Original Xbox Live Is Back! - Insignia

on April 15th of 2010 Microsoft pulled the plug on Xbox Live 1.0 rendering hundreds of original Xbox multiplayer games permanently offline over the ensuing 12 Years a small yet strong community of enthusiasts have kept the online side of Microsoft's console alive through services like x-link Kai but despite how useful and important that service is it wasn't a complete solution many games have net code issues in system link mode since they were designed to be played on local networks not across oceans those that do work deceptively still often leave players with sub-optimal experiences or even outright unable to connect and this is to say nothing if XBox Live enabled games that don't support the system link feature such as the entire EA Games catalog for which network multiplayer of any kind has been unplayable for over a decade it's also a matter of leaderboards the friends list voice chat matchmaking and unique gamer tags all of which were lost when Microsoft flipped the switch but after what felt like an eternity of nostalgic yearning the original Xbox has finally in entering a new chapter because on November 15 2022 the 21st birthday of the original Xbox Xbox Live 1.0 returned you're looking at Insignia reverse engineered full-scale replacement for Xbox Live and full scale is not an exaggeration every one of those long lost features I mentioned is already functional in the first week of the closed beta yes even the hilariously low quality voice chat tomorrow I wasn't even say dude insignia's launch has completely derailed my video plans this was supposed to be a Tony Hawk video but after years of waiting I think I deserved the chance to witness the beginning of this Xbox Renaissance so after spending launch week playing nearly every game currently supported I thought I'd take the time to show off what Insignia can do and hopefully convince a few of y'all to dust off your Xboxes and partake But first you know what I want to partake in access to basic Healthcare today's video is sponsored by rage Shadow Legends the leading mobile fantasy RPG it's never been a better time to dive into the world's Hilaria which Now features over 600 Champions all from uniquely detailed factions my favorite of these factions is the High Elves their Homeland aravia has been around for thousands of years surviving the fall of the lizardmen Empire they helped the humans form their own civilizations and defeated a gargantuan horde Of Orcs that threatened their consonant but then things got Twisted when siroth the Lord of Darkness seduced elves to the side of evil prompting them to attack the kingdom the Civil War nearly ended the elves but Arabia survived rebuilt and now it's stronger than ever raid is full of stories like this and this month is huge for the game as they just released a brand new faction the Sylvan Watchers with some amazing new champions forest elves and Druids phase they're all here and ready to summon to do your bidding and as if that wasn't enough raids got a full lineup of events along with a new season of the forge pass where you can get your hands on some of the most powerful gear the game has ever seen and if you're an Amazon Prime member there are even more Awards up for grabs right now so like I said this is the best time to get started in raid and if you click my link in the description or scan my QR code here on the screen you'll get 30 dollars worth of unique bonuses we're talking a free epic champion this guy verges 200 000 silver one energy refill One XP boost and an ancient Shard everything you need to start summoning awesome Champions will be waiting for you right here in the Inbox and once again a big thanks to rage Shadow Legends for sponsoring today's video so like I said I'm gonna share the highlights of my time with Insignia so far and cap the video off by mentioning a couple games I'm excited to play when their time comes but before we get knee deep into this there are a few things I should probably throw out there for the sake of clarity first Insignia isn't beta at time of writing it's in its first week of beta it is a work in progress and while my experience has been remarkably smooth there are issues at time of writing Insignia supports only a couple dozen games with about a fifth of those titles only having leaderboards rather than multiplayer sessions according to the team these were chosen to give the service a varied launch lineup while keeping the workload manageable you aren't getting heavy haters like Halo 2 or Burnout 3 on launch day because those titles had more complex Services behind the scenes that are going to require more time to get working the current plan is to add more games to the service every month for as long as it's possible with the end goal of supporting every Xbox Live enabled game on the platform the first batch of new games is already dropped and while I can't say if these rapid releases are going to be a theme going forward it seems the developers are making impressive Headway and I'm hopeful that they'll be able to stick to that monthly game schedule at the very least so let's talk about the launch week experience when the registration tools released a few weeks ago I immediately got my console