After waiting in the line at the store, I slowly crept into the Thunderbolt Offices with my shiny new PSP in hand. It was quiet - too quiet. I silently peered around a corner. Josh was asleep at his desk as always, buried beneath a pile of half-finished reviews that were “sure to be completed” and a pile of Cheez-Its. I looked out the window and saw Jim and James doing elaborate field tests on PS2 systems around the office that had broken. It turns out they do indeed get more broken when you throw them out the window of a three-story building. As I slowly crept past Josh, I heard the terrible sound of a week-old Cheez-Its crunching under my feet.
“He’s here!” Josh shouted as he jumped out of his desk, displaying more energy in one single exclamation than he had in the past month. “And he has his PSP too!”
Phil jumped out of the kitchen with a giant grin and some sort of red sauce from a sloppy meal across his face. As I ran for my corner office, I noticed Justin was busy in his cubicle, laughing at my PSP and shoving his stylus back into his DS screen, yelling something about a “lack of touch screens holding the system back.” I darted through the corridors of our building, only to be knocked unconscious as Marc opened a bathroom door right in front of me. I avoided the door, but not the stench that followed it, and passed out on the floor.
When I came to, I looked around. Someone had managed to get the bag containing my PSP Value Pack out of my hands, but I wasn’t sure where they were. Justin was still hammering away with his DS, now bragging about being able to play Gameboy Advance games and didn’t offer any help. The bathroom door was locked, but Marc assured me that he was the only one in there and mumbled something about a bad burrito. It was then I noticed that Phil’s office had a strange glow coming out of the door and rushed in.
I found that Anthony, Josh, James, Jim, and of course the lovable Phil had all plugged my PSP in and were taking turns playing Ridge Racer.
“You should have bought more games!” James shouted at me with a pile of PS2 parts in his lap. “I wanted to try out Wipeout!”
“Yeah and how come you didn’t buy movies? Spiderman looks great on this; you know I love movies man!” Jim added.
I walked over and snatched my PSP away from them. Checking the systems elaborate browser, I noticed that I had been knocked out for almost three hours from Marc’s pungent odor and also that the battery was mostly dead – no wonder they had plugged it in.
“You'd better get writing reviews.” Phil said as now dried-up sauce hardened on his face. “We need page-views! I have the screens all ready to go! Hurry!”
He didn’t need to tell me twice to play the system. I reminded him calmly that it was my system and that I would have shared with them, but now they have to wait to ever play it again because they were greedy. Jim sat and looked like a child who got caught stealing cookies. Anthony cried. I retired to my office and let the system charge up while I read the thick manual.
After about two hours of charging, the battery was full and I was ready to play. I found that the system was big enough to be comfortable in my hands while I played it, but not too big to be cumbersome. It took me a bit of time to get used to swinging around the corners of Ridge Racer with the PSP’s Analog Stick, but once I got used to it I was a lot more comfortable with it than I was with the D-Pad.
Just as I was unlocking the some of the EX cars in Ridge Racer, Josh stormed into my office with a PSP in hand. The system looked visibly greasy from all of the Cheez-Its that he had been eating while playing and he demanded that we play a few wireless games against each other. I flicked on the switch on the side of the PSP and got all set to play, but then Josh and I started arguing about who would host the first race. Suddenly, we heard a door slam, and Marc entered the office and told us to shut up, complaining about a long , painful day and needing a good night’s sleep. I let Josh host the race and we played the night away with no lag.
After destroying Josh with my Ridge Racer skills after waiting a little bit for the PSP to load up games (the UMD isn't nearly as fast as a cartridge, it's one downfall), I threw him out of my office and curled up on my couch to watch Spiderman 2, which was included in my PSP Value Pack. I turned on the DVD of the movie at the same time and attempted to find faults in the conversion to the new UMD format, but surprisingly there weren’t any major issues. The movie sounded crisp through my fancy headphones, though it took a bit to fine-tune the volume settings.
I woke up the next morning and my PSP was gone. Jim was on top of the building again, attempting to throw it off, citing that a “few more tests needed to be done.” Phil and James were fighting with him to get the system back so they could have a few more rounds of Ridge Racer before they had to go back to their own reviews. Anthony, Josh and Marc were all feasting away on more burritos in the kitchen, while Justin was Pitochatting with a person on a lower floor of the building.
Just another day at the Thunderbolt Offices.
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