MS is making old shit new again.

Sometimes I think of gaming as a meal in a digestive tract, where new games are ingested, processed through the system, and then horribly squeezed out of our consciousness. Sometimes we ingest one that leaves a bad taste, or we’ll get a small sweet number that sticks to our hips for a while, and sometimes we’ll have one that screams through us like a truckstop burrito. Other times we take a bite out of a game that takes a really, really long time to get through. Skyrim is the epitome of that Valentine chocolate binge that had you stopped up for a week.

With that image in your head, let’s talk about Microsoft’s Backward Compatibility program. In the intriguing world of games-as-food, Microsoft is offering up a veritable Chinese buffet of old, still kinda good video games. They’ve been on the line for a while, they don’t look quite as fresh, but you know in the back of your mind you’re still going to eat them. Why is that?

Because it’s been a while since you’ve had Chinese buffet, and even though the stuff you’re consuming now is better in every possible way, it’s a fucking Chinese buffet. So you go and eat your fill, and you feel satisfied with the old, still kinda good games you just had, and you’re ready to head back to the new stuff. Then, just as you’re walking away, old lady Microsoft brings out a fresh pan of yesterday’s Contra and you think to yourself “Man, that smells good.”

Despite yourself, you just can’t help but go back for another round.

It’s this constant spoon feeding from MS that’s keeping me from getting to most of the newer games out there. I owned (and still own) a pretty good number of Xbox 360 titles, and while my 360 still works well enough, the controller is old and worn out, the dashboard is getting noticeably slower, and my storage is severely limited. Add that to the fact that its ethernet port doesn’t gel with my mostly wireless household, I can’t easily capture footage, and it gives my HVAC a run for its money in terms of noise. So needless to say, it doesn’t get much play time anymore.

With the Xbox One, practically every drawback with cranking on my 360 is eliminated. The controller is better, the online functionality is two-fold due to the 360 emulation layered on top of the XBO dash, and with my 4TB external, storage is a non-issue. So whenever Microsoft tosses out another handful of Back Compat titles, I can’t wait to see if it contains any that I own.

If I do, I’ll install it almost immediately, because if we’re talking food, the XBO is like taking yesterday’s brisket and tossing it in a frying pan with your favorite bbq sauce, and then having brisket tacos cuz I’m from South Texas and that’s how we roll.

But I digress. I love what Microsoft is doing. They’re killing it with their backward compatibility program. They’re showing Sony and Nintendo how it’s done, properly. Sony dropped the ball this gen due to architecture differences, but with their x86 in the PS4, they shouldn’t have any excuse not to do it next time. Nintendo.. well… First in order for Nintendo to drop the ball they have to almost catch it in the first place. Nintendo is picking daisies and chasing grasshoppers, completely oblivious to the line drives that keep missing their heads by inches. To make matters worse, they have a glove the size of fucking Manhattan to catch the ball with if all they’d do is just lift it up. But Nintendo will Nintendo. Every time.

Ugh. Leave it to Nintendo to somehow get me from a disgusting food metaphor to baseball. Any respectable writer would probably edit this entire story.

Good thing I never claimed to be a respectable writer.