Xbox One Catch-all

Heh, my first console with the Sears generic version of the Atari 2600, and then...nothing. We had no money.
Got many Atari cartridges at yard sales for dirt cheap, and continued to play it through high school.

Had a Commodore 64 after that. My mom did not realize it did nothing without paid for games. I bought blank disks and had this friend with early access to Cleveland...

Cleveland what, Roo?

2600 here, too. I still remember one of the most exciting Christmases ever was when we got the NES, a total surprise to me and my brother. I stuck with Nintendo until I got the PS2 several years after college, also having become a PC gamer in high school, when we got our first computer.

First new console I ever bought with my own money was the Genesis 2. Think I was about 14 and I saved up money I earned mowing lawns and recycling cans and whatever else I could do to earn a few bucks here and there. Mainly wanted to play the Shadowrun game for it because I was a huge Shadowrun fan at the time and the Genesis and SNES versions were completely different. Think I sold the Genesis about a year later and used the money to buy Final Fantasy 3.

My first computer was a TI99-4A and of course I played games on it. Since it hooked up to the TV, I suppose it's kind of like a console too. Sort of.

But yes, first console was the Turbografx-16. I never owned a Nintendo console until the Wii.

I don't think I ever had a launch console of any type. I'd rather other people work out all of the issues first.

Seems like I am the only one who hand an Intellivsion as their first console. I was used to terrible controllers from the start!

IMAGE(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/66/Intellivision-Console-Set.jpg/1920px-Intellivision-Console-Set.jpg)

My issue with the HDMI passthrough is it didn't work for anything I wanted to use it with. All my video watching (on the TV) is done via streaming apps on the Xbox itself, or from the occasional BluRay disc in the Xbox's drive. I would have loved to use it with another game console, but it introduced too much lag for that to be usable. Instead I ended up getting a little box that automatically switches between 5 HDMI inputs.

First console was a Colecovision, which had its own special form of crappy controller. Loads cool alternate controllers, though.

Vargen wrote:

My issue with the HDMI passthrough is it didn't work for anything I wanted to use it with. All my video watching )on the TV) is done via streaming apps on the Xbox itself, or from the occasional BluRay disc in the Xbox's drive. I would have loved to use it with another game console, but it introduced too much lag for that to be usable. Instead I ended up getting a little box that automatically switches between 5 HDMI inputs.

I never once used the pass through. I wished there was a way to use it as a second output a couple of times though. Multiscreen support is something I have wished for since the N64 era. One 4K signal is the same number of pixels as four 1080p signals. Be neat to be able to hookup multiple screens instead of doing split screen.

Rykin wrote:
Vargen wrote:

My issue with the HDMI passthrough is it didn't work for anything I wanted to use it with. All my video watching )on the TV) is done via streaming apps on the Xbox itself, or from the occasional BluRay disc in the Xbox's drive. I would have loved to use it with another game console, but it introduced too much lag for that to be usable. Instead I ended up getting a little box that automatically switches between 5 HDMI inputs.

I never once used the pass through. I wished there was a way to use it as a second output a couple of times though. Multiscreen support is something I have wished for since the N64 era. One 4K signal is the same number of pixels as four 1080p signals. Be neat to be able to hookup multiple screens instead of doing split screen.

That would be an awesome feature. At first I thought, eh, limited uses for Xbox LAN parties and the like, but then I thought, WHOA, home version of the DS!

But seriously, I would actually use that feature to play Rocket League (or Mario Kart if a Nintendo system had it) with my kids and/or friends. Probably not a system-selling feature in any case, so they probably wouldn't do it, but will happily sell you a second Xbox if you really want that experience.

Unfun story, there was a period of time where having a third local player in Rocket League* meant one player had unplayably laggy controls (and I more recently had this experience with four local players). I ended up bringing my launch Xbox downstairs and putting one person on my 43" TCL TV so all three of us could play.

*I reached out to support a couple times but they apparently weren't familiar with this issue, so I guess it was somehow just me? I really tried to troubleshoot it. After some months, it went away.

Rykin wrote:
Vargen wrote:

My issue with the HDMI passthrough is it didn't work for anything I wanted to use it with. All my video watching )on the TV) is done via streaming apps on the Xbox itself, or from the occasional BluRay disc in the Xbox's drive. I would have loved to use it with another game console, but it introduced too much lag for that to be usable. Instead I ended up getting a little box that automatically switches between 5 HDMI inputs.

I never once used the pass through. I wished there was a way to use it as a second output a couple of times though. Multiscreen support is something I have wished for since the N64 era. One 4K signal is the same number of pixels as four 1080p signals. Be neat to be able to hookup multiple screens instead of doing split screen.

