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Pyschonauts Now Back-Compat on 360
The much requested addition of backwards compatability for Psychonauts has reached the Xbox 360, reports the British Gaming Blog. The list also adds support for titles like Ultimate Spider-Man, Buffy, Shenmue II and ... Aquaman. The list was dropped early, so don't put the discs in quite yet and expect them to work. Still ... yay Psychonauts.
I don't understand why LSD is coming to the XBox 360 would be appropriate. Maybe it's a Baby Boomer thing to be psychonuts again.
It uses the common prefix "psycho". Not "pyscho".
Windows is backwards compatible to DOS, over 20 years of improvement, but from one console to the next they break compatibility. Why? I bet most people have more console games that they don't want to buy over then programs. What makes Xbox games so unique that you need to port each one individually? Or is this some sort of business decision? If so, Microsoft is hurting their console sales by forcing people to get rid of old games. So, once again, why?
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
The 360's lackluster backwards compatibility has been a sore spot for a lot of gamers. No one who just bought a shiny new 360 wants to have to keep that huge ugly old Xbox just to play their older favorite games.
Psychonauts in particular is a sentimental favorite for a whole lot of people in the so-called "hardcore" gaming community. It was one of the titles that everyone pointed to when MS released a compatibility updates, as evidence that MS doesn't care about real gamers.
Seeing shovelware titles like Cabela's Big Game Hunter and Barbie Horse Adventures making the cut while fantastic games like Psychonauts and Shenmue 2 were forgotten was a bad thing. This release is one of the biggest steps in the right direction MS has taken.
There's lots still room for improvement, with notably absent fan-favorite titles like Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, Phantom Dust, Otogi, Chronicles of Riddick, Mercenaries, Panzer Dragoon and Jet Set Radio Future. But still, this is a damn good update.
PC games write to hardware registers only through drivers, which are shipped as part of an operating system and can be replaced along with the operating system. Console games, on the other hand, ship the drivers with the game and often ship a game with drivers customized specifically for that game, often taking advantage of imperfectly understood quirks of the hardware. In addition, unlike old PCs and new PCs, the Xbox and Xbox 360 consoles have different CPU architectures, and the Xbox 360 needs an emulator, in effect the opposite of Rosetta, in order to execute Xbox games' Intel instructions on a PowerPC architecture.
Wii's backward compatibility is a result of the hardware upgrade being as transparent as that from Game Boy to Game Boy Color or from PC to PC/XT to PC/AT to what we have now. Other systems with backward compatibility (Sega Genesis, PlayStation 2, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, PLAYSTATION 3) just include the previous generation console's CPU and a subset of its I/O hardware in order to run its games, which hardware may (Gen, PS2, DS) or may not (GBA, PS3) be used for some tasks in titles for the new platform. Microsoft could not do either in Xbox 360 due to contractual disputes with Intel and NVIDIA.
But nothing about the fact that Double Dragon is coming to XBox Live Arcade ? The only thing that would be better than Double Dragon is multiplayer River City Ransom.
... but it still doesn't play Panzer Dragoon Orta or Jet Set Radio Future, the two games that I still bother to keep my old Xbox around so that I can replay.
JSRF is a first-generation game, it shouldn't have been pushing the Xbox's limits too hard. What on earth were Sega doing to the console that is so hard for MS's 'emulation ninjas' to reproduce?
diethylamide
The backwards support of the 360 is a huge letdown. It amazes me they even advertise it anywhere as backwards compatible. I can barely play two of my original XBox games. Boo on MS, and I am afraid what PS3 and Wii has in store.
Aww, Psychonauts is the name of some game? And here I was hoping there was going to be a resurgence in the availability of LSD. Open your source, open your mind, Slashdotters.
Property is theft.
Though I can't speak for the PS3, the Wii has been 100% compatible with all the GC titles I played, (including Progressive Scan over the Wii Component cables) with no issues so far. In fact I haven't heard of a list of any GameCube games reporting issues with the Wii. The Wii plays the games and can use most of the GC peripherals as it has 4 controller ports, and 2 Memory card slots.
Some peripherals don't work though. The Gameboy player won't work, and neither will the Modem adapter. (Nowhere to put it), and I don't know if the USB Ethernet adapter (for the Wii) be recognised as a Gamecube BBA, as I don't have one. I DO know that the internal WiFi isn't recognised as a BBA. (Mario Kart DD doens't have the LAN option in the menu).
