#1 [url]

Feb 6 10 11:02 PM

Wow, what a shame! So many good memories on the original Xbox. I remember how excited I was when I first got on Live. My first game was Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow. At that time, I was so immersed in both that game and in Xbox gaming in general. My library quickly grew over the next year to include more than 25 Xbox Live games. Even back in early 2004, I knew that I was part of something special. I told myself to enjoy every day of gaming, that I would one day look back on it all as a bit of a golden age.

One of my most fondest memories of Live was the time I stayed up all night back in 8th grade playing Splinter Cell and talking to Dark Slayer 5000 (R.I.P.) on the dashboard. I kept meaning to cut things short since I had school the next day, but ended up staying up the entire night. When it was time to leave for school, I felt pretty confident that I could stay awake for all my classes, but ended up falling asleep on the bus! Needless to say, I barely made it through that excruciating day. Looking back on it, I feel pretty fondly about the whole situation. All my teachers kept asking if I wanted to be sent home, but I refused since I viewed being at school as punishment for my actions.

I still played original Xbox games over Live back when I had it from time to time. I never did find anyone else to play Sega GT Online with me. I also never got to invest the time I wanted into games like Guilty Gear X2 #Reload, King of Fighters Maximum Impact, and Dead or Alive.

The great thing about this is that nearly all games have LAN mode, so we aren't losing much. The player base may not be as large as it once was, but I think that after Live closes, we will see an influx of players to services such as XBConnect and Xlink Kai. The people who are still playing Xbox 1 games over Live now probably have the technical skills and more importantly, the drive to continue playing their games via tunneling.