Yeah, I like this game…a lot…and yes, I’ve tried almost every baseball game out since and none are as solid as this one.

With those stats in your head, you can imagine how sad I was when I sat down today to play the last few games of my 12th regular season and saw a wisp of smoke float out of my trusty XBox controller followed by that familiar smell of burning electronics.  I looked for the source on my controller and then noticed that when I bent the cable you could clearly see sparks shooting out of a hole in the cable (see photo below).  I’m no electrical engineer, but thats probably not good.

I know its just the controller and I do have a spare (though I hate it) but to me, this seems like a sign that after five straight years of use, its time for me to move on.  I’ve been thinking about getting a 360 quite a bit lately anyway, and this might be the last straw.

I’m leaning hard about getting the $349 version with the 20 gb hard drive, the headset and such.  

Any current 360 owners have thoughts on:

1. How well Connect360 works so I can play content from my Macs on there?
2. Any good baseball games?
3. Is there any chance I can move my saved baseball game to the new XBox?
4. What are the best shoot-em games?

I’m sad to see my XBox get old, but at least this way I can get Rock Band!

Yup, Nukem and the boys from ID Software are all playable on your mac. How? What’s the cost? Does it suck? All these questions will be answered below on a per-game basis:

1. Duke Nukem

What you need:
You need the Duke Nukem OS X install software (get it here). If you want to play more than just the shareware map, you need the retail edition of the Duke Nukem Atomic Edition. I’ll be honest with you, I’ve had a hell of a time finding a usable ISO anywhere on the net, and if you buy it from somewhere expect to spend $20.

Cost:
Free for the shareware level, $20 bones if you want the levels and you don’t already have a disk.

How is it?:
The shareware plays nicely for the most part. There were a few hangs, but very minimal. What can I say? Its classic Duke with lame sayings and pictures of girls dancing that I’ve found are less likely to give me a chubby all these years later.

2. ID Games: Doom, Doom 2, Hexen, Heretic…

What you need:
The awesomely named Doomsday Engine. Frankly, I don’t give a shit if this software is just a crappy alarm clock and has a dock icon of an erect penis, I’m downloading anything named “Doomday Engine”. You will also need the WAD file from any of the ID games you want to play. You may still have these in a dust covered floppy box and if not, a quick torrent search will give you a rar filled with all of them…or so I’ve heard.

Cost:
Nothing really. Just the time and bandwidth you are usually using to download and view porn.

How is it?:
Is “so bitchin’ I creamed myself” too strong? Maybe a little. I had a few jitters and one game of Doom found it freezing for a split second every minute or so, but I haven’t noticed it since. Other than that, the sound, graphics and everything play as smoothly as on a Pentium 100 with 24 Mb of RAM.

Quake and others?

I’ve heard things here and there that Quake(s) can be on OS X as well, but I haven’t been able to track down any installers or front-ends as of this posting, but please leave a comment or get a hold of me if you have the goods on getting Quake or any other classic game going on OS X.

So there you have it, classic shotem-up games rockin on OS X! In fact, I played them most of the weekend and the only side effects I felt were an increased sense of awesomeness and a strong urge to kill a monster that throws fireballs with a shotgun.

…luckily for her, I have no idea where Rosie O’Donnell lives.

Has anyone noticed the complete insanity over these things? There are guys that would beat and pee on an orphan just to get one! Of course, that is insane…why should you get a Xbox 360 for doing something you love doing every Wednesday?! Thats besides the point though. The real deal is this: Yes, the 360 is cool, and sure its faster, but at this moment, what else is there? What else is there that is better than my current Xbox that would justify me losing my mind and paying some schmuck on E-Bay $1,625.00 for one?

Xbox 360 Fan Boys: There are more features! Are there? Really? Apparently you can sream your video and music from your computer to your nice TV in the living room with the new Xbox. Neat huh? Yeah, I already have that with my current hacked Xbox (Thanks Joe). So no new feature there. Plus, you have to have a Windows Media Center computer for this “feature” to work. My current Xbox streams happily from my linux server.

Oh there is the ability to sync my iPod to the new 360! Wow, so I can have my iPod music playing in the background of some of my games? That would be cool if you couldn’t already do that on the current Xbox with something called a CD…or the fact that both those features suck when you could just turn up your stereo and turn the music in the game down.

Xbox 360 Fan Boys: Its more powerful! Better chips, better graphics. Well thats true. But we are talking about a box made years later than the first Xbox, so the fact that its faster isn’t exactly amazing news. The problem that I have with it right now is with all that gaming power, what are you going to do with it? At the current time there are 18 games available. 18. That sucks. Of course, in the future there will be tons of games to play to use all that gaming hardware, but right now, whats the point of going crazy over something and paying extreme amounts of money over a box that you won’t really love until that game you want comes out 4 months from now, when coicendently, the price of the Xbox has dropped down to semi-normal levels (read: not $1,625.00).

Don’t get the wrong idea from this though. I would love to have a 360, and I have no doubt that at some point I will buy a 360. In fact, I would take one today as a present. But buying one today, which apparently entails killing someone or spend the Gross National Product of Ecuador, is out of the question. Actually, I’m not sure why anyone would buy one until they are succesfully hacked.