What now?

[Atarifever]

So my friend won an Xbox 360 from EB games. This prompted my wife to say "well enough is enough, you can't be the last one to get one, since you're the biggest gaming geek of all of you guys." So we went shopping and I got a 360 arcade (it was much cheaper, and it came with Sega Superstar Tennis, and five arcade games I was interested in). Also, that left money for a third game. So now I'm set up with PacMan Championship Collection (and some other arcade ones), Sega Superstar Tennis, and Mass Effect. I have two controllers, and internal memory of 256 MB. I'm hooked to standard TV and am not terribly interested yet in upgrading (so I hope text isn't too small in Mass Effect).

 

What's next? Is there a way to expand the memory via pendrive or anything (like the Wii with SD)? Is there something in particular I need to download? Is there any upgrade to the dashboard I need to be rushing to hook up for? Vertical or Horizontal for best life expectancy? Is it okay to lay it down on laminate flooring?

 

Guide me. I know nothing anymore. I opened the box expecting to find a memory card for goodness sake. When'd they get internal memory?

 

Also, was Mass Effect a good choice? I bought it because it was pretty cheap ($39.99 next to a pile of $59-69 games.

 

One more thing, how's the warranty work? The chick at the store said it was only good for a year and tried to sell us some extended warranty stuff. Should we go back to get it? I was under the impression I was looking at a 3 year warranty out of the box?

Edited March 26, 2009 by Atarifever

[Spazmonkey]

Well, you can buy a hard drive which just clicks on top, and they range from 20-120 gigabytes.

 

Mass Effect is an awesome RPG, and I really enjoyed it.

 

The warranty is amazing, if your xbox receives a certain hardware failure, which it will at some point in its life, it's covered by microsoft. The best part is it's quite easy to induce this, so if anything else goes wrong, your in the clear.

 

Wherever you put it, make sure it gets enough ventilation, as heat is the cause of the failure. If your console is upright, and it happens to tip over while playing a game, it will ruin the game, eat it one could say. I lay mine flat, mostly because the disk drive thing lost it's elasticity, and won't put out the drive tray anymore.

[Atarifever]

Well, you can buy a hard drive which just clicks on top, and they range from 20-120 gigabytes.

 

Mass Effect is an awesome RPG, and I really enjoyed it.

 

The warranty is amazing, if your xbox receives a certain hardware failure, which it will at some point in its life, it's covered by microsoft. The best part is it's quite easy to induce this, so if anything else goes wrong, your in the clear.

 

Wherever you put it, make sure it gets enough ventilation, as heat is the cause of the failure. If your console is upright, and it happens to tip over while playing a game, it will ruin the game, eat it one could say. I lay mine flat, mostly because the disk drive thing lost it's elasticity, and won't put out the drive tray anymore.

I'm not entirely in the dark (I am a huge geek afterall), so I assume you're saying RROD failure is covered for three years regardless, but the other things may be only one year?

[kroogur]

When i got my 360 last year i registered it online and the warranty end date was in 2011, so it will let you know how long the unit is covered. That aside you may also like Oblivion. I just picked up a copy and it is very good, i enjoy that there are many other interesting things to do other than follow a rigid point a to b quest line.

[atarian63]

So my friend won an Xbox 360 from EB games. This prompted my wife to say "well enough is enough, you can't be the last one to get one, since you're the biggest gaming geek of all of you guys." So we went shopping and I got a 360 arcade (it was much cheaper, and it came with Sega Superstar Tennis, and five arcade games I was interested in). Also, that left money for a third game. So now I'm set up with PacMan Championship Collection (and some other arcade ones), Sega Superstar Tennis, and Mass Effect. I have two controllers, and internal memory of 256 MB. I'm hooked to standard TV and am not terribly interested yet in upgrading (so I hope text isn't too small in Mass Effect).

