If you were any­where near a tele­vi­sion or the inter­net yes­ter­day, you may have heard about Apple, Inc.‘s new announce­ment: the iPhone. I, like count­less oth­ers, spent part of my morn­ing watch­ing the “live blog­gers” feed the world minute-by-minute updates on the sit­u­a­tion at Mac­world. The irony: no Macs were announced. This, I’ve heard, is because it would most likely be diluted by the talk of the iPhone. It’s defi­nately big news.

But, this post isn’t about my plans to pur­chase an iPhone. It doesn’t come out until June, and I don’t know if it would make any sense con­sid­er­ing it’s on the Cin­gu­lar net­work which doesn’t appear to sup­port “South Dakota”. No, this post is about another kind of gad­get that you saw above: the PlaySta­tion 2 (or PS2).

I’ve been think­ing about get­ting a gam­ing con­sole for a while now, and then I talked to Bryce and found out that he and Lind­sey had got­ten a PS2. ‘But,’ I thought, ‘they don’t have any money!’ It was an insult that they should get a cool toy on their lit­tle, com­bined income, while I sit in the dark ages. I resolved to do something.

I floated the idea by Holli who, at first, seemed loath to act upon it. Then, from some­where deep in the abyss, she heard the words “Gui­tar Hero II”, and it was a done deal. Sat­ur­day we sprang into action, dri­ving to Sioux Falls to pick up our very own PS2 and related acces­sories. When all was said and done, we’d spent quite a lot more money than we’d planned.

One notable anec­dote from the jour­ney is that we checked many dif­fer­ent loca­tions look­ing for good prices on games, etc, but we were always on the look­out for Gui­tar Hero II (or GHII), a game that has had quite a lot of pop­u­lar­ity lately. (In Gui­tar Hero, you have a gui­tar for your game con­troller, and you have to play notes as they scroll across the screen. You get to play along with actual songs, which makes it even more fun.) Our quest, through­out all of Sioux Falls, fell short. The last place I felt sure would have it, GameSpot on Louise, did not. It was here, dis­heart­ened, that we instead pur­chased Dance Dance Rev­o­lu­tion (or DDR) Nova with gamepad. We fig­ured, this could be a rea­son­able replace­ment. (In DDR, you have a dance pad and you have to per­form steps as they scroll across the screen. It can be quite a work­out.) We paid and left.

We had decided on Sat­ur­day to wait on buy­ing a mem­ory card. Holli thought that he brother might sell us one, so we could get it cheaper than the $25 price tag you see on new ones. After play­ing a lit­tle bit on Sat­ur­day, how­ever, I decided I couldn’t wait. We went to Pamida and bought a mem­ory card, and then we decided to see what games Lewis would have. Lo, and behold! Beneath the stack of PS2 games we found not one, but two, GHII game bun­dles (which include a gui­tar)! Lewis, in Madi­son, had two of what no elec­tron­ics store in Sioux Falls had. It seemed a mir­a­cle, and again, we forked over the money for it.

Here are the games we have, and their capabilities:

• Dance Dance Rev­o­lu­tion Nova
  • 1–2 Play­ers
  • Eye­Toy USB Camera
  • Online, 1–2 Players
• Gui­tar Hero II
  • 1–2 Play­ers
• Final Fan­tasy VIII (for PS1)
  • 1 Player
• BLACK
  • 1 Player
• The Sims
  • 1–2 Play­ers
• Mar­vel Ulti­mate Alliance
  • 1–4 Play­ers
  • Online, 2–4 Players
• Burnout Revenge
  • 1–2 Play­ers
  • Logitech/PS2 USB Headsets
  • Online, 2–6 Players

Do you guys have a PS2? What games do you have? Do you think you can beat us? Well, you can’t.