on the surface there's nothing
remarkable about what i'm doing right
now
until i do this
that's right ladies and gentlemen this
xbox you're looking at can run games
from almost every
major console ever made and get this
there's absolutely no modding involved
it doesn't void your warranty
and it costs just 25 bucks
after seeing modern vintage gamers
videos showing how well the series s
works as an emulation platform
we knew we wanted to try it for
ourselves i mean it couldn't be
that easy could it well
there are some little tricky bits but
after we show you the ins and outs we
think you could be up and running in as
little as
20 minutes giving you plenty of time to
first check out our sponsor
happy holidays from seasonic
no products to promote i mean you can
check out their stuff if you want but
it's there's literally nothing in my
talking points hey
have a great holiday season from
seasonic
[Music]
the first thing you'll need to get
emulation working on your xbox one
or xbox series machine that's right you
don't even need the latest xboxes to do
this
is a microsoft developer account so we
paid the minuscule 20
fee to be granted access and installed
dev tools for xbox giving us the ability
to load our own code
into dev mode a sandbox where unsigned
code can run
the sandbox is a completely separate
secure operating environment that
requires a system reboot to access
and that cannot run normal xbox games or
applications
what it does allow you to run though is
uwps or
universal windows platform apps these
are the same sort of packages that you
see in the windows app store
and after downloading retroarch's app
from the website
and plopping it into the xbox web
browser interface we were off to the
races
kind of some consoles particularly older
ones like
super nintendo game boy and n64
all just ran directly off of our
external usb
drive without any extra steps but others
say psp gamecube or wii were a bit more
troublesome
i'm going to allow our resident
emulation guru to explain
retroarch is one of those programs
that's super easy to use as long as you
already know exactly what you're doing
the step that many people miss causing
untold frustration
is adding the missing bios files for
each of the cores
or emulators they want to run the reason
you need them is that some of the code
required to emulate
say a wii game is copyrighted by the
console maker
the system menu for example so an
emulator cannot be distributed with
these pieces included
not legally anyway fortunately there are
ways to rip your own
if you already own an old system but you
want to enjoy the convenience of
emulation
so we definitely did that and
didn't just download them from totally
reputable websites
yeah that's that's yeah once we had them
it was as simple as pointing retroarch
to the correct directories so it could
find those bios files
like so out of the gate playing some
good old-fashioned playstation one
i would have straight up no way of
knowing that i'm not on like
a powerful pc emulating this console
there are some idiosyncrasies though
uh for example we couldn't find an easy
way to map the joystick
so we're stuck with the d-pad which is
obviously
not ideal for a lot of playstation games
that's fine because we want to play more
than just this game so to get to the
menu
we're going to press both sticks at the
same time let's have a look at what
we've got here should we
start with something really simple super
super mario
[Music]
i was in control i was in control i
don't believe you
to be clear there were some challenges
so let's fire up super monkey ball 2.
cool cool i always like black screen
simulator
so compatibility ain't perfect
and even for games that work there might
be some
strange behavior let's do tony hawk pro
skater 4.
now this we're expecting to work but
this is a large game and we found that
anything over about what was about a gig
uh yeah around a gig yeah was
hit or miss when loading off the
external ssd so we actually had to copy
this game over to the internal ssd
to get it to work properly okay so this
might
be hanging which would require like a
lot of this is
just trial and error yeah sometimes it
doesn't work
so we're just going to open it up by
manually browsing to it
sort of so we'll go to load content then
we go to our external drive which is q
we go down here wait jade's colin
it auto-populated i swear i believe you
tony hawk pro skater 4. iso
and then nintendo gamecube
open file picker but wait normally we
would like go find it
but we're not going to do that we're
going to just press cancel
and then there's a solid chance it'll
load now
you saw me playing this game i did see
you playing this game at work
why don't we try some of the more
approachable things
uh psp works really well if you go into
the history there
oh hello good day i'm bruce obviously
you know all the usual emulation bug
bears exist
like for example that's got like squares
and triangles and stuff and i've got
a b x y so you just got to kind of do
your best with it
i mean it's running great i mean given
that nobody uses universal windows apps
like
obviously kind of amazing it runs this
well yay colin fixed tony hawk pro
skater there was a setting in retro arch
that made it so that
changes to the renderer we selected were
not applying
uh so so we're good now oh boy
i mean well we're something now so let's
try
uh yeah let's try windwaker
oh she chugs a little she chugs the
little boys talk to the little girl
or you can try and go so see that house
right there are you looking
right behind your noggin i'm trying to
