Stadium Events auctions are up in popularity. In the wake of the accidental auction that recently awarded an unknowing eBayer with a stupid some of money for the NES game entitled: Stadium Events by Bandai, (deep breath) a slew of money-hungry sellers have begun digging through their closets to produce more eBay gold.

I can’t say that I blame them when some of the auctions have currently reached upward of $10,000.  Personally, I would never ever have a need to own such a cartridge and would gladly unload this mediocre game… at the drop of a hat… any hat. Nonetheless, I do find it mildly entertaining to watch such auctions.  In particular, I’d like to draw your attention to the forerunner in the land of NES gold-digging… who seems to (bless their heart) have less than a full grasp on the English language and may be a little less polished than other sellers in their delivery of item descriptions.

“I nearly crap in my pants when i found out what this is…”

Today’s Amazon Deal of the Day is 4GB of Corsair memory.  2 – 2GB 1333MHz DDR3 sticks for the taking.  Click here to go get it – – or at least look at it. I don’t have a machine that would take this and I really don’t know if it’s a good deal or not but I know Corsair makes great memory so I thought I’d share.

Oh and if you want your very own high-tech Blue microphone… there is also a Snowflake mic on sale for a fairly reasonable price–the mic offer expires in a couple of hours!

I wanted to take this time to breathe a moment and impress upon anyone who reads this that this is not a Chilean or Haitian earthquake nor is it a a tsunami alert in Hawaii.  Rather this is a minor problem in the world today that is largely annoying to PlayStation 3 owners.  Myself included.  In other words, I know it’s not a big deal… but I like to speak loudly about such news if not to merely be heard and have an impact – – as we should with any situation or world event we take issue with.  I do not compare the PS3 outage to an earthquake.  I merely state that if we are to be passionate about the lesser then it is our duty to not dismiss the greater.

With that, I continue my petty quest to inform GridCycle’s readers of the PS3 disaster the Twitter community has dubbed “The ApocolyPS3.”

Oh and before I begin with the analysis, I’d like to call out all of the fanboys and “journalists” who indicate that this problem is “only affecting the fat systems” or that “just some PS3s are affected.”  Let me rebut by saying the slim didn’t go on sale until the last quarter of 2009 and currently has the least amount of units in the wild.  The problem is worldwide and affects the majority of PS3 users today.

Currently this little issue from Sony is looking less like a PSN network problem and more like an actual hardware problem.

With the latest cautionary announcement from Sony and the waves of speculative hypothesis flowing through the internet tubes, it’s no small wonder that articles such as this serve to do nothing more than add to the flame that is the proverbial PlayStation3 fire.  The best speculation thus far comes from a few sources but here is what I’ve learned over the course of the day:

• The problem doesn’t seem to be linked to all Playstation Network capabilities as it is still possible to logon to the PSN store and download content.  However, this is a moot point if you attempt to install any of those demos because you will likely run into the aforementioned issues.  Anything that attempts to connect to the Trophy system on the PSN produces this problem.

• The real problem appears to be directly related to the clock in the older systems.  I have not been able to check my own system, but the clocks in older systems apparently mistook 2010 for a leap year.  The clocks never changed to March 1 but instead read February 29th, 2010 – – an invalid date which is believed to be causing all of the outages in systems.  Savvy gamers realize this may mean that the “glitch” extends beyond the PSN.  This is a reasonable hypothesis since the games should have been operational in an offline mode.  Less savvy gamers (such as myself) might theorize that the reason the games were unavailable offline is because they were required to log in to the PSN.  I sincerely hope it turns out to NOT be related to the latter.

• This seems to fall into line with the time that my PS3 went offline which was between 4 and 6 p.m. CST. 6 p.m. CST is when the new day began in GMT.  So the theory holds water.  If the Trophy system and any of the DRM content on the system check the time, they’re likely to not function correctly.

As it is today, I don’t know if it’s even possible to download an update with the affected systems in their current state.  If it is the clock… theoretically, things might return to normal tomorrow with the clocks being a day off.  This would allow Sony time to release a patched firmware that could then be accessible by PS3 customers.  Either way, it’s been nearly 24 hours since the outage began.

At around 11:00 a.m. CST, sony announced a hopeful fix within the next 24 hours.  That means that if they’re on schedule for a fix PS3 users might not be able to use their PS3 until mid-morning tomorrow.

I myself am probably in a bigger world of hurt since I didn’t know what was happening at the time the system went down.  I’ve already deleted corrupt data files and several demos in an effort to see if it was something I did.  I can only imagine what a less cautionary user has done to their system by now.  Even after a fix comes, Sony is going to have more than just P.R. fallout to deal with.

