This week, Sony announced the PlayStation 4 to the world. Some would argue that they left out key parts from their presentation, such as the release date and price. Some also argued that Sony did not show the system itself, but that would be a lie. IGN pointed out that Leonard Nimoy in fact presented the "PS4" in the past, and VOG's very own Bobby Blackwolf got his hands on that very "PS4" and some early prototype games!

For reference, here is the announcement video:

How I Came Upon The "PS4"

It all began with a weird noise coming from my parents' basement, where no, I do not live. My parents went to find a strange man by the name of John Titor, who claimed to be a time traveler. (For the record, I am very skeptical of this claim, as if there really WAS a time traveler named John Titor, wouldn't there be pages upon pages on the Internet about him?) He claimed to arrive in this:


He told me it was bigger on the inside. But, whatever. He led me over to this piece of hardware mastery that he brought from his time:


Why, it was the "PlayStation 4"!!! He also gave me several prototype games that I could take with me and try out the system. I then left, forgetting to decide to watch him leave to see if he was actually a time traveler or not. I guess the world will never know...

The Console

I brought it home and compared it to the video - yep, the same one.




I labeled some of the buttons on the front of the console. Obviously, you have the "Share" button to allow you to instantly upload your video clips to the cloud, but there is also a "Sculpt" button that I am assuming will be used by future Media Molecule games. The most surprising thing was the Difficulty slider right on the front of the console! I, obviously, have it set to my preferred setting.

The Games

I had a few prototype games along with the system. I'm not sure why they have different labelings on them, but I guess it's because they were prototypes and they were reusing other discs.




I didn't get a chance to really get into those games. But, I did check to see if the system was Backwards Compatible...I am sad to report that it is not:


However, I was REALLY excited that Watch_Dogs was included. Since I don't have the Dualshock 4, I decided instead to take advantage of the fact that I'm one of the five people in the world who currently own a PlayStation Vita, so I used that to try out the game:


There are a few other games that came with it but I'm not really sure I'm going to get into them anytime soon...But I can't believe they're remaking THAT game...Again!


Well, I hope Sony won't be too mad we "explored" their console so early from E3. Perhaps they'd like to invite us to check it out in June?

The Real Story: Obviously, this was an attempt at humor based around IGN's video. I grew up around electronics, and my father was always on the "cutting edge", so we actually had the first model laserdisc player ever released. In fact, it was bought from the only store at the time that sold them in the world, and it was in New Jersey of all places. We had about 50 laserdiscs from the 70's, and then they stopped making them. During the resurgence of laserdiscs in the 90's, we bought new players (that played the old discs!) and a whole bunch (hundreds!) of new movies. This particular player no longer functions, but the discs all still play in functional players. The phone booth was built by my grandfather, and I am currently in a struggle with my siblings on who gets to move it to their man cave when they have room for it.