Tim Schafer wants Psychonauts on Xbox 360. Now.

by Ross Miller { Jun 14th 2006 at 8:30PM }

Every time we post about another update to the list of backwards compatible titles for the Xbox 360, there is always one title that is mentioned in the comments: Psychonauts. It was not a major seller, but it has a rabid fan base. It is a title I've personally wanted to see work on my Xbox 360 for a long time -- I once e-mailed developer Double Fine and they told me that, unfortunately, it was up to the engineers at Microsoft. Those guys never returned my e-mails.

Apparently, we are not the only ones who are frustrated. Tim Schafer, whose creative juices flow through Psychonauts, is more than a bit perturbed that he cannot play his masterpiece on the console. After calling people at Microsoft, offering to bring programmers up to Seattle to help get it working (probably within a few hours, he suspects), the only response he could get was assurance that top men were on the job. Who? "Top ... Men," they said.

Tim Schafer, a man who convinced his wife to name their first child "Geometry Wars," needs our help. Send off an e-mail something to the effect of "I am a 9-year-old boy in the hospital, dying of consumption, and my last wish is to play Psychonauts on my XBOX 360!" (Please, try to make up your own disease.)

[via 1up]

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Eric @ Jun 14th 2006 8:35PM

OMFG my last wish on this earth would be to play Counter-Strike on my Xbox360!!!

Microsoft, give us Phsychonauts and Counter-Strike please!!!

Nushio @ Jun 14th 2006 8:37PM

I hope the kid named Geometry Wars is a simple joke. I'd hate my father if I was named PacMan...

jOEfRO @ Jun 14th 2006 8:37PM

Joystiq, wouldnt you rather play Grabbed by the Ghoulies, I mean it got rated SOOOOOOOOO good compared to Psychonauts.

ozymandias @ Jun 14th 2006 8:40PM

copy and paste... there its a done deal. im a 9 year old dying from an acute pripism brought on by a tragic viagra, skittle mix up.

jOEfRO @ Jun 14th 2006 8:55PM

heres my lovely letter, not about being a sick kid though my story is true

Dear Nice Mr. Backcomp Programmers,

My name is Joey Waguespack and I am a 16 year old xbox fanboy. When the xbox 360 came out naturally I bought one, but you probably know it isn't cheap. Back in May 2005 when the Xbox 360 was first announced I knew I had to get one, so I got a summer job, the job payed six dollars an hour three days a week, it was not that bad but I still needed more money for my shiny new xbox 360. I decided to sell my original xbox, I sold it to a friend for 100 dollars with two controllers, but I kept all of my games since I only had about 10 and I thought all of them were going to be backwards compatible. After selling my xbox, I had enough money for a premium and five games at launch.
Now, lets jump to November 2005, I wait in line for eight hours to be the first to have and xbox 360. At about 2:30 AM on November 22 I had my 360 running, I liked it a lot and all of my 360 games were awesome, but after playing them for a while I decided to bust out Halo 2 to see how it looked on 360 then I started Half Life 2 with sucks on 360, so then really mad about Half Life 2, I put in old Psychonauts, well I'm sure you know what the screen said, blah blah, blah, blah, original xbox game, blah, blah, blah. At this point I just go to sleep not happy at all and think how much the xbox backwards compatibility on xbox 360 sucks.

Sincerely,

Joey Waguespack,
aka jOEfRO

P.S.

You guys really suck at your job, and this is from an Xbox Fanboy.

ZildjianKX @ Jun 14th 2006 8:59PM

I really want:
Panzer Dragoon Orta
Shenmue 2
Soul Calibur 2
Mech Assault 1/2
Beyond Good & Evil
:(

SeanB @ Jun 14th 2006 9:18PM

@5: BEYOND GOOD & EVIL. Seriously. One of the best games I've ever played. WHERE THE HELL IS MY BGE 360!?!?

Cage @ Jun 14th 2006 9:23PM

After these games are compatible please create a log, come back to Jostiq, and give us the amount of time you played those games...

ZildjianKX @ Jun 14th 2006 9:27PM

Cage: Create a counter, and increment every time you are being an ass.

epobirs @ Jun 14th 2006 9:36PM

Or Microsoft could answer, "Gosh, you and everybody else who has shipped a popular Xbox title. Oh, wait a minute, that isn't right. Let me put it this way. You and everybody who has shipped a popular Xbox title. Two separate groups really. But don't lose hope, Tim, we'll get there eventually."

Using the list at www.gamedude.com as a reference and eliminating redundancies, the US Xbox library numbers approximately 820 games. That should reach at least 875 before Xbox releases end. (Gamedude's list lacks a few of the most recent items and ebgames.com shows about 35 title on its 'coming soon' list.) The BC list appears to be up to 217 titles by my quick count.

