ONE OF MY FONDEST GAMING memories took place in college. I had a severe case of strep throat, but over a weekend. Go figure. On Friday evening, loaded down with cough drops, mugs of hot tea my mom refreshed for me, and a blanket, I popped Halo: Combat Evolved into my Xbox and settled in to play. Bleary-eyed and delirious, but like Master Chief, I had a fight to finish--and to begin.

Halo's titular ring planet was not my first stop when I picked up an Xbox. That honor goes to WWE Raw 2, which featured four-player seasons where you and your buddies could set traps backstage and cooperate or compete in matches together. I ignored Halo for a time because, well, I was a bit of a snob. I'd been playing first-person shooters on PC since halcyon days of Wolfenstein 3-D and the glorious sounds of chaingun fire exploding out of my SoundBlaster 16. I liked GoldenEye 007 well enough--another fun game when friends came over--but, really, what could a shooter on console do that the likes of Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, Unreal, and Half-Life hadn't?

Plenty. Vehicles that were fun to drive, for one. The most expansive environments I'd seen in a game, for two. The first time I touched down in Silent Cartographer, I was overwhelmed: Where do I go? What should I do? No FPS had ever made me feel so small. Claustrophobic, afraid, and gleeful, sure. Never small.

A few weeks later, my cousin who's nine years younger spent the night. He'd played Halo a time or two with family but never online. I bragged to him that I'd found a way. For context, Xbox Live hadn't launched yet. It trailed the Xbox by one year. There were, however, Alternative Methods™. One of which was a tunneling program that fooled my Xbox into thinking it was connected to a local area network (LAN) when it was really online rounding up opponents for me to frag in Halo contests.

I set up the Xbox, handed my cousin my Duke controller, and watched him play. And play. And play. I went to bed. When I woke up in the night to use the restroom, he was still glued to the TV. When I woke up the next morning, he was still there. Captivated. More importantly, connected.

That was another first for me on a console: Connect to players online over a broadband connection as easily as I'd connected to fellow players on PC. No, not as easily--easier. I'd done most of my online gaming on PC with a 56K modem. Even without an official solution, Halo was a step above its competition.

Ever since that magical span of weeks, I've been curious about the history of Xbox. More than that, I wanted to know more about Microsoft's history in games before consoles. It occurred to me as I was writing this story that although I'd played Age of Empires II, and although my main gamepad on PC had been Microsoft's eight-button Sidewinder, I hadn't associated those products with Microsoft. Not in the same way I thought Microsoft when I sat down to use Word, Excel, Office, or even my beloved Microsoft Mouse with its Terminator-like optical laser.

When I set out to write about the history of a game, franchise, or company, I look for angles no one has covered, or, at least, angles that haven't been covered to my satisfaction. Bet on Black is one of my longest works yet, so long I had to split it in half.

Part 1, which you're reading now, will take you through Microsoft's humble beginnings in games through the launch of Xbox. Part 2… we'll cross that network bridge when we come to it.

So, reader: Where do you want to go today? Let's start at the beginning.

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Disclaimer: The views expressed in Bet on Black are solely those of the individuals providing them and do not reflect the opinions of the author, Shacknews, or its parent, affiliate, or subsidiary companies. Bet on Black is a narrative account written from dozens of interviews and hours of research. Recreating a story from so many sources is an exercise prone to inconsistency, especially considering that many events took place decades ago. Scenes were written by drawing from information gleaned from interviews, myriad research sources, and the author's best judgment.