Music 3000 sampler for ?20

Uh-oh, we're writing about a music program for PS2! This may not mean much to you (in other words, you're permitted to hit 'Back'), but to us it means a weeklong onslaught of emails from companies with PC-based music programs, who are no doubt flabbergasted, bewildered and appalled that we would even consider promoting one of their competitors when we keep fobbing them off with excuses about their software falling outside our remit. To those chaps and chapettes, we promise we'll look at anything you produce, as long as you release it on a games console.

Not that it's worth your while, as our ever-patient friends at Jester will happily testify. We're slacker than an incontinent bladder when it comes to anything that isn't a videogame. In fact, today marks an anniversary even greater than that of the Queen's coronation - as we recall, calendars weren't even invented when we first took delivery of Music 3000 review code, and it wasn't until yours truly broke out the cat o' nine tails last week that Eurogamer's musical duo Martin and Mark finally threatened to produce some copy on the subject - something I have firm assurances they will do today.

Anyway! We should probably get back to the meat of this trifling story, which is that Jester's Music 3000 for PS2 (available now for £29.99, published by Sony), will shortly be joined at retail by a £19.99 USB sampler, used to insert chunks of your own music collection and even your own vocals into ongoing work via the front of the console. As you can no doubt tell from the attached image, Jester's sampler even slots neatly into the PS2 DVD case where a memory card would normally go. The developer had originally planned to plonk it in with the disc, but "factors beyond Jester's control" meant it was impossible to do this. Perhaps next time.

So, if you want a cheap and cheerful way of torturing your PS2's audio decoder, then head down to your local games retailer this month and p-p-p-p-pick up a sampler! And read all about Music 3000 later today.