signed up and eagerly awaited a beta code which arrived early in the morning on the 15th after discovering my old soft mod blocked Xbox Live I upgraded to a newer one by Rocky 5 and after inputting the Insignia DNS boom everything just worked the service takes you through the original Xbox Live signup procedure and allows you to pick a unique gamer tag agree to the terms of surface and that's it you're in for most games no further fuss is required over the course of launch week I met dozens of people from the Insignia Discord and sampled the entire lineup save for Street Fighter DDR Unreal 2 and Battlefront 1. I don't have the time or desire to describe every game in depth but I will run through the highlights after completing the signup process I popped in my disc copy of Midtown Madness 3 and found myself in a Lobby almost immediately for those unfamiliar with the series Midtown Madness was a precursor to the Midnight Club series the first two games were developed by Angel Studios who would go on to become Rockstar San Diego and make that better known series but Midtown Madness 3 was instead handled by Battlefield developers Dice and while not quite as well refined or stylistically rich as Midnight Club their tag on this formula is an excellent arcade racer though perhaps racer is the wrong word at least in the case of its multiplayer Which is far more oriented towards party games like tag and keep away ha ha ha now I have played Midtown Madness 3 over Kai before but this is the first time I've gotten to play with a full Lobby I've really missed party modes like these so getting to experience it again as originally intended is refreshing the action is so frantic and unpredictable and it's exactly what I love about this era of gaming it didn't need to be competitive or balanced it just needed to be fun but that isn't to say that competition didn't have a place on the Xbox quite the opposite actually it's where Competitive Gaming on consoles really got its start but I can think a few games more synonymous to the early 2000s Competitive Gaming than Counter-Strike admittedly this probably isn't when it comes to mind when you think of Counter-Strike nowadays but it's also a far more successful and important title than most to remember for many Counter-Strike for Xbox was their first experience with the franchise maybe their only experience this version sold millions of copies and in a pre-halo 2 Xbox Live it was considered one of the service's killer apps it's hard to think of a more quintessential shooter than a Counter-Strike and this is certainly a respectable adaptation there is a popular misconception that this is a straight Port of Cs 1.6 but that's not the case it's an original game of bespoke assets many of which would be repurposed for condition 0 the following year there really wasn't much in the way of content exclusive to this version though there were only two maps that never officially left the Xbox Miami was a bank robbery scenario with a hostage objective while fast line is set in a Japanese subway station neither of these maps are particularly great despite my love for fastlines Aesthetics it's quite terrible to actually play Miami is better but only just playing Counter-Strike on a controller might sound like a nightmare and that would usually be the case but the Xbox version actually handles extremely well if a bit differently from the traditional experience aiming is not quite on the level of Halo's Precision but it's close recoil and hitboxes are tweaked enough for control sticks that gun duels never feels if you're fighting just to Center the screen while still maintaining the depth of source material spray patterns and unique weapon rolls pretty much every automatic in the game feels excellent and these are easily the best grenades out of any Old Source game not that the bar was set that high only one category of weapons suffers from the transition to controller on PC the op essentially turns Counter-Strike into a high stakes point-and-click Adventure but that kind of precision is much more difficult to achieve on an analog stick I'm sure that with enough practice players could reliably snipe with this input method but it's certainly less than ideal still though the 10 or so hours of Counter-Strike I played on Insignia were wholly enjoyable and even tightly competitive at points this is one of those titles that has net code issues on Kai so being able to casually pick it up and experience the game as if it were 2003 again has been a real treat but the Xbox being the Xbox this is far from the only shooter on offer unreal Championship is basically a console Port of Unreal Tournament 2003 and a very good one at that with the added bonus of being easier to play in vanilla form than that game's sea of mods it doesn't have the Slick refined controls of Counter-Strike but it doesn't really need them for most weapons unreal is less about pinpoint precision and more about movement leading your shots and item control and once you've wrapped your head around the bindings and how to cycle through the guns unreal Championship is as chaotic and visceral as you'd hope on the opposite end of the spectrum support for the original Ghost Recon was added as part of the first Insignia update I absolutely adore this game but I never really got to play it in multiplayer since it's such an aged relatively Niche title so finally getting to play the competitive mode felt like taking something off my bucket list the maps are far smaller and less tactical than I expected ghost recon's multiplayer better resemble the Call of Duty type beat than something attached to the fast dense level design of the single player campaign though if more grounded action is what you're after the single player missions can be played in Co-op along with alternate Co-op rule sets with varying difficulty options it's a pretty great time that being said the shooters we've discussed so far have primarily been ports of successful PC franchises with mixed degrees of compromise while this next title may be multi-platform it's still a bit different and then it was a console game from the start and one that I've not played so with no point of comparison I got to experience something completely new 13's multiplayer can be succinctly pitched as cell-shaded golden eye with maps that often remind me of Team Fortress 2 and Aesthetics and design it's a refreshingly simple shooter designed to run weapon pickups and basic objectives I would love to play more of this game but it's a rare specimen that actually works better in system link through land tunneling than it does when played on Xbox Live for some reason the developers saw fit to impose a lower tick rate for Xbox Live users than for Lan this line of thinking was likely chosen to minimize bandwidth requirements since many internet connections of the day were constrictive but not allowing users with better connections to run higher quality lobbies is a puzzling decision that code is visibly shaky when just walking around much less in combat where players have to lead their shots or rather players with the exception of the host who has the largest host Advantage I've ever noticed in any video game it's a shame too because the game was fun in spite of this but given the international nature of insignia's community I suspect it won't be a popular favorite on the service for clarity though that's not insignia's fault the game was made poorly it's better in system link but only marginally and it's likely that matches on Xbox Live will also suffer from this issue back in the day but it's an important example of how this surface functions at least in its current form it's still Bound by the limitations of the Xbox and how developers made its games and that means some titles aren't going to be as flawlessly playable as we might remember and I think that's as good a segue as any for the next game I'd like to mention out of every game currently supported on Insignia Star Wars Battlefront 2 has definitely generated the most hype it's a universally recognized classic type of game that seemingly everyone has fond memories of nearly 20 years later the game still spawns memes and while I won't pretend I think it's Timeless or even that it's aged particularly well I have to admit that it's still a blast most times I booted up I've organized sessions on both PC and Playstation 2 in the last couple of years so this was not my first time experiencing the online multiplayer but it was my first time playing the game on Xbox Live and to be blunt this game makes me worry about insignia's potential to grow a more casual audience because Xbox Live is a closed ecosystem and one that no longer actually exists for that matter the official automatic method of installing updates in DLC is long gone Insignia can't provide this content even if it was originally available for free because it's still copyrighted material and the team is understandably steering clear from any and all risks that might draw the idea of legal teams with the power to shut the project down obtaining and installing the content on your own is insanely easy but because Insignia can technically be used on modified systems many of its users don't have the means to install these updates even if someone does tell them how but while Insignia can run on stock systems the setup process still involves running a Homebrew app and that uses the exact same materials and methods as actually soft modding the damn thing people should be modding their systems but the stubborn are refusing to do so and thus making it harder for people to play together let me once again pre-face this by saying it's in no way a criticism of Insignia the way it was designed or the people who develop it they're literally doing this for free as a hobby on top of their studies and careers I'm simply pointing out an unfortunate issue with certain games it doesn't seem to have a clear fix with Battlefront 2 being the most severe example I've encountered thus far games like Tetris worlds and Counter-Strike have issues with this but they can generally be worked around in some way Battlefront 2 can't or at least if it can it's significantly more difficult the Platinum hits version of the game came with the title updates on disk meaning it's incompatible with black label copies of the game unless those users also install the patch and even then players using bad rips are having issues with their installations essentially causing the game to identify