[HN Gopher] Significant progress made on Xbox 360 recompilation
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Significant progress made on Xbox 360 recompilation
Author : tetrisgm
Score : 49 points
Date : 2026-03-29 12:53 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (readonlymemo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (readonlymemo.com)
| andrewstuart wrote:
| What is Xbox 360 recompilation?
| fwip wrote:
| You take a binary that's intended to run on the Xbox 360, and
| emit a new binary that runs on a modern x86 computer.
| MisterTea wrote:
| You take an Xbox game designed to run on an Xbox 360, a 64 bit
| PowerPC system and decompile its binaries back into source
| code. You now have the ability to modify the game as well as
| port it to other systems and architectures such as Windows on
| X86_64 or Linux on ARM64.
| kaladin-jasnah wrote:
| Seeing this [1], I thought it was something related to taking
| assembly instructions in the original code, emitting C
| statements that match the instruction, and then compiling
| that C code.
|
| [1] https://github.com/N64Recomp/N64Recomp
| bri3d wrote:
| Your idea is much more accurate; see my sibling comment.
| It's basically using C or C++ as an intermediate
| representation for machine code, rather than trying to
| recreate the game's higher-order logic/structure or source
| code.
| bri3d wrote:
| It's more nuanced than that; the approach you're describing
| is usually called "decompilation."
|
| The difference is how far one goes in hoisting the "source
| code;" in this "recompliation" approach the source code,
| while C++, is basically an IR (intermediate representation)
| between the original game's assembly and a host platform, and
| the hardware itself is emulated (for example, the original
| architecture's CPU registers are represented as variables in
| the host architecture's memory). The machine code is
| translated to C++ using a custom tool.
|
| In a "decompilation" approach the game logic is converted
| (using a decompiler, like IDA or Ghidra's) back into
| something which resembles the original source code to the
| game itself, and the source code is usually hand analyzed,
| marked up, rewritten, and then ported across platforms. The
| product is something that attempts to resemble the original
| game's source code.
|
| Of course, they lie on a continuum and both approaches can be
| mixed, but, while they both involve C++ in the middle, the
| process is starkly different. Recompilation is much more
| copyright-friendly, because in many implementations only the
| modifications are distributed and the original binary is
| translated by the end user (who owns the software/a license
| to it), whereas decompilation produces an artifact (source
| code) which is a derivative work encumbered by the original
| software's license and generally should not be distributed.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| The blog post reminds me of similar efforts with Shockwave.
| There's people building decompilers, and runtimes, and if you
| join enough Discords, you will notice the people in them are
| cross-contaminating between communities if you will, they share
| insights with one another, in their efforts towards specific
| goals. They're hyper focused on making one game or another come
| back. There's Habbo Hotel, and Coke Studios, as well as other
| games.
|
| The Coke Studios effort is interesting because there were no
| "private servers" developed at the time, unlike Habbo which had
| many, and there are Shockwave Xtras that no open runtime supports
| currently.
|
| There's several attempts at a full runtime as well, that run in-
| browser.
|
| Projector Rays (decompiler) really was the biggest release to
| date, and recently people have been really hacking at it, to some
| extent AI has helped to reverse engineer bytecode far as I can
| tell.
|
| For anyone curious, one of the runtimes is called DirPlayer:
|
| https://github.com/igorlira/dirplayer-rs
| YesBox wrote:
| Where can I boot up Coke Studios? Enjoyed that game as a kid,
| including making music (which was so friggen cool! They had
| tons of samples you could just drag and drop into a timeline).
|
| Edit: fun memory. I figured out how scamming works at some
| point. IIRC (and I may not) I set up a minigame in my studio,
| and contestants had to give me their furniture to participate
| in a game. Since furniture could stack weirdly, people made all
| sorts of crazy mazes that were actually quite difficult to
| navigate due to the fixed isometric perspective.
|
| Each stage required handing over a more expensive item than the
| last. At some point someone handed over a super rare/expensive
| piece of furniture.
