My OG Xbox Gaming Memories
Turning Back the Clock
Nothing beats the good old days of gaming.
But as many lifelong gamers know, those “good old days” can encompass several periods in your life.
One such period for me was in 2002, when my then girlfriend (now wife) bought me my original Xbox as a Birthday/Christmas present.
For me, this gift brought back something that I loved.
Gaming…
Sometimes It Takes a Wrong Turn To Get to the Right Place.
Like most kids, I went through some fairly turbulent teenage years which involved spending as much time away from home as possible.
As a result, having a stable gaming hobby was fairly difficult. So I drifted away from my gaming hobby for awhile after it had been such a large part of my life all the way up until high school.
Memories of games like Goldeneye and The Ocarina of Time felt like things of the past. But with this gifted Xbox my excitement for console gaming came flooding back to me.
The Office Superstore
Back in 2002 I was in my early 20’s and working at Staples, “the office superstore”.
I remember working with a guy who was big into Xbox and hearing him talk about Xbox Live.
At the time it sounded so strange to me having still been PC gaming over the years.
The idea of paying for the privilege to play games online felt like a foreign concept to me.
Needless to say, I never got into online play but have many fond memories of packing my Xbox into a carrying case and bringing it to LAN parties at my friend’s houses.
We enjoyed endless hours of couch co-op playing games like KungFu Chaos, HALO and Hunter the Reckoning, just to name a few.
It Was Built Like a Tank!
Constantly karting my Xbox around wasn’t an issue either because the original Xbox was built to last!
The OG Xbox was so freakin’ bulky and durable that I remember once stubbing my toe on it and worrying I might have broken it. (my toe)
I always joked that you could beat an intruder to death with the Xbox and then hook it up and play a round of Halo with your friends.
The Duke
So if you weren’t using the system itself as some kind of cudgel, the controllers would also work perfectly well.
I know people have mixed feelings about the original controllers.
I actually didn’t have “the Duke” thinking back on this. (Or maybe I had one but grabbed my standard controller most of the time.)
I had 4 standard sized controllers so all my friends could play. Even the standard controllers had good weight, making them much better medieval weapons than anything Sony had at the time. /s
Lots of Great (and Terrible) Exclusive Games
Man oh man… the games.
Part of the reason the original Xbox was so amazing (imo) was because of how unique a lot of the titles for the system were at the time.
The Playstation had just moved into the PS2 era which also had great games, but many were sequels to known titles.
On Xbox everything felt new and alien.
There were so many amazing titles that were really different from what Sony was doing at the time. So both systems really felt like they had a unique identity.
Some of my favorite games from the original Xbox that I still remember to this day are:
Xbox Magazine & DEMO Disks!
A great way to try out new games at the time was by purchasing Xbox Magazine which came with these amazing Demo disks.
I actually subscribed so I would get it every month in the mail. That was the highlight of each month for me, like a kid waiting for Christmas.
The discs always had several demos that allowed you to play for solid blocks of time. Each month’s issue could potentially provide a weekend of entertainment along with the games you already owned.
Living in an all digital future can be pretty depressing when you know it’s responsible for the death of the things like magazines and demo discs.
Xbox Live
(which I actually didn’t use.)
Like I mentioned before, I never got into Xbox Live.
At the time my girlfriend and I were living on a budget, in a loft apartment, she was a student and I worked in a warehouse so we had to save where we could.
I do remember the accessories and stuff for Xbox Live being an atomic (transparent) orange color where most of the OG Xbox stuff was branded with the Xbox neon green color.
There was also a lot of cool schwag from the trade shows like lanyards, keychains and promotional materials to try and get people excited about Xbox live.
There was even an Xbox Live starter kit, but I’m hard pressed to remember what was in it.
Xbox Live Original Promotional Video
Those Were the Good Old Days
Looking back on the Xbox, I have really fond memories of the system.
The console itself was a lot of fun! It had some unique games and breathed new life into the console market which consisted mainly of Nintendo and Sony at the time. Ok, there was Dreamcast too. (“Being too far ahead of your time is indistinguishable from being wrong.” – Howard Marks)
But the thing that stands out the most about Xbox is that it was the console that brought me back to my love of console gaming.
My wife didn’t know it at the time, but her gift helped reignite the passion I had for gaming. I also think it helped keep me out of trouble and caused me to become a better person as I got older. (More time spent at home with her, and less time out raising hell with the boys.)
I will always have fond memories of sitting in the dark in our tiny apartment, playing Splinter Cell as the sun went down.
Thanks for the wonderful gift babe!
Favorite Xbox Games I Owned:
- Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding
- Battle Engine Aquila
- Beyond Good or Evil
- Bloodwake
- Brute Force
- Chronicles of Riddick: Butcher Bay
- Crimson Sea???
- Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge
- Dead or Alive 3
- Dead to Rights
- Deus Ex: Invisible War
- Enclave
- Fable
- Freedom Fighters
- Grand Theft Auto 3
- Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
- Gunvalkyrie
- Halo
- Halo 2
- House of the Dead 3
- Jet Set Radio Future
- Marvel Ultimate Alliance
- MechAssault
- Ninja Gaiden
- Otogi: Myth of Demons
- Pac-Man World 2
- Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
- Project Gotham Racing
- Red Faction II
- Robotech: Battlecry (Cell shaded)
- Sega GT 2002 (Came with my xbox)
- Shenmue II
- Soul Calibur II
- Splinter Cell
- Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
- Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow
- Steel Battalion
- Sudeki
- The Thing
- Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2
- True Crime: Streets of LA
Why not Elder Scrolls???
I actually never purchased The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind for the OG Xbox for the dumbest of reasons.
My friends at the time were gaming on PC a lot and really had this “PC master race!” vibe going for them. Ironically enough they would never miss a chance to play Xbox when I brought it over, but always poo-poo’d it when they were on their PCs. (I played both PC and Xbox in my apartment and thought they were both great!)
At the time it was out I was playing Shenmue II and thought it was awesome. I really loved the slow paced, mellow, RPG vibe.
Another friend who had played my Xbox and then went out and bought one, asked me for a good RPG recommendation. I highly recommended Shenmue II to him as he was really into that kind of Japanese / Asian aesthetic.
I was so hyped about the recommendation I think he thought I was crazy. Lol
I also recommended The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and told him it looked amazing.
That weekend I went over to my friend’s house and the guy who asked for the recommendation was there with his Xbox. He was playing Morrowind and my PC master race buddies were also playing it on PC.
I mean, I guess they took my recommendation to heart but the irony of the PC vs Xbox was lost on them as they all enjoyed the same game on different platforms.
What frustrated me the most, was that they all kind of decided to play it together without keeping me in the loop since I would have gladly picked it up to play with the crew.
Anyway, the meat of this post is salty enough… but that’s why it was years before I experienced Morrowind.
Additional Reads
Here’s a fun post I found while doing some research for this post. Basically just more people reminiscing about the days of OG Xbox.
