Xbox gets another 76 backward-compatible games, with enhancements

15.11.2021

Box art detail from 2004’s Red Dead Revolver, the progenitor of Rockstar’s Red Dead franchise — Rockstar Games’ original *Red Dead Revolver*, which launched in 2004, is at last playable on modern consoles.

Microsoft is celebrating the Xbox’s 20th anniversary by making another 76 games, from the original Xbox and Xbox 360, backward compatible on current Xbox consoles. The games will support Auto HDR on the Xbox Series X, and will get a resolution increase on it and Xbox One.

The list of games includes best-sellers like the Max Payne trilogy; fan favorites like Red Dead Revolver, Gladius, and TimeSplitters: Future Perfect; pop culture relics like 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand; FromSoftware obscurities Otogi and Otogi 2; and mainstream controversies like Manhunt.

Backward compatibility was put on hold in June 2019; Peggy Lo, Xbox’s compatibility program lead, called this surprise batch the “latest and final addition” to Xbox’s backward compatibility program, which was announced at E3 2015 and brought Xbox 360 games to Xbox One the following autumn. The program later expanded to include original Xbox games.

In addition to Auto HDR (with supported displays) on Xbox Series X and Series S consoles, original Xbox games will get a four-fold resolution increase on Xbox Series X and Xbox One X; a 3x resolution increase on Xbox Series S, and a 2x resolution increase on Xbox One and Xbox One S.

Eleven of the games (Fear, Fear 3, Binary Domain, and Nier were mentioned) will get 60 frames-per-second support thanks to the FPS Boost feature introduced to Xbox Series X earlier this year. Additionally, another 26 games the were already in the backward compatibility program will get FPS Boost support — including Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Dragon Age: Origins, and Alan Wake. FPS Boost will also come to 33 titles on Xbox Cloud Gaming.

“Together, we’ve celebrated our passion for incredible games and proven the importance of preserving our legacy for future generations of gamers,” Lo wrote on Xbox Wire. “Compatibility and game preservation are core to the DNA of Team Xbox and our community.”

Here is the full list of games added to Xbox’s backward compatibility program: