Hi everybody, guess what?! After over a decade of sticking with North American NTSC video game consoles, I have finally gotten my hands on a UK PAL PlayStation 2! I said before that I would get this idea underway before, didn't I? Well at last, the time has come to import a PAL PlayStation 2 all the way from the United Kingdom, along with this great video game called "Monster Trux Extreme: Arena Edition," which bizarrely, despite the monster truck being an American invention, was released for the PlayStation 2 exclusively in both Europe and Oceania. Normally I like to stick to the original PlayStation 2 from the early 2000s, but since I found a better deal on the PAL slim PS2, I decided to purchase it on eBay. Heck, I also decided it would be better if the small PS2 console helped save storage space when effortfully adding a foreign version of it to my video game console collection, which was successful. The model number, in case you're wondering, is actually SCPH-75003.

Additionally, I managed to use the official Sony Universal AC adapter for the slim PS2 and its Type A power cord (which I also purchased on eBay simultaneously) and my North American PlayStation 2 AV RCA cables, memory cards and DualShock 2 controller, which was a big money-saving plus! However, game save file data is region-locked and thus the ones from my North American NTSC PS2 games cannot be displayed as white blocks on PAL PlayStation 2 units when starting them up, so not much is shown on the PlayStation 2 startup screen at the beginning of this video. My UK PAL slim PS2 arrived here in the USA last week, but this game did not yet arrive in the mail until three days later. To celebrate the fact that I have unlocked the ability to play PAL-exclusive PS2 games (after eleven years of solely using NA NTSC video game console stuff) in my home country, the USA, I decided to record and upload this gameplay video!

About this game, it is totally great! This was one of the PAL exclusive PlayStation 2 games I included in Part 1 of My Custom North American NTSC PlayStation 2 Game Release Front Covers slideshow video series last year as a fake NTSC front cover in order to demonstrate what it would have officially looked like if this PS2 game was ever released in the United States and Canada (along with its outdoor counterpart, "Monster Trux Extreme: Offroad Edition"). This game contains knock-offs of real-life, retired Monster Jam trucks, which are Wrenchead.com and WCW Nitro Machine (which you may recognize if you're a long-time monster truck fan like I am). However, the pace is a bit slow for some reason, but gets better when using yellow boost pads and nitro powerups. You also have to be careful of how you handle your vehicle throughout races as you can only find repair wrenches at certain parts of tracks. Unfortunately, it's not like you're going to find and fetch them every few seconds nor get your truck automatically repaired five seconds after each time it crashes into something or gets hit by one of your opponents.

In addition to accidentally running into one of the tunnels' walls, I also show what happens when your vehicle is completely damaged, but luckily, I managed to make it to the finish line in first place on the final lap. This game was developed by Data Design Interactive, coming from the same people as Lego Rock Raiders, Tonka Space Station and Tonka Monster Trucks (which of course did get released in the continent of North America). If this version of this game ever came out as a USA/Canada NTSC version, I would have loved to buy it in a heartbeat instead of importing this UK PAL one! Nevertheless, it's fantastic!

See the black borders around the game itself? That has something to do with the fact that this game uses PAL signal, unlike the real North American NTSC console games I mainly play. It somehow reminds me of Humongous Entertainment PC games when played natively while your computer's display setting is higher than the HE game's. In fact, when I recorded this footage, despite using the same AV RCA cable as my main North American NTSC PlayStation 2 on this PAL slim unit, I had to switch the video signal from NTSC to PAL in Pinnacle Studio 15 this time (when I was using my Dazzle DVC100 capture device) so the visual content is displayed correctly. As a result, I was forced to save this video as a PAL video file due to the PAL region used in the raw footage.

I'd like to thank all the European and Oceanian PlayStation 2 fans here on YouTube for inspiring me to make my first ever video game console importing project possible! Enjoy!

Note: This video was reuploaded due to the one originally uploaded last night having its visual quality being a bit inferior when saved as a .wmv file in Sony Movie Studio Platinum 13.0, and the volume being too low.

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