The products discussed here were independently chosen by our editors. GameSpot may get a share of the revenue if you buy anything featured on our site. The original Xbox is almost 20 years old, and we've rounded up the 20 best games on the platform.
It's been nearly 20 years since Microsoft made its foray into console gaming with the Xbox. Many of the most popular Xbox franchises today--including Halo and Forza--made their debut on the rather large black box.
Though a bunch of original Xbox games are hard to get a hold of nowadays, some of the best original Xbox games are available to download from the Microsoft Store or can be found on mobile devices, PC, and even modern consoles. We've rounded up the 20 best original Xbox games in alphabetical order. Round of applause for the gamers who played these games with the "Duke" controller. For newer Xbox experiences, check out our roundups of the best Xbox One games and best Xbox Series X games to play right now.
And if you happen to have a Game Pass subscription you should , we have a list of the best Xbox Game Pass games , too. Burnout 3: Takedown is the epitome of fun when it comes to arcade racing games. While its predecessors also encouraged you to ram other racers with your car, Takedown made this spectacle the central theme.
This fast-paced racer often felt like equal parts action and puzzle game. When you take out an opponent, your boost meter is replenished, allowing you to zip around the deliberately tight courses with more speed. Burnout 3's single-player World Tour mode was a great ride, but Takedown's lasting power came from its local multiplayer. Whether you were competing in normal races or trying to rack up takedowns in the variety of crash-focused variants, Takedown was a consistently exhilarating experience.
It remains one of the best arcade racing games of all time. Sadly, the Burnout series has been dormant for some time except for the remastered version of Burnout Paradise, which is available on current-gen consoles. Considering that massive open-world RPGs like Morrowind were rarities in , it's impressive the game was ever released on Xbox to begin with.
While Morrowind suffered from extremely lengthy load times and performance issues, those who were patient got to experience one of the best RPGs of the era from the comfort of their couch. Morrowind's Vvardenfell setting was richly realized and filled with characters with interesting stories and personalities. The game gave players the freedom to forge their own path rather than keep them on a linear progression like most console games back then.
Morrowind may not look as pretty as newer entries in the franchise, but it's still one of Bethesda's crowning achievements.
It would be nice if we'd get a Morrowind remaster rather than yet another re-release of Skyrim. Remember the hype around No Man's Sky in the years leading up to its release?
It was mightily similar to the anticipation around Lionhead Studios' Fable. It also shared a similar fate at launch due to absence of many talked-about features. Granted, Fable was still positively received by fans and critics, but it wasn't the revelatory and novel experience that was promised.
It was also pretty short by role-playing game standards. By the time the game started really hitting its stride, it was almost over. Fable: The Lost Chapters remedied this issue by adding new quests, areas, weapons, monsters, and more, which helped Fable feel far more fully realized. Though The Lost Chapters didn't turn Fable into the game that was expected, it did add enough to round out an excellent action-RPG that holds up pretty well today.
Today, the Forza series is one of Microsoft's most successful and popular IPs, and it's not surprising at all considering Turn 10 Studios knocked it out of the park with the very first entry. Forza Motorsport zipped onto the original Xbox in , just months before the launch of the Xbox It basically pushed the Xbox hardware to its limits with its car renders, tracks, and racing physics. Forza Motorsport featured both real-world and fictional tracks from around the world, but the stars of the show were the vehicles.
With more than cars across nine different classes and a bevy of customization features, Forza Motorsport gave Xbox users a worthy alternative to Sony's popular Gran Turismo. Set in a fictional version of Miami comprised of two islands, Vice City starred Tommy Vercetti, a mobster who just finished a year prison sentence for murder.
Though Vice City had an interesting story and excellent variety of missions, much of the fun came from using the vibrant world as a playground to see what kind of trouble you could stir up.
Retro Gamer Team. See comments. Gaming deals, prizes and latest news. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands. Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors. You will receive a verification email shortly. There was a problem. Forza Motorsport. Shoving a middle finger towards Grand Turismo, Forza Motorsport shoved itself into the minds of Xbox owners - that sounded dirty! It features great handling model and a huge selection of over cars, aggressive AI, over 30 tracks, none of them locked behind DLC.