My guess is that, in the next few years, the cable companies will start delivering their channel packages in some sort of quasi-streaming cable boxless format. At which point, it should be possible to access the same content via an internal app on a smart tv or xbox or playstation or some sort of media device.

There may be a host of regulatory and contractual issues getting in the way of this grand future though.

I can, reluctantly, see the logic for getting rid of the HDMI pass through. But for now, it really does answer a real need in our household.

I am surprised they removed the optical out on the XSX, especially given how it is positioned as a premium device, their fancy new audio processing systems, and their focus on minimizing latency in the gameplay experience.

I've admittedly been wary of Microsoft's backward compatibility initiatives given how terrible the backward compatibility was on the Xbox 360. I bought a 360 in part because of its ability to play original Xbox games so that I could unhook my Xbox, but the 360 backward compatibility was so bad that I ended up hooking my Xbox back up. Most of the backward compatible games I tried on 360 were unplayable.

But I've been surprised by how well backward compatibility has worked on the Xbox One. More than that, I've really appreciated that some games have been enhanced for the X1X. I've been playing Final Fantasy XIII-2, and it's great that Square-Enix was able to patch a 360 game with higher resolution textures and cutscenes. But even games that aren't enhanced for the X1X play well.

I'm curious to see who takes advantage of that on the Series X.

polq37 wrote:

My guess is that, in the next few years, the cable companies will start delivering their channel packages in some sort of quasi-streaming cable boxless format. At which point, it should be possible to access the same content via an internal app on a smart tv or xbox or playstation or some sort of media device.

polq - the cable companies already do. Spectrum has been trying to get me to sign up for TV streaming for like $20 a month for a while now and it has an app on Xbox, Roku, AppleTV, etc.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/21/1...

farley3k wrote:

Seems like I am the only one who hand an Intellivsion as their first console. I was used to terrible controllers from the start!

IMAGE(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/66/Intellivision-Console-Set.jpg/1920px-Intellivision-Console-Set.jpg)

It wasn’t the our first, but my parents got one of these for doing a timeshare demonstration.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I've admittedly been wary of Microsoft's backward compatibility initiatives given how terrible the backward compatibility was on the Xbox 360. I bought a 360 in part because of its ability to play original Xbox games so that I could unhook my Xbox, but the 360 backward compatibility was so bad that I ended up hooking my Xbox back up. Most of the backward compatible games I tried on 360 were unplayable.

But I've been surprised by how well backward compatibility has worked on the Xbox One. More than that, I've really appreciated that some games have been enhanced for the X1X. I've been playing Final Fantasy XIII-2, and it's great that Square-Enix was able to patch a 360 game with higher resolution textures and cutscenes. But even games that aren't enhanced for the X1X play well.

I'm curious to see who takes advantage of that on the Series X.

The Xbox 360 was a radical change in system architecture for the line. Running original Xbox games on it and running its games on the One involve a lot of overhead to account for those differences. The Series X on the other hand, is more or less a straight extension of the One and the original. The Series X running One and original Xbox games is no more remarkable than me running Half-Life 2 on my modern PC.

It is heartening to hear that they've got 360-native games working reliably on the current hardware. I wonder if that's down more to improved translation software or just the hardware is now fast enough to deal with the overhead.

polq37 wrote:

I am surprised they removed the optical out on the XSX, especially given how it is positioned as a premium device, their fancy new audio processing systems, and their focus on minimizing latency in the gameplay experience.

I can see this being an issue as well. I never got the X1X to work right with my TV and surround sound system while using the ARC feature they are all supposed to support. When I first hooked it up the Xbox would only output some super low resolution. I was able to manually set it back to 1080p and everything except Disney+ worked on it. Disney+ just gave some generic error and wouldn't load until I switched to the optical cable.

bekkilyn wrote:

My first computer was a TI99-4A and of course I played games on it. Since it hooked up to the TV, I suppose it's kind of like a console too. Sort of.

But yes, first console was the Turbografx-16. I never owned a Nintendo console until the Wii.

I don't think I ever had a launch console of any type. I'd rather other people work out all of the issues first.

Tunnels of Doom on the TI 994a is one of the seminal games of my life.

chooka1 wrote:
bekkilyn wrote:

My first computer was a TI99-4A and of course I played games on it. Since it hooked up to the TV, I suppose it's kind of like a console too. Sort of.

But yes, first console was the Turbografx-16. I never owned a Nintendo console until the Wii.

I don't think I ever had a launch console of any type. I'd rather other people work out all of the issues first.

Tunnels of Doom on the TI 994a is one of the seminal games of my life.

I played that game SO many times!!!

chooka1 wrote:
bekkilyn wrote:

My first computer was a TI99-4A and of course I played games on it. Since it hooked up to the TV, I suppose it's kind of like a console too. Sort of.

