#xplay

[posthumanwanderings]

X-Play: OutRun 2 review (2004)

[osamaman]

[they-have-the-same-va]

Adamantoise from World of Final Fantasy shares an actor with Man Who Proclaims That Kingdom Hearts II Has Screwed Us Again from the G-Phoria '06 campaign ads.

Portrayed by William Frederick Knight

(he also co-hosted the At the Bootys segment on Attack of the Show!)

[blazehedgehog]

Did you ever watch much XPlay? What did you think of it?

XPlay was (almost) always bad. It started out as a show called "Extended Play", which was a pretty normal game news/reviews show on TechTV.

It was still Adam Sessler, but this was before Morgan Webb -- his cohost here was Kate Botello. Again, things were pretty normal and average. When TechTV got bought and converted to G4, "Extended Play" was changed to become "XPlay" and over the course of a year or two, got retooled to be "funny."

This meant a lot of long, pointless, annoying comedy skits between the game coverage, and a lot of reviews often contained "jokes" as well.

I liked to catch the occasional episode of Extended Play, but XPlay quickly became totally unwatchable. And since it was the early 2000's, a lot of that humor was intentionally very smug and offensive. This was the peak "boys will be boys" era of, like, EGM dedicating pages to swimsuit centerfolds, the stink of endless men's cologne sampler ads, and Playboy featuring CG renders of a topless Bloodrayne. Things were dire.

It's easy to forget that, given how long ago that original run of XPlay was. Rose-tinted nostalgia sets in because it was basically one of the only TV shows dedicated to games and industry news at that time. But it was foul. When I stop and actually think about it in-depth, I have no fond memories of XPlay whatsoever, because I have no actual memories of XPlay at all. It became something I avoided whenever possible. The show was insufferable.

Hearing that Adam Sessler has been having a perpetual, ongoing meltdown for months is really depressing, too. I used to try and take the dude's side, because he seems completely fried by "toxic gamers" coming after him, but he's also like... not stopping? At some point you'd expect the guy to walk away, but lately it seems like every few weeks he's going on another rant about how he hates video games now and is glad he "left." Except he never actually leaves. He just quote-tweets the next guy in line and goes on another 25 tweet rant about how everyone else is the worst. He seems completely broken.

His latest meltdown is because somebody called out one of these XPlay "comedy skits" -- and all he would have to do is spare a moment of reason, say "it was a different time, and a lot of things have changed since then, including me." But it's just another platform for him to scream and vomit about gamers again while the audience pelts him with peanuts. The dude has given up in every way except the ones that actually matter.

Everybody --you, me, Adam Sessler-- just need to walk away. Clearly nobody is happy with this outcome.

[tim-toolman-taylor]

[damagan]

Why I Miss X-Play? The Music

[gaykarstaagforever]

October 2003

You needed a digital camera back then because phones were this (from the same show):

You didn't have a camera on this. It didn't have memory to store photos. And there was no "data plan," because the cellular network was separate from everything else, and you were charged based on how and how much you used it.

Yes, you had to pay to receive calls, normally. Especially from other companies' networks. And make them. And fees for how long they lasted. And roaming. And long-distance. And texting. And the length of texts. And international calling and texting were INSANELY expensive. That $50 ($80 today) was just the base rate.

Also you don't even know how many megapixels your phone camera has today because you aren't paying per megapixel like you were back then. My Samsung S23 has a 200 megapixel sensor and 4 different lenses. And a 128 gigs of memory.

Obviously my phone is $800 and this Motorola i90c was the equivalent of almost exactly half that today. But all I could do with the Motorola was call and text and maybe play terrible little Java games that drained the battery immediately.

The early 2000s were the heyday of the "gadget people," because you literally had to have a bespoke $300 device to do every single thing, and then different memory cards and batteries and cables for all of them. Imagine going on a trip and having to bring a laptop, a digital camera, your phone, and an mp3 player, and all their accessories, and then unpack and repack them constantly, as you also keep track of how charged everything is.

We had fun back then but anyone who says they want to go back is liar.

Edit: Linus Tech Tips just uploaded a video showcasing terrible early 2000s phones. There is a reason the iPhone destroyed the competition in 2007.

[supersoftly]

While I'm sure a lot of people(mostly men) would be happy seeing booth babes make a comeback, wouldn't feminists kick up a stink about it? They'd definitely start accusing booth babes of being sleazy and "pandering to the male gaze".

They never stopped lol 🙄 Why women gotta dedicate a whole ass movement against fun I'll never understand

[saucebou]

Holy shit it’s Makoto’s death day!

It is his death day

I love it when fictional characters are dead.

[veryspecialfungus]

happy psychonauts day!

Oh my gosh it is!

I remember I first found out about Psychonauts by seeing the X-Play review on TV at my grandmother's house (god remember when) and being blown away by the visuals and running out to buy it two days later.

I still have my original PS2 copy. I hope one day to get it signed by Tim Schafer.

Anyway, happy anniversary, Psychonauts. I hope this isn't the end of the stories we get to have in that world, but, um, maybe not in the form of a game this time.

[unpopularshipbracket]

Sorry for submitting a BUNCH of ships from various machinimas. Just trying to increase my odds, and also I love machinimas

No worries, submit as much as you want! Although you ARE making me want to dig up Splinter Cell Co-Op Theater...

[osamaman]

[peachnemnem]

Food icons SVG animation

[ripgray-moved]

"Toooooo... Purgatory?" Yeah, that was still a thing, he was... 70% sure.

     𖤐  ⸻  ❛ ...why do you sound unsure? ❜ SIR???

[gaykarstaagforever]

See you there, boys.