So I’ve collected a nice stash of gift cards from Christmas and earned a few buck selling off my old PSP to afford my second Xbox 360. Was my first x360 dying? No, actually I’m starting to believe Tenno’s theory that I’m in the narrow 25% with a fully functional X360. So after work Friday and made the quick trip to Wal-Mart and cashed in my funny plastic representation of real money and picked a Jasper Xbox 360.
For those who don’t know, the Jasper X360 is the 3rd revision of the Xbox chipset that is supposedly cooler due to the shrink down 65nm CPU & GPU chipset. I’m not sure if this will fix the red ring of death but it was about time to spend the monies to pick up a bigger hard drive so why not spend a little more and get new console as well? The quickest way you can tell that the X360 is Jasper are the 12.1A identifier, which will guarantee you a Jasper motherboard.
The first thing I noticed right away is that the power supply is completely different from the previous models. Removed is the ground and the X360 connector has been redesigned once again. The new two-prong plug design is much easier for me to hook up with my clunky power filter behind my setup. The X360 doesn’t seem to be any quieter but it does run cooler; it no longer feels like a blow dryer when I have to replace my battery pack which is located behind my console so there you have it: the Jasper is out but only as an Arcade & Pro release.
Since the Elite are not selling as well, the current stock of them needs to be depleted before you will see Jaspers in them. That is why I opted to pick up the Pro BUT it seems I am unable to transfer my data from my original 20gb hard drive to my new 60gb hard drive via the 120gb transfer cable that I borrowed from Decepticreep. WTF!? I tinkered around for about an hour before calling Microsoft and guess what? I need to order another cable because apparently the software for the 120GB doesn’t recognize the 60GB hard drives. Ugh! Now I have to print out the form and fill it out just so I can get my stupid one time use cable, but then Murphy’s Law strikes. My damn printer dies. Super luck! I must be one of the few gamers who still have a working original X360 but my low use printer craps out first. So for now I’m stuck with my old hard drive and I’m contemplating on hacking my old drive to a 120GB.
So even though I have a new Xbox, I barely played any games on it. The weekend was a movie-watching weekend. I instant stream’ed via Netflix Takashi Miike’s a weird ass chop-saki western called Sukiyaki Western DJango. It’s an over-the-top western where everyone is Japanese in Nevada shooting with six shooters and slicing with Samurai swords. Amazing concept but I had a hard time understanding what the hell was going on since everyone is actually Japanese and their English was very, very accented, so lots of broken Engrish and unrecognizable dialog. Besides the flaw, I kind of like the movie.
That was it for the X360, the rest of the weekend I was watching blu-rays on the old PlayStation 3. So rounding off the weekend with the Dark Knight, Ironman and Super Bad of the umpteenth time, this weekend wasn’t too boring. The only game I was really playing was Valkyria Chronicles that is a gorgeous game that everyone who loves videogames should buy and play. On Sunday my brother-in-law came over so I had to show him Left 4 Dead and Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, that is always freakin’ amazing.
Now I need to finish up on my many projects so I can add real informative articles for people to use which means stopping here. So happy gaming till next weekend.
[header art by guest artist Krishna M. Sadasivam via Dueling Analogs]
yeah, i’ve been playing an assload of valkryia chronicles too
It was on my tentative list before, but once I actually saw you guys playing it, I was sold. That’s two games now that you’ve done that to me with (that and EDF2017).
Keep reading and hopefully you’ll be introduced to more!