itself as a different version from the others borrowing them from joining each other long story short this is fragmenting the community unmodded users with black label copies of the game can't play with those who own Platinum hits discs and while it's possible to verify the Integrity of a game rip many aren't going to bother I want to be clear this is very much a workable problem for those that are willing to do so but the unfortunate reality of this kind of service is that many will see it as a novelty only engaging with it if it's convenient and simple the dev team has made the process of getting online as simple as it possibly can be but their hands are kind of tied here Insignia is always going to be a niche service no matter what but it has the potential to grow an audience much larger and more active than other original Xbox communities so I hope it's some sort of solution to Title Update musical shares can be figured out anyways once you manage to get into a game Battlefront 2 works great and I did still enjoy playing it but it isn't the Star Wars title I was most excited to try out Jedi Academy is a hybrid first-person shooter and third person lightsaber combat game and I won't be around the bush this game provided the most fun I've had in Insignia thus far I rented Jedi Academy as a kid but the only thing I remember about it is how the lightsaber would leave a trail of scorch metal on any wallet contacted the shooting I can take or leave but the lightsaber combat here is so much fun duels last a decent amount of time and forced powers can make or break any given fight [Laughter] [Music] I love how much control you're given over your lightsaber fighting style and force abilities there's far more depth to the combat and Jedi Academy than any other Star Wars game I can think of and while I'm far from a franchise Super Fan it's hard not to get immersed on action this good friends in my Discord call can attest that I was getting really into these matches Casey you having fun yes oh God I'm no longer having fun I have two HP I have two HP instructs charging me I only got to play a little of this one due to most Insignia users focusing on other titles but even having played only one mode on one map a handful of times I fell in love with Jedi Academy and I can't wait to play more of it in that last bit of sentiment is perhaps the thing about Insignia that incites me the most the ability to try games online for the first time and find something new I missed the chance to play these games online back in the day and even if I had been on Xbox Live at the time I wouldn't have gotten to experience everything like I will now so with that in mind I want to highlight a few games that I'm not yet compatible with Insignia that I'm personally looking forward to playing obviously the entire EA libraries of big deal since they aren't playable any other way Burnout 3 and Need for Speed Underground 2 are the obvious choices but I'm also excited to experience the EA Sports big games and the later NASCAR iterations Beyond EA we have Star Wars Republic Commando which doesn't play well on land tunneling being the only original Xbox game I got to play on live back in the day this is definitely on my short list especially since the remastered left the multiplayer out completely time splitter's future perfect as a split screen classic that I'd love to experience with my internet friends and the same goes for Tron 2.0 killer app and a whole slew of undeniably less than Stellar shooters that I feel are probably still pretty fun in the multiplayer context racing games being my bread and butter most of the games I'm itching to play are in that category Midnight Club 2 and 3 are obvious picks being among the best street racing games ever made but the original Xbox library was absolutely packed with racing bangers Auto modelista Sega GT Online Crash and Burn Moto gp3 and the original Forza all come to mind and there are some nostalgic guilty pleasures in there too Street Racing Syndicate is pretty mid but pretty much any game that looks and sounds like the Fast and the Furious is something I'm down to relive so while insignia's launch lineup is understandably small the gradual trickle of new titles means that every game no matter how obscure or forgotten will get at least some chance to shine I think that's the best potential of Insignia as a service an opportunity to foster a community around games that haven't had communities in over a decade Insignia is undeniably one of the most important projects in multiplayer game preservation and if it can continue to grow its user base and support new games it's on track to take every box I could reasonably hope for [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Kacey

Views: 151,340

Keywords: xbox live, 1.0, original xbox, play original xbox online, og xbox, midtown madness 3, unreal championship, counter-strike xbox, battlefront ii, motogp, xbox live arcade, tony hawk, ghost recon, insignia, insignia.live, star wars, jedi academy, xlink kai, kacey, old games online, conker live and reloaded, tetris worlds, dead or alive, mechassault, xbox live 1.0

Id: 9TQ-Jyg48_0

Length: 18min 29sec (1109 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 28 2022