Originally lasting from 2001-08, Microsoft’s original Xbox featured many of the most significant titles of its generation while setting the stage for the current age of high-budget, AAA games.
I feel like I’ve certainly made it clear in past writings that I grew up as a Nintendo kid through and through, with my family’s SNES supplying me with some of my earliest memories in life on Super Mario All-Stars.
My taste in games got its first mix-up right around the turn of the century, when my father’s interest in Test Drive 5 for the original PlayStation opened up the door for what would eventually be hours of playing Crash Bandicoot and Spyro games throughout my childhood.
From that point on, the precedent had been set in terms of what consoles and games I was interested in. Nintendo took a front-row seat thanks to Super Mario and Super Smash Bros., while Sony stayed in the mix after the PlayStation 2 came out on virtue of my love for rhythm games, namely Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero.
With that said, I had fairly minimal exposure to Microsoft’s original Xbox growing up, already having a GameCube and PlayStation 2 in my living room while not having too much of an interest as a kid in the Halo series or much else that the console had to offer.
My experiences with the Xbox were limited to visits to my childhood best friend’s house, who conversely grew up as an Xbox enthusiast and was eager to show off a modded console that somehow had a Nintendo 64 emulator on it. However, the monstrous size of the Duke controller and relative lack of kid-friendly games kept me from ever really wanting one myself – until I was 24, of course.
While it’s incredibly difficult to find an original Xbox in working condition, I finally did in April 2021 in Champaign, Ill., with that machine still holding up to this day to go along with what is currently our 37-game library for the console.
Most of my play on the console in the past few years has revolved around sports games and the Grand Theft Auto series, along with the Crash Bandicoot and Spyro games ported to the console that I played on other systems growing up.
As an adult with larger hands, the controller no longer serves as a barrier to enjoying the system, as I’ve grown to prefer non-exclusive sixth generation games on the Xbox over their PlayStation 2 and GameCube counterparts.
Although the Xbox doesn’t boast the high amount of rare, coveted games that the GameCube, PlayStation 2 and many other consoles do, there are still several well-known and hidden gems for the console, many of which can be found at a fairly affordable price.
Though these games may rank behind some of the Nintendo titles we have been searching for a good deal on for years, here’s a look at the Xbox games I search for each time I make a trip to the nearby retro games store:
Additionally, a list of the Xbox games currently in our collection can be found here.
1. Futurama
Perhaps the biggest “gimme” on the list, the Futurama game has gained a level of rarity and notoriety for a variety of reasons, owing to a rare combination of a television show with a fervent cult following with poor sales and limited promotion for the game.
The biggest factor working against the game was the trajectory of the show itself – which aired the final episode of its original run two days before the game hit North American shelves for both the PlayStation 2 and Xbox.
As the public began to move on from the show, a game that already would have had relatively limited interest even at the height of the show’s popularity quickly faded into obscurity not long after its August 2003 release.
The result is one of the most expensive games for the Xbox today, with a complete-in-box copy of the title going for around $250 on average, with its PlayStation 2 counterpart at even a higher average sale price of $327.90.
As a longtime fan of the show, the game’s lukewarm reception hasn’t drawn me away too much from the allure of having it, especially as it remains the lone console video game adaptation of the series over 22 years later.
2. Red Dead Revolver
While the series exploded in popularity in 2010 with the release of Red Dead Redemption, the high-budget masterpiece got its start six years earlier with the series’ first title, Red Dead Revolver.
The action-adventure game lays the foundation for the series, placing players in the heart of the American Frontier in the late 19th century on a journey to avenge the murder of the main character’s parents.
Although the game lacks the expansive open world atmosphere and more open-ended gameplay style that the later games in the series introduce, the title does include a local multiplayer mode that feels like an appropriate time machine to hop into today as many shooting-based games have moved entirely online.
Though I’ve personally never played this game before, my limited experience with Red Dead Redemption has always left me deeply intrigued about the start of the series, especially as someone who loves experiencing a series of any media form all the way through from the beginning to the end.
While I’ve yet to see the game myself in a store, it’s a pretty easy one to pick up online at a good price, with complete-in-box copies of the title being sold for right around $20 apiece on average.
3. Grabbed by the Ghoulies
While I earlier expressed that I had limited experience with the original Xbox as a kid, much of the little playing time I did have came at my friend’s house in the form of playing Grabbed by the Ghoulies, an Xbox exclusive released by Rare not long after the developer parted ways with Nintendo.
My interest in this game was piqued by having played and enjoyed Luigi’s Mansion on the GameCube – a fellow ghost-themed game that had 8-year-old me deeply engrossed in the concept. Featuring a somewhat similar plot, Grabbed by the Ghoulies pits a young main character in the middle of a haunted mansion, needing to battle ghosts and other supernatural monsters in an effort to rescue his girlfriend.
Though Luigi’s Mansion is the stronger, more memorable game, going through Grabbed by the Ghoulies today with my wife would still be a fun experience full of both nostalgia and novelty, with my memories and previous playing time of the game both quite limited.
Similar to Red Dead Revolver, this isn’t a game that would exactly break the bank, with complete-in-box copies typically selling for under $20 apiece.
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