What to do with an XBOX...

[Blanka789]

I just got an XBOX(mainly for Shenmue II and Panzer Dragoon Orta) and have put some soundtracks on there, but is there a way to put emulators on there? Is there anything else I can do?

[Flack]

I just got an XBOX(mainly for Shenmue II and Panzer Dragoon Orta) and have put some soundtracks on there, but is there a way to put emulators on there? Is there anything else I can do?

Too tired. Use the search feature in the forum. Type in "xbox emulat*" (without the quotes).

[Anthony1]

I just got an XBOX(mainly for Shenmue II and Panzer Dragoon Orta) and have put some soundtracks on there, but is there a way to put emulators on there? Is there anything else I can do?


There is so much you can do with a XBOX, that it's downright criminal.


You can basically put a huge ass hard drive in there and turn it into the ultimate media jukebox thing.





On mine, I've got tons and tons of MP3 songs, and I have it hooked to my stereo, so sometimes I just listen to all my music on there. Use it like a server for my music.

Also, I got tons of Digital Pictures on there. So when family comes over, I can show them the pics on the TV.


And of course you can backup your entire library of XBOX games, so you don't have to bother with the disks anymore, and it's easy to bounce in and out of different games.


And then there is the emulation. The emulation on the XBOX is just freaking out of control. The NES emulator is so good, that I was willing to actually get rid of my physical NES (I hated the blinking lights syndrome) and just use the XBOX NES emulator. I run it in 720p with Xbox Tri Linear Filtering turned on and Super Scale 2X video mode activiated, and you've never seen the NES look better.

Games like Contra and Tecmo Bowl and Zelda, look awesome in the 720p mode with the effects turned on.

And that is just the NES. The Genesis emulation is absolutely perfect and almost looks as good as RGB when you are playing it in 720p with all the effects turned on.

You can even play Sega CD games (from a CD) and 32X games.

The SNES emulator is basically perfect as well. Again, running it in 720p will get you amazing video quality.


And you can also emulate Neo Geo and MAME and all of that. It's just totally amazing.





It's like I have the history of video games on my XBOX Hard Drive, and I can take it with me anywhere and hook it up to any TV, and be playing from a library of like 6000 games.

[evil_genius]

^^ Where can I learn to do all that good stuff?

[Anthony1]

^^ Where can I learn to do all that good stuff?

xbox-scene.com


or if you are too lazy to do all that yourself, then just check craigslist.org in your nearest city for a pimped out XBOX.


Where I live, in Sacramento, CA, they sell them all the time on craigslist. They even advertise them with 50 XBOX games on the hard drive, etc, etc. I'm kinda suprised that Microsoft doesn't try to crack down on that.


Typically, you can get a pimped out XBOX with a 120 gig hard drive for about $200, of course it will be a used XBOX.

[dj898]

playing NeoGeo Metal Slug on 42" screen using wireless pad is pure bliss... 'nuff said

[Dahne]

Bullet-proof body armor.

[googlefest1]

you can sleep with it!

or dress it up like a little baby and cart it around in carriage (even connect a bottle to it)

or you can dress it up like a punk from streets of rage and push it down hills in a shopping cart at crowds of people (dont forget sun glasses)













disclaimer: i am not condoneing any of this behavior - do so at your own and your xboxes risk.

[phantomfriar]

I second the XBox for its emulation. I went through Xbox Scene and had mine modded by someone I found on the boards (nobody local around me) -- it really IS that good! When you can pop in and play like 2000+ NES games, all the SNES and Genesis games, not to mention all your Atari, Intellivision, Colecovision, MAME favorites...I'll be keeping my Xbox until it no longer works (god forbid) just for that very reason.

The only deal is -- you need to do some work to make it happen. Even if you simply have it modded and have the HD put in, you'll need to learn some FTP, how to put in the ROMs in there, where to get the emulators...if you don't pick one up FULLY modded, there is a learning curve involved and it takes some time to figure everything out.

The good news is, with the 360 coming, I bet prices on the modded Xboxes will be dropping...so keep an eye out.

