After three and a half months of tireless searching, the Holy Grail has been located.

Last Sunday, as I wandered through the morning paper, I spied a peculiar site. Gazing at the cover of the Circuit City circular, I spotted the above image. For those in the know, the XBox 360 has been in high demand since pre-Thanksgiving. Due to massive shortages, most stores won’t advertise them, as their shipments are so sparse that all an ad would do is drive disappointment and despair to their stores. The chains can’t handle the ensuing mob violence so they opt to place the units on the floor as soon as they get them - and let those lucky few that happen to wander buy, snap ‘em up. So, this vision appearing on the front page of the weekly ad could only mean one thing, they were getting more than one.

Within moments I had the kids packed up and we began the three state trek to our nearest Circuit City - situated just 3-inches shy of the Mason-Dixon line. I arrived at the store and found only 3 people ahead of us in line. Ten minutes and one soul later, we were on our way home; the long winding road finally came to its sweet destination.

I’m not gonna’ write too much about the specs. Those that care, know already - and those that find this entire discourse a tad too geeky, do not need any more ammo. Suffice to say - it’s a veritable Trojan horse - packing the processing power of a top-tier gaming rig, a CD player, DVD player, hard drive for storing pics, videos and music files and arguably the most elegant online gaming interface ever created.

Before I go further, I need to digress to explain my continued fascination with electronic entertainment. This is what you get for being a product of the 80’s. My generation seems to hold onto its youth more so than those that came before. I like to think that my generation (a full decade removed from ‘Nam duty) is the first that didn’t fear a draft or know how chilly that Cold War really was. We didn’t marry at 18 and have kids by 21. Among my peers I was one of the first married and that was at the tender age of 28. Therefore, we’re a generation that’s a bit more carefree.

Leading to games. Truth be told, my life is one stress after another. I know, I’m preaching to the choir. But with the pressures of succeeding in my career, raising a family (at the present - juggling the demands of an infant and toddler), maintaining the house (with Spring-time yardwork looming and a litany of Winter work still beckoning), and some nagging health issues that I can’t seem to quite figure out - an hour of gaming at the end of the day - as I settle in comfortably in Mantown and let the Nazi regime know I mean business as I fight the good fight in Call of Duty 2 - well, that just relieves so much of the stress.

Funny thing with the 360 is - the more things improve the more we stay the same. The system - and particularly the online enabled Xbox Live Arcade - features a whole series of classic arcade games. Basically, the things we raved about 20 years ago and now spend a few moments playing on our cell phones while waiting for the T. Anyway - they’re all out there on the service and normally I wouldn’t blink an eye, but there’s this game Geometry Wars - which was cooked up by a bored level designer working on Project Gotham Racing 3 - that is truly seductive. If you grab a system, spend the 5 extra bucks to download this thing. It’s good for killing some time and it brings back that old joy of besting the old score and boasting to all who care.

If there’s one thing that is troubling me about the system is the notion of photo-realistic graphics. I feel that game graphics should always carry a hint of the unreal - to remind us it’s all just a game. The more realistic the games get (in terms of visuals) - the more fantasy we lose. Afterall, we plug in to escape reality. Scope out the image below. This is just getting too damn creepy.