NBrid

A Day at the Xbox

Recently while at the local Toy's R Us window shopping I noticed a flyer hanging from the Xbox display machine. It appeared that a small Xbox convention was coming to the quiet city of St.Louis at the Union Station shopping center. The flyer explained about all the Xbox games that were going to be able to be played including unreleased ones, and all the great prizes one could win. With this info and a thirst for games, two other friends and I headed out to savor in its Bill Gates goodness.

Once we arrived we were greeted to a giant inflated balloon from which the sounds of games and loud music emitted. Unfortunately before we could into the balloon we had to stand outside in the drizzling rain in a line that felt an awful lot like going into some hot night club. After cracking as many jokes as one could to each other we were finally blessed to enter the Thunder Dome. The young lady at the exit gave us each a pass to hang around our necks to show that we were now a part of the Elite X group. (Elite X copyrighted @ 1975)

As we walked in the first thing we noticed was all the display machines, pretty neon colors and besides the display screens and pretty neon colors extreme darkness. The whole place reminded me of the hideout in the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that Shredder had set up for new Foot Clan members. There were two levels filled with games. Some of the games such as Dead or Alive 3 were given giant screens that hung from the sky so that everyone could watch you get your butt kicked. Besides the fact that there were tons of display machines to play on if you looked closely you could see that every single one of them were old games. Everything from DOA3, Halo, Onimusha, and whatever else came out at least one month ago. We saw NOTHING that was unreleased.

Hoping to find better luck on the second level we climbed the steps to the top until we were stopped by another lady who wanted to see our Id's. It seemed the top level was filled with mature games, so we showed here out sexy driver’s licenses and went past. Such games as Max Payne and Onimusha were up here ready to be played, but still nothing new. There was even a small little boy playing Onimusha who couldn’t have possibly been able to show an Id with the correct age.

Unable to really hear what each other was saying due to the loud hip hop music being played we just continued to follow whoever was in the lead, leading us back down to the first level. I even accidentally kicked some kid dressed in all black sitting at the bottom of the steps. (Note to self: Do not dress in all black and sit in crowded dark area.) So anywayz there was even a V.I.P room which looked alot like the private room in a strip club only it was empty. We were going to try and play some DOA3 on the big screen, but we decided we had had enough and left.

I was hoping to be able to come back and write an article on all the cool new games and stuff but alas I played nothing because they had nothing. But all wasn’t a waste. On the way out we nabbed some free Max Payne stickers reading "I stop only for bullet time" ... Okay maybe all was bad.

ConnDestn