So many games I didn't knew about, only to discover them trough emulators, mostly here on YT. So many gems that would be locked in the shelters of a few luck (and wealth) ones.
Not to mention you quite literally need to mod your Xbox if you want to keep it alive for the years to come. Those 2001 HDDs certainly aren't going to stay alive forever and if anything it's amazing they've lasted this long. They're very important for booting it up. The standard drive is locked by default and you need to mod it if you want to change it out with a different/newer one.
Hey Mr Mario I wouldn't have a modded xbox if not for your tutorial! Have you tried playing sega cd games on a modded mega drive mini? That's how I've been playing them. They seem to run fine to me but I've got nothing to compare to!
One thing you dont see, is my OS lightening techniques are really the best ive seen in the public domain. Of course that little not entirely capped at its L3 knees celeron pentium 3 era architecture was fast. It simply had no other random overhead found in todays windows 10. I still remember 10240 and the powers of ram compression termination with an entire task scheduler regedit adventure to trim CPU cycles that had no business eating my almost 2 multipliers worth of benchmarkable proof it wasnt a waste of time. Mind you people pay hundreds extra for binned silicon from the rare and right sources, myself previously included. I may well return to a modern closed from the net ecosystem style build, that ramps gaming efficiency particularly on more ancient machines instead of favoring security since it was at its height of power, was a generalized driver image anyone could install with almost all required changes in advance. 187mhz worth of cycles lifted from mobile haswell i7 measured potential could potentially in the future, be exceeded particularly if I learn the road to changing kernal as we know it. Purely for the sake of optimization. Like a super razor cortex.
Gaben has been waiting for the day of The Prophesy that team blues compiler would be sniffed out and in mass, recompiled as SSE3 negotiation through infiltration patching operations. The great x86-x64 mountaintop deities have all collectively foreseen this as soon to pass. Its my way of giving back to the environment from finding new ways painted across the entire growing library to dump electrons into rendering beauty.
Thank you so much! Out of curiosity what programming experience do you have? I'm planning on starting a career in software development and am wondering what languages it takes to port games like that. I hear C+ and/or C++ is good for Xbox homebrew but I have no idea about Wii.
@@awesomeferret If I'm honest with you, I have no "formal" programming experience, Google is your best friend, also the wii uses c and some little c++ if I'm not mistaken.
This is insane, I couldn't even imagine two years after a console drops and I'm emulating games from the previous generation from other manufacturers in 2021, let alone as a kid. I feel like I missed a golden age
I obtained a modded xbox years ago for an arcade cab project of mine. I've been looking for someone to put coin-ops on it to finally finish the project. It's currently hard modded with a 350gb hdd. Where's the best place to have this done? Thanks
Still my favorite console of all-time. Love opening up the o.g xbox and working on them and doing all sorts of fun stuff with them. Even regular retail units are awesome, one of the best catalogs of games ever, plus 3rd party games from that gen all run best on xbox over ps2, cube. Xbox is massively overlooked for physical game collectors too.
The machine was an absolute beast in 2001. Especially compared to the other consoles. For four years (until 360) it was the only programmable shader console on the market. The only console capable of true DOT3. It was also SIMD on the CPU-side. These advantages are a big reason why it could squeeze by with the Half-Life 2 (physics) and Doom 3 (lighting) ports.
I still remember the day I realized I could stream music from my pc to my home theater using xbmc. It was the coolest thing ever to me and pretty much unheard of back then. The xbmc devs did everything they could to support as many audio formats as possible. When media streaming started to become mainstream it took quite a while before any paid system could live up to xbmc. Arguably kodi (xbmc) still wins today.
its a pretty smart move. people who crack consoles are pirates and homebew Devs. by allowing homebrew they took away a big factor for cracking consoles
My modded xbox I only use it for original xbox games running off a HDD. I use a raspberry pi for mame. I'm wondering if I should slap some emulators on my xbox and see if it runs any better or worse. Especially since n64 emulation is bad on a raspberry pi
Over a decade ago there was a small store near my high school that had 2 arcade machines that were in reality an original Xbox with MAME and some homebrew to play Xbox games.
