Amped was pretty fun! Yeah, I always forget as a U.S. person at the time how lucky we were at getting a lot of things earlier than our friends around the world. Crazy to think that was a thing, even as recent as the PS4 / XBO era.
Yeah I think it was the combo disk. I don’t remember that Sega GT game but I think it was that.
Burnout would be my pick for April. Only Burnout I played on the OG Xbox was Burnout Revenge though (which was incredible and tons of fun).
Burnout is indeed solid, but I think the series really took off at 3. That said, I’d probably rather play Burnout than Spider-Man now. Much more replayable.
Yeah we played Burnout a lot, it was great fare for gaming socially but when Burnout 3 came out that consumed our gaming time like nothing else. Amazing game.
May 2002 was another slow month, but it still brought a few decent titles worth a play at the time. The pre-summer period was slow for the OG Xbox, but I’m sure most of us were still linking up our boxes and playing LAN Halo…
May 2002
Hunter: The Reckoning
Hunter: The Reckoning is a fairly simplistic game by today’s standards, and even back in 2002 it wasn’t doing a lot that was new. That said, it was an Xbox exclusive, featured 4-player co-op, and was… strangely decent, fun weekend game based on a tabletop board game. See? Licensed games could be fun, even nearly 20 years ago!
I remember giving this one a rent and playing through with a buddy of mine. It’s short, it’s really basic, but it was a ton of fun to just punch through in a weekend while hanging out with a bud. I enjoy the aesthetic and world here, I’m not familiar with the board game but it was still neat and a good excuse to kill monster hoards. I believe it’s backwards compatible, but not 100% certain on that. If it is, or you have access to an original Xbox and are looking for a good podcast game, this is it.
Shoutout to Jedi Starfighter as well. I like the game plenty, but I don’t know that I’d consider it as fun as Hunter, even now - and I’m a big Star Wars fan. What game stood out for you in May 2002, in whatever area of the world you lived?
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June 2002 is probably the first month from launch that saw what I would consider a true GOAT type game. In a lot of ways, it was a look at what games could be like, a game that helped establish many industry standards moving forward. And since everyone loves acquisitions…well, here’s an earlier look at an impending company to joint XGS.
June 2002
The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind
I’m not going to sit here and gush about this game for pages, but I could. I’ll just say that if you want an in-depth type analysis, there’s plenty out there and deservedly so. Morrowind was and still is, an epic game. It featured a huge open world. It didn’t lead the player on like modern open world titles, you had to actually pay attention, role play, and figure many things out on your own. The combat is a bit janky, but worked well given the new nature of the game. It seemed to allow unmatched freedom, and the stories I told of my experience were always different from my schoolmates. It didn’t hurt that Morrowind also looked great, had a pretty slick soundtrack, and came out exclusively on the big black box (and PC). It truly showed the difference in both approach and power Xbox brought to the market. Phew, what a game! It’s available on Xbox BC, and I highly recommend checking it out if you’re into this style of game or want to see what Bethesda was all about.
Generally, I do a shout out of another game, but Morrowind is so above and beyond the rest that none even come close. Please, do yourself a favor and check it out. It’s cheap!
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Our May '02 was all about Burnout. Though it didn’t warrant revisits as much its my choice for best that month.
June my Choice would have been for SSX Tricky, we had to wait until Christmas time for Morrowind. 
July 2002 was a very forgettable month. This is my second attempt at this post - the first didn’t save! Basically, I’ve only played two of the titles released this month, and choosing one was basically like flipping a coin.
July 2002
NCAA Football 2003
So it’s American football, and not even professional American Football. The college version of Madden to many, NCAA Football 2003 was like many other EA Sports titles - a slight improvement over the prior year’s release with a few new features and improved graphics (sometimes). This version is no different, but it played smoothly and did what it set out to do for the year (aka sell copies to hardcore football and college fans). I always rented the NCAA series to import rosters into my Madden franchise. This particular version was the best playing and looking to that point, and I do remember thinking how good the crowds looked and the presentation was. Looking back…yeesh.