So nearly 25% of the entire US Xbox library is covered by an effort that has been underway on the final Xbox 360 hardware for less than a year. Just in terms of the required for testing that is a lot of ground to cover. Give it some patience and by this time next year they may have the whole library covered except for a few items like Steel Battalion and other games requiring custome control devices that don't have Xbox 360 equivalents. Even those might be covered by a simple adapter since the Xbox controller ports are USB based.

James Sorensen @ Jun 14th 2006 9:45PM

I very much enjoyed Psychonauts, and yes 360 should backwards compat it over some of the retarded games they add for support....

But I have to say i lose all respect and think of someone being very lame when they name their kid that, and imagine how much of a dumb b***h his wife is to go along with it

C. Grant @ Jun 14th 2006 9:53PM

Yeah, James, something tells me the sarcasm police made an arrest there. Don't think he was being serious, y'know?

sev4 pri1 @ Jun 14th 2006 10:02PM

makes sense he wants the game on 360, theres not the biggest library, and his game keeps getting press on the relavent boards. seems like more than a few copies would be bought for a 360.

Nushio @ Jun 14th 2006 10:06PM

C. Grant:
Hey, in this day and age, and speaking about game developers and gamers, nothing really surprises me.

MrPolarBare @ Jun 14th 2006 10:33PM

Psychonauts? Hmmm, disagree. How much replay value does a 1 player platformer game have? Yeah, it was a good game, but remember how nobody bought it for PS2 and Xbox? What makes you think people will want to buy it now for 360?

A game I don't understand why its not on the list is "Rallisport Challenge 2". The game was made by Microsoft Studios. The game scored a 9.3 from Gamespot which gave it an easy "Best Race title of the year" when it came out, and a nominee for game of the year. So how could this great Microsoft, highly acclaimed, multiplayer game still not be on the list?

Completely off of the subject...Starcraft DS...is anyone listening?

drcomp @ Jun 14th 2006 10:37PM

Email sent - autism. :)

MrPolarBare @ Jun 14th 2006 10:37PM

Let me clarify my last comment. Psychonauts would be a great game to add to the back-comp list. But, I don't see it as one of those titles glaring out and saying "Man I can't beleive it hasn't been added yet!"

Josh @ Jun 14th 2006 10:45PM

My lame letter below:

Hi Micro-friends,

Thanks so much for your exceptional work on keeping the Xbox 360
backwards compatible. The list is filled with warm and fuzzy memories
of misplaced youth.

But the problem here is that I have SO MUCH MISPLACED YOUTH LEFT. And yet no Psychonauts is here to enjoy it with. Help a brother out?

I'd be happy to send your team upwards of $1* for this game to be
playable within the next 6 months. Give that some thought, as I'm sure
Gates and his hippie friends don't shove their ambidextrous wallets
around with such force.

*$1 playable upon completion of said game. Upwards may or may not
exceed .01 united states currency. Do not pass go or collect $100.

Netherbound @ Jun 14th 2006 11:18PM

I think a lot of people are missing the point.
The point is we have had 2 mass update of BS games to backwards compatibility list and most of the time it was thought to be the devs not wanting their games released so they people would get the newer 360 versions. Well now we know that is not the case and that it is M$ that is really fucking us over with these shit updates.
Come on now! Why push Street Fighter 2 for the Live Arcade when all they need to do is make Street Fighter anniversary ED backwards compatible (and yes SF@ with online play is already on that disk).

Art Guy @ Jun 14th 2006 11:19PM

As much as I'd love to try this out on my 360, I don't think that MS is going to go out of their way to specifically get one of the worst selling games working, regardless of how great of a game it actually was. Only if it turns out that another better selling games emulation profile makes it work will it will show up.

Psychonauts only sold something like 50,000 units. That would be only 0.16% of all Xbox owners. I think MS is focusing on the BEST* selling games, not ones that practically caused a company to go under.

*Of all the games that have sold over a million units, only 2 aren't backward compatible or don't have a 360 equivalent (PGR3, Madden, NFS, etc).

http://blogs.msdn.com/xboxteam/articles/On_Backwards_Compatibility.aspx

Drew @ Jun 14th 2006 11:51PM

I never had an original XBox, just a 360. I really wanted to play Psychonauts in some form or another. The other day I managed to find the XBox version on sale for really cheap (PS2 version still normal price), so I bought it. Luckily I didn't open it before checking the list ...

Tooley @ Jun 15th 2006 12:03AM

I love you joystiq

Farron @ Jun 15th 2006 1:19AM

Psychonauts as well as Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath really needs to be bc with the 360.