 

What's next? Is there a way to expand the memory via pendrive or anything (like the Wii with SD)? Is there something in particular I need to download? Is there any upgrade to the dashboard I need to be rushing to hook up for? Vertical or Horizontal for best life expectancy? Is it okay to lay it down on laminate flooring?

 

Guide me. I know nothing anymore. I opened the box expecting to find a memory card for goodness sake. When'd they get internal memory?

 

Also, was Mass Effect a good choice? I bought it because it was pretty cheap ($39.99 next to a pile of $59-69 games.

 

One more thing, how's the warranty work? The chick at the store said it was only good for a year and tried to sell us some extended warranty stuff. Should we go back to get it? I was under the impression I was looking at a 3 year warranty out of the box?

Dude, you are MR classic gaming! Step away from the Dark Side!

[Spazmonkey]

Well, you can buy a hard drive which just clicks on top, and they range from 20-120 gigabytes.

 

Mass Effect is an awesome RPG, and I really enjoyed it.

 

The warranty is amazing, if your xbox receives a certain hardware failure, which it will at some point in its life, it's covered by microsoft. The best part is it's quite easy to induce this, so if anything else goes wrong, your in the clear.

 

Wherever you put it, make sure it gets enough ventilation, as heat is the cause of the failure. If your console is upright, and it happens to tip over while playing a game, it will ruin the game, eat it one could say. I lay mine flat, mostly because the disk drive thing lost it's elasticity, and won't put out the drive tray anymore.

I'm not entirely in the dark (I am a huge geek afterall), so I assume you're saying RROD failure is covered for three years regardless, but the other things may be only one year?

 

Well, when you said in the dark.....

 

RROD is covered, everything else isn't, but red ring is quite easy to induce, so if your okay with milking microsoft, then an extended warranty is a joke.

Edited March 27, 2009 by Spazmonkey

[Atarifever]

Well, you can buy a hard drive which just clicks on top, and they range from 20-120 gigabytes.

 

Mass Effect is an awesome RPG, and I really enjoyed it.

 

The warranty is amazing, if your xbox receives a certain hardware failure, which it will at some point in its life, it's covered by microsoft. The best part is it's quite easy to induce this, so if anything else goes wrong, your in the clear.

 

Wherever you put it, make sure it gets enough ventilation, as heat is the cause of the failure. If your console is upright, and it happens to tip over while playing a game, it will ruin the game, eat it one could say. I lay mine flat, mostly because the disk drive thing lost it's elasticity, and won't put out the drive tray anymore.

I'm not entirely in the dark (I am a huge geek afterall), so I assume you're saying RROD failure is covered for three years regardless, but the other things may be only one year?

 

Well, when you said in the dark.....

 

RROD is covered, everything else isn't, but red ring is quite easy to induce, so if your okay with milking microsoft, then an extended warranty is a joke.

Oh, I'm fine with milking them. I'll rip off any large corporation for any problems in their own technology. It's my civic, national, and global citizen duty.

[moycon]

Mass Effect was an awesome game! I paid close to full price for it when it came out and thought I got my moneys worth.

That said....you can find it anywhere now for $19.99.

I hit Amazon a lot when I shop for 360 games. Cheap prices, free shipping, no tax on the new stuff, and some super great deals on the used stuff (Games for under $10 shipped)

 

Cafeman asked the same question awhile back so I will re-post my response. These are all top grade A USDA choice games (IMO) for cheap on Amazon

 

Kameo can be found < $10 (One of the greatest launch titles ever I think)

Perfect Dark Zero can be found < $10 (Another launch title, this game has full blown co-op through the whole campaign and lots of Vs games)

Prey can be found < $10 (A great if somewhat easy campaign with kick ass online Vs. that unfortunately doesn't have much traffic these days)

Crackdown can be found < $15 (One of my favorite 360 games, full online co-op good stuff)

Unreal 3 can be found < $15 (This has a lame campaign but online is where it's at! Looks super, great, fast, team and Vs fun online for cheap!)

