XBOX 360 how can i play regular XBOX games

they have to be compatible.

Hi Emerson,

Original Xbox games were backwards compatible on Xbox 360's for quite awhile when the Xbox 360 was in it's prime by simply putting in the disc but I don't think backwards compatibility on the Xbox 360 works as well as it used to since backwards compatibility
has moved on to the Xbox One. The Xbox One can play Xbox original games by simply putting in the disc or you can buy digital licenses.

You can try inserting a disc into your Xbox 360 and see if it works but it may not be supported anymore.

In order to play Original Xbox titles, your console must have an installed official Xbox 360 Hard Drive. This drive will have a partition that has the needed emulation files to run the OG titles.

This Wikipedia article, while not official, is a good resource for which games from the OG Xbox are compatible on Xbox 360. Incidentaly, only a very small fraction of those are back-compatible on Xbox One.

For backwards compatibility to work on the 360, the console has to have an official MS 360 hard drive and the game has to be compatible. You can see a list of backwards compatible games for the 360 here

I am wondering if I can use a hard drive I removed from a old regular xbox externally on my 360. My goal is to play the old regular xbox games. It is said that you just need a hard drive to play the games. So can I hookup that drive I took out of the regular
xbox and use it externally with my 360???