[XYXZYZ]

Phantomfriar is right, Xbox modding can be a pain in the ass sometimes. Especially doing it yourself. Actually, here's the run-down:

1 Get a mod-chip
2 install it (Got soldering skills?)
3 flash the BIOS
4 burn a disc and get a dashboard (OS/UI thingy) installed
5 set up your FTP stuff
6 get all your toys on there and rock

Steps 3 and 4 are the hardest parts, especially if you're a regular victim of Murphy's Law. I reccomend a modchip with an LPT port for BIOS flashing; using a CDR you only get one shot.

Oh, and I hear those solderless mods are more trouble than they're worth. (But what do I know?)

[XYXZYZ]

And the emulation is very good, (The DUO emulation kinda sucks though, and MAME can't run the bigger games if that's what you're into) but the screen looks blurrier and kind of muddy compared to the real thing. But then I haven't tried messing around with the filter settings and stuff too much. I think Anthony can tell you more about that.

I used the 'box for all my gaming needs for a while, but recently I've started collecting and only want to play on original hardware. Emulation has that sort of cheap, bootleggy feeling to me now.


By the way, if you're not sold yet, four words:

FOUR PLAYER NINJA TURTLES.

[Flack]

Ok, all better after a good night's rest.

Basically, ^, what everybody else said. My Xbox gets tons more action that most of my other systems, mostly due to the emulation factor.

[PS2Hawk]

My xbox is like a dvd player. My whole family use it. it has Media Center on it, and I usually put video reviews form IGN and gamespot on it. Sometimes I use emulators and I only have Ninja Gaiden left and halo 2 which I am getting bored off, after friday's midterms I might try something else.

[Darth Sensei]

Or you can contact Omnedon (from our forum) and have him mod it for you. I am very happy with what he did with mine.

[lendelin]

The most amazing aspect of the Xbox is the fact that you can play Xbox games on it, too.

[GameSlaveGaz]

The most amazing aspect of the Xbox is the fact that you can play Xbox games on it, too.

I was waiting for someone to make the smart ass comment. Kudos to you LMAO

[TheRedEye]

You can buy Excellent Game Psychonauts and play it all night long!

[nate1749]

You don't actually need a mod-chip in your xbox to have it play emulators/burned games. This is known as a soft-mod and it's what I have and I highly recommend it.

If you're really into playing around/customizing it check out the xbox-scene link above.

If you're lazy you can pay someone else to load it up for you, but be picky. Most people just dump their non-complete non-verified roms on there with some default template that they downloaded & to me it looks like junk.

I'm trying to take pictures of my friends so you can see what a really nice interface looks like with screen shots for every game and preview movies of games for systems.

I don't even play xbox games on it, but making it a retro console is really the best thing you can do imo. The xbox uses a modified version of the windows 2000 kernel so that's why emulation is so supported since it's easy to port over the emulators from the actual PC. So basically if you can do it on a 733mhz PC you can probably do it on the xbox. The latest thing is the dos emulator, although getting each one of these games to work is a little bit of a pain, but I think we've got about 100 old pc games on our xbox (e.g. leisure suit larry 1-6/7).

Also, someone said you need to play sega cd games from cds, that's not true you just need a lot of hard drive space (I think it's 60 gigs) if you want all the sega cd games on your hard drive. NeoGeo CD (not neogeo) is the only system that you need to burn the cds for because the developer doesn't want to support piracy. Someone recently cracked it though, but it's still not user-friendly so for the time being that's the one where you need to burn the games to play them with the emulator.

Nate

[Darth Sensei]

And after you screw up your box with the soft mod, you can send it to Omnedon to fix it.

[PS2Hawk]

You can buy Excellent Game Psychonauts and play it all night long!


FLOP

[Anthony1]

Also, someone said you need to play sega cd games from cds, that's not true you just need a lot of hard drive space (I think it's 60 gigs) if you want all the sega cd games on your hard drive.

Nate


How exactly do you put the Sega CD games onto the hard drive?


I would love to do this, but I'm totally clueless about how to do it. Is their a faq somewhere about it?


I'm guessing you need to get the Sega CD games into ISO form, and then FTP them over to the XBOX, and put them in a certain folder, and then have the emulator look in that folder for the roms or whatever.

I wonder how many Sega CD iso's one can put on a DVD-R?

[nate1749]

And after you screw up your box with the soft mod, you can send it to Omnedon to fix it.

Actually with the soft mod you can reset it back to the default setup anytime (like it was never modded) just by copying over the original xbox files.

