Xbox 360 Backwards Compatibility (1 Viewer)

[Phil Florian]

Howdy!
I was very thankful that LEGO Star Wars was added to the list of backwards compatible games for the 360. Anyone notice a significant decline in game quality with these, though? I picked up Red Dead Revolver (needed a Western fix and I finished Gun in a couple nights when it came out) and most of it plays fairly well but I notice that some of the graphics seem fuzzy. Was this the game in it attemp to emulate old film stock or is it the fact that it is playing on an emulator. LEGO Star Wars showed a number of graphical glitches, too, that I didn't notice when I played it on the original Xbox. Just curious what other experiences are on the 360 with backwards compatible games.


Thanks!

Phil

 

[BrionL]

I just finished playing both Halo and Halo 2 and only had one lock up during Halo 2. Right now I'm playing Doom 3 and haven't had any glitches. In fact I'm really impressed with how much better Doom 3 looks on the 360. Halo and Halo 2 look amazing, also.

Other than those, I've played some of Black and the first Splinter Cell. Both look amazing on the 360.

The only real problems I had was with Ninja Gaiden Black and Half Life 2. NGB had slowdown in a few parts and HL2 had wierd physics glitches. I've heard those have been fixed in the updates, though. Unfortunately, I sold them before the errors were corrected.

Brion

 

[Bryan X]

I've played Halo, Halo2, and Tomb Raider on my 360 with no problems. They all looked significantly better than on my Xbox.

 

[Brian_Pete]

I'm glad to hear that Doom 3 is running smooth and looking good on the 360. I checked it out on my Xbox the other day and I was thinking to myself "How could this look any better?".

I really hope the Ninja Gaiden Black bugs were fixed in the latest update. That's one of my favorites. The screenshots I've seen of the emulation look very improved.

 

[Phil Florian]

Thanks for the info. I will assume that they put more work into the more popular ones like Halo and Ninja Gaiden so something like Red Dead Revolver gets lumped to the side a bit. Maybe the bug in LEGO was present in the original but i didn't notice it? It looked good otherwise and played just fine, just a few graphical glitches here and there. Good to hear all these other games are doing okay, though.

Thanks for the info!

Phil

 

[douglas-b]

I "never" play older xbox games on my 360. I use my "old" xbox for that. Why would I waste my hard drive space or go through the hassle of lock-ups, when all I have to do is drop it in the player is was designed for? Not to mention the fact...the older games look terrible by comparison. I sat down a couple of days ago to play Rainbow 6 Black Arrow...it game me a headache. 360 all the way for me and theres no going back.

 

[PerryD]

After the newness of the technology wears off, you will want to dig out an old favorite to play again. I do this all the time with the PS1 games on the PS2. I would never think to hook up my PS1 to do this.

 

[Kevin M]

My problem is that some of my favorites on the Box are fairly obscure. For example, Arx Fatalis is a hell of a great RPG/Dungeon crawler that I love to play....and that nobody heard of so I seriously doubt it will ever get emulated.
Tron 2.0, Tecmo Classic Arcade etc. etc. MS is saying that they will eventually emulate the entire catalog...right? For some reason I get the feeling that when they get down to "the bottom of the barrel" they won't be as gung-ho to do those emulations as glitch free as they would on other more popular titles.

 

[BrianB]

No.

 

[Kevin M]

,but he has reversed himself on many things before.....(shrugs shoulders) I don't know.

* (Maybe "snide" is a bit harsh but you could have said a bit more.)

 

[Nathan A]

Last I heard was that, when interviewed, Peter Moore believed that people weren't really that interested in backwards compatibility. Plus, he truly believed that MS had underpromised and overdelivered with the number of games they'd gotten to work up to this point (which many people thought was interesting since they'd promised full compatibility at one point).

So it didn't sound like they had any plans to seriously expand the list. Maybe some MS rep has said something since then; I don't know.

 

[Gary Seven]

My understanding was that as well.

I have both Xbox's hooked up since I have the spare component inputs so I can switch back and forth. I have found that for the most part, the backward compatability is not as good as playing fromt the original box. And some games I cannot play on 360, the ESPN Football game being one example.

 

[Jeremy Little]

You should check out Major Nelson's podcasts. www.majornelson.com. He had an interview with Peter Moore that was quite informative (Episode #178).

Basically, Peter Moore said that the quote was taken out of context and that they had no plans to stop anytime soon. He explained why things like Barbie Horse Adventures and things like that made the list. In summary, emulation is very difficult. Sometimes, they can work for weeks and not accomplish anything and put in 10 minutes worth of work to get 5 games going. Barbie helped solve some issues with part of the Tom Clancy games that were acting up within the emulation. The way the games' data were compressed and loaded into memory were simple. Sometimes solving 1 game emulation just fixes that one, and sometimes it unlocks a whole bunch.