I already have Stranger's Wrath but I'm waiting until they make Psychonauts BC on the 360.. and then I'll buy it! I really wish they could get on top of that as I would love to buy Psychonauts right now, but not just so it can lie around and wait.

Kireblade @ Jun 15th 2006 1:20AM

I don't know if anyone has said it yet, but...while a great game...Psychonauts really isn't very visually appealing. I think it stradles that line of looking too kiddy for older gamers and too odd for younger gamers. I really think that's why it didn't do all too well.

Chris @ Jun 15th 2006 4:40AM

Funnily enough, the main thing that makes me want to play this game (other than the fac the man is the genius behind some of LucasArts best adventure games) is the visual aspect - it's trippy as hell and the themes (within each 'mind') and visuals are the one thing that all reviews I have read agree on - they're brilliant, and incredibly original.

The fact I haven't played it is down to my eagerness to make a quick buck from my Xbox - then I bought a GameCube for £15 unaware that Psychonauts wasn't released for it.

D'oh.

Jim @ Jun 15th 2006 5:22AM

#2: a friend of my was called "Mario" by shameless parents. *LOL*

mercatfat @ Jun 15th 2006 5:54AM

Kireblade:

Psychonauts wasn't visually appealing?

Die in a fire, please.

It had the best, and certainly the most creative, art direction of any game in the past five years, period. This is not up for discussion.

Chris @ Jun 15th 2006 7:40AM

Amazingly, just got a response from Microsoft on this:

----------

Chris,

We are working on Psychonauts, I promise. It is a wonderful game. Have faith, and patience.

Sincerely,

Alan Stuart
Emulation Ninja, Psychonauts Fan
Xbox 360 Team

-------------

I'm really impressed with Microsoft here - great to see that they really are listening!

Wickedneoq @ Jun 15th 2006 8:12AM

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=840873&blogID=133066898&Mytoken=A070A1DA-57B5-4C3B-9A081A84CCA9DBFA615797484

Above the link goes to my MySpace Blog, where I've blogged the first instance of me getting a human response from Backcomp about Psychonauts being worked on. Enjoy the ninja banter, kids.

Andir @ Jun 15th 2006 8:19AM

@The picture:
XBox360 + little kids + sparkly fireworks + overused internet acronym = ordinary day of game play on the 360?

Thomas Crymes @ Jun 15th 2006 9:08AM

Anyone else, just a little suspect of some of this.

Tim Schafer used a line from Raiders of the Lost Ark when talking about his correspondence from Microsoft.

I have no doubt the conversation took place, but I wonder how much of the actual words are embellishment or whether they did say "Top Men" and he ran with it.

I wonder why they actually refuse help to get it done.

Dave @ Jun 15th 2006 9:56AM

Autism? drcomp, you do realize that Autism isn't fatal, right?

KilgoreTrout XL @ Jun 15th 2006 10:14AM

Happy to do my part.

Chris- That is pretty cool- I just got an automated response...

Jonn @ Jun 15th 2006 10:56AM

+1 for the X-Files reference.

Victor Lucas @ Jun 15th 2006 11:07AM

Got the same response from Alan--one of the BC Ninjas. Looking good for Psychonauts. :)

"Tim does rock, and we are working on Psychonauts. Thanks for your support."

All the best!

-vic

Cage @ Jun 15th 2006 12:29PM

"I never had an original XBox, just a 360. I really wanted to play Psychonauts in some form or another. The other day I managed to find the XBox version on sale for really cheap (PS2 version still normal price), so I bought it. Luckily I didn't open it before checking the list ..."

So how would you know what the game is and "really" want to play it if you dont have the original xbox? If you have a PS2 it would still work there...

Momus @ Jun 15th 2006 2:12PM

I just picked up Psychonauts for my PS2 and it is pretty entertaining. The loadtimes will be the death of me, though. Almost enough to make me buy an Xbox. ._.

Drew @ Jun 15th 2006 5:24PM

"So how would you know what the game is and "really" want to play it if you dont have the original xbox? If you have a PS2 it would still work there..."

How do I know about Psychonauts? Because I own a tv and a computer ... Besides I'm not going to pay full price for the PS2 version when the should-be-BC XBox version costs half as much.

the T!AN @ Jun 15th 2006 5:28PM

Psychonauts should be spread as far and wide as possible. It had awesome gamelpay, and level design and the only thing bad about it was that it looked so horrible on the PS2. IMO, if the bull fighter stage(see link) had been earlier in the game, more people would have given it a chance.

http://flickr.com/photos/thetian/167906206/