Backwards Compatibility

It's something we've all likely used, even if you don't know it by name. It's playing a Gameboy game on your Gameboy Advance. It's playing a DS card on your 3DS. It's playing a PS4 game on your PS5. Recently, it's playing a Switch game on your Switch 2. The industry comes and goes on support for backwards compatibility, sometimes making it a priority, sometimes deciding it's too difficult to implement for various reasons.

My first experience with it was buying Tetris for the Gameboy, and playing it on my Gameboy Advance as a kid. I didn't know at the time that there were a million different versions of Tetris, including for the GBA. I just saw a $5 Tetris in a used store and I got it. I spent hours as a kid playing it as much as I could, grinding high scores (which I wrote down in a notebook because, yeah, no saves), accidentally discovering the Gameboy Color palettes you can swap to when booting up a Gameboy game, I have a lot of really fond childhood memories around playing a game that wasn't for my console.

This is true of a lot of people, for a lot of consoles. GBA games on DS, GameCube games on Wii, Wii games on WiiU, the list goes on, and that's just for Nintendo consoles. It's become a staple of PlayStation consoles to be backwards compatible to some degree, and even Xbox has put at least half their ass into it. For something that seems to be all over the game industry, how much use does it actually get? Is it really a selling point, a reason to get a new console?

Well, yes and no. The amount of times I consciously think about backwards compatibility when I'm talking about games is about zero. But, the amount of times I use and refer to it is actually pretty often. Like I said in the intro, it's as simple as playing a PS4 game on PS5, something that most, if not all, PS5 owners do. I never had a GameCube growing up, but I had a Wii, and now I use it to play GameCube stuff and the GC is technically one of my favorite consoles because of it! I wouldn't have ever known that I love the GameCube so much if the Wii hadn't allowed me to play them in the first place.

One of the reasons I got a PS5 was to play the PS4 games I missed out on by not owning one, one of the reasons I got a 3DS was to play DS games, owning a GBA enabled me to play the Gameboy/Color games I missed out on a generation before my time. Without that incentive, I probably would've held off on the PS5 entirely, maybe gotten a DS instead of a 3DS, and never would've known what I missing as a kid with a GBA. Obviously none of these are deal-breakers, and I ended up buying things like a DS anyway, but you see my point? I'm just one person, but the idea of playing a larger library of games than originally intended for that console lending itself to me purchasing new consoles over the years, or discovering new functionality in old ones, like the Wii. In that sense, it kind of is a selling point.

On the other hand, lines like the PlayStation sort of bring it full circle. The PS2 was a massive success, in no small part due to the widespread adoption of the PS1 as a household name, which allowed Sony to springboard off of that and into a new generation. To help carry that momentum forward, not only was the PS2 a new generation of gaming, it also played all of your PS1 games, and used the PS1 controllers and accessories (memory cards, etc.) so there really was no point to keeping the PS1 when you could upgrade and directly replace it. When your new console does everything the old one did and then some, why keep the old one? Sell it off, make some money back, enjoy your new thing.

The PS3 did the same thing at its launch, including backwards compatibility with both the PS1 and PS2, playing any game but being unable to accept controllers or memory cards due to a lack of ports. Even so, the new SixAxis controllers worked to play the games, and you could save games to a "virtual memory card" on your hard drive, just like any modern game. Not only was backwards compatibility standard, it was expected, which made it all the more a slap in the face when later models of the PS3 cut out PS2 disc support in an effort to trim the console and make it cheaper, eventually leading to the PS3 Slim redesign later. Every PS3 plays PS1 discs, but only the early models play PS2 discs. Sony later supplemented this by offering PS1 and PS2 games to download under the "PS1 Classics" and "PS2 Classics" lines of digital games on the PSN Store. This allowed even consoles without PS2 disc support to play PS2 games, as long as they were available to download. And there's a good variety that was released for the PS3 store!

