Turn your Xbox Series S, X or Xbox One into a fantastic emulation machine.

[luth714]

Hey, I downloaded this stuff last night to my Xbox One S and wondered if I could pick the forum brains as will no doubt be clearer than that Discord forum...

 

I've got Retroarch on my 3DS and struggled with it, so am I right in thinking...

 

- I put my games on an external USB stick - formatted to NFTS - and I put them in separate folders for each machine for ease of me finding them

 

- I run that game from the Retroarch menu and then I choose a relevant core - ie SNES core for a SNES game

 

- for consoles which require a bios - is it best to have a folder on the USB which I manually scan and then it will link those bios?

 

- do I need a separate bios for each territory - ie if I wanted to play a Japanese game I'd need that region bios for that console?

 

 

I tried playing some bits last night - downloaded a DC bios, PSX bios and came a bit unstuck - I just whacked them on a micro sd card/ card reader just to try it out, so that might be slow speed and all that, but problems I had...

 

Dreamcast - fired up Power Stone 2 which mostly worked, some minor choppy bits - but Space Channel 5 was getting garbled and slow down on the FMV sequences, so that meant the main game was unplayable

 

PSX - tried a bin/ cue file of Spiderman 2- Enter Electro and didn't seem to work at all

 

Mame - tried 3 different roms, still in zip file - Rolling Thunder, R Type and Shinobi - using (I think) Mame - latest update (or something like that) - none of them worked, one stuck at 44%, another said it was missing information

 

Dolphin - couldn't get Rogue Leader to load (black screen) but Soul Calibur 2 worked but was very choppy

 

 

Wondering whether it's the Xbox One S doesn't have enough grunt for some of these, but would be fine with 32bits-16bit-8bit-up to mid 90s mame stuff?

 

I've ordered a 150mb/s 128gb usb disc for this which I think should cover a good spread of stuff - should that work okay in theory?

 

Any help much appreciated!

[ScouserInExile]

Might be a silly question, but: is there any way to emulate non-bc og xbox and 360 games? Presumably the S doesn't have the grunt for that? 

[dumpster]

48 minutes ago, ScouserInExile said:

Might be a silly question, but: is there any way to emulate non-bc og xbox and 360 games? Presumably the S doesn't have the grunt for that? 

Apparently not, no one has done an emulator in UWP format and the emulator community says the hardware isn't capable of dynamically recompiling on the fly. 

[ScouserInExile]

Pity. I'm basically tidying away all my consoles out of my office and want to emulate as much as possible to keep what's out to a minimum. I might have to keep a 360 out. 

[Lorfarius]

I love the Series S, seen them go for as low as £140 on ebay. Thats emulation gold right there, so easy to install and play everywhere.

[dumpster]

I was a bit disappointed after all the hype of the ps5 and Xbox Series that they still do 30fps.  I thought it would be a given with these powerful consoles but games offer a performance/quality CHOICE and it surprised me.  But with the Xbox back compatability it really does give you the feel of the console I expected it to be all along. Games used to be 60fps way more than I remember.  Like, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit was 30, Burnout 2 before it was 60.  When HP came to next gen it was still 30 and only went to 60 after a patch and even then it was still a choice of FPS or graphics.

 

Whether you're playing Sonic Generations or Evil Within 2 (both a transformative experience on Series X) or Ridge Racer 6 that was 60fps all along, the Xbox Series X seems to be an essential gamer purchase to me. Back Compat,  Flycast and Retroarch allow you to replace so much hardware and remain with a neat one-stop shop under the TV, with games running either close, perfect or BETTER than ever. I hope something doesn't come along to ruin it, because I still wonder how Gamr13 and friends have managed to release their own apps on retail consoles with no whitelisting.  You'd think if it were possible there would be an unofficial Xbox store online with shedloads of homebrew.  There are rules and barriers that prevent you from developing your own software for retail Xboxes, and I can't work out how they are doing it.

[Lorfarius]

I've been using an X as my core gaming but I'm going to be start doing loads of travel in a campervan later this year and planning to pickup an S for all my entertainment needs. Its like the perfect mini entertainment center and once I've got it hooked up to the mobile wireless I'll be streaming all my shows and watching films off a USB stick, not to mention all those retro games. Endless possibilities and the price of them is astounding.

