TriXie Interviews THX Midnight
Published November 5, 2007
He lives in Huntsville, Alabama, founded The Hushed Casket, blogged the war for the New York Times, and has an awesome Zuma-crazy wife. Please salute THX Midnight.
TriXie: What's the story behind your Gamertag?
THX Midnight: My Gamertag is THX Midnight. I started using the username "Midnight" on an S-10 forum sometime around 2001 because the color of my truck was officially called "Midnight Black." To make things easy I continued to go by Midnight on the Net and on XBL when it came out in 2002. THX is the abbreviation for "The Hushed Casket" which is a group of gamers I co-founded in 2002. I put the two together since somebody snagged the Gamertag "midnight" before I registered on XBL.
TriXie: What do you do for a living down there in Alabama?
THX Midnight: I am an engineer for Dynetics, a defense contractor in Huntsville, Alabama. I am also a part-time student in the MBA program at the University of Alabama Huntsville.
Rock on, Jeff, and thank you for your service.
TriXie: What's the worst or weirdest job you've ever had?
THX Midnight: Worst: picking up trash alongside the roads of rural Tennessee for minimum wage (then $4.25/hour).
TriXie: At least you made the roads pretty. How long have you been on Xbox LIVE®?
THX Midnight: Since late 2002. The first LIVE-enabled game I remember playing a lot was Wolfenstein for the original Xbox®.
We bet lots of folks will drop into the Return to Castle Wolfenstein All-Nighter.
TriXie: Oh dude, you're gonna love this. November's Xbox All-Nighter is Return to Castle Wolfenstein in honor of the 5th anniversary of Xbox LIVE. We're gonna party back-compat style like it's 2002! Do you have an archenemy on Xbox LIVE?
THX Midnight: I have so many archenemies in real life that I try to limit my hate and discontent on Xbox LIVE. However, I do have rivalries with several different people, depending on the game and where I rank on the leaderboards (filtered by friends only).
TriXie: What's your Xbox setup like?
THX Midnight: My Xbox 360 is my one-stop home media device. I have a dedicated home theater PC/DVR running Vista and Media Center on my home network. I use the 360 as a media center extender, so it's where my wife and I watch live and recorded TV and HD-DVDs. It's hooked up via component to my 67-inch Samsung DLP HDTV which displays 1080p (yes, it accepts 1080p via component). The audio is connected via optical TOSlink to my Pioneer receiver, which is a little old but does a nice job. It outputs 5.1 Dolby Digital audio to wall-mounted Polk Audio front and center speakers, Artison Portrait surrounds, and a no-name 500W subwoofer. Home theater is one of my hobbies, so I could go on and on about this for pages.
TriXie: What's the best feature of Xbox LIVE?
THX Midnight: Its integration with Xbox.com and my ability to message friends through my computer using Xbox.com. It's super easy to set up games with my friends by posting the info on our website, then messaging everyone else on XBL via my computer.
TriXie: What do you think is the best game of all time?
THX Midnight: The best game of all time for me is the first Halo®. I have never had more fun or played anything for longer than I did (and still do) play Halo. It literally changed my life and my hobbies.
The first Halo makes a lot of gamers' all-time best games lists.
TriXie: What's the funniest thing you've ever heard on Xbox LIVE?
THX Midnight: Someone with a thick Spanish accent trying to shoot down a banshee in Halo 2 shouting, "That banshee is built Ford tough!"
TriXie: Who is your inner rock star?
THX Midnight: Izzy from the movie Rock Star. Is that too cliche?
TriXie: Ummm … Sorry, I started thinking about Marky Mark and forgot what I asked you. Uh … If they made a movie about your life, who should play you?
THX Midnight: Christian Bale. His dry sense of humor in American Psycho and his witty comments from Batman Begins would be a good start.
TriXie: What's your karaoke song?
