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.

A look at making the most of Xbox One backwards compatability

Since the release of Xbox One Backward Compatibility Xbox One uses have been able to play certain Xbox 360 titles on their Xbox Ones, with more titles being added regularly to the list of available games. Since the update which added backwards compatability all of the Xbox 360 games added to games with gold have been ones which are playable on the Xbox One. There are other games however ones which although compatable havent been offerd for free yet, however if you have already purchased them then you can download them on your Xbox One or you can pay the xbox live asking price or wait for a sale involving said title or you can get creative and make the most of backwards compatability with the least money possible.

Capcoms DarkVoid is £14.99 via Xbox Live, which well a lot of peope would proberbly say is not worth it after all it didnt receive the gretest reviews only scoring a metacritic score of 59, however I actually found it a pretty darn fun game, going so far as to complete it twice. I wont get in to a discusion of whether this old game is worth spending £14.99 on digitally because I want to point out the fact that you can buy a second hand physical copy of this game for so little that you have almost nothing to loose, in fact I picked up a complete copy from my local granger game today for £1 and its not like granger is your only option CEX apparently only charge 80pence for it, Game will deliver a second hand copy for £1.99. With disc-based games that are a part of the Back Compat game catalog, all you have to do is insert the disc and the console will begin downloading the game to your hard drive. After the game has finished downloading, you will still need to keep the game disc in the drive to play. Yeah its not as good as just having it digitally there but it is a very cheap usefull way of trying out the backwards compatability function and enjoying more games without spending much.

A full list of current compatable games can be found here https://majornelson.com/blog/xbox-one-backward-compatibility/ some of them are arcade only download titles but others are available on disc for very little not just Dark Void.Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2 are cracking games which can also be grabbed from CEX, Game or Granger
for pretty much the same price. Gears of War 1, 2 and 3 as well as Mass Effect, border lands and Alan Wake can all be got for pretty much sub £5... At the very least its worth taking a look at the list and keeping your eyes open to take advantage of the awesomeness that is backwars compatability.