Xbox 360 Backwards Compatibility List

October 6, 2010

19 Min Read

Final Update, November 2007: This list has now been completely checked against Microsoft's November 2007 backwards compatibility update. This will be the final update to this document. With the Xbox 360 now years old, and over 300 original Xbox games now compatible with Microsoft's console, it's become somewhat pointless to keep updating this list. Thanks! --Paul

There's been a lot of confusion about how (or even whether) Microsoft's next-generation Xbox 360 video game console will support games designed for the original Xbox. The issue, of course, is that Xbox 360 is designed around a powerful PowerPC microprocessor, while the original Xbox utilized more pedestrian and PC-like parts. And Microsoft wavered on the compatibility issue when it began detailing Xbox 360 features in early 2005, adding to the confusion.

Contrary to many published reports, Microsoft never promised 100 percent backwards compatibility with the original Xbox. Instead, the company said that it would try and make as many Xbox games play properly on Xbox 360 as possible, and that these efforts would be ongoing, over time, so that the compatibility picture would get better in the months after Xbox 360 launched. The pre-release Xbox 360 I received for my review, for example, came only with Halo and Halo 2 compatibility built-in. But the production Xbox 360 versions that Microsoft ships to the public include, out of the box, compatibility with a far greater range of software.

Here's what you need to know about backwards compatibility on Xbox 360. First, in order to play original Xbox games on Xbox 360, you will need a hard drive-equipped Xbox 360. That is, if you get the Xbox 360 Core System, you will need to purchase the $99 Xbox 360 hard drive as well. The reason for this is that Microsoft is hand-coding software compatibility shims for each Xbox game, and these bits of software must be stored on the system's hard drive.

For more information about Xbox game compatibility, please refer to my exhaustive 360 review.

More compatibility updates now available

In December 2005, Microsoft released the first of its original Xbox compatibility updates for Xbox 360. Since then, the company shipped serveral sets of updates and the latest one is dubbed the Original Xbox Game Support November 2007 Update. You can always download the very latest version from thethis link on the the Microsoft Web site if your Xbox 360 isn't connected to Xbox Live. If it is, you will simply receive each game-specific update when you load the game onto your Xbox 360 for the first time. Offline users will need to burn the update to CD from Windows, or you canorder the CD from Microsoft here. Then, you insert the CD into your Xbox 360 to update the system. I've created a video showing the short update process, which you can find here.

The games

Here's the definitive list of original Xbox games that are compatible with Xbox 360, organized in a way you can actually read and scan easily.