[ScouserInExile]

24 minutes ago, Lorfarius said:

I've been using an X as my core gaming but I'm going to be start doing loads of travel in a campervan later this year and planning to pickup an S for all my entertainment needs. Its like the perfect mini entertainment center and once I've got it hooked up to the mobile wireless I'll be streaming all my shows and watching films off a USB stick, not to mention all those retro games. Endless possibilities and the price of them is astounding.

Depending on how soon you're planning on picking one up, it might be worth hamming Microsoft Rewards to get one a lot cheaper directly from  Microsoft. I saved up for something like 15 months and ended up paying about £70, iirc, for an S. 

 

Funnily enough, emulation was the major driver for getting the S (I've haven't done current gen that close to launch since PS1) and I have no regrets.

[Lorfarius]

1 minute ago, ScouserInExile said:

Depending on how soon you're planning on picking one up, it might be worth hamming Microsoft Rewards to get one a lot cheaper directly from  Microsoft. I saved up for something like 15 months and ended up paying about £70, iirc, for an S. 

 

Funnily enough, emulation was the major driver for getting the S (I've haven't done current gen that close to launch since PS1) and I have no regrets.

 

Yeah I was thinking of doing that at some point. Only been building them up for GP but they practically throw them at you each week and already got over 80K. Still got 4 months of free GP left.

[dumpster]

I'm saving my points for something more valuable since getting Gamepass Ultimate from Turkey via VPN.  12000 points is worth saving for something bigger if the thing I would usually get is now working out at £4. 

[papalazarou]

There’s a new front end out for retroarch called retro pass on the xbox.  You set it up on the pc first using launchbox  to get your artwork and then you launch your retroarch games from with in it.   Quick vid I made of it 

 

Can be grabbed from https://gamr13.github.io/index.html

 

[dumpster]

Not sure if this is posted but here..

 

https://archive.org/details/retroarchbiospack1.0312020

 

...is all the bioses for every system in one pack. 

 

Download it.  Unzip it.  Go into your FTP program and find Retroarch on your Xbox. For me it was on drive Q: in amongst the Retroarch folders you'll find one called system.  Drag across the system folder you downloaded into the same location so the many files and folders all end up in the system folder on the Xbox in the same layout. (Don't have a system folder inside the system folder if you see what I mean, you want the same folders in the same place on the Xbox.  You'll have system/dc for the Dreamcast for example, whilst you'll have some bioses in the system folder itself.)

 

Then go into Retroarch and run the online updater and especially the updater for the ps2 and dolphin.

 

[papalazarou]

Spent the last couple of days setting up retropass fully - adding cover art, game info , screenshots and videos and it’s now looking really decent 

 

 

[dumpster]

14 minutes ago, papalazarou said:

Spent the last couple of days setting up retropass fully - adding cover art, game info , screenshots and videos and it’s now looking really decent 

 

 

Any good tutorials for this my fine friend? Or would you like to make a guide for the forum?

[papalazarou]

1 hour ago, dumpster said:

Any good tutorialsfor this my fine friend? Or would you like to make a guide for the forum?

This is the tutorial which I followed to set up retropass initially 

 

for getting videos I downloaded the various packs from https://emumovies.com and manually added them to the launchbox video folder on my portable hard drive. You can use skaper to do this but there have been a few issues where it messes up retroarch so I found manually downloading the video packs better 

 

[Ork1927]

Managed to get this working last night without too much messing about.

 

Downloaded apps from link on my retail Xbox One.  Whacked some Roms on to a USB and I've got Wrestlefest and SImpsons running on the Xbox.

 

I found a mega list of MAME roms I had on an old hard-drive - only issue is trying to guess the correct MAME Core that will work with each ROM.  Can't get Xmen to work at all at the moment, but Frogger is okay!

 

Got NES and SNES games working as well.  Can't get Scumm to work, but haven't tried too hard.

 

Its proper witchcraft though and I can see that Ill end up spending ages trying to get Retropass set up and having a proper list of all my favourite games on anything ever all sitting there to easily load.

[Quest]

I'm thinking about doing this. I no longer have any desire to spend ages tinkering with settings, uploading artwork and gathering a million roms, though. These days I just decide on specific game I want to play, acquire it by completely legal means and then play it 'til it's done.

 

I'm assuming the retail mode will be fine for me? I just want to slap the occasional game on a USB.

 

 

[ScouserInExile]

22 hours ago, Quest said:

I'm thinking about doing this. I no longer have any desire to spend ages tinkering with settings, uploading artwork and gathering a million roms, though. These days I just decide on specific game I want to play, acquire it by completely legal means and then play it 'til it's done.

