[COLUMN] My Favorite Xbox Memories From the Past 25 Years | by Marty Sliva

With last Friday’s news of the major leadership shakeup at the top of Xbox, folks are understandably curious about the future of the gaming giant. Things have been moving in the wrong direction for Xbox for the better part of the decade, and no amount of studio acquisitions, Game Pass lineups, or classic franchise reboots have made things better.

A thousand people have already written about the decline, and prognosticated where the company might be 5, 10, or 20 years from now. Hell, we already did some of that on this week’s Windbreaker, and I imagine that there’s more to come on Firelink and Unpacked. But instead of adding my voice to that canyon of screams, I thought I’d do something different. I figured I’d just compile a list of some of my favorite memories from each of the four generations of Xbox hardware.

Original Xbox – Baby’s First BioWare

While I was an early adopter to the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo GameCube, I arrived a few years late to the Xbox party. While the console was released in November 2001, I didn’t jump in until the summer of 2003, specifically at the release of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. As a predominantly console player, this was my first BioWare game, and holy moly did it leave a great impression on me. I still think about its excellent characters and incredible story to this day. I’m due a replay of both KOTOR games sometime soon, especially if that phantom remake ever actually materializes.

Original Xbox – A Console From the Future

Aside from Star Wars, my other immediate first impression of the original Xbox was just how beefy and futuristic the console felt compared to its contemporaries. It had what felt like a bottomless internal hard drive, and although I have a weird amount of nostalgia for the Nintendo and PlayStation memory cards of the era, it was clear that internal storage was the way of the future. Also, I loaded that bad boy up with so many 2003-era songs that I stole from Morpheus and Kazaa – if memory serves me, there was an unhealthy amount of The Pillows, 50 Cent, and My Chemical Romance on there.

The Xbox was also built from the ground up with high-speed internet on the mind, unlike the PS2 and GameCube, which needed separate adapters to go online. Xbox Live had already launched by the time I got my console, which meant that it was only the second internet-ready thing in my house after the family desktop PC.

Original Xbox – The Dreamcast: Part II

While my original Xbox library didn’t grow nearly as large as my PS2 or GameCube collections, I did appreciate how the console felt a bit like a reincarnation of the Dreamcast. I loved Sega’s final console with all my heart, even though it was only around for a handful of years. But its spirit lived on in Xbox, with games like Crazy Taxi 3, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Gunvalkyrie, and The House of the Dead III. But the one I put the most time into was Jet Set Radio Future, a game that I still love completely, and hate the fact that it was never ported to another console. Also, it’s still a technical pain in the ass to emulate. Modern gen port, please and thanks.

Original Xbox – Halo(s)

The impact Halo had on the FPS genre and multiplayer gaming as a whole cannot be understated. I redefined how a shooter should play on consoles, whether that was by yourself, alongside a few pals, or online with complete strangers in Halo 2. I still remember picking up Halo 2 on launch day during my first semester of college, starting up the campaign in my dorm room, passing the controller off to one of my buds as I went to class, and then coming back to find that suddenly we were no longer playing as Master Chief, but rather a cool alien version of Keith David. We sunk hundreds of hours into that game, and I have no doubt that it negatively impacted my grades that semester. But I guess things managed to work out in the end.

Xbox 360 – A Big Ol’ Leap

Jumping forward to 2005, I saved up money from my part-time job specifically to be able to snag an Xbox 360 at launch, which was the first time I got a console using my own money. And I then proceeded to empty my bank account on a slew of games that I loved at the time. Some of them have held up, like Call of Duty 2 and Ubisoft’s Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Movie: The Game. Others like Kameo: Elements of Power and Perfect Dark Zero, not so much. But damn if that new hardware didn’t feel like a major leap forward in a way that new generations rarely do anymore. Achievements and Gamescore, downloadable games like Hexic HD, demos for every single major game, and the beauty that was the Blades Dashboard.

Xbox 360 – Tentpole Franchises

As the 360 generation moved on, Xbox built up its portfolio with some really stellar exclusive franchises. Halo continued to grow, cementing itself as the biggest console FPS franchise at the time. Gears of War brought a grittier, spookier flavor of action that I still love to this day. And though Fable couldn’t live up to its monumentally lofty promises, the charm and whimsy of Alblion won me over immediately. Couple this with some big Japanese swings in the form of Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey, and it finally felt like Xbox might be solidifying its roster in a way that could start competing with what we had on PlayStation and Nintendo.

