When I look back on most consoles, I’m largely looking back at the games. The PS3 is LittleBigPlanet and Metal Gear 4, …
When I look back on most consoles, I’m largely looking back at the games. The PS3 is LittleBigPlanet and Metal Gear 4, as far as I’m concerned, and even the GameCube, that squat, characterful delight, is largely hidden behind Mario Sunshine, Wind-Waker and Animal Crossing. (Even just typing that: cor, what a time that was.)
Go back further and the PS1 is Wipeout and Lara Croft and racing cars drifting around Japanese circuits under sodium lighting and a dark sky. The original Xbox is working out how to get from Shibuya to the Skyscraper District as quickly as possible in Jet Set Radio Future. This is all great. These are wonderful ways to invoke the memories of consoles, the idea being, I guess, that the console is primarily the games you play on it.
But the Xbox 360? That’s very different. I don’t get games so much as I get associations. I think of the birth of podcasts. I think of exploring the sliding blades of the original UI. I think about my friend chatting about easy Gamerscore. When I do think of a game, I think about how delighted my same friend was with Geometry Wars, a game that he felt was primarily designed to be played in between other games. Or I remember turning up at his house one Christmas to see that he was playing Kameo, but all the characters had Santa hats on, because somehow the Xbox 360 knew that it was Christmas inside the game, inside the console.
More than anything, I think of an association that, on the surface, doesn’t have much to do with games at all. Ask me about the 360 and the first thing that comes to mind is the brick wall of an apartment building in New York.
