The Outsider

When you travel like I do, it��s a genuine hassle to drag around unnecessary stuff like a PS2. You need to make space for it, plus add extra time for packing and airport security. And when you arrive at your hotel, you almost always get a steaming bag of poo for your trouble. Frankly, I wouldn��t bother at all if the PS2 wasn��t also a DVD player.

Is it a pain? Most certainly. Is it worth it? Maybe.

When you hit the road, be sure to bring both a standard PS2 A/V cable and an RF converter, since you��re usually faced with coaxial-only televisions. Even if you end up with one of the two out of 10 hotel sets that have A/V inputs, they won��t work half the time because the set has been reprogrammed. Bummer. Often, you��ll need a three-outlet AC plug and a short extension cord as well.

You��ll have to deal with cable locks at almost all hotels��these people think you��re going to pirate Spank-vision exclusives. Gimme a break. So, if you��ve got cable locks and no A/V inputs, you might be done. Hotels across America have refused to remove those cable locks for me. I suppose if you��re Bono or in the NBA or something, it would be a different story, but I��ve been screwed.

Even if you hook everything up fine, the first thing you��ll notice is the dark picture. That��s because any hotel television with Lodge-Net or On-Command has a default brightness setting of 50 percent. So, watching some DVDs becomes pointless. And unless the games you��re playing have brightness control in the options menu, you��re screwed. Even then, it��s still too dark for sneaking around in Splinter Cell or cruising Vice City at night. To complicate matters, you can only alter brightness with a ��master remote.�� The hotel engineer should know where to find it and how it works, but most of these guys are figuring it out for the first time when I check in.

Imagine going through all of this after a long flight and a two-hour drive...just to get it all rigged a whole afternoon before showtime amd anxiously fire up the long-awaited new Tomb Raider. But most of the time it��s worth it, or I wouldn��t bother.

My favorite trick is to get a loaner TV set from a hotel��s conference room or A/V department��it comes on a cart, has its own remote and A/V inputs, and is free from the pay-per-view B.S. The hotel may be happy to send it right up, no hassles��or they may want to charge you a $125 rental fee. I suppose if you��re Bono, you just pay it every time and be done with it. But then, I have a hard time believing Bono would go through any of this crap.

I, however, am one of rock��s greatest gamers. And I am stuck in some hotel, thousands of miles from all responsibility, with the latest games, new demos, magazines, codes.... Now, what in the hell is showtime?

Singer for the Gin Blossoms, Robin Wilson (rwginblossom@aol.com), knows more about games than Bono.

Copyright © 2003 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine.