20th Anniersary of the Microsoft Xbox

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

(I really enjoy video gaming history, so be prepared for more)

2021 marks the 20th anniversary of the launch of the Nintendo Gamecube.

On 15 November 2001, the Microsoft Xbox was introduced in North America. It was launched in Japan on 22 February 2002, and in Europe and Australasia on 14 March that year.

With the original Xbox, Microsoft, entered the console market. Following the introduction of the Xbox 360 in November 2005, the original Xbox was discontinued in Japan on 4 June 2006, in Europe on 11 March 2007 and in North America on 2 March 2009.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_(console)

[Leo656]

Man, did I expect this thing to tank right out of the gate. Kinda glad I was wrong, since I've spent a lot of time on my 360 and Xbox One in recent years.

The original, I gotta be honest... I didn't play it as often as I played my PS2 or Gamecube, not even close. Back then, a huge chunk of what I played was wrestling games, and frankly the wrestling games on Xbox were pretty crummy compared to the stuff on PS2 and GC. For a while, most of my time with the Xbox was playing some of the baseball games and stuff, I forget which one I played a lot but it was really good. I was never a Halo guy, and at one point it seemed like Halo was the main reason to own an Xbox. So I didn't spend a ton of time with it.

THEN, Knights of the Old Republic and Fable came out, and FINALLY I started spending a ton of time with the Xbox. Those were some great, great games for their time. KOTOR was like a revelation, I played the hell out of that one for weeks. Little by little I got together a pretty decent collection of Xbox games... and then the damn thing broke.

I hated that big ol' fatass controller it originally came with, but the replacement one was much better. And I especially loved the cavernous hard drive; I don't know anyone whose storage space says anything except "30,000+ blocks remaining" or whatever it is, no matter how many game saves they have. Meanwhile, on my newer consoles I need an external hard drive for one goddamn game, sometimes. It was especially cool with making characters in wrestling games, since for the first time you had "unlimited" spots instead of just 30-100 or whatever, and you could just make as many people as the hard drive could handle. Sadly, those games weren't great and thus it defeated the purpose to a degree, but the basic idea of it was nice. I kinda wish newer consoles still had giant hard drives even if they'd cost more; I mean, you pay the difference buying external storage devices anyway, at this point. Why am I doing the work they're supposed to do? I'unno.

Anyways, didn't think much of it at first, then very quickly warmed up to it. I like its successors more, but it still had some of my favorite games of all time and my time with it did a ton to expand my gaming horizons into other genres. So I still have a very fond appreciation for it. I wish mine still worked. I was gonna have it sent out for repairs, but after shipping it'd honestly be cheaper to just buy a refurbished one.

[Turo602]

One of the coolest things about the Xbox was being able to play your music in games like GTA through the radio station and have your own custom music for wrestling game entrances.

I never owned an Xbox, but my brother did and it got regular use off of Halo alone. We spent some time on the wrestling games as well but they weren't really good so we mostly played the Gamecube ones. I do remember playing Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory's and 007 Everything or Nothing's co-op campaigns a lot though. Brute Force was a game we beat as well that I can't for the life of me ever remember fully grasping, but we got through it somehow. The game was as much of a blur to me then as it is now. We also played through the TMNT games.

We had a demo disc as well with an Indiana Jones game and Kung Fu Chaos that got quite a lot of play time from my sister and I. She also really liked playing Fusion Frenzy.

I did end up getting some Xbox games for my 360 around 2009 and I did end up playing through the Max Payne games and The Punisher. More recently though, I have been trying to amass a much larger library for it while the games are still fairly cheap.

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by Turo602

One of the coolest things about the Xbox was being able to play your music in games like GTA through the radio station and have your own custom music for wrestling game entrances.

YESSSSS. You don't even have the option to do this on the newer, "more advanced" consoles and it angers me greatly. I could have my Hulk Hogan CAW come out to "Real American" almost 20 GODDAMN YEARS AGO on Xbox... and then on Xbox 360... but I can't on Xbox One? You assholes call this "progress"?! Fix yo' sh*t, boy.

That Punisher game was cool as f*ck, man. Last couple levels were hard as balls but I had a BLAST with that one. Those interrogations and kills were so creative and so, so fun. That game was vicious.

I also have fond memories of The Warriors and that Evil Dead or Army of Darkness game, whichever. Some Tony Hawk game. I'unno, I started playing it more and more often after KOTOR, until the damn thing broke on me.

