Gadgetory

today or well yesterday by the time this video is up Microsoft has officially rolled out their backwards compatibility for original Xbox games on the Xbox one how does all work out actually really really well surprising now just like when they rolled out backwards compatibility for 360 games this is not a situation where all of a sudden every single Xbox game is now playable on the Xbox one instead Microsoft is working title by title to make sure every game is perfectly compatible with the emulation software on the Xbox one and that they're getting the best performance possible so right now there are only about thirteen games available to play now these are all representatives of some of the biggest hits on the original Xbox like Crimson Skies Prince of Persia Psychonauts and one game that I actually still own physically which worked out perfectly for testing the system Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic so a really cool thing is that if you are a dinosaur like me and you love to just buy actual physical copies of games and you still have your copies of older titles like this one right here you can actually pop this in your Xbox one it's gonna download a patch for the game which is actually just the full game install it on your hard drive you're still going to need to leave the disc in the system because it basically acts as a disk check to make sure that you do in fact own this game and they're gonna be able to actually play old-school Star Wars nice little Republic better looking than ever on the Xbox one or if you're actually living in the future and our a civilized person you could also just buy these games off the Microsoft Store download them and be done with it but there's no fun in that so now that you've had your old school game installed on the Xbox one what is the actual experience like playing it well it is amazing visuals are crisp and clear in a way that you would not expect for playing a title from back in 2002 on a modern day system now there are some exceptions to this there are some things where for instance text will sometimes have little jagged edges if there's like an icon symbol for something it can be blurry when blown up and of course if there are any pre-rendered cutscenes in the game those are just going to look awful but as far as actual gameplay goes it looks incredible now this is all thanks to something that Microsoft is calling the huger method hugie or quake II it's HEU TCH why uhé it's not hooch it's just for touching which is not anything it modifies the games themselves these are not any kind of patches or updates these old-school Xbox games it is the original game code but instead it has to do with the method of emulation where it's making use of all the resources available on the Xbox one take it the best possible image for these old-school games where even though they came out you know almost 15 years ago when the original Xbox was released we're instead getting visuals that look like something that was recent obviously the textures aren't the best in the world but it still looks crisp and clear like it was a recent albeit maybe lower budget game and the actual gameplay experience is seamless I mean even though the original Xbox controller had a different button layout it still had the same number of buttons all they had to do is move a couple things around for instance the black and white buttons are now just your left and right bumpers and you're also making use of most of the gameplay modes in these games the only thing that is missing for any titles is that because obviously servers don't exist anymore you're not gonna be doing any actual online gameplay with these original Xbox titles but you can still do co-op that is local and you can do system linking with Xbox ones you can do multiplayer games from the original Xbox all this put together leads to an experience that far exceeds anything I would have expected for backwards compatibility happening in 2017 I mean there was very clear love and care put into this system so that people can play favorite games that are two generations old on a modern day system with an experience that is seamless and honestly even improved which is amazing and the best news is there is more of this to come like I said there are only thirteen games currently available but they are planning to add more coming in spring 2018 and not only that but using the same method I mentioned earlier which makes these original Xbox games look better on the Xbox one they're also going to be adding improved versions of 360 games that will play on the Xbox one X now for that we don't have a full list just yet but Microsoft has talked about a couple titles that are going to get this treatment including the likes of fallout 3 oblivion and of course halo 3 because it's a little surprising that halo and 1 & 2 are not on the original games list but hopefully they'll be part of that spring update point is then we're getting the ability to play some of our favorite old-school games in modern times in the best way possible