Running Xbox original games on Retropie (PC only)

fadingrose

After a lot of fiddling i managed to get Xbox original games running on Retropie (on pc). Haven't tested it on a raspberry pi primarily because i'm sure there isn't an emulator built for it plus i doubt it's powerful enough. But anyway enjoy and i'll drop the process below the video if anyone is interested.

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Xbox Original emulator Linux PC setup guide

I have decided to figure out if I could get the Xbox original running in Retropie on PC in some way IE through ports or create it’s own menu button and have partial success using ports. Here is how I did this and my guide if anyone is interested.

PLEASE NOTE!!!!

1 – PC ONLY!!

This hasn’t been tested on a raspberry pi and not even sure if the emulator has even got a port for the pi or even if a pi could even run it

2 – This guide is for Linux Mint

No doubt it will work on many other flavours of Linux with Windows & Mac as untested but if someone wants to chime in a let me know if they had success.

3 – Is your PC capable

You will need to check if your PC is capable of running the emulator and roms with your current specs.

4 – You will need a mouse for loading games

At the moment you will need a mouse to load a game which involves navigating to your games directory but every time you load the emulator back up it will load the last game you selected automatically.

5 – Once a game has been loaded in you will need to click reset for it to start.

6 – Exiting the emulator is a matter of using the mouse to navigate to exit and emulationstation will boot back up.

Step 1 – The first step is to get the xemu emulator installed so exit emulation station to desktop if you have it started and type the following in a terminal

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mborgerson/xemu
sudo apt update
sudo apt install xemu
Step 2 – Under your Retropi installation go to Bios and get a folder created called xbox for the bios and config files and inside this add the following folders.

MCPX boot rom
Flash rom (Bios)
Hard disk
EEPROM

You will need to source the necessary files to get the emulator booting. Google is your friend unless you have an original Xbox you can extract the files again google is your friend.

Step 3 - Under roms get a folder created called xbox for your games and if you ain’t already add a few. The format needs to be XISO for them to work properly.
Step 4 – The next step we need to get xemu set up and configured so open up the app for xemu and go through the wizard pointing towards the bios folder you set up and the necessary files.

Step 5 – Once you have set up the initial wizard it’s time to set up the emulator so jump into settings and configure below.

Full Screen – Needs to be enabled
Controllers – It will pick up your controllers, configure them if needed

Audio/Video – Configure it to your liking depending on your PC specs

Other Settings – Again configure it to your liking
Step 6 – Once finished exit the emulator so we can configure retropie
Step 7 – Open the terminal and navigate to the /opt/retropie/configs/ports directory and create a new directory for your xemu emulator.
mkdir xemu
Step 8 - Navigate to the new directory
cd xemu
Step 9 - Create a launch script called xemu.sh
nano xemu.sh
Step 10 - Add the following content to the script and then press CTRL and X to exit and Y to save changes.
#!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/xemu
Step 10 - Make the script executable
chmod +x xemu.sh

Step 11 - Navigate to the RetroPie ports directory

cd /home/username/RetroPie/roms/ports
Change to your username

Step 12 - Create a .sh file for the xemu emulator

nano xemu.sh

Step 13 - Add the following content to the script

#!/bin/bash
"/opt/retropie/configs/ports/xemu/xemu.sh"

Step 14 – Again save and exit with CTRL and X pressing Y to accept changes

Step 15 - Make the script executable

chmod +x xemu.sh

Start up Retropie then navigate to ports, if all went well you should now see Xemu under port. Run it and the emulator should now boot up in fullscreen and the Xbox intro screen should start to load.

And that’s it your done, in the future i'll look at easily exiting the emulator with the controller, getting a system set up etc.

rogg23

I've also recently been looking to do the same thing., on Ubuntu.

I installed Xemu via Flatpak, instructions on Xemu page.

Then I updated my es_systems.cfg to add xbox as follows:

  <system>
    <name>xbox</name>
    <fullname>Xbox</fullname>
    <path>/home/retropie/RetroPie/roms/xbox</path>
    <extension>.iso</extension>
    <command>/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0 _SYS_ xbox %ROM%</command>
    <platform>xbox</platform>
    <theme>xbox</theme>
  </system>

Then I created a xbox folder under /opt/retropie/configs
And created the following file /opt/retropie/configs/xbox/emulators.cfg with this content

xbox = "flatpak run app.xemu.xemu -dvd_path %ROM%"
default = "xbox"

I put my xbox ISO images in the roms/xbox folder I created.

my xbox_hdd I configured on my NAS and added it as an NFS mount in /etc/fstab and configured the appropriate files within Xemu.

When I launch a game through the xbox menu in emulation station, it just launches, I don't need a mouse, don't need to reset, and when I exit the game it exits back to emulation station.

A different approach and no extra script or mouse needed.

Unknown

@fadingrose @rogg23
Are you going to submit a pull request for this? If not I will gladly do so

rogg23

@Unknown I'm not sure I know how!

Unknown

@rogg23 That's perfectly fine. I can work with you on that if you would like. We just need to write an install script for retro-pie to use. Please let me know if you would like to work with me on this.

rogg23

Happy to help with this, but my input wouldn't be much more use that what I said in my earlier post, but willing to give it a go.

ExarKunIv

Once you have one made you can also open a PR over at

https://github.com/Exarkuniv/RetroPie-Extra

So it's somewhere that people can use it. Until it's accepted into the main Retropie.

If you want.

Unknown

@rogg23 Good! Can you please provide me with the exact commands you used to install Xemu on your device? I’ll let you know if I need anything else

Unknown

@ExarKunIv said in Running Xbox original games on Retropie (PC only):

Once you have one made you can also open a PR over at

https://github.com/Exarkuniv/RetroPie-Extra

So it's somewhere that people can use it. Until it's accepted into the main Retropie.