[Turo602]

I swear to god, I feel like the only person who misses being able to do that sh*t. It's hardly requested or even brought up. I think Saint's Row let you play your own custom music in the radio too, but that feature was just abandoned at some point and forgotten. I think some of the early 360 wrestling games allowed it too. It was something I always felt Xbox had over Playstation, and it never took off for some stupid f*cking reason. You'd think people would make a bigger stink for it just for GTA alone.

[Leo656]

Believe me, I rage about it every single time I boot up any WWE game on Xbox One.

And I actually think you might have it backwards; I'm not 100% anymore on whether WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2007 - the first WWE game on 360 - allowed custom soundtracks for entrance themes, since it's been years since I played it. I *think* it did but I honestly forget. But everything after that did, up until at least WWE '14. I can't speak to WWE 2K15, as while that did come out for 360 I only bought it on Xbox One, since it was primarily made for that system.

But yeah. I had to give my Goldberg CAW the f*cking Terminator music in WWE 2K16 (since the f*cking Terminator was in that one) because it was the only thing even halfway close to Goldberg's music. And that's ass.

I play these games often, so trust me, I rant about this sh*t more than you even know.

Also, Sonic Generations on 360 with the in-game music? Pretty cool.

Sonic Generations on 360 WITH custom soundtrack, including stuff like "Sikamikanico" from RHCP and Fozzy's cover of "The Mob Rules"? PERFECTION, bruh. It just wouldn't be the same otherwise.

[sdp]

I don't like Xbox but I can give them their credit due, they had tons of bad press from gamers foro the most part for not being a Japanese company. Microsoft was not a cool brand to be associated with, it was big and bulky, it didn't have the major franchises that Sony/Sega/Nintendo had. Their name X-Box reeks of the late 90s but it has survived all these years. They were able to enter the market and sell as many units as the Nintendo Gamecube! During the PS2 dominance era. Of coure all of this because of having the unlimited funds backing of Windows money but it's still impressive, Microsoft wasn't able to do the same with the Zune or Windows Phone.
Hard Drive, Halo, Live and Live Arcade were all industry changing things that they implemented well and were copied but their competitors and it established the brand to become a household name with the 360 because of the foundations the original had laid out (and of course Sony messing up the pricing of the PS3)

[Papenbrook]

Today is the anniversary of when the Xbox first entered the console market.

Even though I never grew up with it, I'm glad that Microsoft was able to carve its own gaming legacy. The Xbox had brought a Y2K-futuristic look for the 2000's decade. From there, it was able to stand out from its contemporaries.

Without the Xbox, I don't think gaming would be where it is today.

Happy birthday, Xbox!

[Prowler]

The original Xbox seemed to come out of nowhere. I remember being a bit surprised and perplexed at how Microsoft suddenly was putting out a video game console.

You could ask me the same thing about Sony but the first PlayStation console came out when I was 5 years old or something. So it's not the same thing.

Anyway, back to the Xbox.

I never had an Xbox in my life. So I can't say I know much about the original Xbox. But I do have a feeling it might be a tad underrated. Why? Well, because honestly, the only major games I can think of when you mention the original Xbox are Halo, Fable and KOTOR. And Fable and KOTOR aren't even exclusives.

People usually say the GameCube didn't have many games, but I can name way more big GC titles than Xbox ones.

Still, the original Xbox managed to outsell the GameCube slightly. Probably due to Halo alone, I dunno.

I seriously doubt Halo, Fable and KOTOR were the only games worth playing on the Xbox. The system probably has a bunch of hidden gems.

It seems like a rather forgotten system nowadays while the 360 has a bigger legacy, understandably.

Anyway, this was the last generation where the difference between each console was still big. While multiplatform titles were already common, all of the consoles still had plenty of exclusives. You had to think hard about which one to buy.

In the following generation, the Microsoft and Sony consoles began blending more together in terms of games. It felt like the 360 and the PS3 shared 95% of their games. So basically, your decision boiled down to wanting to pay for online gaming or not. If you didn't mind it, you got a 360. If you didn't want to pay for it you got the PS3.