I just want to give a personal thanks for your efforts in the scene. It was ripping apart, hacking, and playing with homebrew on my OG xbox when I was a kid, that pushed me to become the engineer I am today, and I would have never gotten anywhere if the community (I am sure you were involved, looking at you surreal64) wasn't there helping along. I still look at that as the catalyst for showing me what real passion was, and have carried that forward with me into my professional career. Thanks again.
I remembered breaking my first OG Xbox trying to solder the d0 point. That’s when I first learned how to solder. I bought another and I finally modded it, did a cool paint job on the case and replaced the jewel with clear acrylic and led’s. I love it so much that I still play it with my friends and family members.
I have one of these in my pool room, it powers my arcade cabinet! which is just a OG xbox with a x-arcade stick plugged in and the usb for the roller ball plugged into a usb to xbox adaptor and stuck into player 3 port, works great on all roller ball games and the sticks are superb once you change them to competition sticks!
That does sound awesome! Where can I get that USB to xbox adapter? I've got a custom built arcade cab using genuine arcade parts but the pcb is from X-arcade...
My roommate in 2006 had a softmodded OG Xbox and blew me away. We had a cat5 running from the Xbox in the the living room to his pc in the dining room which had A whole bunch of movies music, and tv shows. He just had a cpl DVDs burned with a few of the BAED images he got from someone on the Something Awful forums. We had MAME, Neo Geo, CPS1 and 2, and most of the games forthe 8 bit and 16 bit consoles. I was no stranger to emulation but this was the ultimate couch gaming/media setup! Even in 2006 there were streaming video and radio channels on XBMC, it really was revolutionary!
Thank you MVG for the history lessons. I’ve done everything you’ve covered over the years and I always wanted to know how these things were accomplished
I don’t think it was just him, but yeah. I think he said in another video that it was him and at least one other person that ported Project64 and the others to make Surreal64 for the Xbox.
I had sort of suspected that considering the praise he gave for other projects and then when it came to N64 he was all “well it wasn’t that hard really, just sort of, putting the pieces together”. I got the sense there was sudden humility and surmised maybe he didn’t want to toot his own horn. Edit: of course that could be seen as disparaging someone else’s work I suppose, but he isn’t rly that kinda guy usually, so that’s why I guessed he’d had involvement there.
@@Wally17. He ported project64 to the Xbox by himself for a competition, the guy who got second place suggested partnering up to make surreal64. So yeah he made it (in a 2 person team)
I still remember shitting my pants when I saw zsnes being released for the xbox. The compatibility and the skins made for that emulator were so damn cool. I had the original HD cables for the xbox and I was blown away by just how amazing everything looked on the HDTV I had at the time. Even after the Xbox 360 came out, I remember playing Castlevania Symphony of the Night on it and then putting that game on the modded OG Xbox and saw that with the filters it ended up looking better than the 360 version. I also did the same with a few games that were classic games that were released on the Wii and noticed that there was no comparison. The OG Xbox is still a juggernaut for homebrew and has been since I first soft modded it in 2004. Awesome work man. Been a fan since I was a teenager.
This brings back so many memories. I used to mod OG Xboxes for family and friends for mostly XBMC. I modded mine with an IR receiver that let me turn it off and on via the DVD remote! Thank you for making and being part of the emulator scene, many a night were spent playing SNES games on the machine. Unfortunately I lent ot to my brother, never to be seen again. I'll enter the lottery and maybe I'll be lucky :) Cheers from Germany (230V, I'll be fine)
I used to LOVE my Xbox! In 2003 I took it to a modder in San Francisco I found on Craigslist and he installed a modchip, "massive" 120GB hard drive, and faster IDE ribbon cable for enhanced load times. It all ran on the custom Xbox Media Center dashboard. Right away I began ripping games, installing emulators, and transferring over my movie/MP3 collection via FTP. Back then streaming wasn't a thing and finding something to connect to your TV to play all of your movies and songs in an all-in-one box was nearly impossible so the Xbox was a godsend. Everyone who came over was jealous and asked about how I got it set up like that. It was amazing how many good times we had with this little powerhouse.