Crimson Skies: Highroad to Revenge. Do you like alternative history, dog fights, being a pirate in the sky? Chad discusses the plot. It got better with multiplayer. This was piloting at its finest.
Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath. Oddworld was a spin-off of a popular franchise that makes the ridiculous believable. Using the adorable creatures of the world as ammo, it felt different to other games on the system at the time. Bounty hunting felt like bounty hunting. Jade Empire. This RPG was way ahead of its time. Jade Empire explores a universe unlike any other. The ensuing campaign is one of the most engrossing sci-fi mysteries in Xbox history, and as you get more powerful you feel more and more like a superhero — which was more than you could say of actual superhero-based games of the time.
A tennis game on the top 25 Xbox Games of All-Time list? You'd better believe it! Top Spin wasn't just a phenomenal tennis sim that featured a ton of real-life superstars of the sport. It was also one of the pioneers of Microsoft's online sports initiative, XSN, which integrated Xbox Live online play with webpage-based stats and tournament information, allowing you to participate in online events and then track your progress on the web afterwards.
When Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas came out for Xbox, it wasn't just a big deal because the game was absolutely incredible. It was a big deal because it was the first time that a Grand Theft Auto game released day and date on Xbox along with PS2. The biggest series in the world finally gave equal time to Xbox, and San Andreas was Rockstar's most ambitious effort yet.
It lives on in memories and memes today. Full Spectrum Warrior wasn't a game at all, in the beginning. It was a training tool built for the US Army that was converted into a game. And it made a heck of a unique one. In Full Spectrum Warrior, you guide your troops through a combat zone with one goal: keep them alive. Formations, carefully considered movements, and suppressing fire are the keys to survival.
Funny enough, for an actual military shooter, you didn't really do any shooting yourself. And yet, the strategic Full Spectrum Warrior was every bit as tense as any other traditional shooter.
As history has since shown, Xbox needed Bethesda as much as Bethesda needed Xbox back in The Xbox was the perfect fit for both parties, and Morrowind brought an RPG experience to consoles the likes of which had never been seen before.
Its high-fantasy open world was teeming with player possibilities, and its first-person perspective pulled you straight into Tamriel and Morrowind in a way that the third-person view of the traditional JRPG could not. This was the beginning of a long and bountiful partnership between Microsoft and Bethesda.
MechWarrior was a beloved PC game franchise. It was one of the best pen-and-paper-to-video-game RPG translations that had ever been made to that point, and MechAssault took that universe and made a faster-paced, more arcade-y version of it that felt great to play with a gamepad for the original Xbox.
It managed to retain the soul of the more simulation-focused parent series. Even better, it was a day-one launch title for Xbox Live, and its multiplayer proved to be unique and brilliantly suited to the Xbox Live environment. This is another game that has remained disappointingly dormant in the years since its release MechAssault 2 hit a couple years later but wasn't as good , leading fans to wonder if MechAssault will ever return.
That is what we'll always think of first when we think of this beloved Xbox racing franchise from the renowned developers at Bizarre Creations. When you did awesome stuff on the track, like drifting, passing, powersliding, etc. The power of the Xbox hardware relative to the PS2 really shined here, as PGR2 was gorgeous as future entries in the series would be as well. PGR2 deftly walked the line between arcade and simulation racing, making itself incredibly approachable for more casual players, while still offering enough for hardcore sim fans to grab onto as well.
Its soul seems to live on today in Forza Horizon. KOTOR was the first and it has historically gotten all of the glory, but the second was Jade Empire, an excellent Eastern-influenced epic that took home one of the highest review scores IGN had ever given at the time. It borrowed the morality system from KOTOR but ditched the turn-based combat in favor of a real-time combat engine, resulting in much faster, more fluid fights.
It was a classic and unfortunate case of critical success and commercial failure, but it's never too late. If you get the chance, play it.
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