The other title I had played was Aggressive Inline. Basically, a rollerblading version of Tony Hawk that was trying to take advantage of the TH / X-Games hype of the time. It wasn’t a bad game, just not particularly memorable. Even the music I don’t recall, which is really something for a game like this. Music, strangely enough, is pretty core to these games and the runs you make shooting for high scores. All in all, an average, forgettable game. Did any of you play anything from July 2002? If you didn’t, I wouldn’t blame you and wouldn’t be surprised but it’s worth asking!
Out of the July 2002 releases PAL side the only one I remember at all is Enclave,
and then not extremely well… I vaguely thinking it wasnt so bad but we took it back to the rental place pretty quick.
Apropos renting, I recall we rented a great deal of games from the local video store since we had a ton of spare time. I had forgotten doing that completely until I started looking at release dates and recognising many more than I owned.
August 2002 showed a better output compared to the prior month for the young Xbox. A lot of sports titles this month, especially NFL which made my heart ache for the times when the license wasn’t in EA Sports Madden jail. However, despite Madden 2003 being the game I played the most and actually purchased that month, my favorite game looking back would be…
August 2002
Dead to Rights
Dead to Rights is a multiplatform third person action game developed and published by Namco. It’s a bit of an oddball of a game when I look back on it, especially from the lens of someone who recently played it again via Xbox BC. It’s another game that uses bullet time, similar to Max Payne, so nothing super unique there. However, the best part was that the main character has a partner dog which helped out throughout the game. As we all know, dogs always make a game better. Always. Don’t argue.
The story is fairly basic, you’re a cop who’s trying to track down his dad’s killer. You go down a crime solving rabbit hole, beating down baddies and solving a few puzzles here and there. The dog could be used to do an attack, help with puzzles, and fetch items for the main character. I had to look up the MC’s name. It’s Jack Slate. Yup. The game is fairly fun, a bit clunky especially by modern standards. The camera was wonky at times, it was tough, but made for some fun moments throughout. Give it a shot on BC if you can, it’s worth a few hours of your time to see how games used to be or as a reminder.
Lots of shoutouts for this month, including Sega Soccer Slam, Madden 2003, NFL Blitz 2003, Turok Evolution, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. All of these games are fairly solid, lots of good times to be found in each. What did you find best in August 2002?
Oh wow, August 2002 was slim pickings here, FILA World Tennis, Slam Tennis, Agressive Inline and Splashdown. I can honestly say I did not play a single one of them, so who knows?
I do remember Dead to rights with some fondness though, like you say a little clunky but enjoyable enough at the time.
Wow I have nothing for Aug02 lol. Great thread though, it’s nice to go back and 2002 was an amazing year for games actually, perhaps because we were younger and more excited. Best of luck picking a single title for November.
Yeah, November has some great stuff! I have one in mind 
September 2002, phew there’s a lot of releases for this month and a lot of very fun stuff. Nearing the holidays, it seems game releases were picking up much in the way they do today.
September 2002
Unreal Championship
Unreal Championship, developed by Epic Games and Digital Extremes, was an Xbox exclusive entry in the Unreal franchise. And wow, Epic used to make games other than Fortnite, hard to believe now that it prints money! It was a big deal at the time, a fast paced, great looking, big multilayer game in an early era for Xbox Live. It was Xbox’s version of the big PC hit Unreal Tournament and showed the Xbox could stand tall against its PC counterpart.
I don’t recall playing this much in single player, which I believe was basically UT with bots. I mainly played local MP with friends or over XBL, CTF and TDM were my favorite modes. I also recall enjoying the Domination mode, but the former two took much more of my time. I can’t specify any map I loved over the others like I can in Counter-Strike or Halo, but I remember most being well-designed arenas where death came quick. Tons of hours spent on this one, even when there was a lot of other great games coming out on all platforms.
