Just because you haven't burned my house down yet doens't mean you should have that grin on your face!
Forget about how video games are supposedly turning us all into mindless killing machines, lately it seems like the problem has nothing to do with the games or the companies that make them ... the real danger comes from the video game consoles themselves. You can buy all the health, house, and disaster insurance you want but you're on your own when your favorite video game system decides to kill you.
This week Sony announced that they were recalling 3.5 million AC adaptors for their recently shrunk down PlayStation 2 console. The company warns that the part has a tendency to overheat, which in turn could potentially lead to a fire.
After the Xbox melts it leaves a smell that's extremely difficult to get rid of!
Unfortunately this is not the first time we've had to worry about our system catching our house on fire. Earlier this year Microsoft recalled more than 14 million of their Xbox AC adaptors for exactly the same problem, leading some of us to wonder what we ever did to them to make them put our lives in risk.
Forget terrorism, natural disasters, and crime, it seems like the biggest risk to our safety comes from Sony and Microsoft. Is the company that brought us Parappa the Rapper really out to
"Hey buddy, just because I was winninng is no reason for you to shoot out my screen with your UMD!"
burn down your place? Sony has done a lot of bad things this generation - offline Gran Turismo 4, two control ports, no HDD support, questionable online support - but torching the place just because they bought the slim line PS2 seems a tad uncalled for. It's just rude.
If lighting your game room on fire wasn't bad enough, Sony also has some health concerns to worry about when it comes to their handheld console, the PSP. Although the PlayStation Portable user will probably never be physically injured by the device, if you twist it in just the right way it will send your UMD game (or movie) flying at lightning speed in whatever direction you're
It's going to take more than death to scare me, it'll take something as strong as an MC Hammer reuinion tour!
holding the system. So you better tell your little brother to look out, aim it away from the dogs and cats, and make sure it doesn't fly out shattering the glass in your T.V. set. In this case Sony isn't out to get you; it's out to injure the people around you.
But this is not the kind of thing that Nintendo would do; they aren't about the flames and smoke. The people that brought you Mario, Metroid, and Mew, don't want you to die ... they just want you to wear glasses. If you've ever played Nintendo's Virtual Boy, their
Perhaps you shouldn't have played that Virtual Boy for so long!
faux-3D "handheld" released in the mid-1990s, you already know that the game reminds you not to play the system longer than 15 minutes at a time, otherwise it could damage your eyesight in ways you'll never be able to fix. Now granted, Nintendo did do just about everything they could to prevent you from playing the games longer than 15 minutes (even installing a timer that would automatically pause the game to let you take a break), but with so many addictive Virtual Boy games how could anybody just play for 15 minutes at a time? Oh wait, scratch that ...
We live in a complicated world filled with challenges that need our undivided attention, the last thing we should be worrying about is some Sony product killing you in your sleep. There are better things to worry about, like vampires, the apocalypse, and another Cher farewell tour. In the future I don't want to have to report that the Xbox 360 makes you impotent and the PlayStation 3 could put you in a coma, the price of gaming is depressing enough as it is.