But yes, first console was the Turbografx-16. I never owned a Nintendo console until the Wii.

I don't think I ever had a launch console of any type. I'd rather other people work out all of the issues first.

Tunnels of Doom on the TI 994a is one of the seminal games of my life.

This would make an excellent thread about one's gaming milestones.

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

First console was a Colecovision, which had its own special form of crappy controller. Loads cool alternate controllers, though.

The sports game controller where it was like a pistol grip with a numpad on top, and you had to spin that little wheel to make the guy run? Lost so many hours to playing those things.

Also had that big add-on box thing that plugged into the front of the Coleco Vision that straight up let it play 2600 carts. IIRC that one got Coleco sued. Was great to have though

DSGamer wrote:
farley3k wrote:

Seems like I am the only one who hand an Intellivsion as their first console. I was used to terrible controllers from the start!

IMAGE(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/66/Intellivision-Console-Set.jpg/1920px-Intellivision-Console-Set.jpg)

It wasn’t the our first, but my parents got one of these for doing a timeshare demonstration.

We had the 2600, but my best friend that lived behind us had the Intellivision. For sports games, it was so much better. Weird controller, but the use of so many buttons made football and baseball games work a little better.

But otherwise, the 2600 just had more games worth playing.

My first console was a Sears branded home version of Pong that my dad won in a sales contest. It had three games, you adjust speed and paddle sizes, and was in color. Woot!

The first console I bought with my own money was an SNES that I bought after months of going to a friends house where a group of us played Madden 94 constantly. I eventually traded that to our babysitter for a long day of watching Jo while she was still a baby. I had pretty much given up on console gaming for the PC. Between Quake and Front Page Sports FBPro, I didn't need a console anymore.

After FBPro 99 was an absolute failure, and sport games were beginning their decline on PC, I bought a Dreamcast just after Sega had announced it was leaving the console business.

Once it was time to upgrade, Teresa was going to buy me a new console, and it came down to an Xbox or a Gamecube. I chose the Gamecube because it had NFL2K and Zelda. I didn't really care about Zelda, but I could tell from how Teresa and Jo reacted to those Wind Waker commercials that they would like it. It was a hit, and Jo picked up a fair amount of her reading chops from reading all of the dialogue as we played.

But my brother convinced Teresa to buy me an Xbox so we could race PGR2 together. We've been pretty much a two console home ever since, with and Xbox and Nintendo. Honestly, as much as I like Xbox, and its been the longest stretch I've stuck to one platform, I'm always game to find a better way to play my games.

The only Playstation I ever owned was a PS4 slim for a couple of years. Not a bad console, and we got a lot of use out of it. But in the end, I did not play near as much MLB The Show as I thought I would, so I gave it to Jo to take to California, where she obsessively plays Persona 5.

I am not sure we will buy another Nintendo. The Switch has been pretty much a BotW and Mario machine, and very little else. But Nintendo does tend to price their consoles low enough to be a good second console, and they always have at least a few stellar games that are unlike anything else you can get on other platforms, either in their creativity or polish, and mostly both. But Teresa and I both play pretty much exclusively on the Xbox these days. We will probably pick up a PS5 or PS4 for HZD2, but I doubt we keep it around long. It didn't move us to keep it the last time.

All of that ignores what probably got most of my gaming time when I was young. I had all these, and several more.

IMAGE(https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/pJIAAOSwGC9dkOs3/s-l640.jpg)IMAGE(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/68/56/2b/68562bb6a3dc86d7afca1af9854a6915--mattel-hong-kong.jpg)IMAGE(https://retrothing.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/mattelautorace.jpg)IMAGE(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Basketball_2_by_Mattel_Electronics,_Made_In_Hong_Kong,_Copyright_1979_(LED_Electronic_Handheld_Game).jpg)IMAGE(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/bb/32/8e/bb328e07e5a193c3461393fd3d4518d8.jpg)IMAGE(https://www.handheldmuseum.com/Toytronic/Toytronic-MultiSportGame.jpg)IMAGE(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/e9/71/55/e971555aebd82cd7f7fcd51d8a53cad7.jpg)IMAGE(https://electronicplastic.com/_images/450/entex/SpaceInvader-80.jpg)IMAGE(https://i.pinimg.com/236x/92/a7/c9/92a7c9854f20d92caa7bb5af778e6676--photo-essay-arcade-games.jpg)IMAGE(https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7048/8688049795_05c46610c4_b.jpg)

We had a bunch of those too. And a Merlin.

IMAGE(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/akyuM3H0MHk6rFzB1k4HDPgPd_ByIQVCZyPpsklhlPdUQvfu7-fVXwKoKrWQvg7c1WTYawDZJBZ1TCSWBsQVWoNvOFdN6RREbPhaY2SjuxzCtEoyAVKrU30v)

Maybe I’m out of order on which was the first system. Thanks for the trip down memory lane, Jayhawker.