THX Midnight: Oh man … "Trashy Women" by Confederate Railroad. Not because the song is overly great, but because it's one of the few tunes I can manage to sing without sounding like a total moron, although my wife might disagree.
TriXie: What cartoon character do you think is most like you?
THX Midnight: Wile E. Coyote. He's a dreamer, an engineer at heart, and damn it, he will not give up.
TriXie: Isn't it weird how he talks in some cartoons and not others? Plus he has a prissy British accent in some of them. What superpower would you like to have?
THX Midnight: Most likely the ability to turn my friends into chickens. Then I could antagonize them with the line "Ha ha ha ha ha ha. I made you a chicken!"
TriXie: Wow, in five years of doing Gamer Spotlights you are the only person to wish for that power. If you could trade places with anyone for one day, who would it be?
THX Midnight: Slash from G&R, just so I could mail his top hat to my house for playing Guitar Hero III™: Legends of Rock the next day.
Maybe a top hat would help.
TriXie: Oh, I beat Slash on the first try last night in GH3! But it was when my guitar strap came undone and I wasn't even paying attention so I think there was some sort of weird voodoo going on. What celebrity would be the worst roommate?
THX Midnight: I'm guessing Paris Hilton. Does she help pay her rent while she's in jail?
TriXie: I don't know but if she's in the pokey you at least have a skank-free apartment for a while. Who's your favorite superhero?
THX Midnight: The kid from Captain Planet that had the power of fire. Not that it's incredibly original, but just because it made the kid with "heart" look so ridiculous. What the hell is "heart"? That's not a superpower. When is anyone fighting a bad guy and they decide to whip out heart, or sympathy, or acceptance. That's baloney. You fight villains with things like fire, not heart.
TriXie: Yeah, "heart" is a crap power. That's like a Care Bear Stare or something. Hot celeb you'd like to be stranded on a desert island with?
THX Midnight: Megan Fox. I can't believe that kid in Transformers was going to hold it against her that she used to help her dad steal cars. If anything, that would make her even hotter!
TriXie: Yeah, he was sort of a wuss. If you could be any videogame character, who would it be?
THX Midnight: Easy: Master Chief Petty Officer John 117. Although I would have to request an inter-service transfer to my beloved Marine Corps.
TriXie: What's the worst food you've ever eaten?
THX Midnight: Some Filipino dish made with pig's blood.
TriXie: Yuck! If you could go on tour with any band, which would it be?
THX Midnight: The greatest band in the world on tour for the greatest album in the world: Metallica in 1986.
TriXie: What do you predict will be the "next big thing" in gaming?
THX Midnight: I think the next big thing will be extending MMORPGs to the console. We've seen the huge impact of MMORPGs in general, and we've seen the huge console acceptance of games like The Elder Scrolls® IV: Oblivion™. It's only a matter of time before the two are tied together, and I can't wait to see how it happens.
This guy agrees that MMORPGS will be big on consoles.
TriXie: What do you think is the best thing about Xbox 360?
THX Midnight: Its function as a Media Center Extender and DVD/HD-DVD player. My Xbox 360 is the only piece of equipment I need in my entertainment center besides my TV and audio receiver.
TriXie: What is the Xbox 360 Achievement that was hardest to get?
THX Midnight: The hardest to get that I've earned? Perhaps it's just that it's fresh in my mind, but I'll say getting a kill-frenzy in the Lone Wolves playlist of Halo 3 was the hardest achievement I've managed. I stupidly waited to earn it last, so I was quite evenly matched with gamers of equal rank when I started focusing on it. I got close, really close, three times before I pulled it off with the rocket launcher and four seconds left in the game.
TriXie: What would you like to be doing in ten years?
THX Midnight: Completing a Ph.D. in systems engineering. Spending more time with my family away from work. Oh, and playing games on a future console that will allow me to tune HDTV, order channels and movies on demand, act as a DVR, have a built-in HD-DVD player, and render next generation games natively in 1440p. That's all.
Interview by TriXie
