A trio of classic Rockstar titles from past gaming eras are going to be available on Xbox One next Thursday via the Backwards Compatibility program. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Midnight Club: Los Angeles and the relatively obscure Rockstar Games Presents: Table Tennis will be made available on the console.
When the backwards compatibility program was announced and kicked off for a long while there was no word or even sign of Rockstar Games partnering up with Microsoft to make their older games available on the Xbox One... Only for Red Dead Redemption and GTA 4 to then pop up suddenly. On the 7th of June, which is next Thursday, three new titles will be joining them.
Thanks to how backwards compatibility works, all owners of these games will have instant access. If you have digital copies registered to your Xbox Live profile, they will be ready to install, whereas in the case of physical copies you just pop the old disc into the Xbox One and voilá.
In the case of GTA: San Andreas, the original Xbox disc will also work, not just the 360 version.
GTA San Andreas is considered by some fans to be the best game in the series to this day. Featuring the biggest open world in a GTA game when it was released, even surpassing the size of GTA 4's Liberty City, San Andreas was filled with content to a degree that was unprecedented in the series. Telling the story of Carl Johnson (CJ) and the Grove Street Families, San Andreas defined a gaming generation and is often mentioned in various gaming toplists.
Midnight Club: Los Angeles is the fourth and as of now final game in the racing series, featuring an open world larger than that of all previous Midnight Club games combined. Set in the city which inspired GTA's Los Santos, fans of San Andreas and GTA 5 might want to give it a try for the location alone.
Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis is an odd inclusion to be sure. Even when it was first released back in 2006, everyone was confused why a game with Rockstar's library of games would make a table tennis simulator out of nowhere. However, when you take into account that this was the first time the RAGE engine was used, it becomes pretty clear that this is a glorified tech demo. Nonetheless, it got rave reviews on launch, so it's a very well made glorified tech demo.
If you own any of these games and have wanted to take them for another spin for old times' sake, but didn't want to break out the old hardware to do it, come June 7th you'll be able to play them on the Xbox One.
