How many of you who played RPGs back in the NES days remember having to hold reset in whenever you turned the game off? I remember first hearing about this "bug" around the time of Zelda and Final Fantasy.

Some games just told you it was a bug, others made up strange and corny stories to explain the process. ("If you don't hold down reset while turning the power off, the wizard will escape and erase your save files")

This was a bug in the hardware system, and there wasn't anything that could really be done about it in software. Nintendo told us about it, and told us how to avoid it, which is about all that could have been done.

Although you may not know it, the PSX also suffers from a hardware bug. However instead of informing us of the problem, and telling us how it can be fixed, Sony, in it's infinite wisdom, has decided that the best course of action is to deny that the bug even exists.

I first began to notice the bug over a year ago, when I started playing FF7. The FMVs would start to get jittery, they would skip a few frames, and after a short while, it would be missing more frames than it was getting.

I had gotten my PSX used, and figured this was just one of those risks from buying used hardware. I would turn it off for awhile, and then start it up again, and sometimes the problem would be fixed, sometimes not. After awhile, i started noticing slowdowns as the PSX tried to load information after battles. Some of my strongest memories of FF7 involve broken FMVs and long load times.

These problems continued, to greater and lesser degrees, with later RPGs. Final Fantasy Tactics had minor problems, Breath of Fire 3 locked up several times after battle, often at annoying points, Xenogears had some problems as well. When i got Azure Dreams, things started out okay, but as I progressed in the game, the problems got worse and worse. It would take several seconds to load the attack animation, sometimes halting completely. Sometimes opening and closing the lid would get it going again, sometimes not.

In frustration, i started searching the web, trying to find if anyone had had similar problems, and if there was anyway to fix it. If found the Playstation Workshop, and discovered that my problem wasn't due to mishandling by a previous owner, it's actually quite common in older playstations.

The website describes two mechanical problems, and since then I've been told of a third. Although the website describes repair and replacement methods, two of those problems have a very simple solution. Turn the playstation upside down.

Amazed that I had never heard of this trick before, I immediately tried turning my playstation upside down, and starting up Azure Dreams again. Everything worked perfectly, and since then I have not had any problem with FMVs or with load times.

I found out later from a friend who works at a game development studio that everyone there keeps their playstation on it's side, just like most PCs are made these days. What was the reason for this odd behavior? Because like others, they had found that putting the PSX anything other than right-side up prevents one of the two mechanical problems mentioned on the Playstation Workshop, and also prevents overheating, the other major cause of FMV and load time lag, due to the location of the ventilation grills on the bottom of the unit.

Sony has even rejected some RPGs when they were first submitted, because the testers at Sony experienced frame skips in FMV. Problems that could only be reproduced by the developer's Quality Assurance people by turning a playstation right-side up, and letting it run for several hours, giving it time to heat up. However according to Sony, this problem does not exist, therefore all fault must lie with the developer.

In order to fix this problem, another recent game would "watch" the FMV sequences. If frame skips are detected, the user is warned, and the game suggests that the PSX should be turned off for awhile so it can "rest."

Since Sony denies that this problem exists, you'll never see an official warning. But if you are being frustrated by broken FMVs and eternal load sequences, before you try to take your PSX apart or buy a new one, try turning it upside-down first, and see what happens.