If it's feeling a little chilly in hell, it's because Microsoft finally released a much anticipated update to the backwards compatibility gamelist for the XBox 360. Yes, those harworking folks at microsoft toiled endlessly for three months, working day in and day out to add 20 whole games to the list. I don't know about you, but I have a sneaking suspicion that keeping this list up to date is not a full time priority for these folks.

Why is this a big deal? First of all, when Microsoft was first promoting this fantastic new game system, they took pains to assure original XBox owners that they would not be left behind, that they would enjoy all of their favorite games on this new system. But then Microsoft came up with this software driven system of verifying the games before allowing them to be played on the 360, leaving a large percentage of XBox games waiting for their chance to be played. In other words, if you're at the store, and you're wondering if that Xbox title will play on the new 360, it's very likely that it will not. And with them adding 6-7 titles a month, maybe not ever. Compare that to Nintendo. Nearly all of their Gameboy games will run on the Gameboy Advanced and I've yet to find a GBA title that won't run on the Nintendo DS.

But what does this mean to us? We've been waiting for some of our favorite games to run on the 360, not the least of which so we can get online and play with other folks and get updates, etc. Of the 20 games that were added to the list, only one of them was one we happened to own - Star Wars Battlefront. Sigh.

Arcade Update - Front End
Thought you'd like to see the custom menu I put together for the arcade machine. Feast your eyes:


Sadly, it may turn out that this menu system may turn out to be too taxing for the tiny little computer I'd tapped to be the guts of this system. Time to troubleshoot!