If you want.

True. I’ll do that.

rogg23

@Unknown
So my install was on Ubuntu x64 using flatpak.

:: Install Flatpak

sudo apt install flatpak

:: add flat hub repo

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

:: install xemu using flatpak

flatpak install -y app.xemu.xemu

Unknown

@rogg23 Thanks. I’m a busy guy, but with any luck I can get this working in a few days.

Unknown

Update on my progress. I am currently creating a virtual machine to conduct this experiment with. By the end of the day I will have retropie installed and functioning. Hopefully tomorrow I can start working on the install script.

Unknown

Ok. Looking at the install scripts that retropie uses, they all seem to install from source and I can't find an existing example of something using "flatpack". However Xemu provides detailed instructions for building from source so stay tuned.

Unknown

Ok here is the script I have made so far.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# This file is part of The RetroPie Project
#
# The RetroPie Project is the legal property of its developers, whose names are
# too numerous to list here. Please refer to the COPYRIGHT.md file distributed with this source.
#
# See the LICENSE.md file at the top-level directory of this distribution and
# at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/master/LICENSE.md
#

rp_module_id="xemu"
rp_module_desc"Xbox Emulator"
rp_module_help="ROM Extensions: .iso .xiso \n\nCopy your xbox games to $romdir/xbox"
rp_module_licence="https://github.com/xemu-project/xemu/blob/master/LICENSE"
rp_module_repo="https://github.com/xemu-project/xemu.git"
rp_module_section="exp"

function depends_xemu() {
    local depends=( build-essential libsdl2-dev libepoxy-dev libpixman-1-dev libgtk-3-dev libssl-dev libsamplerate0-dev libpcap-dev ninja-build python3-yaml libslirp-dev)
    getDepends "${depends[@]}"
}
function sources_xemu() {
    gitPullOrClone
}

The script is complete, but it's a start. If anyone has any input I would be happy to take advice.

Unknown

Here is the complete script which runs without any errors as far as I can tell.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# This file is part of The RetroPie Project
#
# The RetroPie Project is the legal property of its developers, whose names are
# too numerous to list here. Please refer to the COPYRIGHT.md file distributed with this source.
#
# See the LICENSE.md file at the top-level directory of this distribution and
# at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/master/LICENSE.md
#

rp_module_id="xemu"
rp_module_desc="Xbox Emulator"
rp_module_help="ROM Extensions: .iso .xiso \n\nCopy your xbox games to $romdir/xbox"
rp_module_licence="https://github.com/xemu-project/xemu/blob/master/LICENSE"
rp_module_repo="https://github.com/xemu-project/xemu.git"
rp_module_section="exp"

function depends_xemu() {
    local depends=( build-essential libsdl2-dev libepoxy-dev libpixman-1-dev libgtk-3-dev libssl-dev libsamplerate0-dev libpcap-dev ninja-build python3-yaml libslirp-dev)
    getDepends "${depends[@]}"
}
function sources_xemu() {
    gitPullOrClone
}
function install_xemu() {
    cd xemu
    ./build.sh
}


function configure_xemu() {
    mkRomDir "xbox"
    if [[ "$md_mode" == "install" ]]; then
       mkUserDir "$md_conf_root/xbox"
       mkUserDir "$md_conf_root/xbox/$md_id"
       moveConfigFile "$home/.$md_id" "$md_conf_root/xbox/$md_id"
    fi
    addEmulator 1 "$md_id" "xbox" "$md_inst/xbox -r 3 -i %ROM%"
    addSystem "xbox"
}

I haven't tested the emulator itself yet because I don't currently have Bios or roms but we'll see soon.

Unknown

This morning my virtual machine decided it wanted to crash my computer whenever I tried to start it. I have no idea why, except for a humorous theory that it became sentient and decided that it didn't want to exist. :D
Anyway I will be testing today and hopefully get Xemu running after I take care of this setback.
Thank God that I posted the script here because otherwise I don't know how I would get it back.

ExarKunIv

@Unknown said in Running Xbox original games on Retropie (PC only):

became sentient and decided that it didn't want to exist

i hate when they do that. :D

Unknown

@rogg23 said in Running Xbox original games on Retropie (PC only):

I've also recently been looking to do the same thing., on Ubuntu.

I installed Xemu via Flatpak, instructions on Xemu page.

Then I updated my es_systems.cfg to add xbox as follows:
  <system>
    <name>xbox</name>
    <fullname>Xbox</fullname>
    <path>/home/retropie/RetroPie/roms/xbox</path>
    <extension>.iso</extension>
    <command>/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0 _SYS_ xbox %ROM%</command>
    <platform>xbox</platform>
    <theme>xbox</theme>
  </system>

I am currently to find my es_system.cfg file. You you tell me the directory?

Unknown

Ok I figured out the es_system thing. I tried running a game and I got this error.

Parameters: 
Executing: /opt/retropie/emulators/xemu/xbox -r 3 -i "/home/retropie/RetroPie/roms/xbox/ATV Quad Power Racing 2.iso"
/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh: line 1322: /opt/retropie/emulators/xemu/xbox: No such file or directory

I assume it is searching a BIOS. Does anyone know how I can redirect it to the RetroPie Bios folder?

ExarKunIv

@Unknown we had a similar issue with aethersx2
we just made a symbolic to where it was look it for. we didnt figure out how to change it in the config

    # Create a symbolic link for BIOS
    if [ ! -L "$home/.config/aethersx2/bios" ]; then
        ln -s "$biosdir/ps2" "$home/.config/aethersx2/bios"
    fi

thats the best i can give. i have not messed with this yet