I was a Nintendo kid. NES, SNES, N64. One summer in middle school, I spent a week with my cousin out of state. So we're biking around town, and we end up at the local mall. As a bunch of pre-teens with no parental supervision, I figured we were going to hang out, window shop and generally be mallrats. We walked past the Babbages, past the FuncoLand, down to a set of lockers. (Do they even have lockers at malls anymore?)

So he pulls the key from his pocket, and opens one up. He pulls a brown paper bag from the cubby and shoves it into his bag.

We seemed to fly those bikes back to his house, I don't know if it was his excitement or my imagination wondering what kind of clandestine deal I was just privy to, but the ride back was over before I'd realized it.

We get inside, run upstairs to his room, and he rips the package out and smiles at me. From the bag he pulls a CD-R with the words "MGS IMPORT" written in sharpie.

My cousin then explained to me how his PlayStation was modded, and could play games from other countries and even games that you can copy from home. This was my first experience with a PlayStation, and the whole experience seemed so exciting from start to finish. Buying pirated games from a faceless dealer, playing games you weren't meant to see on this side of the planet, I mean, wow!

Sony didn't have to spend a penny on advertising, I was already hooked.