Remembering the first year of MICROSOFT XBOX in the UK

OG Xbox was the first time I owned PES Probably my most played games on the console were PES4 & 5. Hours spent on Master League.

Some great exclusives too like Halo, Fable, JSRF and Amped 2. I also got to play Conker having missed it on N64.

I was primarily a Gamecube gamer but the translucent Xbox for £100 got me in one Christmas.

The overall best game for the system was Burnout 3 though (yes I know it's multiformat). I still don't think there's a better racing game.

jawa_ wrote:Oh! I'd forgotten about the music-to-hard-drive option! That was great; in GTA III/Vice City (the amazing double pack that released in late 2003) you could create your own music channel and I remember playing Brownstone's If You Love Me on it .

100%. I too had the GTA Double Pack and, along with Burnout, it was brilliant to just play the game to your own soundtracks (although the in-game ones were pretty ace too).

I've pared back my OG Xbox collection significantly over the years (and no longer own the console - all the games I still have are backwards compatible) but I kind of wish I'd taken advantage of the ridiculously low pre-owned prices and built up a bit more of a collection. It had some dross (as did all the consoles of that gen) but overall MS did a lot right considering they were "new" to the market.

...oh! Just remembered that I also bought Championship Manager (one of the later SI ones) for the console too, but had to get shot of it pretty quickly as the cursor was absurdly slow.

EDIT: just looking at lists of games for the console now, and there are loads of game series' (serieses?) that were new to me, that I tried on OG Xbox and bounced right off of. Half Life 2, Morrowind, Shenmue 2, KOTOR, Deus Ex Invisible War. Plus Fahrenheit and Stranger's Wrath.

Oh! Just realised I experienced MGS2 for the first time on Xbox. What a game. Bonkers.

I got mine on launch and basically ran home from school to play on it. I still sometimes get my dad's birthday mixed up with the xbox launch date (his is 16th). I got Halo (I remember weighing up whether to get this or Bloodwake ) and PGR and loved them both. I spent all day playing Halo, then moved onto PGR and got distracted with adding all my CDs to the hdd. That was a very cool option to have with a driving game. I distinctly remember listening to Nas - Stillmatic while playing it.

Of the launch games listed I had Halo, PGR, JSRF, Rallisport Challenge, and Oddworld. The latter two I got free because the console was faulty and I had to have it replaced. I think there was a global issue with some of the units and this was the compensation for it?

Getting online with Halo 2 and PGR 2 later was amazing too. I spent so many hours on those. Sadly I can't really remember what other games I had on it. I just had a look at some lists and most of the games I recognised I had on the 360.

But yeah, I loved my Xbox. I was pretty blown away with it. Even the weird "oh so early 00s" neon green dashboard seemed super futuristic. I even didn't mind the enormous controller, though I did move on to the S.

Jenuall wrote:360 was the one with the massive power brick I believe

Yeah, the 360 power brick looked like this:

Absolutely insane the size of that thing!

Pretty sure it weighed more than the console itself as well

Jenuall wrote:Absolutely insane the size of that thing!

Pretty sure it weighed more than the console itself as well

It's so heavy you have to measure it in a similar way to the size of a football pitch. For the 360 power brick, it weighed the equivalent of 5 double decker buses.

Evel Knievel broke his pelvis trying to jump 13 Xbox 360 power bricks at Wembley.

KK wrote:Google to the rescue:

If your Xbox was manufactured before October 23, 2003, or January 13 2004 in Continental Europe, your console requires a replacement cord. A specific fault in the PSU has been discovered where the solder joints on the plug port can melt and dislodge, resulting in potential fire. Microsoft have advised to immediately throw out the included cables and order a free replacement on their website.

We now know that the clock battery will also corrode with time and kill your Xbox (as it did mine) unless it's removed.

I think it's fair to say that Microsoft's build quality wasn't exactly up to Nintendo standards in the 2000s...

What, they literally sent out inline RCD power cable rather than just recalling and replacing the machines

That's hilarious. I have an RCD adapter for my CNC mill in case it crashes and sets fire to itself or shorts. But not a game's console.

It's funny because otherwise it's just a generic figure of eight AC lead, which is good when setting up multiple consoles; no residual current draw when an adapter is left plugged in, and generally just not having to store, find, locate an tidy away a massive power brick. If you have a lot of old consoles they're a real pain. Afaik the only one to have always avoided that is Sony.

I never really had that many games for the Xbox, I was late to the party and never had the massive large controller with mine it was so late on. I bought it solely for Halo and I couldn't even tell you what other games I had for the console. Very strange how I went onto buying a X360 at release!