Yesterday, around 4pm Sony began fielding calls from upset PlayStation 3 customers around the world who have been denied service to the PlayStation Network (PSN).  The outage seems to only affect older models of the PS3 and not the recently released slim models.

This may not seem like such a big deal at first.  “So, you can’t logon to the PSN.  No big deal.”  Not so.  In order to play any games that you’ve downloaded from the internet (or that use trophy support) you must first:

1. Have an internet connection.
2. Be logged into the PSN.

I was not aware of this tragic fact until I attempted to play a game of The Last Guy on my PS3 yesterday afternoon.  I have the  60GB Ps1, PS2 Software Backward Compatible unit.

Around that time I had also been trying to upgrade my UPNP client on my Mac.  The problem also started right around the time the PS3 was performing a fairly hefty file copy from my Mac.  The copy was halted for some unknown reason and my PS3 shut off all by itself.  In other words, I picked a bad day to fiddle with my PS3.  I thought the problem was something I had done.  I had company for a movie last night so I just decided I would call Sony the following day to see if there was anything they could do.

That’s when I discovered it wasn’t just me.

As of this morning, the PSN is still unavailable.  According to this article they have no idea what the problem is.  When calling Sony you will likely get an automated message stating:  “Unfortunately we’re unable to handle your call at this time. For faster service [paraphrased] go to our website.”  If you happen to get through to Sony you get this fantastic message, “Due to the popularity of Sony services and products, we are unable to take your call at this time.”  What a load of complete bullshit.  It should say, “Due to a problem with the PSN, we are unable to take your call.” not some snowy canned message that completely ignores the problem.

The thing that I find most frustrating though is that if you’ve downloaded a game like Braid or The Last Guy, you cannot play it unless the PSN is available.  This is a HUGE shortcoming of the platform.  I for one will think twice before downloading ANYTHING from the PSN again.

Sony is not taking calls and no official announcement is yet released telling customers what the real problem is.

So if you receive an error: “8001050F – Hardware failure. Cannot update Firmware or connect to Internet” type of message – – you’ll have to sit tight until Sony fixes it.  Afterward, please call 1-800-345-7669 and give them an earful about games YOU PAID FOR THAT YOU CANNOT PLAY.

I won’t bother to post any more links to other articles.  Just google “PSN Play Station Network” and search the News section for a plethora of articles explaining how customers are outraged.

UPDATE: 11:01 AM CST

I should also mention this affects your PS3 titles that require trophy support to play.  Games such as Burnout Paradise, Conan and many many more require the PSN to operate today.

BluRay, PS1 and PS2 games are not affected as they do not require the PSN to function.

UPDATE: 1:00 PM CST

Sony has released a statement which includes a warning to NOT play your PS3 until the problem is resolved:

As you may be aware, some customers have been unable to connect to the PlayStation Network today. This problem affects the models other than the new slim PS3.

We believe we have identified that this problem is being caused by a bug in the clock functionality incorporated in the system.

Errors include:

• The date of the PS3 system may be re-set to Jan 1, 2000.
• When the user tries to sign-in to the PlayStation Network, the following message appears on the screen; “An error has occurred. You have been signed out of PlayStation Network (8001050F)”.
• When the user tries to launch a game, the following error message appears on the screen and the trophy data may disappear; “Failed to install trophies. Please exit your game.”
• When the user tries to set the time and date of the system via the Internet, the following message appears on the screen; “The current date and time could not be obtained. (8001050F)”
• Users are not able to playback certain rental video downloaded from the PlayStation Store before the expiration date.

We hope to resolve this problem within the next 24 hours. In the meantime, if you have a model other than the new slim PS3, we advise that you do not use your PS3 system, as doing so may result in errors in some functionality, such as recording obtained trophies, and not being able to restore certain data.

As mentioned above, Please be advised that the new slim PS3 is not affected with this error. We are doing our best to resolve the issue and do apologise for any inconvenience caused.

For the latest status on this situation please check either PlayStation.Blog, Twitter or PlayStation.com.

A new version of Blaster Master was just released on WiiWare. In case you don’t remember what Blaster Master is… here is the original NES version:

Blaster Master: Overdrive looks very faithful to the original. I’m gonna snag a copy with some WiiWare points I have laying around.

This is the 3rd game to tout the Blaster Master title. The unexpected sequel, Blaster Master: Blasting Again, was released on the PSX in 2001. As with a number of games in the late 90s and early 2000s, Blasting Again is a 3-D version of the classic. It contains one of the best “Worst Voice Acting in a Video Game” moments. Once you get past the intro though, it’s supposedly pretty fun to play. I obtained a copy of the PSX version today to give it a whirl. For the awfulness of the PSX intro… Read More »»