|
| Not gonna erase that. ACTUALLY I think I figured out how to
| clone items due to a bug. Or mine infinite DBs. Used that as
| cover to get someone to give me their item. Was a long time
| ago.
|
| Anyways, a user handed me their super rare item and I then gave
| them a stern warning on how this is a common scam and I just
| stole their item(s). Then I handed everything back over to them
| and they profusely thanked me. lol
| Aurornis wrote:
| I have a lot of respect for little communities where people
| gather to work obsessively over a goal like this. It's fun to
| see projects like this that would never see this much effort
| applied if not for the passion of a few dedicated people.
|
| Many of the smartest people I've known got their starts in
| little communities like these: Obsessively learning new things
| that would normally be beyond their academic or career level
| because they need to know something advanced to move their
| passion project forward.
| triangleman wrote:
| What's the latest on homebrewing on the actual Xbox 360 these
| days?
| opan wrote:
| You can play game backups, use unofficial HDDs at bigger sizes,
| send over new games with FTP, use third party and DIY
| controllers like GuliKit's offerings or a Flatbox leverless
| arcade controller. You can play a modded version of Rock Band 3
| with all the songs from all the games, using a Wii Guitar Hero
| controller with a Pi Pico-based adapter in place of the
| Wiimote. Any game you installed from disc for faster load times
| becomes playable without the disc in automatically once you get
| Aurora running (this is pretty cool, on some other modded
| consoles like PS4 you'd have to reinstall the games another
| way).
|
| As far as homebrew in the sense of people making their own
| games and applications, I don't know that there's much going
| on. Maybe you can find a controller tester app. Sadly the 360
| scene has a lot of proprietary stuff going on, and uses some
| official dev SDKs, IIRC. Where 3DS and Switch modders have
| everything on GitHub and freely licensed, 360 has a lot of
| binary-only releases on random forums and such. It would
| probably be a major effort to change this and involve rewriting
| stuff people already know and love.
|
| I did the the RGH 3 mod to half a dozen or so 360s a few years
| back for myself and friends. If you just wanna play games with
| modern comforts, things are in a pretty good state. We don't
| need to worry about the original disc drives, HDDs, or
| controllers wearing out and making the console useless, we can
| replace or avoid them all. The wireless card is also easily
| replaceable, a friend of mine had one that seemed non-
| functional after he spilled some Mtn Dew all over his 360 back
| in the day. Everything else seemed good after a clean but I
| just got him a new wireless card off eBay and swapped that out.
|
| If anyone wants to get into this and doesn't already have a
| 360, the S models are easiest to mod and most reliable (no
| RRoD). Some are Trinity and some are Corona motherboards
| inside, but both are hackable. Corona may need a post-fix
| adapter, but they're cheap and easy to install. Just avoid the
| E series.
|
| For modding tutorials, MrMario2011 on YT is great.
|
| There is also a software-only exploit that's a bit worse but
| more accessible. It came out after I already did all my
| modding, so I haven't got experience with it.
| asdff wrote:
| Crazy that it has taken so long. I understand these are small
| teams trudging off in the dark but you could have imagined there
| would have been more eyes on this and hands tinkering in the time
| when the Xbox 360 was being sold than today. Right at that same
| time in history the iPhone was getting cracked basically every
| iOS release, sometimes by teenagers. Seems like there were a ton
| of hackers around back then.
| wmf wrote:
| Most people just want emulation which was solved a while ago.
| Recompilation is mostly for modders which is a very small
| community.
| Venn1 wrote:
| These projects are really neat. Last week, I was able to build
| (and play) the Xbox 360 release of Sonic Unleashed on a couple of
| ARM SBCs using Sonic Unleashed Recomp.
| wesfenlon wrote:
| Hey, that's my newsletter -- thanks for sharing! :D
|
| Some exciting stuff has already happened in the week since I
| wrote the interview. Here's Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kih42KlocII
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