Microsofts Xbox One is now backwards backwards compatable kind of..... (Some Xbox games are now playable on the Xbox One)

Towards the end of 2015 Microsoft idea of Xbox engineering boss Mike Ybarra broached the subject of making original Xbox games playable on the Xbox One through backwards compatibility he said that the feature hadnt been ruled out, but that we shouldn't expect it to come anytime soon. Well I guess if he was right or not depends largly on your definition of soon as now towards the end of 2017 we now have original Xbox games on the Xbox one through backwards compatability.

Xbox One backwards compatibility works by emulating the Xbox 360 operating system and then running the games through this apparently, well after having tried one of the Xbox original games on the Xbox one it would appear that they are doing the exact same thing as when you go to play the game you see the original Xbox start up screen.

Currently there are only 7 original xbox games in my country at least which are on the list of those which are currently playable via the Xbox one, and there are basically two ways to play them. One is you simply buy them on the Xbox store and the other is if you have a copy of the disc you can put that in. If you put the original disc in though you dont actually play the game of the disk, the disk simply proves that you own it, you are then allowed to download it but can only play it while the disk is in the slot, still its great that they have made it work in this way because if you have the game your not forced to pay for it again and even if you dont have the disk you can look if its cheaper to source a copy before paying for it digitally.

So far the original xbox games are Black, Ninja Gaiden Black, Crimson Skies, Fusion Frenzy, Psychonauts,  Sid Meiers Pirates, and Grabbed By The Ghoulies. Now with the exception of  Fusion Frenzy I think they are all darn fine games some of the best from the machine. I would argue that now you can buy Rare Replay which features Grabbed by the Ghoulies and a whole other bunch of games its a bit of a redundant purchase but I guess if you have it laying around then its free and you cant complain about free. For those of us who collect old games though this is a great thing, it might not be a lot of games now but it will be great to see which games end up on the list. I have noticed while looking up Knights of the old Republic that game is also on the xbox store and you can buy it to play on your Xbox one, I have this game on disc but I havent gotten round to trying it yet.

I have tried Crimson Skies though and it worked a treat, I enjoyed playing it again and it ran perfectly, if every single game runs like this then it will be awesome. So I guess the last thing to say is what games would I like to see on the list next right? Well I am going to do that but I am going to stick to games which already appeared on the list of Xbox original games that you could play on the Xbox 360 as well I think these are the most likly ones we will see.

• Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance
• Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II
• The Bard's Tale
• Blinx: The Time Sweeper
• Blinx 2: Masters of Time & Space
• Blood Omen 2
• Brute Force
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds
• Burnout
• Burnout 2
• Burnout 3: Takedown
•  Conker: Live and Reloaded 
• Dead or Alive 3
• Dead or Alive Ultimate
• DOOM 3
• EA SPORTS Fight Night Round 3
• The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
• Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick
• Evil Dead: Regeneration
• Fable
• Fatal Frame
• Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly DIRECTOR'S CUT
• Future Tactics: The Uprising
• Genma Onimusha
• Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee
• Godzilla: Save The Earth
• GoldenEye: Rogue Agent
• Grand Theft Auto: 3
• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
• Indigo Prophecy
• Jade Empire
• JSRF: Jet Set Radio Future
• Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis 

The truth is that I could go on and on listing games I would like to see on backwards compatability but the fact I have already made quiet a bit list very quickly shows that there is a good catalog of games for them to pick from. Part of the fun though will be to see what comes up as playable in the future and run to my retro game collection to see if I have a copy of it sat there.

Xbox One Backwards compatability revisited.... Grab a bargain try something you missed.

So with lots of people running about grabbing Switch's playing Zelda, grabbing PS4 Pro's and playing Horizon Zero Dawn or messing around with the whole Virtual Reality thing ecetera I thought I would do a little thing about playing a few games you might have missed on the cheap again.  Way back  on Monday, the 20th of  June 2016 I made a post about making the most of Xbox One backwards compatability which was a reasonably new function for the Xbox One at the time so without further ado this is an area I would like to revist but first here is a link to my original post incase youd like to have a look at it first.

http://kerr9000.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/a-look-at-making-most-of-xbox-one.html

When I talked about this last time I talked about DarkVoid, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2, Gears of War 1, 2 and 3 as well as Mass Effect, border lands and Alan Wake all of which are still games I feel are more than worthwhile. Since then however the list of compatable games has been widened. 