Mattel Electronic Football 2

I can still remember exactly how the buttons felt under my thumbs. Soft and fast. So much more satisfying than the clackety-clack of Football 1. Football 2 let you push the buttons faster than the display could refresh the screen. I remember going so fast on the hardest difficulty that I was counting the button presses and mentally visualizing the “ball” moving across the screen rather than relying on my eyes.

That’s why they colored it mean joe green

Jayhawker wrote:

I am not sure we will buy another Nintendo. The Switch has been pretty much a BotW and Mario machine, and very little else. But Nintendo does tend to price their consoles low enough to be a good second console, and they always have at least a few stellar games that are unlike anything else you can get on other platforms, either in their creativity or polish, and mostly both. But Teresa and I both play pretty much exclusively on the Xbox these days. We will probably pick up a PS5 or PS4 for HZD2, but I doubt we keep it around long. It didn't move us to keep it the last time.

I thought of you just a little while ago while playing Animal Crossing on the Switch. I popped a balloon that flew overhead and the present it dropped was a throwback (baseball) mitt chair. It basically looks like a giant baseball mitt that is used as a chair. Well I have a jock squirrel on my island named Sheldon and I gave it to him and hopefully he will display it in his house.

But then I had the thought....

What if someone made an island with all ten of their animals being jocks and then decorated their entire island with a sports theme, with arenas and sports fields and all sorts of cool things like that. And then I had the thought, "I bet that's what Jayhawker would do!" LOL

It's not really my style or theme, but it would be neat if someone did that!

Anyway, back to Xbox.

I just realized the game reveal event is going on right now. New Dirt game so far.

I was a bit underwhelmed; seems like there were a bunch of indie games that I'll probably never play.

I did think the Yakuza game that has fantastical elements looked pretty interesting. I've never played a Yakuza before, but I found the story interesting, and then all the crazy stuff reminded me of Saints Row 3/4.

I was really hoping we'd get something about Elden Ring!

That said, now that I've seen this I'm guessing the big stuff is still being saved for the summer, so it was smart of them to have an indie-focused event where some games that might get lost in the shuffle this summer had a chance to shine.

Not Titanfall looked cool, as did the Medium. Was fun to see new games announced:)

Not Titanfall did look pretty good, but when they said it was the work of one guy, I felt sure the scope of the game must be pretty limited.

I also really liked the futuristic world they were showing for one game, but then it turned out to be an isometric shooter. Still cool, but not the kind of game I generally play.

There seemed to be a lot of very story-focused "adventure" games (for lack of a better term), and that's cool, but also not a type of game I play.

I was pretty happy with what they showed off, overall. The three titles I was most excited about (Scorn, Call of the Sea, and The Medium) were all on Game Pass, too, so that's a nice bonus! I'm pretty worn out on AAA games these days (oh look, another open world where I sneak through tall grass and kill animals to make a bigger wallet!) so the focus on smaller, indie games was fine by me.

I did like the prevalence of Gamepass, especially since this wasn't the first party showing. If Call of the Sea turns out to be Lovecraftian, I might actually play it. If he's just gone to the beach, not my thing.

bekkilyn wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

I am not sure we will buy another Nintendo. The Switch has been pretty much a BotW and Mario machine, and very little else. But Nintendo does tend to price their consoles low enough to be a good second console, and they always have at least a few stellar games that are unlike anything else you can get on other platforms, either in their creativity or polish, and mostly both. But Teresa and I both play pretty much exclusively on the Xbox these days. We will probably pick up a PS5 or PS4 for HZD2, but I doubt we keep it around long. It didn't move us to keep it the last time.

I thought of you just a little while ago while playing Animal Crossing on the Switch. I popped a balloon that flew overhead and the present it dropped was a throwback (baseball) mitt chair. It basically looks like a giant baseball mitt that is used as a chair. Well I have a jock squirrel on my island named Sheldon and I gave it to him and hopefully he will display it in his house.

But then I had the thought....

What if someone made an island with all ten of their animals being jocks and then decorated their entire island with a sports theme, with arenas and sports fields and all sorts of cool things like that. And then I had the thought, "I bet that's what Jayhawker would do!" LOL

It's not really my style or theme, but it would be neat if someone did that!

Anyway, back to Xbox. :)

That’s fun. And, yeah, totally would do that. I actually planned on getting Animal Crossing for Teresa, but, she doesn’t like any social interaction in games. She prefers Harvest Moon in that vein.

Rught now she is obsessing over that Goose game, something I doubt she looks at without Gamepass.