Emulation on Xbox
 

I have been offline for about one year and I see a lot of changes here (no more console rooms). Anyway I do have a question regarding ancient console trying to emulate event older ones (it seems everyone here has a "current-gen"). I have N64 and PSX but they take too much place :D So is it a better idea to emulate those games on old Xbox (one console instead of two plus I will finally play Doom 3 and Half-Life 2)? Can I find some compatibility list somewhere? Thanks in advance...

I don't know about a compatibility list, but don't expect too much. When I think of the great emulators for XBOX, I think of the ones for much older systems. The SNES and Genesis emulators work pretty well, for example.

The PS1 emulator works with some games, but definitely not with the majority of titles. You'll find that depending on what you want to play, it might be acceptable. Definitely not a substitute for a real PS1. Even when you can get a game to work, there could be sound glitches, framerate drops, other issues.

The N64 emulator is better, but still only works with some games rather than with every game. I've found it very usable for some games, not so much with others. It's definitely a viable emulator, but don't be too surprised if one of your old favourites won't work.

Neither of them are being updated anymore.

That said, it's not too difiicult to turn an Xbox into a linux workstation and you can then install a PS or N64 emulator over the top of that. That's certainly what my housemate has done, he uses his old xbox as a media centre running linux and installed a PS emulator on to it so he can play those old games on it and it seems to work pretty well.

Don't ask me to explain the technical ins and outs of it though. He started explaining it to me once and lost me after about ten minutes. He assures me it's dead easy though.

Eh. Maybe he got lucky with the choice of games, or maybe there's another emulator I don't know about. As for how it's done, no doubt he tried to explain the details instead of the practicalities. From your point of view, ya put a memory card in the XBOX, ya copy the hacked save to your drive, ya start Splinter Cell (or one of a few other games) and then load the hacked save. Instant GUI installer for the basic Linux/Dashboard application, then you can FTP other apps to the hard drive.

You can make or buy a USB adapter for the memory card, to load it up with the hacked savefile, which is essentially a security exploit with a Linux installer payload. The hard part is finding an XBOX memory card these days.

So it seems I would have to stick with N64 and PS1 (I love them but I have not enough room).

I have found a comptibility list for the PSX emulator and about one half of the known games work + one half of the games I own.

Do you know some good Xbox site where I could find more details regarding N64 emu...

Thanks for your replies guys.

Xbox-Scene.com - Xbox 360 Xbox360 Modchips Xecuter3 Xenium SmartXX X-Chip X-B.I.T Xecuter2.6 Xodus - Gamesave Dashboard exploit - EvolutionX Avalaunch MXM Dashboard UnleashX - X2 & EvoX bios - Copy Xbox Hacks & Cracks tutorials faq - Cheapmod

This was the hub of information on this stuff when I softmodded an Xbox a few years ago, so I can only assume it's still just as useful. (As an aside: Honestly, once you're done modding your console, do install XBMC as the replacement dash - it's pretty, it's useful and you can launch everything you could possibly want from it.)

The only PS game I bothered to play on my Xbox was FFVIII, which actually ran surprisingly well. Good framerates, perfect sound, no worries. I've heard compatibility isn't great, but considering the last time I dabbled in this stuff was 2006, I might be wrong now.

N64 emulation's OK - The emulator I used actually contained three different executables, and some games were more compatible with certain emulators than others. It's pretty much trial and error. The package is called Surreal64. Here's a compatibility list. Last updated four years ago, but I'm not sure if the app itself is still being worked on.

Oh, and as for modding methods... The route I actually took was the font exploit trick, which did involve hotswapping two hard drives at one stage. On the plus side, you don't need to shell out money on a memory card and a game containing the save exploit - however, hotswapping the HDD is fucking tricky business, and does, obviously, involve opening the console.

Thanks for your answers guys. It seems it wasn't a good idea to emulate those games on Xbox. "Only" one half of the PSX games work and the N64 compatibility list isn't optimistic too (The World Is Not Enough, Doom 64 and Hercules The Legendary Journeys - I can't sacrifice these games).

So maybe the PSP...