Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic now runs on a Windows 11 PC as an original Xbox game, and it awards achievements for the first time in its 23-year life. It is one of 21 original Xbox titles Microsoft added to Xbox Backward Compatibility on PC on November 12, three days before the console’s 25th birthday.
The new batch lifts the PC library to 25 games, a number Microsoft chose to match the anniversary. Jason Ronald, Xbox vice president of next generation, announced the expansion on Xbox Wire and said the company plans to bring “even more original XBOX games to PC in the future.”
Why November 15 matters
The original Xbox went on sale in North America at midnight on November 15, 2001, with Bill Gates selling the first console at a Times Square event the night before. It cost $299, sold 24 million units worldwide and launched with Halo: Combat Evolved. Twenty-five years on, Microsoft is pitching the PC program as a preservation project for that library.
The 21 games, by the numbers
Star Wars dominates the drop. By our count, 11 of the 21 new titles carry the Star Wars name, including both Battlefront games, both Knights of the Old Republic games, Jedi Academy, Jedi Outcast, Republic Commando and The Clone Wars. That is more than half the batch.
The other 10 cover a wide spread of early-2000s favorites:
- The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and Grabbed by the Ghoulies, both also in Xbox Game Pass
- TimeSplitters 2 and TimeSplitters: Future Perfect
- Red Faction II, Armed and Dangerous and Secret Weapons Over Normandy
- Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb, Thrillville and Disney’s Chicken Little
They join the program’s original quartet of Conker: Live and Reloaded, Fuzion Frenzy, BLiNX: The Time Sweeper and Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge. Microsoft says it has also improved performance and stability on that first group, and every title now supports mouse and keyboard.
Achievements arrive for four classics
For the first time, players can earn achievements in both Knights of the Old Republic games, BLiNX and Conker. The achievements also work on Xbox One and Xbox Series consoles after the latest system update, and Microsoft notes that some may pop based on progress players have already made. The company says it designed them with each game’s developer and publisher.
How the PC program works
Xbox launched the PC version in early release on July 22 with four games, playable on desktops and on handhelds such as the ROG Xbox Ally. Games carry over if you already own a digital license on console, and the PC versions add options the 2001 hardware never had, such as up to 4x resolution upscaling, VSync, windowed modes and improved anti-aliasing.
The bar to entry is low. Microsoft’s July post set the minimum at an Nvidia GTX 950, AMD Radeon RX 550 or Intel Arc A310 graphics card, a four-core, eight-thread processor, 8GB of RAM and Windows 11. The fine print says features vary by game, a download is required, and some titles are limited to select markets.
Our timeline of the program so far: four games in July, 21 more in November, and 25 in total within 113 days of launch.
Badiyaa has also covered Bethesda’s Fallout 5 plans and The Elder Scrolls VI and the QuadStick mouth controller for PC and console players. More is on our Gaming page.
The anniversary itself falls on Sunday, November 15, 2026.
Further reading
Image: Evan-Amos, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
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