crazy Taxi

Yesterday I downloaded 2 games off the PSN: Crazy Taxi: Fare Wars & the PSP mini Blast Off.

I'd heard about Sega offering sale prices for their PSN games when I was still in China and couldn't access the PS Store. Crazy Taxi was one of those PSP games that I was always interested in if I could find it at the right price, $10.00 or under.

What's so annoying about the PS Store is... ok, PSP update 6.20 came out a few weeks ago, when I was in China, right? Fine-- I knew I'd have to update before I could access the PS Store. I accepted that.

But when I tried to buy Crazy Taxi off the PS Store, Media Go told me I needed to update it to a later version (I was running 1.2). Hmmm. Ok..... it didn't take too long to update it.

But then..... after buying Crazy Taxi & trying to download it..... it told me I needed to update my Playstation Network Downloader. *After* I already updated Media Go. Grrrrr. Ok fine.


So I update my Playstation Network Downloader. then have to restart my computer of course.... *more time* AND THEN... I can finally download the game I bought, and it only took about AN HOUR AND A HALF to buy and recieve one lousy game off the Playstation Store.

At least I managed to get it... but things like this remind me that the PS Store is a ticking timebomb, sooner or later it will go off and decide to stop working on me, making me regret buying all this downloaded content that will go bad like spoiled milk. I understand that they need to make improvements to software & upgrade their services, and we need to update our accounts in accordance. But WHY do they make it so inconvenient to simply BUY STUFF from them?

Oh well... after getting Crazy Taxi, I remember hearing about Blast Off & bought that one too. I've been playing both games a bunch since last night, Blast Off is really fun. Crazy Taxi is great too, but it is a bit repetitive, because the routes are always the same.


And I'm not thrilled that I now have this comics app for my PSP, but because I'm Canadian, I can't access any comics........



later
don

Back from China

Alright, I hope that whoever reads this blog didn't get too bored with me being gone..... but I just got back from China last night.

One of the things I discovered shortly after entering the country is that you can't access blog sites like this one from inside there. So I wasn't able to update this blog as I'd like to have, which is a bit vexing, because there are tons of gadget stories to tell from China.

I spent some time in the south, and a few days in Hong Kong. As a Handheld Addict, of course I had a few goals when traveling. One was to try & find a 16GB (or larger) Memory Stick Micro (M2).... that wasn't fake. For some reason I cannot find 16GB M2s anywhere in Canada.

So I was searching the cities I went to as best I could, but I only found 2 & 4GB M2 sticks... the same as available here in Canada.

By the end of the trip I finally struck gold in Hong Kong. I was at Harbour City mall, a huge mall there, and I came across this place that had a Sandisk 16GB M2 stick for about $598 HK dollars.

The exchange rate is about:

$1.00 Canadian dollar= $7.00 HK dollar. So it worked out to about $85.00 CAD. Not bad. But I was very concerned about it being fake.... so I held off & looked around some more. And a few stores down, I found a Sony Store (I think they're called Sony Style now) and asked about a 16GB M2, not really hopeful about it because I was in previous Sony Stores in China and they only had 4GB M2 sticks. But the store in HK *did* have a 16GB M2 in stock! I wasn't even sure if Sony made a 16GB M2 stick. It was the same price as the Sandisk one at that other place, and since it's a Sony store, it should be real, right? I hope so. So now my PSPgo is kitted out with an additional 15GB of storage which I'll make good use of once I actually get home.

Speaking of fakes..... ok, we all know China is is famous for knockoffs, and I'm sure you've seen the many fake PSPs out there, like the one pic posted in this entry.

But I was surprised how many fake PSPs there were that were clearly *NOT* PSPs, but they had the PSP and Sony logo all over them. I haven't seen pics of those on the internet as much... I'd have loved to take pics of them but my camera is too big to hide..... it was kinda shocking, if someone knew next to nothing about PSPs, because of the logos, they almost look legit. I even saw some fake PSPgos that were the size of a PSP-1000K model! Bizarre.

I took my PSPgo with me for the trip, and it served me well. Some long train trips, one overnight, and being able to get some Twisted Metal: Head On time in sure helped my sanity. The good thing about most gadget power adapters like the PSP is that they accept the foreign electrical voltage, so I had no problem plugging it in and charging it with China's 240V.... no problem other than finding the right plug shape that is.....




later
don