Xbox 360 – Xbox Live Arcade

While the big AAA games might’ve helped pay the bills, it was the introduction of smaller, often independent, downloadable games that really opened my eyes during the Xbox 360 generation. This hit its stride during the amazing run of Summer of Arcade, which brought with it the likes of Braid, Bastion, Castle Crashers, Shadow Complex, Super Meat Boy, Limbo, and Geometry Wars 2. I can trace a direct line from that era to my modern day top 10 lists of any given year, which are now predominantly filled with smaller games. If there’s one positive lasting legacy from the entire Xbox experiment, it might be introducing millions of folks to the joys of indie gaming.

Xbox One – My Entertainment Hub

With the arrival of the Xbox One and subsequently the Series X, Microsoft’s hardware slowly became the de facto hub of my personal entertainment center. It’s what I turn on after work while I figure out how I want to spend my evening. It’s where I watch YouTube, Netflix, HBO, Crunchyroll, and the embarrassing amount of other entertainment services I subscribe to. I’ve grown so accustomed to it that I vastly prefer it over using a Roku, Apple TV, or whatever trash is built into my TV.

Xbox One – Sunset Overdrive

As we move into the Xbox One and Series X generations, I have fewer fond Xbox-centric memories. That’s not because I stopped enjoying games on the console – as I wrote above, it’s been the focal point of my living room entertainment center for well over a decade. However, a majority of the games that I’ve enjoyed on my past two Xbox consoles have been ones that could be found elsewhere as well.

One of the major exceptions to that is 2014’s Sunset Overdrive, a game which I still maintain to be among the most underrated and underplayed of the past 15 years. Its colorful world oozes charm, its sense of locomotion is unparalleled, and it leans heavily into Insomniac’s joy of creating a suite of weird and memorable weapons and gadgets. I’ve revisited this one a few times since 2014, and it’s held up excellently each time. I can’t recommend it enough.

Xbox One – Game Pass

The legacy of Game Pass is a tricky one to talk about. On one hand, I firmly believe that its legacy will be a net negative, as it’s contributed to the devaluation of games in the minds of millions of people, not unlike what Netflix has done for the film. It was unsustainable from the start, and I can see a world where it begins to fade away sooner rather than later. But if I take my critic hat off and put my “dude who likes playing games but doesn’t like spending a ton of money” hat on, then Game Pass has been nothing short of a portal into countless unforgettable experiences, and has introduced me to games that I absolutely would’ve passed up otherwise. I distinctly remember randomly downloading Outer Wilds at launch back in 2019 without having a single clue of what it was – I just dug the thumbnail art. Cut to the next day, and I’m rolling credits on what became one of my favorite games ever made.

Xbox Series X – Psychonauts 2

Of all the games that have come from studios that Xbox has gobbled up over the past 10 years or so, my favorite might be Psychonauts 2. I was a massive fan of the original, and never dreamed that the story would actually continue, let alone in a game as good as this. The writing, characters, and story are every bit as strong, the visuals received a massive upgrade, and the whole thing controls much smoother. It’s among my favorite games of 2021, and among the best 3D platforming adventures of the past 20 years. Also, we need to protect Double Fine at all costs.

Xbox Series X – Indiana Jones and the Great Circle 

The most recent first-party Xbox game to really wow me was 2024’s Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. It’s the best Indiana Jones thing in 35 years, which I know isn’t saying a ton, but it’s wild how much developer MachineGames just gets the character and what makes his adventures so exciting. Fantastic globe-trotting exploration, a great bit of virtual tourism, some really fun puzzles and combat scenarios, and a stellar take on the iconic character from Troy Baker. It’s 2026, and you owe yourself an outlet where you can punch Nazis in the face.

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Those are some of the fondest memories I have with Xbox consoles from throughout the past 25 years. Holler at me in the comments below with some of your own. Consider this a nice, positive little rest stop before venturing on and talking about the countless ways that Xbox has stumbled, annoyed us, or caused irreparable harm to the industry.