Happy 20th Birthday to The Console Brand Made By Microsoft - The Bear and Badger

afgavinstan

Ok, extremely platform specific thread.

Fair play to them sticking it out. From the OG launch, to the highs of Live and 360, the horrific depths of the One reveal, and back again.

I remember the photos of the massive X shaped console in Edge and thinking "lol Bill Gates isn't a gamer like me, this gon suck sooooo badddd".

My first experience was when my childhood best mates parents divorced. His dad was in full-blown "reliving his youth" phase. Got a swanky pad in the next town, a brand new Audi TT that I couldn't fit in, and the new hotness that had just launched that was the OG Xbox. I definitely think there was a part of that him just trying to look cool to his sons that were 14 like me and 12. He never played it and I don't think he was great to their mum. Anyway, me and Jonny would stay there and rent games from the Blockbuster down the road. But it was all about Halo and Project Gotham. And being weirded out by the black and white buttons on the big ol' Duke.

Year or two later, my brother got his own machine. By that point, the S controller was the standard. He had the limited edition crystal console, a cool by-product of then working at the local indie game store, could blag whatever he wanted. I remember really enjoying the XSN sports games, and generally finding most multiplatform games just looked that little but nicer. Of course, our PS2 was still king, but the Xbox got more than a look-in. Great memories of the Half Life 2 port too, since I didn't have a PC capable of it.

360. The blades. The cheevos. The friends list. Gears 2. Being called a cunt numerous times. Cod lobbies. The birth of Friday Night Forza on FM2. Left4Dead. Halol 3. A truly brilliant controller. So, so so many good things about it. A wonderful machine. May it live forever.

The One. Hmmm, not the greatest legacy to begin with but it finished strong, and of course, we got 3 Forza Horizon's so it ain't all bad.

Had a year with my Series X and I do really like it. All the GP stuff and integration, I am absolutely feasting these days.

But anyway, fair fucks and a big Thanking You from me for the last twenty years. They dragged me online, gave me countless memories with you all, and while the glory days of the 360 have gone and other successes elsewhere has us all kinda fractured a little bit into our own little groups and niches, it's cool we're all still going.

There's a celebratory livestream this evening at 6pm UK time, but until then, post your memories from time spent of the Xboxes.

*raises glass*

EvilRedEye

Twenty years and not a single, solitary game.

mistercrayon

The RRoD response was fucking bold. Easy if you’re ms.

davyK

Original Xbox left me cold. Never saw a reason to get one.

The 360 however. One of the greatest consoles ever for its library and the integration of online.

I've had no motivation to buy into newer tech. But I'm the same with PS. PS2 is as far as I went on that line.

Dark Soldier

360 is the greatest console ever imo.

I hadn't touched gaming for a couple of years then got my student loan and first thing I did was buy one. Booted up Gears of War and that was a holy shit moment. Prob my peak gaming years of end of my youth into adulthood kinda shit.

CoD4 with a squad from here every Friday night was an absolute joy. Last time I really bothered with MP.

LivDiv

Xbox
I chopped and changed consoles a bit this gen and have love for all 3. I remember riding my bike back from town with an Xbox in a carrier bag on the handlebars, that was interesting. The Xbox though I think set some real trends we still have now. Internal storage and modem. A properly developed and reliable online system that set the standard. Halo and Halo 2 were THE games but quite often multi-plats ran best on Xbox and being able to play your own tunes via the HDD was a great feature. I still say Spawn was the best guest fighter in SC2 as well.
Best pad of the gen and it was a good gen for pads.

360
The daddy. The best Xbox there has been really despite the RRoD issues of the early models. Online console play matured into not just an additional feature but a primary reason to be a game and even the only way to actually play certain games eventually. Great pad. A ton of memories from a very long console cycle that didnt outstay its welcome. Halo 3 is a biggy. Fallout 3 and NV, Skyrim, Gears, Bioshock too many to mention really. A fantastic generation for gaming.´I ´think 3D games really came into their own by this point, way less clunk in general. Alot changed over the courser of this gen. We went from mainly 4:3 SD SCART with wired ethernet connections to 16:9 HD HDMI and WIFI options. Memory cards also got the hoof by the end of the gen.
I remember the day I got mine. Not that long after launch a guy wanted rid on eBay. Some bollocks about his ex buying it for him and him wanting rid so I got it for a steal. First student on campus with one and it led to many a LAN/online gatherings to play Halo 2 and 3. Sometimes online with people a couple of doors down or just around the corner so running to another house in socks to gloat was not uncommon, there were even occasions of interhouse real life teabagging.
I think I had 3 units total but the gen carried me right through uni and into my first career job and countless nights playing with workmates. Ive never laughed as hard playing games as I did playing Rayman Origins, 4 player, many beers. Those Rayman memories are ones i hold dear as reminders of a great time in my life and of a friend/workmate/housemate at the time sadly no longer with us.

