Take some Xbox’s, add Screens and copies of Forza2

Just add screens

Now that you can pick up Xbox 360′s so cheap thought it rude not to grab a couple to have for spare parts, media extenders and having as “development” boxes. Before gutting them I spotted you can hook up 3 together for the Forza2 driving game I like so much. In fact rare I play anything other that Forza2, and Call Of Duty 2/5 now.  The idea is that you need 3 Xbox 360′s all networked, 3 copies of Forza2 (I happened to have two, a third used copy cost me £5), plus screens, cables and controllers.

After much arranging of cables, and trying to get the three screens the same height, I thought the final stage of just starting up the game would be so easy. How wrong I was. Some faffage with network cables and my Linksys WET54GS5 wireless 5 port bridge was required first. But then still one of the three Xbox’s refused to play with the others. After swapping of cables/games/memory cards, I remembered that the offending box was just back from Bill, and was a Virgin box. Hence it did not have the latest updates for Forza2 installed. You have to be “online” when you start up the game for it to check and give you the option to download the latest updates. Internet connectivity was already done, issue was that you need Xbox Live Gold (maybe silver works?) Membership. So this required me getting my Xbox gamertag from the living room Xbox (for those counting at the back, yes I now have 4 boxes) onto a memory card, to the offending Virgin box. Login with my gamertag, start up Forza2 and as I expected, was prompted that an update was available. Once the update had installed, all three boxes did indeed hug each other, and fire up a three screen view for me.

Was more impressed than I though I would be at the improvement in gameplay, really rather good. I grabbed a quick video using my phone, so sorry about the quality, will try and get some decent footage another time. You can view the video by following this link

The General