i love the PSP to pieces. it's probably my favorite handheld, if not console, ever, despite its shortcomings. while Nintendo's offerings in terms of handhelds had a harder-hitting lineup of exclusives and features, i find the enginuity of the PSP to be something incredible. the original DS wouldn't let you go into the settings on the menu without needing a restart, and you're telling me the PSP has a full-blown XMB? it plays MP3s, movies, lets you use Skype, download little indie titles and original PS1 games- oh, and speaking of which! the PSP is a great machine for playing PS1 games on the go, because it runs every single one of them pretty damn flawlessly. (unless it needs the Dualshock, then you gotta upgrade to the Vita, another console i wanna talk about at some point...) i also love how instead of cartridges or something normal like that, the PSP uses optical disks. that's right, the UMD! an itty-bitty disk in this cute little plastic caddy, so overengineered, but so cool.

"alright mot," you say, "we get it, you like the PSP. why are you telling us this shit?" hold your horses, i'm getting there! the primary issue i have with the PSP is its lack of truly exclusive games. it's great for playing PS1 games and ports of older console games, but when it comes to games that are exclusive (and that fit my tastes) it's a little on the light side. so when searching for things to play, i had to sort of... dig deep. and when you're forced to dig deep, you end up playing stuff you probably wouldn't otherwise. which brings us to our main course...

work time fun!

i think the first time i saw this thing was in a Vinesauce Vinny video back in the day, and i retained pretty much nothing about it. then, in 2019 when i got my PSP, i was searching for games to... legally buy and play on my new system, when i saw it again. i downloaded it, played it, and said to myself, "wow, this is... not very fun. i'm going back to Patapon." yeah, i wasn't in on the WTF train yet. took me until about two years later when i picked it up again on my Vita, and it started to really click for me.

work time fun is a minigame collection where you do jobs to earn money to use on vending machines to unlock more jobs and little trinkets. it's pretty clear from the get-go that WTF is trying to comment on capitalism and all that, with its dry and bleak sense of humor. a lot of people draw comparisons between work time fun and the WarioWare series, but i don't think that's entirely accurate. i think a closer comparison in terms of gameplay would be something like Bishi Bashi Special, WTF's minigames are a lot longer and more involved than something like the microgames of WarioWare. and while WarioWare is trying to be weird and goofy, i think WTF's tone is a little more uncomfortable and satirical, which is cool in its own way, at least to me. the jobs in WTF can range from things as monotonous and simple as putting caps onto pens or sorting chicks, to more bizarre jobs like catching baseballs for the grim reaper (who happens to be a baseball player) or doing a chicken race where you have to stop as close to the edge of a cliff as possible without driving off.

now, are these minigames as fun as something like WarioWare, or even Bishi Bashi Special? well... no, not really. they feel more like work than anything. but like, that's kind of the point. i dunno, i can respect a game like this sacrificing most of its fun factor in favor of dedicating itself to its themes and atmosphere, i think that's super bold and out there. plus, i think the atmosphere that it creates is super unique and interesting. there's a feature in the game where you get emails from random people that you can't respond to, and it's kind of interesting to keep up with all these weirdos and what they're up to. i especially like the photorealistic images that are attached to each sender, you gotta wonder who these people are or what they're up to these days. there's also this huge collection of trinkets you can get from the vending machines that serve zero practical purpose, but each and every one has a little sprite and flavor text to go with it, which is like... so completely unnecessary, but i love that it's here.

keep in mind, WTF is a first-party Sony game. this isn't some random game that was just pumped out and left at that, this was something Sony themselves put together, and i find that endlessly interesting. it totally feels like some random B-game made by just a couple of guys that somehow got approved to be on a console, yet it's made by the top of the top, and its style and vibe is so unlike anything else i've ever played, not just on the PSP but on any major console really.

so, here's the bottom line. is work time fun... fun? no, not particularly. but i still love it for its completely out there ideas and just how of-the-era it is. it embodies that early 2000's weirdness that i'm so addicted to, and for that it's absolutely worth checking out. (plus, i can say from experience that it is a surprisingly good time-waster when you're actually at work.) give work time fun a shot if you haven't already, it's really something else.