 

I'm assuming the retail mode will be fine for me? I just want to slap the occasional game on a USB.

 

 

I decided some time ago to only put a single game I want to play onto the device, rather than thousands of roms 

[Mr. Gerbik]

I was hoping for some legal retro goodness on PS5, but it all sounds... a bit disappointing. So now I'm considering playing PS1/2 games on my Series X instead.

 

Is there a really simple idiot proof guide to aet this all up in retail mode? Thanks in advance.

[papalazarou]

37 minutes ago, Mr. Gerbik said:

I was hoping for some legal retro goodness on PS5, but it all sounds... a bit disappointing. So now I'm considering playing PS1/2 games on my Series X instead.

 

Is there a really simple idiot proof guide to aet this all up in retail mode? Thanks in advance.

Go to the offical discord section and to the retail guide setup section  it will take you through step by step https://discord.gg/dominater01

 

also grab dumpsters bios pack a couple of posts up as you will needs these 

[Quest]

Right, I'm doing this tonight. Gonna get me some Bujingai on the go.

[papalazarou]

I’ve been adding more obscure console collections  to mine like the msx etc… stuff that I’ve never played and it’s been great - though thanks to retro pass I’ve spent more time looking through all the old cover art of games on systems like zx spectrum etc…. And how many would never see the light these days (the California games crotch shots cover is def one) 

[Quest]

BUJINGAI WEEKEND IS GO.

 

 

Had a bit of hassle getting connected to Durango FTP, but switching from the wired connection to wifi seemed to fix it somehow. Now  I just need to look into the best settings for the PCSX2 core.

[bumclasshero]

Do these ever pop up on Ebay pre modded? A bog standard Xbox One would be fine?  I'm too lazy to do the modding myself but would love one sitting under the tv.

[JPL]

On 17/03/2022 at 08:00, dumpster said:

Not sure if this is posted but here..

 

https://archive.org/details/retroarchbiospack1.0312020

 

...is all the bioses for every system in one pack. 

 

Download it.  Unzip it.  Go into your FTP program and find Retroarch on your Xbox. For me it was on drive Q: in amongst the Retroarch folders you'll find one called system.  Drag across the system folder you downloaded into the same location so the many files and folders all end up in the system folder on the Xbox in the same layout. (Don't have a system folder inside the system folder if you see what I mean, you want the same folders in the same place on the Xbox.  You'll have system/dc for the Dreamcast for example, whilst you'll have some bioses in the system folder itself.)

 

Then go into Retroarch and run the online updater and especially the updater for the ps2 and dolphin.

 

I can’t seem to find anything named Retroarch on my Xbox, after doing a search through FileZilla. Do you have any more tips on where I can find it, or maybe a screen grab showing its location?

 

Thanks!

[dumpster]

1 hour ago, JPL said:

I can’t seem to find anything named Retroarch on my Xbox, after doing a search through FileZilla. Do you have any more tips on where I can find it, or maybe a screen grab showing its location?

 

Thanks!

For me, it's on the Q drive...

 

Users 

Usermgr0 

Appdata 

Local 

Packages 

"Goldensky whatever he called. It this time"

Localstate

System 

 

Copy your system folder on top so the contents appear in that system folder.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[JPL]

Just now, dumpster said:

For me, it's on the Q drive...

 

Users 

Usermgr0 

Appdata 

Local 

Packages 

"Goldensky whatever he called. It this time"

Localstate

System 

 

Copy your system folder on top so the contents appear in that system folder.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks! That’s my job sorted for the morning.

[Barnard]

Microsoft have got the USB/wireless controller connectivity options locked down hard on the Xbox. 

 

I've got an 8bitdo M30 six button pad and a HID arcade stick that none of the adaptors will convert to the Xbox protocols.  

 

I'll never be able to play Street Fighter 2 with shoulder buttons and the original Xbox d-pad is atrocious. ☹️ 

 

I have other options to play on, but nothing that does those glorious CRT shaders I've fallen in love with on the Xbox. 

[carlospie]

Any idea how to get Saturn games to work on here? On retroarch it just says nope 

[papalazarou]

1 hour ago, carlospie said:

Any idea how to get Saturn games to work on here? On retroarch it just says nope 

Prob stupid question so sorry in advance but you have the bios files in the system folder - what core are you using?