I got home on Friday night to find that FedEx had dropped my Playstation off… with my neighbors. And not just any neighbors, but the ones who park in the fucking fire lane.

Jenn tried to get them to answer the door twice, but had no luck. Their TV was on far too loud for anyone to hear the door.

I got home, rang their doorbell (they’ve installed one themselves; our apartments don’t come with doorbells) and a few minutes later the door opened and I was accosted by the stench of freshly pissed pants. I have no idea how they live in that, but it almost knocked me out. Only my dire need for my Playstation kept me conscious.

The lady of the house gave me my package (it took her a second to remember that, yes, just a few hours ago she did, in fact, sign for a package) and, after making sure it wasn’t going to pollute the air supply in my apartment, I returned upstairs to unpack my console.

I took it straight into my room and opened the box. I pulled out the work order description and it seems Sony saw fit to replace the entire laser component in the unit. Fine with me, man. I hooked it up and put in Time Crisis 3, the game I was having trouble with in the first place.

It still doesn’t work.

I tried it all different ways, but it doesn’t work. Other games work, and I even watched a movie on it (which didn’t work too well before), and that works. Everything works except this game.

What’s puzzling me now is that the game worked for me for a while, but stopped. It worked for my friend/boss Greg (on his newer hardware version of the PS2). So is it a disc problem or a hardware problem? I have to assume it’s the disc now, since everything else works and it’s been freshly repaired.

I’ve now sent a note to Namco support to see if I can package up my disc and send it in for a replacement. Hopefully I can get my replacement disc and try that out before my 90 day limited warranty on the console repair runs out. If the replacement disc doesn’t work, then it’ll be confirmed a problem with the console. If it works… well, at least I have a new laser component in my console, right?