Microsoft just released my favorite old-school Xbox game on PC

The year is 2003. I’m a freshman in high school playing games on the original Xbox, with a controller approximately the size of a serving platter. I’ve got Halo and Dead or Alive 3, and I’m blown away by the graphics. The next game I buy is Crimson Skies, an arcade-ish dogfighting game that mixes alt history with adventure pulp, and some genuinely wonderful controls.

I’ve been trying to replicate that feeling, if not that exact experience, for over 20 years.

You can play most of the blockbuster titles in the original Xbox lineup on PC right now, including Halo, which has both a remaster and a remake on the way. But some of the more niche titles have been unavailable for a long, long time, with the exception of a few that you can stream through Game Pass. Microsoft has decided to bring some of these lesser-known classics — and perhaps a few that don’t quite live up to the “classic” label — to PC players with full ports.

Xbox “classics” get PC ports

It’s calling this “Xbox Backwards Compatibility on PC,” launching with four games and with more coming soon. These games will run locally on your Windows PC, apparently without any kind of emulation (or if it’s emulated, that’s not spelled out), with some minimum system requirements including a GTX 950 or Radeon RX 550 graphics card. Basically any PC released in the last six or seven years can hit it, including laptops and handhelds with integrated graphics.

The first crop includes Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge, which I only later learned was a console-only sequel to an earlier PC game. It’s ten bucks, shockingly reasonable in a world where Microsoft wants $40 for a re-re-re-release of Skyrim. I bought it instantly and went to download it… but I can’t, because according to the Xbox app for Windows, it’s only available for streaming via Game Pass.

Microsoft says you need the latest version of the Xbox Insider build, which I have. This looks like a staged rollout, a frequent issue with features dependent upon the Xbox Windows app. I am somewhat miffed that I can’t try it out right away. It also means that playing it on a SteamOS-based device will be nigh-impossible, which is a very personal bummer. I’ll come back and update this article if I get it working soon.

The other titles are Blinx: The Time Sweeper, one of the early attempts at giving the Xbox a mascot platformer, Conker: Live & Reloaded, a remake of N64 oddity Conker’s Bad Fur Day made after Microsoft bought Rare, and the X-tremely 2000s party game Fusion Frenzy. All four were part of Microsoft’s initial Xbox publishing push, and Blinx and Crimson Skies are also available via Game Pass.

I’m sure that a lot of PC gamers are like me, and have fond memories of at least one of these games. Blinx in particular was doing some very interesting game design stuff that was impossible on older consoles, enabled by the Xbox’s 8GB internal hard drive, a huge differentiator against the PlayStation 2 and other consoles. Other games are allegedly coming to the Xbox Backwards Compatibility in the future, though exactly which ones weren’t mentioned.

Deeper problems at Xbox remain

But I’m afraid I have to bring the mood down here at the end. Xbox as a platform and as a Microsoft business unit is in dire straits, failing to compete against PlayStation, under assault from Valve with Steam and SteamOS, and laying off thousands of workers in its huge, expensive stable of developers and publishers. Xbox desperately needs to woo back players, who may be disinclined to trust it after huge increases to the price of Game Pass and Xbox hardware.

These nostalgic additions to the PC come shortly after rumors of a new Fallout game from fan-favorite developer (and Microsoft subsidiary) Obsidian, which was deeply impacted by layoffs. It’s pretty easy to view both moves as an attempt to right the ship, and/or get gamers to forget the deep issues within Xbox and Microsoft as a whole. It’ll take more than a 23-year-old port to do that.