I seriously don't know how people are messing this up. You load a saved game, copy some files, and that's it. We can soft mod them in about 2 minutes, takes about an hour to transfer over the 9 gigs of roms/screenshots though.

There are a few soft mods out there, we use the font hack - I've never tried the other ones, but perhaps they have trouble like CueWarrior states. That would be hilarious if people are sending their xboxes and paying someone to download the default drive structure though - talk about easy money.

Nate

[nate1749]

Also, someone said you need to play sega cd games from cds, that's not true you just need a lot of hard drive space (I think it's 60 gigs) if you want all the sega cd games on your hard drive.

Nate


How exactly do you put the Sega CD games onto the hard drive?


I would love to do this, but I'm totally clueless about how to do it. Is their a faq somewhere about it?


I'm guessing you need to get the Sega CD games into ISO form, and then FTP them over to the XBOX, and put them in a certain folder, and then have the emulator look in that folder for the roms or whatever.

I wonder how many Sega CD iso's one can put on a DVD-R?

Your guess is correct, I'll have to go check where we put them, it was awhile ago that we did Sega CD. I remember they have to be iso + mp3 though, no clone cd or bin/cue (i think). The DVD-R question would vary since some games are really small and some games 4 cds, but I would guess around 10-30. I remember if you're in a game and you have to switch cds, when it asks for the new disc you just press the black button to get to the menu and load the other disc directory. Pretty neat. I never got into sega cd as a kid, so when I played it on xbox I just couldn't believe they got away with such terrible video quality.

Here are some FAQs that may help, personally I would just guess and check, you'll learn more and will probably take less time than finding the answer in all these dozens of FAQs.

http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=267019
http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=267035

As for the original post, check out this link for more links to stuff for xbox, you decide what you like =)
http://www.xbox-scene.com/software.php

Nate

[dj898]

anyone remember the 1st gen chip for xbox?
the monstrosity with 29 small wires that you need to solder onto 9 tiny spots... :(

I had one of those Enigmah prototype and had nightmare to install it...and in the process almost kill my v1.0 US M/B by rifting up few tracks...though managed to fix it by running bypassing wires...

anyhow the current gen chip should require no soldering - though it's recommended - and won't be too hard to install once you have your xbox open its gut... :p

yep! emulation is the way to go with xbox when you are sick of all those current pretty looking but shallow and expensive games... he he

I myself use my xbox mainly for NeoGeo emulation - MetalSlug!!!

[dj898]

anyone remember the 1st gen chip for xbox?
the monstrosity with 29 small wires that you need to solder onto 9 tiny spots... :(

I had one of those Enigmah prototype and had nightmare to install it...and in the process almost kill my v1.0 US M/B by rifting up few tracks...though managed to fix it by running bypassing wires...

anyhow the current gen chip should require no soldering - though it's recommended - and won't be too hard to install once you have your xbox open its gut... :p

yep! emulation is the way to go with xbox when you are sick of all those current pretty looking but shallow and expensive games... he he

I myself use my xbox mainly for NeoGeo emulation - MetalSlug!!!

[Mattiekrome]

:eek 2:

Man, I didnt know you could do all this stuff on an x-box. Hell I have a PS2 and got a GC last christmas, but I still always go back to my NES stuff. I have only played my GC for maybe 20 hours total since Christmas, and the PS2 maybe 2 hours total in the past year. Hmmm, getting one of these modded Xbox's might become a reality when the next gen systems come out

[Mattiekrome]

:eek 2:

Man, I didnt know you could do all this stuff on an x-box. Hell I have a PS2 and got a GC last christmas, but I still always go back to my NES stuff. I have only played my GC for maybe 20 hours total since Christmas, and the PS2 maybe 2 hours total in the past year. Hmmm, getting one of these modded Xbox's might become a reality when the next gen systems come out

[evil_genius]

Thanks Anthony. I am very lazy and want someone to do everything for me. And I don't want to learn anything, I just want a ton of cool ass shit on my XBOX. So I will be checking out those links, thanks again.

But if anyone around here wants to hook my xbox, with money involved of course. Please PM me and we'll work something out.

[evil_genius]

Thanks Anthony. I am very lazy and want someone to do everything for me. And I don't want to learn anything, I just want a ton of cool ass shit on my XBOX. So I will be checking out those links, thanks again.

But if anyone around here wants to hook my xbox, with money involved of course. Please PM me and we'll work something out.