So, I got this new video game console…

The looks I get on the subway is what a Lambo owner gets at every stoplight.

Yes, this is what I game on: a Samsung Galaxy S3 with a Playstation 3 controller hooked together by a GameKlip.

To answer the immediate questions: No, I am not a hipster. I am not trying to do things more difficult on purpose. I am not trying to be provocative with my choice of color in hand controllers. Rather, this is my one an only option for all my gaming needs.

Here’s the part where I explain: as a lifelong gamer, I’d be willing to pony up for a Playstation 4 or Xbox One even though it’s not worth it yet. However, living in the country that I do (China) does not allow for proper gaming: my two choices here are to pay for a gimped system or to adopt piracy as another member of my family. Other options are not so convenient: buying a console from another country is to eventually be confronted with region issues, and I neither have the confidence or bucks to build myself a prime specimen to join the PC master race.

Needless to say, life is awful. I tell my clergyman I still haven’t played XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and he just shrugs and suggests I talk to the guy across the street next Saturday.

But all is not lost. I have been able to play Grand Theft Auto III on my Android phone, and playing it inspired me the same way as when I first played it on the Playstation 2.

The pink controller is missing stickers, otherwise it’d be even cuter.

To satisfy my gamer requirements, I was encouraged enough to go buy the attached peripherals. No more would I have to rub my thumbs in the sticky residue of their own filth across the screen of the phone.

That leaves us with one problem: games for Android suck. After maxing out all the stats for Dead Trigger, there was a huge emptiness in my heart that this platform simply could not fill. That is, until I found out about emulators….

Now I’ve come onto a huge library of games, more games than I know what to do with. Finding myself a Playstation emulator, the themes popped up right away in my head: is it redundant to play Playstation games on an Android? Do games from twenty years ago have any relevance in a market where video games are regularly free-to-play? Is it nostalgia, or was the Playstation generation “the greatest of all time”? (sorry, WWII)

Seeing as I game too often and don’t write enough, this is the challenge I pose for myself for the next year: can I write about the modern significance of a Playstation video game on a daily basis, once per day?

At the very least, there will be jokes.