Imagine being able to play Xbox 360 classics like Lost Odyssey or the Fable series on your PC with higher resolutions, more FPS, better aspect ratios, and so much more. Even better, those forgotten X360 exclusives. Well, that could soon be possible. Over on GitHub, creator hedge-dev has released a tool for recompiling Xbox 360 games into native PC ports.

XenonRecomp, in simple terms, decompiles the PowerPC machine code used by the Xbox 360 to turn it into a more readable or editable form that humans can understand. From here, it then recompiles this code into x86 (currently, it only supports x86 platforms due to the use of x86 intrinsics), making it runnable on modern PC hardware.

Recompiling beats emulation

What makes it better than emulators is that, unlike an emulator that simulates Xbox 360 hardware, recompiling allows games to run as native PC applications, thus giving you much better performance. On top of that, since it doesn't have the overhead of emulation, recompiling can allow games to run at higher frame rates and resolutions than they did on the original hardware.

And we're already starting to see this recompiling in action. Unleashed Recompiled is a native PC port of Sonic Unleashed from the Xbox 360, created using static recompilation. The PC port uses DirectX 12 and supports enhancements such as 4K resolution, high frame rates, and ultrawide aspect ratios. Tech YouTuber Modern Vintage Gamer shared gameplay footage of Sonic Unleashed running on their PC at 4K 144 FPS, and not even once did they come across any stutters or lag.

The next step in video game preservation

Interestingly, this isn't the first time we've seen recompilation bring a classic console game to PC. Previously, there was N64 Recompilation, which worked in a similar way but for Nintendo 64 games. In fact, according to the creator, XenonRecomp is heavily inspired by N64 Recompiled.

Of course, recompilation isn't as simple as dragging and dropping a few lines of code, and even if you know C++ inside out, you'd still need skills in reverse engineering and a deep understanding of the target hardware. Putting the complexity aside, what this could mean for the average gamer is a new era of Xbox 360 game preservation and accessibility on modern hardware.

About the Author

Hassam Nasir

Hassam boasts over seven years of professional experience as a dedicated PC hardware reviewer and writer.