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.

Comments

We're still on AT

[tepples]

What makes Xbox games so unique that you need to port each one individually?

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.

Go buy Psychonauts.

[mbourgon]

Like platformers? Go buy Psychonauts.
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/Psychona uts-Demo