So the HD generation starts off in 2005 with the launch of the Xbox 360. Now I really wanted one, but I was kid in college still, and on top of that, you literally could not get an Xbox 360 from November 2005 through April 2006. Call of Duty 2 and Dead Rising were the games that I wanted to play on it. It also played certain original Xbox Games, which I was looking forward to playing. When I finally graduated in 2006, my girlfriend at the time, among with my friend group, got me an Xbox 360 for graduation. It was a great little system, and I played it a lot the following summer after I moved back home from the university. Lots of late nights replaying KOTOR and KOTOR2 as well as an ever growing amount of games and demos from the Xbox magazine. I had a neat setup where I routed the sound out to some 2.1 PC speakers and used a VGA cable to connect it to a PC monitor for 720p gaming! That fall, I took it with me to my new apartment when I got my first job in computer science outside of the university. After I got off of my 6 months of probation as a new employee, I celebrated by buying a 1080p 42” Sharp AQUOS LCD HDTV! Sadly, my Xbox had to use Component cables for HD gaming, but it still looked epic! I even hooked up my PC to it for a while and played some great games on there like Left 4 Dead and WOW. I even kept playing DDR on the Xbox 360. It had three releases and was the only HD DDR game that you could get. I had a lot of fun with those games, despite the PS2 having a better selection of DDR games.
I even got the HD DVD add on drive to watch movies on it. At the time, it cost me $200 to get the drive, where as the cheapest blu-ray player was still $600. However, I really enjoyed that format. Its region free movies even allowed me to import some films and watch them at home before they even opened in theaters here in the US. I remember watching Mr Bean’s Holiday in my apartment in HD with my girlfriend while it opened up the following weekend at AMC theaters. However, one day when watching March of the Penguins on HD DVD, my first RROD happened. I was sad, upset, and annoyed. However, Microsoft had just started their warranty repairs service for this. I remember walking into the UPS drop off, and the guy just saw the size of the box and immediately knew what it was before I even got to the counter. He said that they had so many of them, that he could just recognize the box. Eventually, after some hijinks with UPS, I got it back, or rather got a refurbished unit sent back to me. Yet, that didn’t last long. Another RROD sent that one back less than a year later.
One thing that did last a long time for us, was Guitar Hero 3. For the holiday in 2007, I had just bought a house with my Fiancé at the time. For Christmas, we had got the GH3 guitar bundle with Slash’s guitar. It was an epic game that introduced me to some good music and bands. I got addicted to 30 Seconds to Mars from this game. Not only I got hooked on this game, but I got my brother hooked on it too. We took the game to my parents home that year from Christmas. My brother had spent Most of Christmas Eve with his Fiancé ‘s family, but showed up at the folk’s house around 9 PM. We showed him the game, and he was hooked! He played it for two hours that night until he could barely keep his eyes open. Later on, I would get to try Rockband in our then local Best Buy. They had the whole thing setup in their gaming section. Drums with a stool, two guitars, and a mic on a stand. It was epic! I loved playing the drums, so I got myself a set! I remember having a blast playing that, and I really enjoyed playing it with my dad on a couple of occasions.
Eventually, I picked up an Xbox 360 redesign, as I wanted that built in Wifi and HDMI output. I tried to get one when they were first announced through a Gamestop trade in deal, but they cancelled the deal about 6 days into this month long promotion. I did get one elsewhere though, and its still working to this day in my kids’ playroom, where they jam out on Rockband/Guitar Hero and play Minecraft on occasion.
The story of how I got a PS3 is kind of neat, so I will include that here. Now, I want to remind you all about January 2008. HD DVD had almost convinced Warner Bros to exclusively put out their content on HD DVD. It was going to be a big announcement, as they had been releasing on both HD DVD and Blu-ray. Well, that didn’t happen. Instead, HD DVD died that month, and I had backed the wrong horse. Now, this is years before we had HD streaming. In fact, I was still watching HDTV shows over an antenna! So I wanted to get a Blu-ray player so I could keep watching movies and TV sets in HD for the foreseeable future. I also wanted to play some of the PS3 exclusives and the PS3 was still the cheapest Blu-ray player, so that is what I was hunting. On top of that, it had to be a backward compatible model as I had quite the PS2 library, and would love to play the DDR games upscaled on a PS3. That only problem was that the launch units that were fully compatible were long gone. The new ones that were only software compatible, were extremely rare, and impossible for me to find. I spent around 6 months looking to no avail. At the time, I was deep into wedding planning with my then Fiancé, and when she went into store in a nearby town, I got her to drop me off at a Movie Gallery that had a Game Zone attached to it, as I wanted to check there to see what the store had available. The Game zone was this little room attached to the movie gallery that was dedicated to gaming. Like having a little EB Games inside the store. There to my surprise, was not one, but two 60gb PS3 launch units! Despite my fiancé’s indifference to me spending this much money on a PS3 while she spent thousands on the wedding, and the PS3 had recently been reduced to $500 MSRP by Sony too, I got one of them! I called my boss to let him know about the other one as he had been looking for one too! I used that PS3 for a lot of movies! The amount of Blurays I watched on it would be in the thousands! I used it as my main player from 2008 until 2016 or so when I got my UHD Player. I played a few PS3 games on it, but mostly I used it for movies and some PS2 DDR games. We even got the upgraded pro mats for this, as we kept breaking the cheaper plastic ones. Playing the PS2 DDR games on it really sold the fiancé on the PS3, btw. I should note that this PS3 in 2008 was the first video game console that I ever bought by myself brand new. Crazy to think about, but its true. Like I bought a house before I bought a new game console for myself.
