I was there, Gandalf…
No, seriously. I worked at an EB Games in Orlando. My shift was to start later that afternoon, but I wanted to get my system that morning (I also had a pre-order for it before the official pre-order process started). I entered the West Oaks Mall super early and strolled right past the massive line of guys waiting for the gate to roll up. I shouted in, “yo, let me get my system!”
One of the other employees said, “if you want it you better get in here.” Audible groans and clear anger starting to rise from the dudes in line.
“Easy, I’m an employee.”
I go in, was handed my PS2, then I clocked in and started helping out when the gate rolled up and all the dudes started streaming in. It was quick, efficient, and with very little drama. Then I went home, played exactly twenty minutes of TimeSplitters, and then went back for my normal shift where I spent the rest of the day informing people that, yes, we were sold out of PlayStation 2 consoles.
They’ve only had 4 PlayStations in 26 years? Wow that seems low for some reason. I always though it was new console every like 3-4 years but its closer to 7
So I was at scout camp when the PS2 launched and some of us had our drivers licenses and a car. Steve wanted to go to the mall that was 30 min away and get a PS2. Steve asked a guy Nick to drive him, and Nick’s condition was that Steve had to buy him a lobster. So long story short some where there are photos of a lobster being put on people’s faces and we had lobster at 2 am at scout camp.
Having gone to scout camp many times myself, this story checks out and is very plausible.
Oh god I remember when stores would only get like 5 units a week if lucky and would sell out within hours. Don’t know how I managed getting one but I did. It was also around the same time DVDs were becoming available and for many, the PS2 was their first DVD player.
A big driving point of the PS2 was that it was literally the cheapest DVD player on the market… and I’m not talking about being 50 dollars cheaper than a cheap PoS one, cause at that time there were no cheap PoS dvd players… I’m talking hundreds of dollars cheaper than the most affordable DVD player.
It was a brilliant marketing move.
There were a lot more brick and mortar stores back then. We used to have 3 gamestops in the same mall plaza. So you could call and have them hold it for you or rush to the store before they sold it.
I didnt realize there was such a rush on PS2s.
I just walked into K-Mart (Sigh… I miss K-Mart…) and bought one on release day without issue, Maybe no one thought K-Mart would have them and thats why…
Kmart was actually a hidden gem when it came to stuff like this. If a popular game was sold out everywhere, there was a good chance Kmart still had it.
K-Mart was fuckin fantastic. so much better than walmart. They always had great stuff, and at good prices too… and they waited until after thanksgiving to put up and out the christmas displays.
Fuck Eddie Lampert, ayn rand wanna be piece of shit.
Wonder where she is now. Did she stay at Best Buy? Is she the regional manager by now? Is she alive? There’s a not zero chance she got murdered.
Let’s find out.
Tineye brought me to https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/9/24/20835653/trump-overtime-pay-rule-explained
Name from caption: Desiree Garcia of El Paso, TX
I agree that she’s likely in her early 20s here. Photo from 2000, so approx 45 right now.
Sadly, no other images from the photos added to Getty, where lots of sites use this image give us any more to go on.
This image is hard to use for any facial recognition sites, and even just being a human looking at this, I can’t easily find anyone with the same name from general indexing sites (she might also be married and changed the last name) to get much farther than this short of spending time and money looking at high school yearbook sites and facebook to see what lines up. Just to get a clearer photo, just to use PimEyes on her.
Remember kids, anyone can do OSINT on you, so be careful what you post online. You leave a lot of data in your wake, even if you don’t intend to.
You know she never signed a model release.
Yeah I think you proved your point.
That’s a weird direction to take this line of thinking.
It’s been 13 minutes since FarMaster69 wrote this. What have they done in the meantime? Did they brew coffee? Read an article? Get trampled to death by a herd of rampaging elephants? There’s a non-zero chance that FarMaster69 has died to a herd of elephants.
One minute ago rabbidhamster put into words what we are all thinking about fartmaster 69. Is he dead? Are the elephants still there? Did they get him find out next time on dragon Ball? Z
And I’m seeing this at 3+ hours.
It might only take one elephant, if FarMaster69 was in the wrong place at the wrong time. So anywhere between 1 and all elephants on earth might have trampled them by now. The chances of that happening increase every second.
Holy crap! This is that guy? I thought I read the news alert wrong!
What does he know that we don’t?
Crushed to death Black Friday, November 2000 by rabid customers trying to get a PS2. 😔
She really got down on Friday 🎶
I do this a lot also, especially with animals in tv shows/youtube videos. No idea why my brain goes down that road.
If this lady is in her early 20s in this picture, she has to be in her mid to late 40s now. I wonder how she’s doing too.
I do it with movies. If I’m watching something really old I’ll lean over and say, “fun fact: everyone in this movie… is dead”
It appears they found a way to stay alive.
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PS2 library was incredible. Golden era was having a PS2, GameCube, and OG Xbox (and free time)
Yeah, I know everyone thinks the generation they grew up with is the best, but I really think the PS2 was the golden age. 3D games were new enough that developers did a lot of experimentation and took risks to made a bunch of really interesting and fun games that would never get made by a big studio today, and the graphics were far enough along that a lot of the games still look really good, especially the ones that leaned into the limitations and used stylized cell shading instead of trying to make it look realistic.
Just to further illustrate your point: The difference between ps1 and ps2 is staggering and was mindblowing. The difference between ps2 and ps5 barely piques my interest.
AND the early PS2 models had backwards compatibility with PS1 discs, adding that incredible library from the outset.
AND it played DVDs.
It was too good.
This always reminds me that the most-sold PlayStation model is the only one I never owned. When it came out I was going through a PC gamer phase.
