My New Entertainment Center

Say 'Hi" to grandma for me.

:x

You are too hilarious bill.

Where's your Xbox?

Excellent choice in the SNES and N64!

@James -- Bill's trying to convince me to buy a 360. You've got one of those, don't you? Do you find it's worth it?

@Mike -- thanks! I play the SNES more than anything. The N64 is there for Mario Kart. :-P

@Lis -- thanks for the support here, hon. ;-)

Cool setup ! :)

Xbox 360 is the most impressive game console I've ever used, even if you don't own any games. Sorry for sounding like a raving fanboy, but Xbox Live has to be the best thing ever, and I've spent as much time playing Hexic HD (a free game that comes with the HD, designed by the designer of Tetris) and Geometry Wars as I have playing Call of Duty 2, Dead or Alive 4, or Kameo. (Actually, I've found Kameo a bit disappointing.) And Elder Scrolls is coming out later this month, I can't wait!

I did have one problem setting it up, where my Xbox Live account didn't get correctly transferred from my original Xbox because I'd changed my email address on Passport between setting up the original Xbox and the 360. But it was resolved by calling Microsoft. I haven't had any crashes or bugs yet.

http://live.xbox.com/member/Mecha Gamera

That link was broken, add a %20 to make it work:

http://live.xbox.com/member/Mecha%20Gamera

Another minor gripe about the system, I'm sure will be resolved soon. Even though you can't earn accomplishments for demos, the demos show up on your Gamer Card... so if you look at my Gamer Card, you'd think I own Crystal Quest and just suck at it. (I don't, it's just the demo for it.)

Also, the wireless controllers don't work as Windows XP controllers; only the wired ones do. And the $400 system only comes with wireless. (Took me forever to figure out why the driver wasn't working until I found an explaination!)

A few more cool things about Live:

The Gamer Points you earn from accomplishments are the same ones you can use to purchase Live games and skins and such. So if you have Dead or Alive 4, and unlock *every* accomplishment, you've basically refunded the cost of the game in Gamer Points. (Of course, unlocking every accomplishment would require having no life whatsoever.)

EVERY Xbox 360 game has, or will have, a free demo you can download on Live. I anticipate this will do a lot to prevent crappy games from being released. (Even Live Arcade games all have free demos.)

Can you tell I'm excited about it? :)

The thing I have a hard time with is that I'm not interested in online gaming at all. I'm interested in single-play, non-FPS games. Think things like Crash Bandicoot, the FF series, Disgaea, Katamari.

Is there a decent selection of those sort of things?

I take a strong issue to continuously having to pay to play a game. So I won't bother with the entire pay-as-you-go online system stuff.

1) If you don't want to play online, you can still use all the other features of Xbox Live for free (including the downloadable games in the Arcade, and the buddylist and score tracker features.) The fee is only for playing games online with others. And it's dirt cheap, as well-- only $50 a year.

2) The Xbox 360 is too new to tell for sure. The original Xbox, despite its online focus, had a goodly amount of games that were fun to play solo and off-line, and despite the stereotype, not *all* Xbox games are FPS games. I do know that there's at least one Japanese RPG planned (Blue Dragon).

If you're into Computer RPGs or Adventure games, the Xbox/Xbox 360 is about the only place to go, console-wise. Syberia, and a few other high-profile adventure games were exclusively on Xbox, and Dreamfall (Longest Journey 2) is coming out for 360. In addition, Arx Fatalis, Morrowing, Jade Empire, and KOTOR, all computer RPGs, came out for Xbox and weren't ported to any other console. That's the advantage of making it easy to port DirectX games.

Speaking of game consoles... your top picture of the TV looks like an oversized Vetrex.

@Phil -- those are rabbit ears. I finally broke down and got them in case I had people over who needed to watch TV. Otherwise, I have no TV capabilities in the house.

@James -- thanks for the extra information!

Actually, you missed my reference of "Vectrex" (I must be dating myself). It was a monochrome arcade system that came out around 1982, but instead of being a standard TV proportioned screen, the screen had more height than it was wide.

http://i3.ebayimg.com/02/i/06/7e/f5/55_1_b.JPG

Just because of the angle of photo and possibly because of the way it is displayed on the webpage, the TV looks like it is squished like a Vectrex system. This is my very first impression of the photo even before I saw the comments.

The scary thing is that I had pretty much the complete system, in fact I think my dad bought a second one because the original one had the picture tube go out (cheaper to by new). As far as I knew it was still the closet in my old room at my parents home but I found out about a year ago that my dad had given it away. Now those consoles are selling for approximately $400 and each game is going for about $50.

So hold on to your game systems, and try to keep all of the original packaging... who knows what they will be worth in 20 years.

I have a complete Vectrex up in the attic. Now that was good gaming.

How do you live!?!?!

Seriously, I think you've posted before about watching movies so I assume you allow yourself some couch potato entertainment. If so, TV is so much better than anything Hollywood it putting on the big screen lately. Between the new season of Sopranos, the incredible story lines of Lost, the never ending excitement of the Amazing Race and fun little shows like MythBusters, movies just don't compare. With my Tivo no time is lost in the hell that is broadcast programming.

I'm going to see my first movie in over 6 months today, and only because "V" for Vendetta is produced by the Matrix "guys".

As for the 360, which I waited in line over night for, I wouldn't recommend shelling out the $400. The game selection is still really poor and truthfully not much better quality than original Xbox games yet. You can pick up an Xbox for under $100 now anyway. The 360 will be worth it in about a year.

My $0.02 worth, I agree with James the Xbox 360 rocks... The only big issue is that you are limited by the games available right now. Like all things it not perfect, I find a few of the entries in the menu system somewhat burried. But all in all, I'm very happy with the purchase. Hexic is great fun, BTW!