Xbox One
Yeah. Not great was it. Some decent titles, good pad, ended up quite cheap compared to a PS4. Great media device. Not one to be remembered really even if it redeemed itself somewhat from a disastrous unveiling. Shrug.

Xbox Series S
So far so good. A great little thing that kind of just sits there unassuming, quiet, small, reliable a year in. Combined with Game Pass feeds me games at an alarming rate asking little of me in return. Like the past couple of gens of Xboxes it is also a great media unit for every streaming app I have looked for plus Plex. Its hard to say I really love it as much as I love what it delivers, the actual physical thing I can forget even exists in my living room sometimes.

Kow

The 360 is a COAT.

[Deleted User]

They certainly played the long game with me. No interest in any of them until I got a Series X this for the GP.

About ten years ago I had such a lack of interest that my bro-in-law gave me a 360 for free and I donated it to charity months later.

x

Blue Swirl

I bought my OG Xbox when my local branch of GAME opened - they were selling them for £99 when the RRP was still £150. I got mine with the initial plan of installing Linux on it, just to stick it to The Man. The machine came with a free game... in my case, a little title called Halo. I never did get around to installing Linux.

Fast forward a few years, and I'm queueing up at midnight to buy the cat helmet edition of Halo 3 and a green 360 to play it on. Probably some of the best money I've ever spent.

With the One, I didn't jump on immediately. I liked the idea of waving my way through the UI, but I knew the experience would be less Minority Report and more shit interpretive dance. I eventually caved when the One S launched. I'd probably still have it today if I hadn't moved to Taiwan. It got flogged towards the price of a plane ticket.

As for the Series... well. I want to buy discs from time to time, but I reckon the X would obstruct the view of my telly, SEGA Tower of Power-style. If you can find a place here selling Xbox stuff you can find the machines without much issue. Most places only sell PlayStation and Switch stuff, and often only one or the other.

TheBoyRoberts

So many happy memories of the xBoxes - I'll share my most random!

After graduating I managed to get a job in London. One of my mates helped me move down and on one sunny afternoon in August, we packed the car and headed to the big smoke.

We needed to fill the car up with fuel, so we headed to the local petrol station which was about 5 mins drive from my house. On the way round, we were getting flashed, beeped at and folks were frantically waving at us as we passed. I thought "well this is nice, all these canny folks saying goodbye to me as I head to London".

I got out of the car to start filling the tank up for my mate and what should be on the roof of the car? The OG xBox! The beast of a console hadn't even moved an inch!!

Blue Swirl

TheBoyRoberts wrote:

The beast of a console hadn't even moved an inch!!

Heh. It was a behemoth.

Reminds me of this, if we're talking university and Xboxen.

Yossarian

GunValkyrie was excellent.

Blue Swirl

Yoss' post is sponsored by SEGA.

hunk

Og xbox was solid.
Console was clunky and build quality suspect (shitty cappacitors, a stunt they'd somewhat repeat with 360's rrod) but the software was amazing. DOA3, the Halo series, JSRF, Outrun2, Ninja Gaiden black, pgr, forza. Standardised online play, pad layouts and internal hdd. Was my console of choice after the dc died.

Diluted Dante

I wondered how the OG Xbox pad compared to the Series X, so I put one next to it.

I moved the crane out of shot first obviously.

davyK

I only got a 360 when I saw it got modern 2D shooting games. It got great support from Cave - the Daddy of that genre.

