Weekend Gaming Score: Oh good heavens, what have I done?

By Stephen Munn | July 12, 2009

It was a light weekend for gaming items, despite the dozen or so sales I visited yesterday and today. The big score I thought I had turned out to be not so much a great score as it was a good deal. The end result of this has me… well, a little on edge.

An unattended yard sale, which was really just a table with a couple of things on it, had my item. It was a complete, boxed, near mint original Xbox console. Black, two controllers, three games. No sooner had I approached it and looked at the price tag than the woman who owned the house appeared. The price said $30 for the system and $10 for the lot of three games. Thinking I could surely resell an Xbox in this condition, I asked if there was a way I could test it. She agreed, and her son hooked up the console to demonstrate that everything was how it should be while I made a trip to the ATM. She dropped the price to $30 for the system and games combined, and I came back with said $30. So, at this point I’m on my way home with an Xbox and three games, right?

The games that I have here are Sims Bustin’ Out, Shrek 2, and Halo. You’ll hear me joking in the upcoming podcast 90 (which was recorded the night before I bought this) that my most hated game and franchise are Halo, a game I’ve never seen more than a Red vs Blue video of, so let’s call that a starting point. I hooked up the system when I got home and poked through the green menus, then fired up Halo for a full system test. I need to make sure everything, including every button on both controllers, was working. I actually found the game surprisingly not terrible, and even felt an amount of disappointment that I wasn’t going to get to continue playing when I finished testing everything. Of course, aiming with a stick sucks, but that’s a given.

Having tested everything involved, I started checking online to find out what the resale value of an original Xbox is. It turns out, it’s not so good. While $30 for the console and games was a good deal, it wasn’t a resalable deal, which means I can’t expect to get more than $30 for it on eBay. The realization at this point that I had actually gone out and purchased a Microsoft game system on purpose, and perhaps for good, was starting to sink in. For those who’ve just joined us, I’m not a fan of Microsoft as a corporation or its products, and while the Xbox doesn’t have the reputation as a piece of crap the 360 has, I’m still wary of it.

I’m getting ready to move at the end of the month, and the Xbox is coming with us. We’ll see what happens from there.