When the PS4 rolled around however, Sony announced that it wouldn't have any backwards compatibility with prior PlayStation consoles. The PS3 used a processor that was just too complicated for most developers to bother with, and the ones that did either invested all of their time into making it work, or half-assed it and made the PS3 versions of games worse as a result. With the PS4, Sony decided not to bother with it at all, and just cut it off at PS4 games. Because of this, they started "remastering" a ton of PS3 games for the PS4, even if they weren't all that old, like The Last of Us. Later on, they offered the ability to stream PS1-3 games on PS4 at a certain subscription tier of PS Plus. This feature persists on the PS5, although now the PS5 can play PS4 games, so it feels like we're entering a new phase of PlayStation compatibility.

I've never owned an Xbox, but from what I understand, they tend not to have much (if any) backwards compatibility at launch, and they add support for more and more games through updates. Even so, they only manage to support a fraction of the Xbox and Xbox 360 libraries on any given console. Again, they put at least half their asses into it.

Nintendo consoles are obscenely backwards compatible. From the NES til the GameCube, Nintendo home consoles didn't really have any kind of backwards compatibility. NES cartidges couldn't work on SNES, nor SNES on N64, and certainly none of those were on the GameCube. Nintendo continued releasing new versions of games, like the Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition disc for the GameCube having Zelda 1, 2, Ocarina of Time, and Majora's Mask. It wasn't until the Nintendo Wii that the home consoles starting catching up.

On early Wii consoles, the top of the system is made up of two liftable panels that reveal a full suite of 4 player GameCube controller ports, and both A and B memory card slots. The Wii could play GameCube discs, and use all of the original accessories, except for the Gameboy Player. This allows the Wii to be a 2-in-1 GameCube/Wii, including GameCube controller support in plenty of Wii titles. In addition to everything else the Wii had going for it that made it the best selling console at the time, add on top of that the fact that it was a no-brainer upgrade for GameCube owners the previous generation. It was everything the GameCube was, no caveats (yes, yes, the Gameboy Player) as well as a Wii. The WiiU was the same situation but for the Wii, much like every model of DS was to the one prior to it.

This is the kind of backwards compatibility that is sometimes rarer, but certainly the reason to make it a selling point. When the new console is fully compatible with everything your current console is, and also is everything the new one is, that's what makes backwards compatibility a deal. The Wii, the PS5 and PS2, any DS, these are all systems that let you do everything that's new, everything that's old, with no sacrifices on either end. That's maybe the most important idea behind it all: no sacrifices. Nobody wants to give something up for what's next, they want to be able to keep doing, and pick and choose what change they want and when. This isn't always an option, but it's certainly what everyone wants, and in some cases, backwards compatibility serves that purpose. Why move on from your PS4 games when a PS5 can play all of them anyway? You can get more power, a new library of current releases, and you don't have to give up any of the things you already love! Seems like an easy sell, and in return, it's beneficial for the companies that produce these console and games, because now the new hardware that's more expensive and make a bigger profit, is also helping push older software for no additional cost. People won't stop buying the older games since they can play them on the new console, and they'll also start buying new games since the new console can play them. Win-win, right?

Ultimately, backwards compatibility is not necessary. It never has been. The first runaway gaming success stories, the SNES and Sega Genesis, differed on backwards compatibility, with the SNES not at all, and the Genesis playing Master System games via an adapter. Who won that contest? While they competed neck and neck, the SNES pulled ahead in sales and finished ahead of the Genesis, despite it's superior power and backward compatibility. Sure, the Wii was the best selling console of its generation, but how much of that can be attributed to the GameCube games? The PS4 is the fifth best selling console of all time, and it doesn't play any older PlayStation games natively. There's a lot that goes into making a console, and even more into selling it, and while backwards compatibility is useful and always something I think about when considering a purchase, it's incredibly clear that it's not something everyone thinks about.

~ Alex Amelia Pine