A full list of current compatable games can be found here http://www.xbox.com/en-gb/xbox-one/backward-compatibility this includes both games that were originally released on disc and games that are and have always been purly digital, as for the digital only ones I wont be touching those at all for the main reason they have a set price you have to pay to download them and there is no real wiggle room to get a better deal (well apart from when there are sales). I will again be talking about Xbox 360 games which can be purchased on disc for very little and can be either played on an Xbox One or Xbox 360.


Seeing as Zelda Breathe of the Wild is one of the hotest games right now lets start by looking at a set of titles which have a lot in common with the Zelda series, I am of course talking about the highly underated DarkSiders games. Both of the DarkSiders titles can be got from various online sights like Music Magpie and Amazon just to mention 2 for £2 to £3 including postage, heck if your an Xbox Gold subscriber then you can currently claim the first one for free as part of Games with Gold. (Yes there are Xbox one versions of these games but there more money and I would argue they dont actually add that much). Imagine a Zelda game where instead of playing the part of a young guy with pointy ears you play one of the horsemen of the apocolypse and you have the DarkSiders games, the style of gameplay is very simmilar with both puzzles to solve and enemies to fight and it has that same style of progression where the further you get in the game the more tools you get ahold of which then allow you to reach places you couldnt before. If you have enjoyed Zelda games and want something with a good story, good length and that kind of style then you cant fault these games and should jump on them.

I have currently been spending some of my time playing Mass Effect Andromeda on the Xbox One and on the one hand I am enjoying it but on the other I cant help but think that it is not really any better than any of the previous Mass Effect games on the previous generation of consoles. Now when you bear in mind that I spent £38 on this game and I am not enjoying it anymore than the original 3 games so if you havent played those then why not give them a crack first, after all the new one will eventually drop in price. I have to admit the Mass Effect trilogy was a lot more well known than DarkSiders so the chance that there will be people who havent played it is much lower than with DarkSiders and Mass Effect the original will cost you £4.50 from CEX, the second will cost you £3.50 and the 3rd will cost you £7 so given this I would go for DarkSiders first if your looking for something to play as there cheaper. I know some people who gave the first Mass Effect a go and didnt really get on with it so ignored the series for these people I would say why not throw £3.50 down on the second now hear me out. The first tried to be a RPG with shooting, the second game is not quiet the same, in fact it kind of swayed things back the other way in some ways with it being more of a shooter with RPG elements. You might say that if you play the second game then you will be missing out on the story, that you might find youself stuck in the middle of things with no idea of what is going on but to be honest the second game is structured really well, it lays itself out in a way where it recaps you on what has happend and then starts a new story, so if you play it without having played the first game then you will still know who you are, what your doing and why.

I could carry on and on like this laying out cases for why you should buy and play various games on the backwards compatability list, instead I will end things here by making a plea that you dont get so caught up in the present, in all of the hot new games that are coming out that you ignore some of the options open to you, especially when some of them offer you both some of the greatest entertainment you can get your hands on but also some of the best value for money you will ever see when it comes to the world of Video games. Did you know that Oblivion is on the backwards compatability list, that you can go to CEX and get this game for as little as £3.50 or failing that you can have it posted to you from websites such as Amazon for the sum of £4.50. So why am I brining this particular game up in my clossing argument for the brilliance of backwars compatability simple my original play through of this game took me 120 hours, and that wasnt enough I have since returned to the game and restarted it several times even if you ignore these replays then 120 hours of fun for £4.50 is insanly good. Yes some people will be shocked that I call one of those invisable dice rolling RPG style games fun but believe me it is, its the kind of game which gives you tales to share with fellow players, I could tell you the story of how a orc much stronger than me was chasing me and I ran for my life only to find that as I came rushing down a hill he rolled past me and crashed down dead at the bottom of it, having I can only reason fell and broken his neck (Trust me it was much funnier and exciting than it might sound).