Eternal Sonata can be found < $15 (One on the best RPGs I've ever played)

Test Drive Unlimited can be found < $20 (A really great driving game with a huge world to explore and lots licensed cars to buy.)

Burnout Paradise can be found < $20 ( I love this game, so much to do and great graphics )

Oblivion GOTY can be found < $20 (Reason alone to buy one of the current gen consoles...AWESOME)

Bio Shock can be found < $20 (No online but the campaign just kicks so much ass and looks so great you'll get sucked in quick)

 

Remember you can usually find a free demo of games on the marketplace. Try before you buy.

Edited March 27, 2009 by moycon

[Lord Helmet]

Make sure you lay the thing horizontal. Vertical is just asking for trouble. I think you should invest in a hard drive, because that memory unit won't hold much. You can grab one from ebay for cheap...I got one for like $20 that way.

 

Bioshock, Crackdown, Test Drive Unlimited are all less than $20 and are great games.

 

Remember you can usually find a free demo of games on the marketplace. Try before you buy.

 

I don't think you can do that without a hard drive...???

Edited March 27, 2009 by Lord Helmet

[JamesD]

My brother's Falcon(?) model had the RROD even though it was on it's side but YMMV.

 

The Orange Box, Leggo Star Wars the Complete Saga, Tomb Raider Anniversary, etc... all $20 at Target. I think Mass Effect was $20 or $30 but can't remember which.

I picked up Blue Dragon for $5 and Unreal Tournament for $20 at K-Mart.

I picked up Tomb Raider Legend and Underworld for under $20 on E-Bay, both new and that was shipped.

 

Mass Effect and Bioshock are both great titles and can be found pretty reasonably priced. Halo 3 and Gears of War are very popular and I liked both. The collectors edition of Halo 3 was just over $20 on ebay.

 

eBay is ok if you are patient. Best Buy has a large selection so you might find a few older titles that aren't available elsewhere. Target has some great deals on older games that were hits but overall selection is small compared to BestBuy.

[Atarifever]

Dude, you are MR classic gaming! Step away from the Dark Side!

I can't help it. They had PacMan right on the box! And he was smiling and running! I was powerless.

[Atarifever]

Quick question: If I hook to the internet without a Gold membership, will my scores for PacMan, Frogger, etc still post to the high score boards?

[Lord Helmet]

Quick question: If I hook to the internet without a Gold membership, will my scores for PacMan, Frogger, etc still post to the high score boards?

 

I believe so.

[Atarifever]

What about the HD Street Fighter II? Is there any reason to buy for a guy with no HDTV?

[+Cafeman]

Don't move the system IN ANY WAY if a disc is inside and the system is on - it could destroy your game disc. A simple bump hooking in the USB microphone destroyed our Guitar Hero disc (which best Buy replaced though).

[moycon]

I don't think you can do that without a hard drive...???

 

Oh yeah that's true. Maybe for some of the arcade titles, but surely not most of the retail games.

Time to get a HD Atarifever !

[Atarifever]

I don't think you can do that without a hard drive...???

 

Oh yeah that's true. Maybe for some of the arcade titles, but surely not most of the retail games.

Time to get a HD Atarifever !

I'm not that interested in retail games truth be told. Any cheap solutions for storage (like I said, maybe pendrives or something) that'd let me hold a bunch of download arcade games? I just barely ran out of room on the Wii, and now they've fixed even that minor issue more than well enough for my purposes. I'm hoping I can pull off something similar with my 360. I plan on making it live up to the "Arcade" name, and have little interest in games measured in anything bigger than maybe a few tens of megabites.

 

I think I must be an anomaly in the Xbox market. I am not much interested in it's High def ability, media centre functions, or massive storage. I want it to play simple pick up and play games with its awesome controller. It's also basically what I do with the Wii now. I could care less about motion controls. I just like that the Wii controller turns sideways to be a two button controller with a nice d-pad for its simple download games. I specifically want these systems, when they are in my house, to avoid doing everything everyone else seems to want from them. HD? HDD? Motion control? Not under my roof.

