Microsoft made an announcement at last years E3 that they would be bringing Original Xbox games to their backwards compatibility program on Xbox One. They teased games like "Crimson Skies," but they did not give any specifics other than that they were coming this year. It was confirmed yesterday that 13 Original Xbox Games were being released today! They will all run at 1080p, have smoothed out frame rates, and will have faster load times.
What game are on the list
The 13 games you can currently play are:
- "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic"
- "Ninja Gaiden Black"
- "Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge"
- "Fuizion Frenzy"
- "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time"
- "Psychonauts"
- "Dead to Rights"
- "Black"
- "Grabbed by the Ghoulies"
- "Sid Meier's Pirates!"
- "Red Faction 2"
- "BloodRayne 2"
- "The King of Fighters Neowave"
That's a pretty diverse group of games to have as the first wave.
If you still own any of the discs to these games, then you can just put them in the system and the game will download, just like they do with the 360 games. It's cool that they're still doing that, but I'd imagine most people don't have the discs anymore. If you don't, then you can buy most of them digitally for $9.99.
How do they look/play
All the games run at 1080p, but most of them still have an aspect ratio of 4:3. "Ninja Gaiden Black" is the only confirmed game to have a 16:9 widescreen ratio available. Games like "Crimson Skies" that supported system-link will still support it on Xbox One. It will also work with any variation of Xbox One. So if you have an Xbox One X, and your friend has a launch system, then you can still use system-link.
When "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic" came out in 2003, it suffered from some pretty serious frame rate problems and this version should fix most of those. The PC version fixed a good deal of old stuff, but playing KOTOR on an Xbox One S or Xbox One X will probably be the definitive/easiest way to play the game going forward.
The story holds up as one of the best "Star Wars" stories ever made, and it shows how ahead of the curve BioWare (the developer) was since this came out four years before "Mass Effect"
When will more games be announced?
A good bit of Original Xbox games publishers don't exist anymore, or there could be some legal issues with a licensed song. When PlayStation released the PS2 "Grand Theft Auto" games on PS4 they ran into this problem. We'll have to see if more games will be announced in the next few months.
