Anyone who kept the green Xbox 360 cases on the shelf got one more reason to dust them off: on March 13, 2018, Larry Hryb, Major Nelson, announced on Twitter three new games in the Xbox One backward compatibility program.
- Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier
- Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker HD Edition
- Axel & Pixel
Each has its own story. Ghost Recon: Future Soldier came out in 2012 and took Ubisoft’s elite squad to a near future, with optical camouflage, drones and plenty of tactical team shooting. It was one of those games for closing out the night with friends in co-op, each one covering a flank.
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is a chapter many people skipped at the time, because it was born on the PSP, in 2010. The HD version reached home consoles within the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, in 2011. It is the story of Big Boss in 1974, in Costa Rica, building his army and Mother Base, ideas the series would revisit later in The Phantom Pain. Anyone who lived through that time remembers: it was pocket Metal Gear with the soul of a big game.
Axel & Pixel is the surprise on the list: a point-and-click adventure from the Czech studio Silver Wish Games, published by 2K on Xbox Live Arcade in October 2009. You guide the painter Axel and his dog Pixel through 24 levels built as photograph collages, inside a dream world created by the artist himself, until facing the Ice Giant.
Backward compatibility was announced by Microsoft at E3 2015 and, since then, had been receiving games in batches, always announced by Major Nelson.
What came next
The program kept growing until November 2021, when, for the Xbox 20th anniversary, Microsoft added 76 games at once and warned that this was the last batch. According to the company, the team had reached the limit of what could be brought over, due to licensing, legal and technical constraints. The games that got in, like these three, remain playable on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S, to the delight of anyone who never got rid of their old games.
Source: Major Nelson, Xbox Wire.
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