But I have since built up a rather nice library that suits my tastes. The XBL content is great too - I started with Pacman CE but Trials HD is one of the best games ever made.

afgavinstan

If Xbox announce Outrun 2 backwards compatibility tonight I will cry real tears

bad_hair_day

Came for Halo
Stayed for Sea of Thieves

Dark Soldier

afgavinstan wrote:

If Xbox announce Outrun 2 backwards compatibility tonight I will cry real tears

If they announce Trials Evo back compat I'll be joining you

Kow

They'll probably announce that Game Pass is going up to 40 quid a month.

regmcfly

It's on here plenty but man the 360 was my gateway drug back into gaming after getting more interested in socialising during the first couple of years of uni. Didn't get one until nearly 2007 and my first games were Just Cause and Viva Piñata as they should be.

Moving to Edinburgh in 2008 and not having pals in the city meant that the Xbox became my social life. Hence FNF, hours spent in Cod4, getting drunk with Unlikely and playing through the Halo 3 campaign on Co op, getting peer pressured into GOW2 Horde (on the Friday it dropped I refused to buy it, by Saturday morning I had grabbed a copy from Sainaburys.) But the big yin, and no one else has mentioned it, was the beautiful flame that burned twice as bright, 1 vs 100. What a fucking time.

Flora and I bought an OG Kinect on day one and pretended it worked for a long time. During the halcyon days of Lovefilm I reached a personal nadir playing Kinect Star Wars one Easter holiday but that in itself is a mad memory.

The One was, tbh, a functional disaster. Mine ultimately went to a forumite after I boxed it up prematurely, but it was the system I played Titanfall 2 on, and did give a pretty decent Dead Rising (3). Afraid I can't say much more on it than that, but the Series X is getting all the gaming time at the moment with Gamepass and Forza.

Happy Easter Xbox.

regmcfly

Jeff Grubb dropped thar

Spoiler:

btw.

afgavinstan

1 vs 100 is rumoured for a comeback, btw. Fuck yeah. Damnyeah, even.

Edit: my man

afgavinstan

Here's the vid for the stream starting in 40 mins

EvilRedEye

No, but in all seriousness...

Xbox: Just came at the wrong time in my life. If I'd been older and consequently had more income I would have got all the consoles of that generation. I tried out Halo MP with a friend in a shop once and it was fun.

Xbox 360: Had a lot of fun with this - it often beat out PS3 in head-to-heads so I experienced a decent portion of that gaming generation on this.

Xbox One: Bad initial concept, not really much in the way of exclusives - ended up ignoring.

Xbox Series X: Had a decent time with this so far, has done well competing for my time with the Switch and PS5. Think this will be a strong generation for Xbox.

Matt_82

Xbox: I liked it.

360: Didn't have one.

One Didn't have one.

Series S: I like it.

Wookienopants

Xbox: didn't have one. Wasn't interested.
360: just the best. So many happy memories and awesome experiences.
One: some great experiences. Still massively prefer it to a playstation.
Series X : sex in a tower

RedDave2

afgavinstan wrote:

If Xbox announce Outrun 2 backwards compatibility tonight I will cry real tears

Given all the shit with brexit, trump, covid and the climate crisis, its the least they could do.

afgavinstan

we didn't get it but we got Ridge Racer 7 and Skate 2 and..

BINARY DOMAIN

YAAAAAAAASSSS

kestla

Xbox: Being wowed by the lighting of the original Splinter Cell and spending many an hour at Uni playing 4 player Halo when I should have been studying.

360: Had a few years away from gaming but my first proper job after Uni meant I finally had disposable income which went on a 360 and a HD Ready Samsung. 720p Table Tennis blew me away and then was obsessed with Rainbow6 Vegas and even joined a clan. Left4Dead, all night ProEvo & Fifa tournaments, just the absolute peak of my gaming life if terms of time and money to just do as I pleased.

One: Bought one, but wasn't as time rich. Moved in with the wife once married and only had the time for late night sessions once she'd gone to bed. Then our daughter arrived and time went out the window and sleep became more precious than gaming.

I don't think I'll ever enjoy gaming as much as the 360 era, and I will forever be nostalgic about that time. Absolute King.

regmcfly

afgavinstan wrote:

we didn't get it but we got Ridge Racer 7 and Skate 2 and..

BINARY DOMAIN

YAAAAAAAASSSS

LETS FUCKING GO

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