The Wii, well, it was something that I held off from for a long while. I didn’t get the console until my birthday in 2009. I was married, and we were the last of our friend group to get one, so we got one. Mainly, I just played a few Wii Sports games, Link’s crossbow game, and eventually New Super Mario Bros Wii. I really didn’t give this system much of a chance. I hated that it was in SD when its competitors were in HD, I hated the name, and I didn’t much care for the motion controls to be honest. It was fun for Wii bowling and tennis, but I didn’t enjoy it on RE4.
I want to talk about this generation a lot since I played it a lot. Like this was my generation that I played as much as I did in the NES days. The 360 was my system of choice this generation. I had it first, all the online multiplayer I played was on Xbox Live. I had a Wii and a few games for it, as well as a PS3 and a few games, but nothing compared to my massive library of 360 games. I played hundreds of hours in Fallout 3. I did everything I could in that game and its expansions. I played that game so much that one time I saw a bottlecap on the ground and got excited. I loved Fable 2. That game was fun to play! Resident Evil 5, while not as good as 4, was a lot of fun to play online co-op with my friends. Dead Rising was pure zombie slaughtering fun! I still remember the right combo of gear to have to have near indestructible chainsaws. I loved playing through the single player campaigns of Halo 3, odst, Wars, Reach, and 4. Such great games, that I even got into reading the epic novels about them. If you haven’t given them a look, check them out. Gears of War 1-3 were epic games that I really got into as well. I was good at the multiplayer too, but the single player campaigns were just so much fun! I also got to shout out the novels for this game series too, some of which were written by the same people that wrote some of the Halo novels.
As much as we loved the Halo games, Call of Duty was the big game series for my buddies and I. We spent a lot of nights gaming on Xbox Live, trying to get a Nuke in multiplayer in COD:MW2. I should note that I did it once and it was my crowning achievement in Gaming. I miss those days, playing with my friends after hitting the gym after work. It helped me greatly through my divorce, and I am forever grateful for that.
I should mention that I also fulfilled a dream of mine during this era, as I got an Optma HD20 1080p projector, and a 135” motorized screen and put it in my living room. After all, I was a bachelor now with a big house to myself. That made the PS3’s movies look amazing and gaming on a screen like at was so immersive that you have to just experience it for yourself. I had to eventually get rid of this about 5 years later when I got remarried and started having kids, but for a few years, I had the best place around to watch TV, movies, games, or sports. One day I like to get another projector for movie night, but that might have to wait until I move again.
I even got the HD DVD add on drive to watch movies on it. At the time, it cost me $200 to get the drive, where as the cheapest blu-ray player was still $600. However, I really enjoyed that format. Its region free movies even allowed me to import some films and watch them at home before they even opened in theaters here in the US. I remember watching Mr Bean’s Holiday in my apartment in HD with my girlfriend while it opened up the following weekend at AMC theaters. However, one day when watching March of the Penguins on HD DVD, my first RROD happened. I was sad, upset, and annoyed. However, Microsoft had just started their warranty repairs service for this. I remember walking into the UPS drop off, and the guy just saw the size of the box and immediately knew what it was before I even got to the counter. He said that they had so many of them, that he could just recognize the box. Eventually, after some hijinks with UPS, I got it back, or rather got a refurbished unit sent back to me. Yet, that didn’t last long. Another RROD sent that one back less than a year later.
One thing that did last a long time for us, was Guitar Hero 3. For the holiday in 2007, I had just bought a house with my Fiancé at the time. For Christmas, we had got the GH3 guitar bundle with Slash’s guitar. It was an epic game that introduced me to some good music and bands. I got addicted to 30 Seconds to Mars from this game. Not only I got hooked on this game, but I got my brother hooked on it too. We took the game to my parents home that year from Christmas. My brother had spent Most of Christmas Eve with his Fiancé ‘s family, but showed up at the folk’s house around 9 PM. We showed him the game, and he was hooked! He played it for two hours that night until he could barely keep his eyes open. Later on, I would get to try Rockband in our then local Best Buy. They had the whole thing setup in their gaming section. Drums with a stool, two guitars, and a mic on a stand. It was epic! I loved playing the drums, so I got myself a set! I remember having a blast playing that, and I really enjoyed playing it with my dad on a couple of occasions.
