A few days ago, Father’s Day occurred in America, and I was fortunate enough to be off from work to celebrate this one day where everyone congratulates you for sticking with your family no matter how many times they make you watch Say Yes To The Dress, or whatever that show’s called.
I received hand-made cards, special meals and cake. It was a festive day. That’s why I decided it would be a perfect day for swapping out the old Xbox 360 hard drive with a bigger one. Recently some saved content had to be deleted to make room for another EA game update and my son has been learning to accidentally spend my MS points trying to buy Live Arcade games. Clearly a need for more officially sanctioned storage space was at hand.
I was in a good mood. All that special Daddy’s day food can loosen up a man’s wallet, so I was thinking, why not? Let’s take the son to the game store and have some good father/son time and maybe get him a new game for being such an awesome kid. He’s at just the right age now where he’s really getting into video games and starting to ask important questions like, “Why does Dr. Robotnik want to kill Sonic?” “What kind of vegetables does Sonic eat to help him run so fast?” And the best one — “Is Sonic for real?”
So off to the store we went. Myself, determined to buy the cheapest stopgap on sale. Of course, we left with the biggest option available, an extra memory card, another Sonic game, and a 1 year subscription to DISCOUNTS… along with a free magazine. My son was thrilled while I was a little disturbed at how easily I parted with funds. Oh well, mission accomplished… as far as I could tell. We arrived home with the bag full of goodies and set to work.
Since I neglected to purchase the official transfer kit, game saves had to be transferred one by one by one, starting with user profiles and then the actual progress saves. Paid DLC could be downloaded again so we used the memory card and the cloud saves feature to catch all the important game data. This was accompanied with patient queries about how long this would take. “Are we done yet?” “How many more times do you have to do this?” “Can we play Sonic now?” Bolstered with enthusiastic support I plodded forward.
Then there was a snag. According to the internet, and this recent experience, original Xbox game saves are not transferrable without a special $20 transfer kit. Additionally, the extra DLC acquired for original games is not transferrable at all?! (the internet actually said this) Why had I taken the time so long ago to transfer all my original Xbox games to the 360 when now all was potentially lost! Games with DLC like, Halo 2, Brute Force and… Gee, I can’t remember… Ninja Gaiden? So… goodbye original Brute Force DLC maps. Or… I just keep a retro 20 gig for nostalgia and maybe that’s not a bad idea.
After what seemed like hours (hours) it was time to swap the physical drives and do everything again in reverse. But we needed to dust off the ancient 360 machine first as it had been sitting on a shelf for several years accumulating dust, not to mention the newly acquired fur shed from the supposedly cute creature that shares breath with us in this very house. Dust and fur covered the console vents so I ordered my charge to, “go get the vacuum cleaner” while I began taking the hard drive and the front and side panels off. He returned enthusiastically and we took turns running the suction hose over all the little vents and shining a flashlight into the holes to see even more dust inside.
“Should I take it apart and get all that dust out?” I was ready.
“Hmmmm…”
“It will take a while to get all those rivets apart.”
“No. Do it later.” The people had spoken.
Later the next day… Errr, later… everything was swapped and we were free to play SONIC! At least until it was the little guy’s bedtime. We had finally accomplished the immense task before us and even created a new profile to separate our game progressions — father’s profile / son’s profile. There’s still loads of stuff, current dlc maps, leftovers to re-download. I literally quit later the next morning. It was such deliberate work but somehow worth it for that strange little bonding time with my son. How he pays attention to every little thing I do. Now he has the practical experience in trying to manage his very own digital content collection. This was my Father’s day activity. It was sort of enjoyable in a grisly screw driver sort of way. But I had a great helper who was perfectly attentive, shared my interest, told me how much he loved me and made me feel like a genius.
Also, don’t ever lose your Battlefield 3 online pass game save, lest you be required to repurchase the content even if your using the same profile that purchased it prior. It would seem the purchase can be used with other devices, or even profiles? This must be some sort of “convenience” for players that create new profiles endlessly for the express purpose of humiliating lower ranked players and the exhilaration of ranking up again and again. “Weee!” And there’s another parent/child dicsussion to save for the future…
Finally… I have nothing else to say at this time, really. I’ve probably already said too much and incriminated my intelligence but hopefully, indicated how special the day was since I have a great family that puts up with my schemes. For my next project, I think I’ll build a family robot for doing all the chores that end up on my plate.