The Existential Dread of playing the Xbox 360 in 2024
Trying to find meaning in a dumb anecdote about my Xbox 360.
"You guys remember Nazi Zombies?" A simple question. One that would, over the course of days, destroy a part of my sanity. All thanks to the Xbox 360.
But first, some context: did you know it's actually really fucking hard to spend time with people? I'm luckier than most - I have friends that I 've known for 20 years and have regular contact with. Even so, adult life is not exactly conducive to healthy friendships. To try to address this, we've created a blocked out day to just hang out. Sometimes we just dig into our normal hobbies, others they get high and we watch the Ralph Bakshi Lord of the Rings. The point is spending the time.
And it's planning one of these that prompts the question. “You guys remember Nazi Zombies?" Of course we do. Call of Duty's horde mode has been a staple for almost as long as the franchise's wacky attempts to be serious about war. Putting that aside though, “Zombies” is actually a pretty fun time. The mode is more or less Left 4 Dead using COD's engine - slowly progressing while fighting off increasingly dense wares of zombies; with the added benefit of the initial editions focused on killing zombified Nazis. Adding this to a group rotation of Halo co-op runs for my friend group in the first several years of our adult lives. So, naturally, I enthusiastically responded to the group chat, volunteering the Xbox 360 in my collection. And none of these assholes stopped me.
At first, the task seemed simple enough. I have the last revision Microsoft made on the 360 and actually use it from time to time. I would need to procure more controllers and an actual copy of Call of Duty, which also seemed easy enough. A simple visit to one of Utah's various used game stores and we'd be all set. This is where the troubles began.
Which Call of Duty did I need to buy? The first store I went to had some genuinely well restored controllers (shoutout to Game Changerz in Salt Lake) but only Call of Duty: Black Ops, not its more popular sequel. The former has the ever important "killing Nazis" detail, but the latter was more well regarded. So, to the group chat I must turn:
"Is Black Ops 1 okay?"
"Does it have Kino der Toten (an iconic map)?"
After a brief check on the COD wiki I confirm in the affirmative, and buy the game and two more controllers and the game, so the three of us we planned on are set. Mission accomplished.
Well, except I can't help but complicate things. Black Ops has some iconic DLC maps, so I think it might be great to pick some of that up. That brings me to experiencing the final throes of the Xbox 360 marketplace. The 360's UI is a mess thanks to existing at the same time as Microsoft's Windows 8 era, but while basic navigation is painful it at least works. The store just doesn't. It follows no logic, dumpstering everything into a single tiled list, with an unreliable search system. The only way forward is to buy from a web browser or from the game itself if only getting DLC. It makes begrudging sense that they've shut it down.
Though, that's if you can get the console online at all. The 360 cannot easily connect to modern Wifi technology, so outside of a cable, you need to create a much less secure secondary network. Needless to say, just getting what I needed was a test of patience.
But I am patient and stubborn, and testing all the controllers and game would prevent disappointing my friends. We only get so much time, after all. So mission accomplished for real now! I thought, anyway. I packed everything up, ready to go for the night.
And the new nightmare began.
I arrived at my friend's house early, intending to be set up right at our start time. The roadblocks hit immediately- someone else had to pick up a controller for our surprise fourth, while we were left to figure out why my perfectly fine 360 all of sudden wouldn't display. We got all that resolved, eventually we found a HDMI port that made the console happy and a controller was found at a GameStop, though with thumb sticks warped by what I can only imagine is the deep Gamer racism of its former owner. With every hurdle cleared, we sat down, launched the game,and found out how badly I had fucked up.
Call of Duty: Black Ops does have the iconic naps and Nazis to kill. But it was Black Ops II that had four player split screen for Zombies.
