With the recent Xbox Games Showcase, some modicum of faith is being restored to the Xbox brand. Exciting as those games are, however, I still can’t move past the absolutely horrendous business practices Microsoft has been implementing with their games division these last few years. Hopefully those games turn out great; I certainly don’t want to live in a world where a new Doom game disappoints. But you’ll have to forgive me if they alone don’t make me optimistic for the future of Xbox.
But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. I’ve already spouted plenty of negativity and criticism at Microsoft over the years, especially this one. I want to be more positive today. Instead of lamenting a tragic present or dreading an uncertain future, I’m going to take a look back at a pleasant past.
As much as I bully it now, I still love Xbox. Or at least, I love what Xbox used to be. I grew up in the early 2000s, at the end of the original Xbox’s lifespan and the beginning of the 360’s. Some of my earliest memories center around that original console. And when I say earliest, I mean four years old, only just starting to develop brain functionality early.
To this day, I still remember my earliest proper memories. The first, the moment I came into cognizance of my own existence, was me playing with Legos in the tub when I was four. The second and far more impactful was my fifth birthday, when I opened the very first present I can remember: a copy of ‘Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee‘ for the Xbox.
Holy shit, dudes, I played the hell out of this game as a kid! It quickly became a mainstay with me and my two brothers (though my younger brother was still an infant at the time, so largely between me and my older brother.) We’d spend hours in the versus mode, sometimes fighting, sometimes just wrecking the city and messing around. I still have PTSD of my brother spamming Megalon’s underground grab attack. Hell, my younger brother and I still occasionally boot up the game and have a great time!
Even if the little bastard inherited the Megalon cheese.
Another mainstay with me and my brother was an ARPG called ‘Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes‘. My first D&D game, first ARPG, and first proper co-op game. Unfortunately, since we were both kids, we didn’t quite understand the numbers side of the RPG, so we weren’t especially good at it.
But we did find a way around that. See, my brother found a way to make the mage character ridiculously overpowered. Then we found a way to break the game so we could both play as the same mage. So the two of us would just duplicate the character, then spam the same overpowered spells together and blow everything away. If that ain’t good brotherly bonding, I don’t know what is.
How? I don’t remember, dude, that was nearly twenty years ago. I didn’t even remember what the game was called before I wrote this part!
There was another ARPG that hooked me and would not let go: ‘X-Men: Legends.’ Being a huge X-Men fan as a youngin, I naturally played the holy hell out of this game. But this was still around the same age as I had been when I played the prior game, and my knowledge of numbers and RPGs had not grown in the slightest. This game was really, really hard to my little toddler brain. Luckily, Wolverine has his healing factor, so I managed to beat the game not by playing well, but by running around like a headless chicken while his health slowly healed and chipping away at every boss and enemy.
Why work smarter, not harder when you can do both at once? Tagline of my childhood.
On the subject of RPGs, I can’t ignore ‘Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.’ Before I was an old and jaded nerd, I was a bright-eyed kid who loved Star Wars. I didn’t even know how the game worked mechanically; I saw the title, and I was in.
That first playthrough was an adventure I will never forget. My first narrative-focused choice-based RPG with Jedi and Sith and Mandalorians and everything else a young dork could ever want! I was utterly horrible at it, but I was so engrossed in the story that nothing could stop me from playing!
Holy shit, I still remember discovering the Revan twist for the first time! It’s no exaggeration to say that moment changed my life! The influence it’s had over my own writing is significant to say the least!
While we’re discussing games that completely changed my life: ‘Halo‘. Long time readers will know that I have been a Halo fan for as long as I can remember. It’s not only changed my childhood, but a large portion of my teenage and adult years.
I’ve always been a socially awkward person. Connecting with others is a constant challenge for me, even to this day. Yet I have found that, among men my age, there’s a universal language that almost immediately breaks down social barriers: nostalgia for Halo. I’ve forged many a friendship thanks to these games, some of which I still have to this day.
I can vaguely remember going to a LAN party for ‘Halo 2‘ with my Dad and brothers when I was a wee lad. Granted, I was too young to remember it very clearly now, nearly twenty years later. But even then, I could feel the energy in the room around me. Everyone came to play Halo and have a great time, and by god, we did!
Sometimes I would just fuck around in Forge with my bros. Such as the time we constructed what we called the ‘Icarus Cannon’ in ‘Halo: Reach.’ Basically, we wanted to use an angled gravity-lift to launch ourselves across the map, because why not? After several hours of tinkering, we managed to get the thing working, and with a casualty rate of less than eighty percent!
The secret was to hit the ground with the Gravity Hammer the moment before impact. Ten percent of the time, it worked one hundred percent of the time!
Finally, there is my favorite game of all time: ‘Psychonauts.’ Holy hell, did this one take a stranglehold! My brother and I waited sixteen god damn years for the sequel, and by god, it was worth every second!
Funny thing is, this game ended up in our lives by mistake. My dad took all my siblings and I to Blockbuster (yes, I know, I’m old) and told us each to pick out a game to rent. Which he would torrent onto the Xbox because we were dirty pirates. The game I chose was not ‘Psychonauts‘. It was ‘Shadow the Hedgehog‘ of all games. But the guy behind the counter got our rentals mixed up with someone else’s I guess, because we ended up with Double Fine’s masterpiece instead.
God bless that man, My life would have taken a very different – and probably worse – turn if not for him.
‘Psychonauts‘ is a staple game in my family household. We’ve all played it and we all hold it near and dear to our hearts. My brothers and I have spent countless hours combing over every inch of the game, and to this day we still find new little details we never noticed as kids.
Like KOTOR, this game had a huge impact on my own creative voice. Every level in this game takes place within the minds of the characters, making the level design itself tell a story. This was the first time I truly became interested in character writing as a kid, a fascination which has since become an obsession of my adulthood.
There are so many other games and memories from the old Xbox days I could go into. Playing ‘Star Wars: Battlefront II‘ with my cousins. The constant ‘Mom said it’s my turn on the Xbox’ arguments between me and my siblings. Watching my friends play ‘Dark Souls‘ for the first time on the 360 while I guided them, encouraged them, and laughed at them. I owe a lot of good memories to the Xbox of old.
Which is why I take no joy in bullying the Xbox of today. It’s like watching an old friend become an alcoholic and lose their family and home to gambling. I want to see them get back on top, but at this point, I just can’t see that happening.
Still. A man can dream. You never know what the future holds. Who knows? Maybe they’ll turn it around.
Though given that I’ve been saying that for about a decade: I doubt it.
Jonah's Books & Rants 
Leave a comment