HuguesJohnson.com Mobile: History of Backwards Compatibility

PS2, Gamecube, Xbox, Emulation

The Playstation 2 hit shelves a year later featuring backwards compatibility with the original Playstation. This new incarnation basically included a full working version of the original hardware which made it a practically trivial task.

Sony must have faced the same debate Nintendo did during their Super Nintendo development. The Playstation was hugely popular and available pretty cheap. The Dreamcast was off to a slow start so maybe there was some fear that gamers were satisfied with Playstation and not interested in dropping a stack of cash for something glitzier. Whatever concerns existed about keeping the Playstation alive were ignored and the Playstation 2 went on to become the most successful game console to date.

The Xbox and Gamecube were the last entries to this gaming generation, neither were backwards compatible for obvious reasons. The Xbox had nothing to be backwards compatible with while the Gamecube was Nintendo's first departure from the cartridge format.

While all these systems battled something was brewing in the background. In the mid-90s computers were getting powerful enough to emulate classic consoles and arcade games. Yeah, it seems like an old 33mHz Intel 386 should have been able to emulate a 6mHz game system but it wasn't until the 100+mHz Pentium that emulators became accurate. Usenet and crappy Geocities pages served as the initial distribution mechanism for the actual game roms. Even over a 28.8 modem you could download a huge collection of 8-bit games in no time (so I've heard). 16-bit emulators weren't far behind.

By 1999 a Playstation emulator called bleem! was on retail shelves. The seemingly impossible task of emulating a modern, complex system was a reality. They even figured a way for the Dreamcast to emulate the Playstation, at least a few games. Since the Dreamcast was (relatively) simple to develop for it became a target system for a slew of homegrown emulators. Sega themselves created a Genesis emulator for the Dreamcast near its final days; Nintendo created NES and N64 emulators for the Gamecube.

The rise of emulation would redefine how backwards compatibility could be achieved. It also sent a clear signal to game companies that people actually wanted to play old games. If a simple, legal option wasn't in place they'd take their chances on whatever they could download from questionable sources.