What followed was a night of frustration — both in trying to fight back against the limitations of the Xbox 360 and of our own memories. Some were convinced that we definitely have played this mode in four players and others tried to use an old Reddit trick to glitch it. We called other game stores to try to locate a copy or Black Ops II. We discussed switching off players, but it was stubbornly shut down. I eventually caved, choosing again to brave the 360 store to spend way too much on a digital copy of Black Ops II. Which, thanks again to the limitations of the console, would take nearly an hour to install, which felt impossible to me. Was it always this way?
Deciding to play the Halo Anniversary edition I somehow had the foresight to bring, we found ourselves starting to recapture the magic. At least, until we noticed the framerate of the game felt... off. “Okay, something is wrong with the game," says one of us." Nah, you’re just used to playing on the PC now," I reply, convinced now by all the other limitations of this console. Multiple rounds pass with a snarky back and forth about the choppy experience before I recall our HDMI ordeal; culminating in eating a well deserved dank when I ask the TV's owner to check the mode it was in." You all just sat here and gaslit me!" my friend of two decades playfully shouts as we finally settle into salvaging the night.
"Gaslighting" was a pretty apt term for the experience, but to me it evolved a bit into existential dread. What was really happening was our memories were failing us. Zombies in Black Ops supported 4 players, Halo was always a bit choppy, the Xbox 360 downloaded games quickly. Memory is a fickle thing, but for me this was an experience in seeing just how fickle in a way that can only come from getting further away from your halcyon days of youth. In trying to recapture that feeling, I turned to the hardware tied to those memories only to find things weren’t quite how I remembered it.
This Harvard News summary (for a dummy like me) of a 2012 study into memory behavior feels appropriate: “We remember the emotional moments, the fun or scary or sexy ones, and forget the daily drives to work and lunch-table conversations. This leads us to predict the future inaccurately, because we misremember a richer past.”
Network technology has radically evolved over the near 20 years since the 360, a console that didn't even have a wireless adapter originally. After two generations of relatively quick download speeds - the Wii U notwithstanding - it actually makes a lot of sense that I'd be surprised by the 360's slow crawl. Our memories of playing either Black Ops didn’t really have anything to do with the means of doing so, just that it was fun. We did it so often, the reality of doing so became routine. In a roundabout way, I didn’t remember Nazi Zombies after all.
There’s an interesting trend going on in tech. Folks, usually close to my own age, are turning away from current tech in favor of things we had 15 years ago. They’re canceling streaming video and music services to buy blu-rays and restore iPods. They’re trading in their smartphones for basic keypad bricks. My beloved Nintendo 3DS is practically thriving a year after being abandoned by its parent, entirely off the labor of its fans. Sony had resounding sales success with the PlayStation 5 undercut with the reveal that a majority of its user base is still regularly using their PS4s instead. And of course, it’s starting to look like Microsoft has accepted it’s sold as many Xboxs as it ever will.
These are not radical shifts but I still think they’re notable as indicators of a larger reckoning coming for the tech sector, which games are always intrinsically tied to. People don’t really want what we’re being handed now, which seems to be accelerating a new wave of nostalgia. It’s probably my own membership in this age range, but I see a lot of reason in it; to the point of being guilty of looking at iPods on classifieds myself.
But now I find myself questioning if I actually need the hardware itself or if I’m chasing barely remembered moments of joy. Did I really need to go through the effort of getting an Xbox 360 running to have a good time with my longtime friends, or was I trying to give them something they didn’t even ask for? After all this time, am I trying to hold on to memories of these people instead of making new ones? Are they?
It’s not as if we need specific hardware to access all this shit anymore, as my friend who hosted this latest bout of existential blathering reminded me towards the end of the night: “Next time, just sign into my Series S and we can install the game there.”
Alright, so maybe we’re just idiots.
Speaking of the 3DS and not letting go, I’m extremely grateful to the folks behind the preservation of Dragon Quest 7’s DLC tablets. I’ve been nursing a playthrough while out and about and will someday be able to leverage this!
Help No Escape escape debt! (If you can)
Kai After Kai is a channel you’ve never heard of but you WILL WATCH. Start with this efficient but great explanation of their own journey regarding gender.