A Playstation Mind

From our friends at CNN comes the story of a man:



This man is a piano virtuoso. It is postulated that the intense pressure of playing the piano caused a psychotic break for this speechless master. I was completely taken by the look of deep saddness, and the hint of genius, in his eyes. Surely this is no crazy person, surely this is a publicity stunt.

I could only imagine the stresses of playing the piano at his level. I was a piano hack in elementary school and barely learned to bang out chopsticks before wanting to remove tufts of my own hair.

Try it yourself and play a java piano . Alternatively, if you have the courage, look deep into these maddening keys:



These memories... they made me do a little soul searching.


What other endeavors of man put such performance pressure on timid souls?


What other common activity requires the pressing of buttons, with just the right pressure, at just the right time, using combinations and reflex and muscle memory to guide you through to victory?


A long pause,


then a thought:





Clearly only console gaming approaches the complexity of piano mastery. The playstation II controller has 14 pressure-sensitive buttons.

So what, you might say. A piano has 88 keys.

Yes, but a playstation controller button is, on average, 10 times smaller than a piano key. This means that these buttons are 10 times harder to hit than a piano key.

Based on my calculations, then, a playstation game is approximately 59% harder to play than a piano.

Based on my current success (or lack thereof) with Hot Shots Golf FORE! you may soon see my speechless visiage wandering downtown London, scribbling pictures of a television to any who would look at it. Although, truth be told, this will soon be a common site, with today's Playstation 3 product unveiling.

-Ed