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Xbox Emulator Plays Retail Game

Ryan M. Pamplin writes "The critically acclaimed Xbox Emulator, CXBX, has made its way into Xbox history. Caustik has announced that "Turok Evolution" is now playable at real-time speed with comparable graphics to the Xbox while utilizing nearly the same graphics hardware found within the Xbox itself. The development of CXBX will continue to advance at rapid pace. Expect many additional titles to become playable upon the release of the next binary in the near future. A DivX video, binary, and GPL'ed source is available at the website."

16 of 379 comments (clear)

  1. Maybe Later by stecoop · · Score: 4, Informative

    I can buy a Xbox for a 150 bukcs. Ill look at it when it becomes V1.0 Stable but for now Ill play the games faster than an emulator and save myself 151 dollars in time.

    1. Re:Maybe Later by DrEldarion · · Score: 2, Informative

      Actually, if you can make your way to an FYE/Coconuts, you can get it for $119 after a $30 rebate.

  2. Good work but not quite Mame by ifreakshow · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is really great work but there's much more to be done before this is an All Purpose Xbox emulator. Currently, It only plays Turok. Which is based on the 4627 XDK. Other games based on this are:

    Aggressive Inline
    Battle Engine Aquila
    EggMania
    Kelly SLater's Pro Surfer
    Rayman Arena
    Sega GT 2002
    Shadow of memories

    1. Re:Good work but not quite Mame by frenetic3 · · Score: 4, Informative

      additional notable points are that it is also missing sound and network support.

      also, maybe it will be slightly since xbox is based on x86 architecture and nvidia graphics, but it took a while for ultrahle, for example, to be truly playable (the o/c'ed celeron 450s didn't exactly cut it back then -- or it would play fine 90% of the time but glitch annoyingly the other 10%.. or buttons would have no text, etc.). so the requisite hardware might be a year or two off before it's truly playable (not to mention the incredible amount of effort to fully reverse engineer the xbox architecture enough to emulate it in software such that it plays indistinguishably from a real xbox)

      -fren

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  3. Patents are bad for Emulation! by Elektroschock · · Score: 4, Informative

    Don't forget that parts of the XBOx are protected by trivial patents of Microsoft.

    See:

    Microsoft and Patents
    http://swpat.ffii.org/players/microsoft/i ndex.en.h tml

    Bruxelles event
    http://dot.kde.org/1081152462/

    Web strike and demo
    http://demo.ffii.org

  4. In fact... by paranode · · Score: 2, Informative

    Well, they lose all the revenue from the sale of X-Boxes... Unless of course they're taking a loss on those, in which case this is actually good for Microsoft. Uh.

    Actually they are taking a loss on the Xboxes. It is the packaged games that they are counting on to make their money back. This emulation technology, if abused, could (and probably will) encourage people to trade/download/serve illegal copies of the games so they don't have to pay for anything.

    The author makes it quite clear that this is not his intention, and while that may or may not be a genuine sentiment, I think MS will probably come down on him with the DMCA somehow.

  5. Google Cache by OctaneZ · · Score: 3, Informative

    No, it's not up to date but it's better than nothing.

  6. Re:Mirrors please by LqqkOut · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's a .torrent

    Are there any recommended tracker sites for files such as this? (non-copyright, one-off dl's)

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  7. No, not really. PCs cannot read Xbox Discs by BenJeremy · · Score: 5, Informative

    Xbox incorporates a non-standard DVD format that requires the DVD-ROM drive, at the firmware level, to handle reading the Xbox portion.

    PCs only see an 11MB video that basically says "look, dumbass, this is an Xbox game so go stick it in your Xbox". (Maybe not in quite that harsh of language - I'm paraphrasing here)

    You can't hook an Xbox Drive up to a PC, either... because the system won't recognize it as a valid DVD-ROM drive. Again, this is an issue with firmware (oddly enough, some standard DVD-ROM drives can be used on modded Xboxes to read backup discs).

    This is why you have to use a modded Xbox to back up an Xbox game - the game material has to be read from the Xbox itself, then transferred to a PC.

    This was intentional. It was meant to stymie hackers from simply reading the disc in a PC, or slapping an Xbox DVD-ROM drive into a PC and using that to read from.

    The Xbox can handle games loaded from a DVD-R in UDF format, or even it's special Xbox DVD FAT format (burned as a "normal" disc image) - once it's modded. Why? Because it makes things easier for development. Developmnet Xboxes can be thought of as "half-modded" - developers can sign aps with a developer's key FOR THEIR XDK CONSOLES ONLY. Thus, they can test their releases with burned media (saving the expense of mastering a secure DVD and generating a signature).

    So legitimate games cannot be used on a PC. Microsoft has locked themselves out of that market (albeit in the interest of copy protecting their software).

  8. Re:X-box accessories for PC by jmccarthy · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Xbox controller is essentially a USB device with a fruity plug. All it takes to get it running on PC is either cutting the end off and splicing on a male USB end or buying a 5-6 dollar adaptor that hooks into where the break is in the controller cord, plus appropriate drivers.

  9. Xeon by emkman · · Score: 4, Informative

    The other xbox emulator in the works, Xeon, can already play Halo to a large degree. Check it out

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  10. Latest version by Aphelion · · Score: 3, Informative

    The latest version is not linked on the downloads page.

  11. Re:Piracy concerns by Jim+Hall · · Score: 2, Informative

    You're forgetting one important thing M$ would lose on: revenue from games because they can now be pirated and played... without a modchipped console. People can just copy them from a friend and play them on a computer that contains no piracy check.

    There's another thing, too. Microsoft depends on the XBox sales numbers to be somewhat reliable, so they can use those numbers to convince software developers to commit to creating new games for the XBox. It's a tricky thing. If you have people who aren't buying XBoxes, Microsoft's sales numbers are off.

    This came out fairly early on when it was found that Microsoft was double-counting sales of XBoxes if you had to return your (then, overheated) XBox for a new one. Instead of counting one sale, they'd count two (one purchased, plus one given to you in exchange.)

  12. Re:Microsoft's gonna be mad! by merdark · · Score: 2, Informative

    One development cost for two different platforms = huge savings.

    So I guess you missed the news on XNA?

    http://www.arstechnica.com/news/posts/1080238536 .h tml

  13. Re:Piracy concerns and other lawsuits.... by wolrahnaes · · Score: 2, Informative

    Doesn't work that way. Unlike PS1 (and PS2 IIRC) discs, Xbox games cannot be read in a PC CD/DVD-ROM drive. MS modified the DVD format that the Xbox uses to prevent easy ripping of games. All you see with a PC DVD drive is a short animation telling you it is not a DVD, and should only be placed in a Xbox.

    The only way to use Cxbx is with a disc image that has been ripped using a modded Xbox.

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  14. "Nearly the same" graphics hardware? by Trejkaz · · Score: 2, Informative

    And then the real article says it was a 2.8GHz P4 with a GeForce FX5600.

    The Xbox is hardly a 2.8GHz P4, guys.

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