Always Time for one More is no More!

So for less than 7 years (my 360 still does not show even 5 years as yet, but i did go through a name change from el sufur to suffur, so maybe it does not include that, but Blo changed his name and seems to be showing more years than me, lol, though he has been on longer than me!), I have been playing Xbox, I know I got onto the service late due to not being able to afford a descent broadband/internet connection, but eventually got one and since I bought my Xbox Original 6 months before so, and played Burnout 2 Point of Impact to death as well as lots of Lan games on Halo 1 and 2. I enjoyed Crimson Sky’s, Carve, the Midnight Club’s and Mid-Town Madness. Most of the games i played were for playing with others, because i played the single player games so much I was ready to show of my skills to strangers and own them, lol. And I also played split screen with a friend of mine called Partisan, who if he came down the same gaming route as me would have been way better than me, he was that good!

I was looking forward to playing Halo 2 online, sadly I was getting pwoned left, right and centre, and it was so hard to concentrate due to excitement playing on-line for the first time, and that's my excuse, lol. So decided to put in my one and only favourite game @that time, Burnout 3 Takedown, after I shoved Burnout 2 Point of Impact in to get my leader boards updates!

I don’t know who I played for my first games, but i did ok, for a noob, had some skills, though was sticking with my Tuned Super, as I could make that car do stuff, that most people would think impossible(probably not but hey i was good), well in my eyes anyway, lol. I know in races, I stuck to my racing lines, even when other players were trying to pop my cherry, and since my lines were oncoming and racing down the dotted line, most people could not get close enough, with out clipping the oncoming i was hiding in, lol. And I know even when the racing was swapped up to open (any car) i stuck to my Tuned Super, and still beat, the Euro and the WTR, and no not all the time but enough to get kicked out of rooms, lol, as i was raping rank of a lot of racers. So I hopped from room to room.

In those days, as I learned, there were strong hosts out there, people that had rooms that could only be got into if your were, good, funny and could keep up. And those leaders of the rooms that i remember were ZombieTron, Black Pancake, and Brainless Yoshi, 3 women! I know i was a quiet person in those rooms, but my skills at racing were good enough to stay in racing rooms, but then… The rooms changed to Takedown rooms,they probably were takedown rooms normally, but i think in those days, rooms started as racing then moved up to takedowns. And since i was the noob, I was on the blue team, and after a few runs, where blue team won, i was then hunted as the only blue guy vs. ... the rest of the reds, with them after my virgin cherry, lol.

And I lasted, and I was hunted by what think were some of the best players out there. From MonkeyCMonkeyDo, Blofeld (x), drunknnumpty, Zombietron, Black Pancake, Brainless Yoshi and her partner, and a few others that don’t stick in my mind, but good people and players/gamers. I think it was numpty that got me in the end and after that was owned a lot as they learned to chase my dotted line on oncoming, plus i learned how they were catching me out, by break checking, boxing me in and basically being bastards, lol! But i gave them a run for my money and theirs, and when they went off line, I went to the other side of the pond and raced gamers from over there. And i stole rank like a demon! I do admit i did not win in the early games i played as i was getting use to people taking at me, and trying to hurt the noob, lol but by the next day, and racing for 18 hours straight, yes i ate, and took comfort breaks, and in those days i left the room to do so, and then try and find the room i was in if there was room!

By the time i got back to Black Pancakes room, my rank had come down considerably, and having a low rank made sure you got in room, as people wanted to steal it, lol, but i was now more at home with being online, i could catch conversations, know what people were like, learned some fast lines and still use my skill at oncoming and weaving thru traffic like i was possessed, and as I played these buggers who were that good that they caught on to try and destroy me, lol. I know i fought back well, taking down reds while alive, but if i was dead, i was the man to protect my fellow blues (I must have been ZombieTron ’s guardian angel, lol), making sure Blues won! I know I napped for a few hours, but left my Xbox running, while i napped, because i was not sure if my skills/rank were being save, did not want to lose my ranking whore score, lol. I know by day 3 of playing mostly Burnout 3, yes i played some Halo 2 but it was just not as fun as BO3, and lots of children on Halo 2 that just irritated me no end, and the BO3 rooms that i was in you had to be over 18, so felt more at home there with out the fear of stepping over a line and upsetting someone’s child, if they pissed me off, lol.

I know over those 3 days, i was popped, shoved into a wall, into traffic and basically abused but i did give as much as i could. Numpty was the guy that got me first (as far as I know, and a guy I love and glad to have as my friend as well as the others), the others followed close behind taking me from behind, fnar fnar! And that’s what it was about for Burnout 3, the double entandres, the sex jokes and basically smack talk that, changed me, i was allowed to be me in those games, i could say rude but funny things, and that is where i did that sort of stuff, I should have taken it to my relationship i was having in those days, but it seemed silly to do that, one of the reasons i tried to get my girl playing with us, to share the rude, raw sex appeal (those aren’t the right words, it was more like being open sexually with out the mess, lol) that i had in those rooms. Don’t get me wrong i was still quiet, as was drunk, but we hit people with one liners and quips, and seemed to know what each other was thinking.

