Seems to be National Xbox 360 Day in the US today:

BBC News: US gamers lay hands on Xbox 360

Yea, and there was much grumbling about ‘cores’. Seems there’s two types of 360, one that has all the bits, and one that sucks, and they sold out of useful ones. I must admit, I know very little about consoles in general, being something of an old-school traditionalist when it comes to my gaming, and seem to have by passed the console thing entirely.

My gaming history:

  • Sinclair Spectrum +2. My first ever computer, it used audio cassettes as a data storage medium, and meant you had to actually sit there and listen to high pitched squealing for two minutes just to load the game, in a very similar manner to a dial-up modem. No hard disk at all, and only 128K of memory. Very few games used this expanded capacity, instead being written for the basic Spectrum and being 48K in size. Surprisingly fun in hindsight, but I doubt I could play on it now. The +2 was ground-breaking in its day, as it had a built-in tape player!

    PC-based Spectrum Emulator – you’re on your own with the games though.

  • Commodore Amiga. Full 256 colour, with actual music! I bought a plug in piece of circuit-board that gave it 512K – I was uber even then. It used 3.5inch floppy disks, and had no hard disk, although one was available for it towards the end of its life. It rivalled the Atari ST, another iconic platform of the time, and I used to get into all sorts of quasi-religious arguments about which was best.

    PC-Based Amiga Emulator - likewise…no idea where the games are for this.

  • 486SX25 PC. This was at about the time PCs were beginning to get real games – seeing a housemate’s PC running Sim City 2000, Doom and X-Wing sold it for me. The original machine came with 1MB of memory, a 100MB HDD, and a graphics card marginally less powerful than today’s mobile phones.

Since then, I’ve been effectively using the same machine, for while each and every individual part of it has been upgraded at least once, to it being it’s current 1.7Ghz, 1GB Ram, 100GB HDD 256MB GeForce 6 gaming rig form, I feel that the essential spirit of the machine is still there. It's like an old friend. All very zen and everything, but all that spending means I’ve never really been able to justify buying another machine for exactly the same purpose as well – a console. Also, console MMOs seem to have a lot of catching up to do – Phantasy Star Online is about the only one I can think of off-hand, and that really doesn’t sound like my cup of tea - too much huge manga hair for my liking.

Still, well done if you did manage to snag a 360 Pro, or whatever the full one is called, and if you didn’t, I can refer you to Penny Arcade, Buttonmashing or Games.Slashdot for far more clued up analysis, review and lowdown that I have to offer.

Enjoy!