The Video Game Critic

Thanks to the generosity of "Mr. M" , I now have some cool Xbox games to play and love the system overall (especially since I paid a whole $21 for it and $0 for games so far!) ... but I have three Q's I'd like A'd if you could please:

1) This bugs me. On my other CDrom/DVDRom game systems-PSone, Saturn and PS2- you load the discs MANUALLY; press eject to put a new one in-if one IS in the system, it plays on power up. On Xbox, the DVDRom tray automatically ejects EVERY SINGLE TIME you power on. This is mildly annoying but what REALLY worries me is the drive motor wear-I've no idea how old this thing is. Have any Xbox owners had the DVDR tray drive motor wear out? I DID own a Sega CD automatic once, but only had it 3 months....AND it did not eject every time, you had to PRESS "Eject".

2) Sometimes a disc I just played and worked fine, I'll push the tray back in and the dreaded Microsoft "ERROR!" -"cannot read" etc.. message comes up. Any idea why? I cleaned it after I bought it (it WAS pretty dusty before).

3) Ok the big Q....When PSone was replaced by PS2, you could find lots of budget PSone games EVERYwhere. Now, the XB360 is backwards compatible, isn't it? If so, or even if not, why are there no Budget "regular" XB titles around, or even discounted ones? I know X360's been out a year, but I see lots of bargain GC and PS2 and GBA games out there but NO Xbox! WHY???!!!

Thank you!

[QUOTE=Alienblue]1) This bugs me. On my other CDrom/DVDRom game systems-PSone, Saturn and PS2- you load the discs MANUALLY; press eject to put a new one in-if one IS in the system, it plays on power up. On Xbox, the DVDRom tray automatically ejects EVERY SINGLE TIME you power on. This is mildly annoying but what REALLY worries me is the drive motor wear-I've no idea how old this thing is. Have any Xbox owners had the DVDR tray drive motor wear out? I DID own a Sega CD automatic once, but only had it 3 months....AND it did not eject every time, you had to PRESS "Eject".[/QUOTE]

I think you are pressing the eject button, not the power button.  The power button is actually below the eject button.  It is the smaller of the two buttons, while the eject button is the larger.  If the XBOX is off, pressing the eject button will turn on the machine and eject.  Pressing the power button only does the first of those.

Now if that's not the case, then I have no idea.  My xbox power button never ejected the disc.  And turning it on meant that after a few seconds, it would load whatever disc was in there.

[QUOTE=Alienblue]2) Sometimes a disc I just played and worked fine, I'll push the tray back in and the dreaded Microsoft "ERROR!" -"cannot read" etc.. message comes up. Any idea why? I cleaned it after I bought it (it WAS pretty dusty before).[/QUOTE]

That's a common problem.  I got that issue with KOTOR quite a bit.  But pulling it out and putting it back in usually fixed the problem.

[QUOTE=Alienblue]3) Ok the big Q....When PSone was replaced by PS2, you could find lots of budget PSone games EVERYwhere. Now, the XB360 is backwards compatible, isn't it? If so, or even if not, why are there no Budget "regular" XB titles around, or even discounted ones? I know X360's been out a year, but I see lots of bargain GC and PS2 and GBA games out there but NO Xbox! WHY???!!!

Thank you![/QUOTE]

First, the XBOX 360 isn't exactly fully backward compatible.  It does its BC through software emulation, and so the title list is growing frequently through online updates; however, so far the list is only as follows:

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/backwardcompatibilitygameslist.htm

It adds up to about 297 games total.

In any case, I see bargain XBOX games ONLY in the used department.  I find these  at Gamespot and EB Games stores in the used areas.  I don't think new XBOX Greatest Hits games are still available.  Microsoft has sort of let the XBOX go, partly because they can't really make any more of them.

Thanks again, Mozart! You seem to be quite knowledgeable on this stuff...thanks for all your help here, too!