The original XBox didn't exactly speak to my gaming tastes, so I honestly never had a reason to buy one. This lifestyle choice totally worked out for me, except for the few XBox exclusives that had no place on Microsoft's first console. Case in point: Jet Set Radio Future. I don't know what marketing wizards assumed XBox fanboys would be into such a colorful, thoroughly-Japanese vandalism sim, but they were obviously wrong; even when Microsoft started giving away the game for free (along with Sega GT), people still didn't want it. And I should know--I worked gaming retail at the time, and watched multiple copies of Future sit unloved on the shelf.
So I never really got the chance to play Future as much as I should have; my time with the game was limited to the brief instances of in-store rebellion when I snuck the game into the demo kiosk at work. And I'm sure many Sega fans had the same experience; it was very strange to see the company's creative spirit trapped on the XBox, where it was barely appreciated by the crowd Microsoft was trying to cater to the most (fans of football and explosions). I always believed that Sega's XBox-exclusive games would have been most welcome by GameCube owners--and the company soon found this was true. For cryin' out loud, with Sonic Adventure DX, they were able to sell a Dreamcast launch game four years after the fact!
Read More...