This is a bit offtopic, but I recently got curious about how NDS cartridges were dumped and copied because every time you search for it it's tutorials on how to do it on the 3DS. Any chance of a video about cartridge dumpling?
Originally you needed special hardware to read and rewrite cards, but I guess the sceners developed homebrew hardware that could dump the ROMs onto the computer for then patching them for flashcards.
On the NDS (lite) it´s impossible. While the game is inserted, you´ll also need a storage device to copy the ROM onto it. Flashcards have a MicroSD card and there´s actually a homebrew app to dump slot2 (GBA) games but the other way around i don´t think this will work. A GBA flashcard might be a possibility but it will have to talk to slot1 and the full DS hardware which isn´t that easy since it´s booting in a GBA sandbox. For DSi it´s actually possible since the device itself has a sd card slot to store files on but idk if there´s a tool for dumping avaiable. On the 3ds there´s godmode9 which can dump both 3ds and ds games.
Just install luma3ds and godmode9 and hold down start or select (I don't remember which one) tap the power button and it will boot godmode9 into file manager mode then insert your DS or 3DS game card and go into the drive for it and copy the bigger *.nds or *.3ds file from it to your SD card
My modded Xbox was amazing in university, back in 2005-2007. Installed XBMC, hooked it up to the shared house network and helped everyone set up a network share with their videos accessible. With those and all the games and emulators installed to a 500GB HDD, it was student living room bliss.
@@edstar83 No dont get me wrong, I grew up on the n64 and ps2 and love all the console generations, the OG xbox was just never a system I really heard many people talk about until now.
I was watching your older og xbox video this period and it got me to search hard and find my first ever OG Xbox, capacitor removed and all. Hopefully it won't be very hard to replace the stock hard drive with a bigger one and start have fun! Thanks for making such great content. You can tell how much love you've got, advising the winner to watch out for the power of the xbox you're giving away! Always a joy when you put out new videos, especially about the og xbox, you're the best. Take care!
I recall the Dreamcast being able to play the entire NeoGeo library at full speed... I can't remember the coder's name, as it was looooong ago, but he wrote a script that would only partially load a ROM into memory and progressively load more/replace as needed. If I'm remembering wrong though, well, haha. Whoops.
I can't put my finger on why but there's something really cool about the OG Xbox and it's still fun to tinker with today. I upgraded the hard drive in mine for the second time just a couple years ago, and was pleased to find that there is still indeed an active community for when you have questions. Before cheap and powerful streaming boxes/ dongles, using XBMC to play DVD ISOs from my PC over the network was how I watched movies for years. Good times.
Yep! 230 V AC main voltage here in France. I have such a step down transformer for my Japanese Sega Saturn. Gonna try my luck at winning that Original X-Box. Good luck to all the participants.
Because of this channel, I got an OG Xbox for the first time in my life Xmas 2019. Whilst I don't play it everyday, its great to have a emulation box hooked up to a CRT.
Not so sure why you included that raspberry pi argument at the end, I don't think anyone would argue buying an OG xbox over an RPi nowadays, great video as always though
It's often still cheaper to buy an original Xbox than a Pi4 with the accessories needed, the setup is easier and if you want to use it with a CRT, it's definitely cheaper and the Xbox doesn't have any issues with the image being cut off on a CRT. It's also a great networked media player & DVD player to go along with a CRT. I like to use mine to watch 4:3 shows Scrubs (pre-season 8 or w/e).
It's still at my mom's place a couple states over, but I do have a modded Xbox from back in the day with the 128MB RAM. I used that thing for everything. Media streaming, ripping games, and building Halo multiplayer maps were some of my best memories with it. There was very recently released a full running version of KI/KI2 using Twister OS.
Im in aus melbourne, no freaking way just before midnihgt this video comes out another one about xboxb modding geez, all my answers are answered through you thanks so much.
Some of my best memories were wowing my friends with modded Halo 2 maps I had made, we'd have so much fun messing around in multiplayer with glitches and modded maps! Thank you so much for letting me live down memory lane. I remember very vividly seeing the softmod installer screen after booting the custom Splinter Cell save file and thinking I was some kind of god-hacker (I wasn't, it was pretty easy lol!). I know for a fact I would not be half as computer literate as I am today if it weren't for messing with OG XboX.
7:10 - I loved my crystal clear Xbox lit up with blue leds, and was modded with Xecuter 3 and 250gb hard drive. XBMC was so damn awesome.... oh the nostalgia.
I've been in the homebrew world since Llamma and Xbox-Scene. These videos are the reason I've been a subscriber. I love my original Xbox. Thank you MVG.
I loved my OG Xbox. Blinx, PGR2, Top Spin1, Halo, Amped 2, Ninja Gaiden, Fable, not to mention the other multiplat games that ran so good. Plus all these emulators. Oh boy
Absolute beast of a system. I had mine with the xecutor chip. Loved using it for emulation and back ups. I remember xbins - it felt so covert at the time. Great fun!
So happy you made an updated version! I'm so happy with my newly modded xbox - had it since I was a kid and never realized the potential of it! So much fun!
We need an updated video for this! The Xbox is still great in 2023 with all the new updates, 16tb internal hard drives, cerbios and cci files, the latest work on the ps1 emulator, project stellar, etc.
No mention of the mod community's hardware mods for 128mb mem upgrades and even showed a media player with the 1.4ghz p3 running @ 1.5ghz to allow proper use of some of the stuff mentioned. Though both these mods are not required to continue to utilize these old consoles for grate custom uses that were shown. Currently the hardest to find is the interposer boards for the 1.4Ghz cpu upgrade as they have had production stopped and those modders moved onto other projects. Grate vid none the less and I'm sure there is someone out there that's very lucky to have won the OG Modded Xbox you sent out!
This was a major nostalgia hit. Thank you for the video and your work on the OG Xbox. I softmodded my xbox using the memory card hack with splinter cell when I was 14, and had it set up to dual boot with surreal64, xbmc (with the OG 360 dashboard theme), and even figured out how to ftp into the hard drive and modify the maps from the Halo 2 Multiplayer Map Pack. I modified the weapons on Containment so the sniper rifle was automatic, the shotgun shot a burst of rockets, and the warthog horn shot a tank shell. I loved working on that machine and had a total blast with it. I had left it at home when I went off to college and sadly when I returned home, it was stuck in a bootloop asking me to connect to xbox live to update. Even if I could connect to xbox live, the OG Xbox live servers had already been shut down. So my xbox was retired.
I never played the OG xbox as an OG xbox. My first xbox was bought brand new and within 24 hours had an upgraded HDD and Xecuter chip. Still have it to this day!
I've had my MtDew Xbox since the beginning and I had it as my main media player/game system for damn near a decade. Thank you for your contributions to the scene back in the day. I still have it but rarely boot it since hi-def video has become standard and it could no longer be used for a local media player.
I had known of homebrew scenes pretty early on. I remember a guy who had a custom cart for SNES when I was in high shcool. For me and my young age at the time, homebrew had always been around. Then, when I was 19 and the original XBox released, I bought one. A couple months later, I picked up the book "Hacking the Xbox: An Introduction to Reverse Engineering" before Microsoft was successful in having it pulled off shelves for a couple years. I dived into homebrew and XBox hacking at the time. I kinda miss those days.
The fact that the OG XBOX was easy to mod (with the hardware mods being essentially a hacked/modded/replacement BIOS that was fairly easy to get working and the soft-mod options being even easier if you could get hold of a game with an exploit in it) probably contributed to its popularity for homebrew.
As an OG softmodded xbox user (running multiple dashes), thanks for your xbox releases. :) These days, I just use a Pi. But I loved my xbox back in the day.
I'm glad a few years back that I mustered up the courage to do a little bit of research to figure out how to hot swap the HDD, get my keys and install a custom launcher on my XBox. I'd only had the thing for nearly a decade, but I was still able to pimp it out with a bunch of things. It's crazy to see projects like MAMEoXtras still being worked on to this day...I don't think this console is ever going to be removed from under the TV. 😆
xbox classic is amazing..i bought 4 of them this month for my first time..with 128mb ram/modchip/lcd screen/2tb origins disk/xbmc4gamers/leds etc etc...love them
I had every console of that time but the XBOX was the only one that I bought entirely for media center purposes and not for gaming. I used that modded XBOX with EvolutionX and XBMC for several years as my media center on the TV. It was so awesome to have such a capable media player back in the day, way before smart TVs and all that stuff came along. I still have that XBOX with XBMC standing here today and updated it like 2-3 years ago to support H.264 videos. Microsoft really hit a slam dunk with the original XBOX that was so close to a real PC, making all that stuff possible, and that fact has become more and more clear the more time has passed.
If you were super big into the OG XBox Scene, did you ever see that TeraBox with 4 built in HDDs, Right side mounted DVD Player, front mounted LCD screen, internal USB hub and network router?
In my country most of the og Xbox you could buy would already be modded and with preloaded emulators and games including n64 and I remember one of my friends showing me ocarina of time running on the Xbox, I was blown away and could not comprehend how it was possible at the time.
I still have my OG XBOX softmodded and connected on a 4K TV. I use it to play multi-platform games from that era since they look better than their PS2 counterparts. Back in the early 2000s I did everything featured in this video from NES to MAME and CPS emulation. Brings back sweet memories.
Two things: 1. The Xbox still is one of the best game consoles EVER made. It is a console where almost every native game played at 480p, some played at 720p, you can still play local lan multiplayer, and could emulate well over 10,000 games from 30 different game consoles or arcade systems. 2. MVG is underselling how much of a contributor he was to the xbox homebrew scene. He packaged up and ported some of the best emulators on the XBOX, including ones for the NES, SNES, Genesis, Sega CD, Master System, Atari, and Colecovision. He's keeping it modest, but he was pretty legendary back in the day.
The original XBOX was the first console-ised PC and the sheer amount of homebrew for it reflects that. Of course it helped that it had very easily broken security to begin with but it hugely benefited from the massive existing base of people who were very comfortable coding for x86 and Windows. I remember seeing a modded one for the first time and thinking how cool it was, it really had become a neat little PC in terms of its abilities.
At the time, the only way to watch movies was DVD’s or on fumbling about on your PC, so XBMC was a revolution, you could store your library of movies, games and music in one place and have an easy to use interface with IR remote control navigation
PSA for anyone with an OG Xbox: If you haven’t removed the super capacitor for the clock, do so IMMEDIATELY. It WILL leak and destroy the PCB if left in place. (I think the final rev of the hardware used a different cap that’s less likely to leak, but the earlier revs are pretty much doomed if it’s left in place.)
The pre-chipped Crystal Edition Xbox my father bought for me in 2004 still works. I replaced the harddrive and updated the chip firmware a few years ago, ripped all my games. The chip is called Apple something and runs EvoX.
I loved my neighbor's Xbox but I was always a Nintendo guy; now that I am older I've been more and more inclined on getting an "all in one" emulation machine for the house and this looks awesome.
Running all these emulators on my modded xbox is my preferred way to play even after all these years!!! Great video and thanks for all your work MVG!!!👍👍👍
XBMC is so cool. I had it for years in my box and it was absolutely HTPC replacement and a really, really good one. I've watched so many movies, listened to so much music with it and it was simply so good environment to use. Even for gaming it was nice. Well I actually still have that unit on my TV. Though I really should look into some good HDMI-hack as I have really shitty cables..
The 4 controller ports the fact that the xbox was the BEST system of its generation with 480p default just amazing system built in network is cherry on top
The Pi 4 running TwisterOS, overclocked to 2.3Ghz runs KI1 & 2 at full speed now. The Pi scene isn't standing still, and it's evolving pretty fast. What was true when you recorded the video changed that fast. That said, the OG Xbox is still great, and I wish my modded one still worked.
I would love to know more about how you got KI running smoothly on the OG Xbox and why it’s so difficult to run on much faster hardware like the RPi. Would be great if you could do a video specifically about KI explaining the technical side!