Eventually, I picked up an Xbox 360 redesign, as I wanted that built in Wifi and HDMI output. I tried to get one when they were first announced through a Gamestop trade in deal, but they cancelled the deal about 6 days into this month long promotion. I did get one elsewhere though, and its still working to this day in my kids’ playroom, where they jam out on Rockband/Guitar Hero and play Minecraft on occasion.
The story of how I got a PS3 is kind of neat, so I will include that here. Now, I want to remind you all about January 2008. HD DVD had almost convinced Warner Bros to exclusively put out their content on HD DVD. It was going to be a big announcement, as they had been releasing on both HD DVD and Blu-ray. Well, that didn’t happen. Instead, HD DVD died that month, and I had backed the wrong horse. Now, this is years before we had HD streaming. In fact, I was still watching HDTV shows over an antenna! So I wanted to get a Blu-ray player so I could keep watching movies and TV sets in HD for the foreseeable future. I also wanted to play some of the PS3 exclusives and the PS3 was still the cheapest Blu-ray player, so that is what I was hunting. On top of that, it had to be a backward compatible model as I had quite the PS2 library, and would love to play the DDR games upscaled on a PS3. That only problem was that the launch units that were fully compatible were long gone. The new ones that were only software compatible, were extremely rare, and impossible for me to find. I spent around 6 months looking to no avail. At the time, I was deep into wedding planning with my then Fiancé, and when she went into store in a nearby town, I got her to drop me off at a Movie Gallery that had a Game Zone attached to it, as I wanted to check there to see what the store had available. The Game zone was this little room attached to the movie gallery that was dedicated to gaming. Like having a little EB Games inside the store. There to my surprise, was not one, but two 60gb PS3 launch units! Despite my fiancé’s indifference to me spending this much money on a PS3 while she spent thousands on the wedding, and the PS3 had recently been reduced to $500 MSRP by Sony too, I got one of them! I called my boss to let him know about the other one as he had been looking for one too! I used that PS3 for a lot of movies! The amount of Blurays I watched on it would be in the thousands! I used it as my main player from 2008 until 2016 or so when I got my UHD Player. I played a few PS3 games on it, but mostly I used it for movies and some PS2 DDR games. We even got the upgraded pro mats for this, as we kept breaking the cheaper plastic ones. Playing the PS2 DDR games on it really sold the fiancé on the PS3, btw. I should note that this PS3 in 2008 was the first video game console that I ever bought by myself brand new. Crazy to think about, but its true. Like I bought a house before I bought a new game console for myself.
The Wii, well, it was something that I held off from for a long while. I didn’t get the console until my birthday in 2009. I was married, and we were the last of our friend group to get one, so we got one. Mainly, I just played a few Wii Sports games, Link’s crossbow game, and eventually New Super Mario Bros Wii. I really didn’t give this system much of a chance. I hated that it was in SD when its competitors were in HD, I hated the name, and I didn’t much care for the motion controls to be honest. It was fun for Wii bowling and tennis, but I didn’t enjoy it on RE4.
I want to talk about this generation a lot since I played it a lot. Like this was my generation that I played as much as I did in the NES days. The 360 was my system of choice this generation. I had it first, all the online multiplayer I played was on Xbox Live. I had a Wii and a few games for it, as well as a PS3 and a few games, but nothing compared to my massive library of 360 games. I played hundreds of hours in Fallout 3. I did everything I could in that game and its expansions. I played that game so much that one time I saw a bottlecap on the ground and got excited. I loved Fable 2. That game was fun to play! Resident Evil 5, while not as good as 4, was a lot of fun to play online co-op with my friends. Dead Rising was pure zombie slaughtering fun! I still remember the right combo of gear to have to have near indestructible chainsaws. I loved playing through the single player campaigns of Halo 3, odst, Wars, Reach, and 4. Such great games, that I even got into reading the epic novels about them. If you haven’t given them a look, check them out. Gears of War 1-3 were epic games that I really got into as well. I was good at the multiplayer too, but the single player campaigns were just so much fun! I also got to shout out the novels for this game series too, some of which were written by the same people that wrote some of the Halo novels.
As much as we loved the Halo games, Call of Duty was the big game series for my buddies and I. We spent a lot of nights gaming on Xbox Live, trying to get a Nuke in multiplayer in COD:MW2. I should note that I did it once and it was my crowning achievement in Gaming. I miss those days, playing with my friends after hitting the gym after work. It helped me greatly through my divorce, and I am forever grateful for that.
I should mention that I also fulfilled a dream of mine during this era, as I got an Optma HD20 1080p projector, and a 135” motorized screen and put it in my living room. After all, I was a bachelor now with a big house to myself. That made the PS3’s movies look amazing and gaming on a screen like at was so immersive that you have to just experience it for yourself. I had to eventually get rid of this about 5 years later when I got remarried and started having kids, but for a few years, I had the best place around to watch TV, movies, games, or sports. One day I like to get another projector for movie night, but that might have to wait until I move again.