Edited March 27, 2009 by Atarifever

[Atarifever]

Just did some research and the only memory cards are like $59. And no one else seems to make them. That's gross. If I run out of space and erase the game, can I redownload it for free? That'd be an affordable solution until Christmas. I mean, I have a baby on the way and am lucky my wife was cool enough to suggest this last hoo-rah with the finances. I won't likely get a harddrive or $60 memory card anytime soon, especially if I'm going to be buying some points soon.

[moycon]

Just did some research and the only memory cards are like $59. And no one else seems to make them. That's gross. If I run out of space and erase the game, can I redownload it for free? That'd be an affordable solution until Christmas. I mean, I have a baby on the way and am lucky my wife was cool enough to suggest this last hoo-rah with the finances. I won't likely get a harddrive or $60 memory card anytime soon, especially if I'm going to be buying some points soon.

 

The 512 MB cards can be bought new off Amazon for $42.99 (That is with free shipping and no tax) you can also find them used for under $30 (but you'll have to pay for shipping) Really though since the 60 GB HD has become the standard, the 20 GB HB used can be had for probably the same price as the 512 MB card.

 

But yes, to answer your question you can always delete and re-download your purchases.

[brojamfootball]

If your machine has the "old" firmware, you can contact Microsoft through their website and get a brand new 20GB hard drive for $20-30(price changed at some point), including three months of XBOX Live and shipping is way cheap. They do this for owners of the 360 Arcade with older firmware since the memory card doesn't have enough space to hold the firmware update. Check it out.

[Atarifever]

But yes, to answer your question you can always delete and re-download your purchases.

Fantastic! I don't believe the Wii allows for that. Will that work with a new 360 if mine Red Rings on me?

Edited March 27, 2009 by Atarifever

[Atarifever]

If your machine has the "old" firmware, you can contact Microsoft through their website and get a brand new 20GB hard drive for $20-30(price changed at some point), including three months of XBOX Live and shipping is way cheap. They do this for owners of the 360 Arcade with older firmware since the memory card doesn't have enough space to hold the firmware update. Check it out.

Thanks!

[moycon]

But yes, to answer your question you can always delete and re-download your purchases.

Fantastic! I don't believe the Wii allows for that. Will that work with a new 360 if mine Red Rings on me?

 

You can actually re-download it to any 360 in the world and play the game, but here's the catch...you have to be logged into you gamertag AND logged into Xbox live to play the game. Otherwise, it will just show up as the trial version. In order to play the game offline, you have to be playing on the console the license is tied to (probably the one you downloaded it to to begin with) If you got RRoD, and they send you a new unit, the SHOULD tie all your past downloads to that new unit for you. If they didn't you can do it manually (once a year) from Xbox.com, but if you had an issue where you wanted to transfers the licenses again and that year hadn't passed, you could call customer support and have them transfer it. I ran into that very issue when I transfered all my licenses from my Pro unit to my Elite and then the Elite crapped out and I had to send it in, they didn't transfer the licenses and I couldn't do it myself since I had already done it once that year (stupid if you ask me)

Usually takes a day or two for them to do it though. They tell you 7 days, it took mine about 1 day.

[HammR25]

Namco Museum Virtual Arcade is a pretty good buy for the price. It's got all of the Namco Xbox Live Arcade games on it plus a ton of other games.

 

It's actually cheaper to buy this disc than to buy all of the Namco Xbox Live Arcade games separately, not that you have a choice without a hard drive.

[Atarifever]

Namco Museum Virtual Arcade is a pretty good buy for the price. It's got all of the Namco Xbox Live Arcade games on it plus a ton of other games.

 

It's actually cheaper to buy this disc than to buy all of the Namco Xbox Live Arcade games separately, not that you have a choice without a hard drive.

Just went and checked it out on their site. Looks great. I'll probably pick it up. Usually those arcade compilations end up in the bargain bins, so I'll look there first.