TV Game

retail memorabilia #2

Today’s piece of old merch is…this:

I’m still not entirely sure what it is. It’s promoting Killzone 2, which for the record, was fucking awful. I bought it because I wanted a second multiplayer game on my PS3 besides Metal Gear Online, and it was one of the few games on the system that had custom soundtrack support. That’s about it, it was trash otherwise.

Here’s the back.

It’s not an envelope, as there’s no brad on the back. And even if it had one, I doubt that the post office would let you send out a package with a space nazi on it.

And it can’t be a folder, because it’s way too thin to hold more than a few pages. So it’s just a thing that exists and sits in a storage box in my closet.


Well, that was pretty disappointing. So to make up for that, I’m going to tell you about a little something called the Retail Loyalty Quiz. Where I worked (and I imagine it would be the same for places like Gamestop and Wal-Mart, places where vendors would visit), you would be given a web link by the local Sony vendor when you meet them for the first time. The Sony vendor I dealt with was nice, even if she towed the company line to a degree that bordered on cult-like.

Anyways. The point of this site was that you could take a series of quizzes that tested your ability to sell Sony shit. And if you did well enough, you would get points that you could then use to order things like terrible merchandise and terrible games. I’ll get to that last bit in a while.

Now, I don’t remember the link to this page. And even if I did, I haven’t worked at that job since 2009, so I wouldn’t be able to log in in the first place. But luckily, I made sure to screenshot some of the questions they would ask you. You’ll see why.

They start off fairly benign. But then they get some weird fucking answers pretty soon after.

So, after answering all these questions about girls not playing games and buying a new PS3 with the mega smash hit ATV Offroad Fury and playing it through a cable hooked to my brain, I ordered a game. I can’t remember the whole selection of games, but I remember they were all shit. And they were all late-era PS2 games, as this was still during a time when Sony wanted to get that last push for the system before throwing all their support into the PS3, which really needed it (this was back when Giant Enemy Crab jokes were still the height of comedy). I ended up ordering the least shitty game, Tourist Trophy on the Playstation 2. I could have done a lot worse than a game Google informed me was pretty much Gran Turismo but with motorcycles.

It’s been 12 years now, Sony, and if you ever want to actually send me a copy of the game, that would be cool! There’s still a blank spot on my shelf for it!

If there’s one thing you could take away from coming to my web site, it’s this: Sony owes me a copy of Tourist Trophy on PS2.

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