If you are already fourteen years as gamejournalist’re in, you automatically get a certain fondness for certain spellenseries, developers, and machines. So will Blizzard always have a special place in my heart and that has everything to do with their rts games Warcraft and Starcraft. Also I have a soft spot for Thief, Splinter Cell and Metal Gear Solid since I love stealth games. Especially Thief – ‘I can hear you, Taffer!’ – belongs to my alltime favourites.
Such an emotional connection with games, ensures almost automatically that you are also a verzameldrang develops. In the beginning of my career, I collected really anything with games. Posters, mugs, pens, notebooks, stickers, and puppets… or better said: ‘figurines’. Dozens, if not hundreds of puppets, I must have had. Solid Snake, a tin WarCraft II Orc, a plaster Prince from Prince of Persia, miniatuurunits from Red Alert 2 and I can still go on.
With age, I have the chaff from the wheat separate. My office looks no longer matter if the average game shop but my desk can, of course, not without a few gems. Now is my verzamelliefde slightly moved to the machines themselves. So had I at one point four different types of PlayStation 2 game consoles: a black, a silver, artic blue and a slim version. Also, the first Xbox was ultimately three times under the tv: the regular black box, a green, and a very limited transparent white.
And yes, when that Special Edition Halo 3 Xbox 360 was announced, it started again to itch. Microsoft Netherlands has fortunately not omitted and with a reasonable number of gameshops was the machine to obtain. Of course, not pallets at a time, but if you wanted to, you could get a hold of.
That is an exceptional situation because, usually, we fall in Europe outside of the boot. One fine after the other beautiful limited edtion announced, but always for America or Japan. In the land of the rising sun is a white PlayStation 3 available. Why not in the Netherlands? And then that many tasteful limited edition DS consoles? In Japan, there are already more than fifteen different colored DS Lites available. In the Netherlands we have to make do with a handful of crayons. Or take that gold Zelda DS Lite with the famous Zelda logo. Why is that never come true?
Most disturbing I find the quasi-limited editions that are here do come true, and especially from the Sony stable. At the time of the introduction of the PSP Slim Lite, there were two European limited variants announced: a Spiderman red and Simpsons-yellow. Apart from the colours, there was nothing special about the machines. America was, however, his own limited version: the Star Wars Battlefront Renegade pack: the eponymous PSP game along with a white PSP with on the back the black helmet of Darth vader engraved. Star Wars fan or not, it should be clear about which version is more is thought.
And now extract Sony a similar trick again with God of War for the PSP. We should do it here with a PSP-pack; a silver PSP bundled with the game God of War: Chains of Olympus. Nice, such a pack, but in America there is a similar pack available, only then with a blood-red PSP with on the back the tormented tronie of God of War hero Kratos.
So a call to Sony Europe: let’s be a bit more creative with your limited they had. Living In Europe also passionate gamesgekken.
