RHF envy

I had an odd thing happen to me today. I bought video games, and it felt like work!

In fact, I was getting paid to buy them. The company I work for is building a “game room” where I work. The powers that be decided it would be cheaper to buy TVs and console gaming systems than it would be to buy arcade cabinets. (And of course they’re right, but somehow they decided (or were coerced into) buying all the latest systems. So we’re going to have 2 TVs, and a gamecube, xbox, and PS2, all in one room (with the foosball table and lounge chairs). Now, I didn’t get to buy the systems–apparently we had some kind of hookup for those… but someone had to go out and buy all the extra controllers and some games. My buddy Nick is on the “committee” in charge of this whole gameroom project, so he got elected to buy the extra stuff. So we went out and bought 6 games for PS2, 6 for gamecube (the x-box we got already had 18 games with it, that’s another story), and enough controllers so every system has 4. Choosing the games was what felt the most like work. What had (before stepping out of the office) seemed like an incredibly fun waste of time was suddenly turning into “how to buy great games that will please the greatest amount of people”. We managed to keep it down to 1 sports game per system, and pretty much get one game of every genre that supports multiplayer. That is, racing, FPS, Fighting, Puzzle, etc. I won’t list the games we got, but let it suffice to say, it was hard work!

Now, as everyone knows, PS2 only has 2 controller slots, so we had to buy the multitap. And of course we bought some memory cards. (Oooh, I think we may have forgotten to buy one for the gamecube.)

Nick also happened to be in charge of buying the stuff to make any of the game systems playable on either TV. That was a task in and of itself worthy of quite the deliberation. Unfortunately, there are not devices made for this task. However, the price of “input selectors” has plummeted since Nate and I bought one when we got our second TV. Unfortunately, they still only have one output. So we went the way of the RCA splitter cables. (Does RCA refer to the cable itself, or the three cables together?) Anyway, one splitter for every cable, that’s nine, and then the splitters were super short, so we needed extension cords… the total was over $850. CRAZY.

So the funny (haha) part is that the whole 2-TV-setup is almost exactly what I have at home… and I think I can do almost exactly what Nick and I bought for about $100. (with some cables and stuff I already have at home.) So I’m off to best buy for the second time today. Wish me luck!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *