Snes On An Xbox360

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBDYbRxYax4]

Surprisingly the Xbox 360 hasn’t seen a lot of homebrew action. [tmbinc] has taken it upon himself to port the Snes9x emulator to it. There’s no pretty GUI, and its not running on top of linux or anything. This is native, directly to the hardware emulation. He believes this is the first to do so. Unfortunately, it will not work on the most up to date Xbox 360s.

[thanks xb0xguru]

34 thoughts on “Snes On An Xbox360

  1. Why is this so inconclusive? There isn’t even an x360 shown in the video? No information on how to accomplish it?

    If the informational aspect of this hasn’t been posted yet, I feel like you should notate that in the write up.

    ie: “The details have yet to be released, and there is nothing actually available yet for users to download. Very interesting, we will inform you when the code is released”

    ^something like that would be nice.

  2. Well, to understand why this is such a “big deal”, you have to understand that a lot of people apparently don’t believe in free software (as in speed) as much as in “free” software (as in beer; but really, it would more be stolen beer), and rather want to see the Xbox Development Kit coming to a hacked xbox360.

    I believe hat this is the wrong way for several reasons: First of, acquiring and using the XDK software is illegal, as well as all produced binaries. This has been a major problem on the original Xbox homebrew scene, where most scene releases were “illegal” because they contained XDK code. Most people don’t seem to believe that xbox software development can be done without Microsoft’s support, and my snes9x port (it could really be any other program as well) is basically the proof that it can be done.

    So the real thing here is libxenon, a free library with xbox 360 hardware support. Snes9x is just a random app which was ported to that library. I did the video because people were bitching “it will take ages until we see real homebrew”. Well, it did not.

  3. Nothing against you, you apparently do great work, just HAD’s blog of your work falls a bit short. This blog post seems to insinuate that the readers have already been following this.

    If this isn’t illegal, is the fact that libxenon has xbox360 hardware support illegal?

    Or is it one of those situations where it depends on how it is utilized?

  4. 36chambers its only illegal if part of the original code was used for the port,

    but that library has been written using a clean room approach so all the code is 100% original.

  5. What tmbinc’s post looked like to me:
    Blah blah blah blah blah, legality, blah blah blah blah I’m a poopy face.
    1: Nobody on the internet cares if anything is legal or not.
    2: Seriously? Xbox 360 snes emulator? You obviously have a computer, that would be easier. I know that’s not hacker thinking, but honestly… it seems like kind of a waste of time.

  6. I think its great, a homebrew app on the x360… soon we will see some HomebrewChannels … Need to downgrade my box now. Please make some exploit for the newest Dash to be downgraded.

  7. pilotgeek – you’re missing the point entirely. tmbinc ported snes9x as a proof of concept. It’s running natively using libraries which are 100% legal (as opposed to the majority of Xbox1 stuff which was accomplished under XDK which was questionable for legality). Earlier 360 work had just been achieved on the back of Linux/Windows Media Centre Extender, whereas this is directly addressing the hardware. It’s a HUGE step forward for homebrew on the 360, which is the reason why I submitted it to hack-a-day.

  8. ssss – as long as you haven’t upgraded your dashboard in the last week (i.e the 8/11 update), you’ll be able to run the exploit. If you have, all is not lost. Look for a second hand 360 – it can be banned, as it won’t matter in the slightest.

  9. outstanding work. I must agree that the article here doesn’t really explain the video’s importance to those not already following. I can’t wait to see what awesomeness stems from libxenon.

  10. As for why there is no details on this it’s probably because he has to rewrite the bootloader to get this to work. Which means (per this demo) his 360 probably BOOTS to the emulator and that’s all it can do. Basically, he turned his 360 to an SNES. This is less than useful for most people.

    The main reason we haven’t seen a lot of mods for the 360 isn’t “security” but because of it’s weird pseudo-PowerPC architecture (Xenon) that isn’t fully documented and it uses a proprietary controller interface. The PS3 also has a weird pseudo-PowerPC architecture but it IS well-documented, they provide low-level APIs, and they use standard interfaces like Bluetooth. This is why Linux on the PS3 actually works and why you see more homebrew.

    The original XBOX was essentially a standard Intel x86 PC with very standard interfaces. You could run Windows on it and a vast variety of Linux variants. The standard x86 architecture made is VERY easy to port AND Windows or Linux software for the original XBOX, which is why so much is available.

    It is very unlikely that ANY console will ever be as good for homebrew as the original XBOX was. So hang onto ’em.

    I also strongly recommend the PSP for this kind of work. Running old SNES games on your 360 is “eh”, but it’s a lot more compelling on a handheld like the PSP. Basically, as far as emulator boxes go, the current winner by far is the PSP and possibly the upcoming OpenPandora.

  11. vic – judging by the spam link you included in your post (where you think it’s 100% possible to fix a 360 in 37 mins), I can only deduce that you’re clueless when it comes to technology. As I posted before, the fact that a snes emulator is running on the 360 is not impressive: the fact that it’s running natively without any underlying OS *is* impressive. If you knew anything about the security of the 360 it would be a no-brainer.

  12. It has been a few months since I have checked up on whats happening in the scene and all I can say is wow. Some very good things can come from this, well done!

    BUT seriously what is with all these people coming in mentioning; “snes, thats pathetic” or “wheres our code or step by step instructions for proof”.

    Is that all you managed to type while your boyfriends deep-throated you to the opening score of World Of Warcraft and your mother banged on the wall to keep it down??

  13. If only I were home right now. It’d have popped my SNES on top of my 360, taken a picture, and saved everyone a truckload of time.

    Posted at 4:05 pm on Aug 18th, 2009 by CityTrader

    If only I were home right now. It’d have popped my SNES on top of my 360, taken a picture, and saved everyone a truckload of time.http://bit.ly/##SPAM (xb spam e)

    Posted at 1:42 am on Aug 19th, 2009 by Vic

    My bet is Vic is a spammer delete post…

  14. “Hurr, these sucks y do u want 2 play nintendo on you’re 360 when you have HAlo3? So patethic.”

    Posted at 04:55 on Idk 9th, 2009 by Derps

    Please remove yourselves from the Internet.

    This whole issue rises a relevant question for me, though:

    How is Microsoft affected by people buying their systems for the sole purpose of using them for server work or number crunching?

    Are they getting any direct profit, or rather rely on service and game sales for that?

    “Why are you asking?”, says you.

    Because while I can’t take back all the money I gave them over the years, I definitely do not want to keep feeding the hideous monster that Microsoft has become.

    I’d rather pay double than keep feeding the beast.

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