Most serious gamers by this stage have shelled out for a high-def TV and decent surround sound system, but there’s a new option that puts that shit to shame. Movie megaplexes are renting out their empty theatres for morning and late-night Xbox 360 sessions so gamers can frag each other on a 50ft wide screen.

Beginning this past summer, Cineplex theatres across Canada have been charging $179 for two hours and a max of one dozen gamers.Now they’re not the first—an enterprising Utah theatre owner was projecting Halo on the original Xbox as far back as 2004—and it’s not the cheapest—a Pennsylvanian cinema charges only 50 bucks for four players and $5 for every additional.

But it is pretty freakin’ sweet.

Not surprisingly, party games work the best, so bring your own plastic instruments for a session of Rock Band 2 or Guitar Hero: World Tour. Though the graphics are hardly worth blowing up big, a cinema sound system is unbeatable when blasting out tracks like Guns’n’Roses new single “Shackler’s Revenge.” Plus, since four can play at once and songs only last a few minutes, nobody sits on their ass for too long.

Shooters are a little more problematic. As with any offline multiplayer, you still have to deal with a split-screen. Games like Gears of War 2, which use a top-bottom split-screen, are almost as hard to play on a movie screen as back at your home.

You’re better off playing zombie blast-a-thon Left 4 Dead, which has side-by-by-side screens. Even better, go with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which boasts four-person split-screen.

If you want to go old-school, you can't go wrong with Namco Bandai's new Namco Museum: Virtual Arcade which lets you plays some old-school classics like Pac-Man (or it's updated Championship Edition).

But if you can’t get 12 friends organized, want to theatre-game during prime-time hours or, y'know, just want to be sippin' on  gin'n'juice (laid back), you’re best off going all out and getting an HD projector for your house.

I have a 720P projector with a 106-inch screen which is plenty mammoth—the screen’s about four inches less wide than my entire living room—and is as much an improvement on the gaming experience as upgrading from standard-def to HD. I can’t recommend it enough. And hey, you can watch TV on the bastard, too. It's not cheap, but it's not much more than a plasma or LCD.

By the way, if you need convince a ladyfriend that a projector is a necessary addition to your home, make sure to mention that when not in use, it rolls up and disappears unlike a honking HD set which dominates the living room. Her feng shui can equal your frag shooter.