Everyone who thought Psychonauts was a great game, please raise your hand.
Ok, great, now everyone who was under the influence of a mind altering substance while playing, please lower you hands.
Thanks. Now both of the people with their hands still in the air, please explain what you liked about the game.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Like platformers? Go buy Psychonauts.
a uts-Demo
Hate platformers but love adventure games? Go buy Psychonauts.
Love those old Lucasarts games like Day of the Tentacle, Maniac Mansion, etc? Go buy Psychonauts.
Have a PC? Go buy Psychonauts. Have a console? Go buy Psychonauts.
Something for the girlfriend to help you play? Go buy Psychonauts.
Want to support digital distribution? Go buy it through steam.
Wanna help indies? Go buy it period.
Yes, I'm raving about it - it's worth doing so. Yes, okay, technically it's a platformer - but written by Tim Schaefer, a damn funny writer. It's equal parts platformer, hysterical humor, and adventure gaming. It's not just fun to play, it's funny at the same time. The sense of joy, and the sense of humor, is astonishing.
Ye gods, this sounds like a plug. Here - go play the demo. Then go spend the $20 or $30 or whatever it costs. I WANT MORE!
www.gamershell.com/download_8864.shtml
www.fileplanet.com/152193/150000/fileinfo/Psychon
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
It's not news at all. Even as a console gaming enthusiast this barely registers for me. Whoever the editor is (I won't bother looking) who approved it just wanted to have his post count upped one more to show he's doing his "job"
Two points:
Interlaced -> Progressive isn't quite the same thing as actually rendering the game in 720p, which is what Microsoft is doing with the original xbox games on the xbox 360. Original Xbox games actually look noticably better on the 360 because of the increased resolution, texture sharpening and FSAA that the Xbox 360 does.
Of course if all the licensing issues weren't there and the hardware was more compatible with the old generation Microsoft most likely would of taken the easy way out of rendering the original xbox games exactly how they were rendered before.
Agreed. Just FYI, the GC games did support 480p. I was just commenting that the B/c mode of the Wii supported it as Well.
Of course if all the licensing issues weren't there and the hardware was more compatible with the old generation Microsoft most likely would of taken the easy way out of rendering the original xbox games exactly how they were rendered before.
Agreed. They backed into Backwords compatibilty, they didn't think it would be so important. So not only did they change arcatecture, they changed vendors which is why they needed to emulate. The GameCube was made by IBM with ATI video. The Wii is made by IBM with ATI video (and didn't change arcatecture design) so I would be surprised to see any issues with their bc.
360 Backwards Compatibility has actually been pretty good in my experience. Just last night I dropped my new-to-me copy of the Futurama game into my 360 tray, et voila! it worked! I like playing my original Xbox games on my 360 mostly because I vastly prefer the 360 controller to my old wired ones, even over my beloved Dukes. Buffy is good news to me, because I just acquired both it and Chaos Bleeds, and the (inferior) latter was the only one the 360 would play.
And I also cheer for Psychonauts, what an awesome game!
Editor has probably just played the game, because this is definitely noteworthy for people who have, or people who care about innovative and fun gameplay.
In all fairness. Barbie Horse Adventures made the list because it started to work after they made adjustments for GTA 3 to work. The underlying engine, is apprently very similar.
A lot of the responses to my post seem to be saying that shovelware is getting the nod over fan-favorites because they were easy to emulate or some such nonsense. That *may* be the case, but that's not why gamers were pissed.
They were pissed because Microsoft is on record as saying that they prioritize games based on how they've sold. So regardless of how easy it was to develop the emulator, the suggestion is indeed that shovelware that sells well makes the cut, obscure classics are ignored. Call it bad PR if you want, anyone who takes gaming seriously as a hobby can tell you: this is remarkably short-sighted.
Five years from now, is anyone going to say "Hey, let's play some Monster Garage on the 360"? Even though it was a popular television show, and probably sold like hotcakes despite being a sub-par game, probably not.
But five years from now, I promise that there will be people who want to return to low-selling classics like Phantom Dust and Panzer Dragoon Orta.