[Leo656]

As I recall, what kept the PS2 ahead of the Xbox in the marketplace was mostly that it was cheaper and the PS "brand" had already been well-established. Online gaming hadn't taken off just yet, so nobody really cared much at first. The Xbox had a ton of the same great games the PS2 had, and they looked quite a bit nicer, too. But as I understand it - from being told, cannot fully verify - they tended to play better and have fewer glitches on the PS2. Like, a LOT of the games I played on Xbox had glitching/freezing issues that simply weren't a factor when I played the same games on PS2 or GameCube. Whether my own console was just kind of shot or it was a universal thing with Xboxes, I really can't say. I've been *told* it wasn't the most stable platform and that a lot of the glitching was common across the board, but who knows.

Whenever the same game would come out on all three consoles, it basically broke down like this, it seemed...
- On Xbox, it would look and sound the sharpest, but have the most glitches and freezing and also some framerate issues.
- On GameCube, the games would be the most stable with the least glitching/freezing problems, almost none whatsoever, but the graphics would be noticeably more blurry compared to Xbox or PS2.
- PS2 versions of the game would be rather in-between, with sharper graphics than GC but not as sharp as on Xbox, and bug/glitches much less often than on Xbox but still more common than on GC.

So there were a ton of great games to own on Xbox beyond just the exclusives. But you had to contend with the fact that sometimes they wouldn't start up, or would freeze at random. If you wanted to be sure your copy of a game started up every time you played it and never, ever froze, you got it on GC and put up with the blurry graphics.

Some of the games I played the most on Xbox were Atari Anthology,
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, Dead Or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball, Evil Dead: Regeneration, Fable: The Lost Chapters, Fight Night Round 2, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age, Mortal Kombat: Deception, MVP Baseball 2005, The Punisher, Sonic Heroes, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of The Sith, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Mutant Nightmare, Ultimate Spider-Man, The Warriors, WWF Raw, WWF Raw 2, X-Men Legends, and X-Men Legends 2: Rise of Apocalypse. Those were the ones I played a lot when the system was "fresh"; since then, I've had some fun checking out stuff I didn't play much back then, such as The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance.

So yeah, definitely a lot of fun stuff to play on the Xbox. Although looking at that list, it really is a lot of exclusives. Not only, though, just mostly. Still a good amount of multiplatform stuff too, though.

I didn't get much sleep at all between 2000 and 2008.

[Prowler]

You forgot to mention the fact the PS2 was a cheap DVD player for some years. That helped a lot as well.

I've met a few people with Xboxes but nothing compared to PS2 owners. GameCube? No other kid in my school had one. I was the only one. But a lot of people had GBAs and a lot of people got the Wii a few years later as well.

I don't think Xboxes ever became so popular in Europe or Japan tbh. Except maybe the 360 but still I think the Wii and the PS3 were more successful in this part of the world.

The Xbox is mostly popular in North America. It always had some problems imposing itself in the European and especially Japanese markets. Which is kinda crazy since Microsoft is a massive company and nearly everyone has a Microsoft computer.

Anyway I remember wanting a 360 at some point but never got around to play it because I went through a phase for a few years where I didn't game much. And I'd most likely have purchased an original DS instead.

I think Xbox consoles got a reputation for being for "dudebros" because of Halo and shooting games in general. Funny cause Sony consoles have plenty of FPS games as well... but they also have a ton of JRPGs, so they appeal to the "geeks" as well. And thus didn't get such reputation.

[Andrew NDB]

I play games on the X-Box Series X from time to time, but only because it's the wife's favored console and it's what she buys all of the games for. Everything available on it that I play is otherwise available on PS5 and I'd be buying for PS5 if I was by myself. I don't see anything special or unique about X-Box vs. PS and never have.

Also, PS controllers have always been cooler than the X-Box controllers. Every generation.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

I play games on the X-Box Series X from time to time, but only because it's the wife's favored console and it's what she buys all of the games for. Everything available on it that I play is otherwise available on PS5 and I'd be buying for PS5 if I was by myself. I don't see anything special or unique about X-Box vs. PS and never have.

Also, PS controllers have always been cooler than the X-Box controllers. Every generation.

I've only played Xbox consoles in store displays and such for a couple of minutes. I remember the controllers feeling bulky.

Yes, Dualshock are the best controllers of all time imo. Clearly Skby modelled them after the SNES controller, which was also great.

Dualshock controllers can be hit fragile though. Especially the shoulder buttons. My NES, SNES and GameCube controllers still work 100% fine after all these years, but both my PS2 controllers have non-resonsive left shoulder buttons.