November 2005. I’d just turned 23 – not long out of university and about to push forward with my career in games media properly by moving into a house/office in an attempt to make something out of what was to become VideoGamer.com (don’t visit it now, I warn you). This was, it’s not hyperbolic to say, one of the most important moments in my life. It was also about to be the first major new console launch of my career. What could go wrong?
Before my GOAT’d status in UK games media times were tough, as is always the way when starting something from scratch without any clout to lean on. Emails, phone calls, and meetings with the industry’s PR overlords had resulted in some solid relationships but ultimately the website and I were too small fry to be on the list for an Xbox 360 review unit. Completely understandable, no hard feelings – and we were being sent review copies of all the 360 launch titles, which was something (back then we were still dealing with physical media, so in the lead up to launch I’d amassed quite the stack of games).
Small problem: the Xbox 360 wasn’t releasing in the UK until Friday, 2nd December, almost two weeks after it arrived in the US! Anyway, nothing I could do about that but wait. Some US-based freelancers helped fill that late November void, and then release day arrived. My Xbox 360 was due to be delivered… until it wasn’t. My PGR3 dream lay in tatters! I’m not sure what deliveries are like where you live, but companies promising delivery on a certain day only for the package to end up back at the depot was, and still is, fairly common. My new delivery date? Monday, 5th December! I wasn’t having this.
It turned out that the parcel depot was a 30-minute drive from where I lived. Not being able to drive, I had just one option: “Mum! Can we drive to Gatwick?” There was no time to pick up the console on the Friday (curses, Parcelforce!), but the depot was open on Saturday, so early that morning off my mum drove in her Vauxhall Zafira, me in the passenger seat and my five-year-old sister in the back – who happens to share a birthday with the release of the OG Xbox in the UK.
I should add here that I’m forever grateful for all the efforts my mum went on to appease my love of video games, be it trips to stores on launch days (Comet on N64 launch day was epic), going out of our way to get games a couple of quid cheaper, or the many, many magazines I asked to be bought while she was doing the weekly food shop at Tesco. I apologise for what was about to happen to your car, 20 years ago.
While there’s cheer in the air during December, there wasn’t much on this particular morning. It was cold, grey, and a little wet – the kind of day you’d usually want to avoid going out in. Not for us, though. The drive over went fine, the collection of the console completely without incident, but the journey home was in thicker rain and on busier mid-morning roads. As our car approached a right-turn filter lane, my mum slowed down as one of the cars that had pulled into it hadn’t gone over enough, blocking the flow of traffic on the main road. The car behind hadn’t paid attention to this, slamming on its brakes just enough to avoid a huge crash, but not in time to avoid doing some damage. Bollocks.
While this was only a minor incident compared to what it could have been, the moments directly after are still slightly surreal, even as a memory. I remember the man in the Mitsubishi Lancer that hit us getting out checking we were all OK. I remember him sort of gesturing to other cars, as if he was controlling them with his body movements. I remember quickly going into the back seat to check my sister was OK, and happily finding that she was apart from a bizarre circular red mark on her cheek with a dot in the middle – something we were never able to figure out.
After a long delay at the side of the road we eventually made it home. Everyone was fine. The car needed a bit of repair work, and I’m sure my mum wishes I’d just waited to get the Xbox delivered on the Monday, but what was done was done. If we’d not intervened with the universe’s plan this article wouldn’t exist. It’s funny looking back. Everything seemed incidental, meaningless at the time, but now I’m not so sure.
The Xbox 360 turns 20 years old on 22nd November, so we’ve put together a week of coverage that looks back on Microsoft’s most successful games console.
