The Original Xbox - Home Emulation At Its Best

[jaundice]

Let's start first with the price point - I've seen them as low as 35 dollars used on auction sites, Amazon, etc., so right there, it's perfect for the price. Second, they're not too hard to come by, which makes it even better, and finally, modding them is a snap, with the requirements being an Action Replay, a Memory Card, a copy of Splinter Cell and about 5 minutes of time, with the total cost for the combined materials if you don't already have them/know someone that has them being somewhere between 60-80 dollars depending on where you go.

I've had my Xbox modded for years, and I've used it to play my favorite SNES, Genesis, NES, and PS1 games without worrying about having to use my Cartridges/Discs, and I just recently modded my friends Xbox for the same purpose, and simply put, you install Linux onto the console with a new Dashboard, and various functions are added - including the glorious and ever-so-useful FTP, which of course you can use to transfer the ROMs and Emulators to your Xbox.

There are many guides as to how to mod your Xbox, which a simple google search can suffice.

I'd simply like to point out to distinct advantages modding the original Xbox has.

1.) It's insanely simple to do and requires 5 minutes of time (as mentioned above.)
2.) It's cheap - the price is perfect for anyone who wants to play the classics at a decent price, and of course with the ability to add/remove games whenever they wish.
3.) Internal storage is pretty massive, and is scalable. For instance, you can buy an IDE cable with a splitter and add ANOTHER hard drive to your console and have an extra 500GB or even 1TB of space. Pretty much more than enough room for any amount of ROMs you can imagine, with the exception of perhaps PS1 ISO's which can be upwards of a few hundred MB, but even then... come on.
4.) The console itself has 4 controller ports. So what's that? You have a MAME emulator on your Xbox and you want to play The Simpsons Arcade game with 3 of your buddies? Done.
5.) Almost all of the emulators have support for translation packs, graphics packs (God damn you Star Ocean), as well as emulation speed up/slow down, recording your gameplay (which of course you could then transfer to your PC and upload to your favorite video sharing site)
6.) Peripherals. You can buy aftermarket lightguns (Mad Catz, etc.) either for Xbox or one that is compatible with various platforms, and almost all of them work - from what I've seen, the third party Light Guns emulate perfectly in the Nes, Snes, and Genesis emulators for Xbox, while the Mame has varying support, depending on the game, which is to be expected, because it's Mame.

Bottom line - it's a fairly cheap setup, it's entirely scalable, easy to set up, and has support for all of the fun perhiperals for your favorite games of yesteryear - including Mice, though a compatibility list should exist somewhere, and you can get USB->Xbox Controller Port adapters for that purpose. I figured I'd share my thoughts on the subject, as it has been providing me years of emulated goodness without any issue, and for the ease of use and price point, it's almost unbeatable.

[Jontendo]

It's good, but I still prefer GameCube "GX" emus for "original" mode (original rez, natural scanline, CRT happiness).

[gtmtnbiker]

Yes, I agree that the xbox is a great little machine for retro gaming. I think the Wii is a strong competitor as well.

What do you like to use for a controller with a good d-pad? The Wii has the advantage with the classic controller.

[jaundice]

I have an after market Xbox controller, it's the S design, the D-Pad works pretty well, it has the raised directions and is fairly intuitive with the diagonals as well. The controller I use also has the Black and White buttons as Shoulder Buttons as well as in their original place, so with some proper reconfiguring of the button mapping and I've got my L and R buttons feeling pretty comfortable. I'm going to be looking into getting a lightgun so I can play Metal Combat: Falcon's Revenge, and possibly even a couple arcade sticks for some of the MAME games.

[Joeyg329]

jaundice just set up my xbox with this emulation, works awesome! Finally found a use for my dusty old xbox. . .

[meat]

Yes its better hardware wise.But try finding a decent arcade stick for a xbox,thats the problem i ran into.I am in the process of building 2 custom sticks.

[Anapan]

Just use a PS2 to Xbox controller adapter
Here's one for $6 free shipping
Dunno if that one works with an arcade stick; The one I got is the universal Gemini NCC and Xbox one listed here. It works perfectly with all my PS1 & PS2 arcade sticks.

[jaundice]

Anapan beat me to it - I was just going to say that they have adapters and universal arcade sticks, ones for PC are pretty good and you can get a USB to Xbox adapter, considering that the Xbox controller itself is just a modified USB interface.