This is the first in a series of entries by Joel Johnson, who is currently in Australia on Microsoft's dime to write about the Water Balloon Challenge. Hence, 'WBC 360.'

April 18th, 4:40P EST - I AIM'd Crecente before I left, "Probably a good time to break out the PSP again, huh?" Even though the battery life of the PSP isn't everything it could be, I figured between the PSP and the DS, I'd get a few hours of gaming in on the flight. Before I left for the airport, I rushed to my corner game store and bought a couple of games: Daxter and Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories. (In retrospect, I probably should have picked more dissimilar titles.)

Imagine my frustration as I popped in Daxter only to find that the game requires a firmware update to be playable—a firmware update that's impossible to do sitting here on my plane with no AC plug in sight. I'm sure the package gave me fair warning of the firmware version required. That makes the concept of updating firmware on a mobile gaming device no less infuriating.

So thanks for this, Sony. I just spent nearly a hundred bucks on new games for my PSP, but because of your stupid anti-piracy procedures—stubby flailings against the tide of free time graced in abundance to eastern European crackers—I'm carrying around three hundred dollars worth of useless hardware.

On the up side, I'll probably set a new personal Tetris DS best.