I know I jumped into a lot of rooms, met Irongrid, who was Xandu, Capt Smooth, BootlegGiant, Kevlar0, umo (Fnord), a guy called Stang79?( an American who seemed to come across as some very rich guy, he even invited me to a party in the states and seemed to indicate that he was going to pay for the trip and i have to admit that was to strange for me to go, i sort of regret that as it would have been an adventure and i did have a passport, lol), EvilKonCarne, Whateverevil, and many others that i met through these games, most on my friend list still, though many are gone after not moving onto other games, letting their tags die, or changing them to other names, or going to the dark side and playing on the PS console, but still gamers which is what it’s about.

The ‘Just one more’ was the moto of rooms in those days, people played Burnout 3 from 4 pm till 3 am (well as soon as they got home from work, put on the Xbox, jump in a shower, eat and set up the drinks which took less than 15 minutes for me, lol), and as the night grew old and the morning showed new rays of promise, and people wanted to go to bed to greet it, someone would say just one more game, and it would lead to another hour of game play, because of that line, lol. If a room was going well, from an interesting conversation, to just fun racing, raging or crashing, we kept going. It was a great game, and the social net work was that strong it did eventually spawn, the site Burnoutaholics, and the JAM clan and FAQ Clan on Face Book, we have all met each other in person at drunken’ meet ups. I did know it put a strain on my personal relationship/s and social ones and it did it for others but it also spawned new ones, many of my fellow burners are now married and have children with Burnout babies or are still in long term relationships.

I spawned a line recently, that gaming was better than masturbation though not better than sex, and that was my down fall, lol. But I know i was having a lot fun as a gamer, since my first days of Pong and Atari 2600 and playing games on the MAC and my IBM apple 2c clone pc, lol. I am a gamer not as prolific as others I know as I have only just recently broke 15k gamer score but I have got many people into games of one type or another, true it can wipe a real social life off the agenda that is life, and maybe i should have had some consideration, but I know that while I played Burnout and other games, someone was sitting next to me playing Pokémon and was a demon on that game!

The Original Xbox Live service was a god send for a lot of gamers, it may have done some damage to people’s lives out side of the service but over all the games were just apart of a new social net work that has grown to to more than 20 million people with the birth of the Xbox 360 and i must have played 1/2 a million people by now on the games i played, especially on the 360.

I will miss the Xbox Original games, like a lost Girl friend, but we all have to move on, and see what the next day bring us, and what developers bring us in the future, gaming is now main stream, with more that 1/2 a billion players out there from the PC, Xbox 360, PS3 and the Nintendo Wii, and from all ages, to all walks of life, and i think it will grow even more by the next generation of consoles and PC upgrades. And the games are becoming more interactive with motion control, Natal and many other innovations within the industry, and some of them are starting to look so realistic your not sure if you in your own movie, lol, and with new tech in TV’s for multi consoles being plugged into one TV to 3D screens etc, the future looks like games are here to stay, and to move on, we need to lose the original platform and the base of operations where we all started in this next generation of interactive media, and hope what they bring us next will make us feel like we did when we first started.

I know when i first started on Xbox, it seemed like i was hanging out with a dirty secret, as games were looked upon as pure escapism, and not socially acceptable or what lazy people did and social introverts, hey I'm a lazy person and socially shy, but i like trying to prove myself with what I'm good at and certain games are what I am good at, I know i did not talk much about it then, though did try to sell what i was doing to my friends, that this stuff is fun, come join, but most people i know are more social in the pub than on Xbox, while i was at home in Gaming Cyberspace, I was sort of anonymous in those days, but with the expansion to the web with the fan sites and stuff you do get known well by the people that play the games you talk about, lol, and though I am not know for my writing skills, lol, I still can’t spell, lol, I have learned and met so many people because of gaming, I did a few years as a part time game journo/blogger, i have played demos and interviewed some very interesting developers of games, as well as other gaming journalists, that I was going to be playing and some that i did not because i wrote about them.

I have had a fun ride/drive so far, but I do miss the early days, and think that we should hold a minutes silence on April 15 every year for a while in respect for those good old days, the people that have gone from our friends list and for the death of what was called ‘indie’ gaming and the Original Xbox that got us here today, into main stream gaming, which is where we are today awaiting the next game of Crackdown 2 and other serialized games that have done well, and look forward to what is coming around the corner, that is so innovative, and so out there we will not know it good/fun till we play it.

Any hew, I have played all my Van Halen, so time to stop writing and post this, I have copied this from my space page as this is more a blog rather than a journalistic piece not that have written many of those but more a slice out of mind, and it’s part of Microsoft’s Windows Live Writer for that service, so double postage for the win, lol.