Shout outs…well, Sega GT and Hitman 2 came very, very close to taking the month. I love both of those games. I also remember enjoying The Thing on a rental, which was another fun weekend romp. What did you enjoy this month?
October 2002…so many games. So many. But looking over the list, there’s only a few that I spent “quality time” with and for good reason. This month’s game is quite good indeed!
October 2002
TimeSplitters 2
TimeSplitters 2 was probably the closest thing to a spiritual successor to Perfect Dark / Goldeneye that I can think of from the original Xbox era. It had a decent length campaign with co-op, I don’t recall much about it but remember giving it a run through and moving on. The main focus here, much like it’s predecessors, was the multiplayer. It featured most of the modes you’d expect from a MP FPS - deathmatch, CTF, survival, etc. - but also had a map creator which was always fun to tinker with. I played a lot of this over the course of the Xbox’s life, and it just goes to show what an absolute wealth of quality MP titles were available on the platform, even during the early days.
Shout out to Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance and Shenmue II. Dark Alliance was a fun Diablo-like that I remember enjoying a lot. I don’t think Shenmue II is a good game really at all, but I wanted to mention it as it showed that Xbox was becoming the “Dreamcast 2” in a lot of ways, and showed the effort Microsoft was putting in to break into the Japanese market. What stood out to you?
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TimeSplitters 2 was one of my favorite OG Xbox games. I spent countless hours playing it. I still remember thinking how it was BS that the AI had an animation for a roll/dodge but the player didn’t. Shenmue 2, oof. I bought that game, got to a section where I had to catch leaves from a tree and carry books around, and never played it again. I liked the setting, and some of what it was doing, but it was a little too tedious.
Yeah I really enjoyed TimeSplitters as a series. I often wonder if there’s room for something like it in modern gaming. Shenmue II…yup. Wasn’t super terrific then and is even worse now. But I think its place in Xbox history is a big deal. A Japanese game, a niche one at that, that really shows their efforts in the market and their taking the role of Sega as a console hardware maker.
Well, here we are a year from the launch of the Xbox. November 2002, a year on the market and its first true holiday season as an established entity in the market. As is common today, November brought some serious heat in terms of great game releases so making a choice was challenging but in the end it all boils down to one man with three lights and an iconic voice.
November 2002
Splinter Cell
Looking back on the early Xbox, along with Halo this was one of the games that I considered absolutely must-own, must-play. I remember seeing it in magazines and drooling at the graphics, dreaming about how it would actually play. And it didn’t disappoint! Splinter Cell was an absolute showstopper from a technical standpoint, and the stealth mechanics were incredibly unique, even at a time when Metal Gear Solid 2 was a thing (and also released as “Subsistence” on Xbox that month).
This wasn’t an easy game. You had to be methodical in your play - no run and gun here - and really scout out the environments for entry points or ways to tackle encounters. I think a lot of modern games such as Dishonored owe a lot to Splinter Cell and similar games (Hitman), the design and approach seem so similar in many ways. The story was intriguing and Sam Fisher was/is a bad mofo! Plus…that goggle sound, chef’s kiss!
Like I said before, this was a tough month to pick a single game so a bunch of shoutouts incoming: MGS2 Subsistence, Jedi Knight II, Phantom Crash, 007 Nightfire, MechAssault and of course…Steel Battalion. So many good games (I really love MechAssault in particular) in one month. And hey, with all the discussion recently regarding licensed games, November 2002 clearly showed you can make quality games even within the bounds of those IP.
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Oh god I missed loads, once I’ve finished the spring cleaning I’ll dive back into my list to check when they came out. Splinter Cell and Timesplitters 2 are strong contenders. I never played unreal tornament.
MechAssault and Splinter Cell! Two of my favorite OG Xbox games. I loved the campaign of Splinter Cell, and it was really ahead of the curve for improved lighting and shadows in games. I played MechAssault constantly. Met a lot of good friends on that game, including my wife, so it will always have a special place for me. Would love to see the series come back.