go there hold on i'm trying to play
video games here colin
can i just jump oh yeah
[Music]
hey blindness ah got um
so it works it works ish
but even once you get the games launched
frankly it is
not all sunshine and rainbows crash
bandicoot the wrath of cortex for
example
we got some weird purple flashes on
loading screens
and in mario kart 64 there are some
really
weirdly rendered lines in the menu but
it's definitely playable
and for the 20 dollars that this costs
to do i really don't see why you
wouldn't add it to your xbox
it makes this 300 console just that much
more appealing
but the question is what is microsoft
playing at here
other than to just reinforce my
arguments that xboxes are just pcs now
why would microsoft allow users to run
unsigned code on their consoles for the
relatively paltry sum
of 20 bucks to find out we checked out
the excellent talk from tony chen from
microsoft's security team
it is worth the hour to watch guys but
if you don't have that much time
then you can still watch it but at 2x
speed if that's still too much for you
then here's the summary people have been
hacking consoles
ever since there was something to gain
by doing so and
that thing to gain could be anything
from saving a buck by pirating games
to just unlocking the hardware so it can
be used in unconventional ways
playstation 3 supercomputers anyone and
i get it
people don't like being told what they
can or can't do with their own
hardware that they own and they will
void their warranties for reasons as
trivial as wanting to use a different
system theme on their iphone
whether a new system will be pwned is a
matter of
how many hours not if it'll happen look
at the xbox 360.
people wanted to play burned discs
straight up piracy
but the firmware in the dvd drive built
into the console
wouldn't allow you to read burned discs
the drive's ability to be modified
was then locked by a grounded pin in the
flash memory that was sealed
inside the chip after manufacturing
disabling the ability to overwrite the
firmware
well wouldn't you know it someone
figured out how to locate exactly where
that pin was
within 0.1 millimeter on that little
dime size
chip then using a dremel with an led
wired up to it
they would poke a hole at that precise
point on the chip
until the led turned on indicating that
they'd hit the right point
that disabled the grounded right pin
enabling the ability to flash the drive
with new firmware
that tells the console a burned disk is
legitimate and will then let the code
run
this was aptly known as the kamikaze mod
i mean
man the lengths nerds will go to to gain
access to their hardware
it's hardcore just like our merch
ltdstore.com
security is so critical in the console
business though
due to their entire business model the
so-called
razer and blade model where the hardware
is sold at either
slim margins or even at a loss that is
quickly recouped by selling games
at much higher margins if you can't
secure your hardware to prevent piracy
you're out of business it's as simple as
that this
among other things led to the downfall
of the sega dreamcast in 1998.
within a year that thing had been
completely pwned
and developers don't want to release
games for a console where they will be
immediately pirated no new content means
no more sales let's bring it back though
why does microsoft allow just about
anyone to run whatever code they want
well they figured out that if you give
people an
easier way to run their own code they
won't resort to more outlandish hacky
ways of doing it
so then has console hacking and game
piracy been beaten
so simply not quite but
admittedly microsoft and so has sony for
that matter has taken
a lot of the reward out of the attempts
between the 360
and xbox one generation the hardware got
much smaller
and much more tightly integrated
narrowing the gaps in the armor on that
side of things
and it was also during this time that
system software updates became a normal
part of the console experience
once that happened the ability for a
manufacturer to quickly break exploits
after they'd been released
or even brick your console made the risk
not feel worthwhile
for a lot of people then the last big
nail in the coffin
in my opinion is games developers have
worked for years to make the online
elements of a game
like multiplayer or community level
libraries
an integral part of the experience so
there's a lot of games where you could
pirate them
but you'll always feel like you're
missing out combine that
with better games delivery services like
xbox game pass
and it looks like a pretty killer
one-two punch i mean valve figured out
way back in the early 2000s that the
answer to software piracy
is to make the drm more convenient than
the piracy
and that is exactly what microsoft has
done here
for a reasonable monthly fee you've got
access to enough games to keep you glued
to your couch pretty much
24 hours a day and it even sorts out
that whole
community element of gaming i mean how
many times have you and your buds gone
to play some multiplayer
something or other only to realize that
freaking jeff
doesn't own this game and smithy doesn't
own that game
and neither of them feels like spending
60 bucks so you can't all play together
well it sucks but as long as you've all
got game pass
well now it's all good just like our
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if you liked that video
why not check out the video i did with
riley where we tried out
android on a nintendo switch yes my
friends
it ain't quite totally dead although
nintendo even though that was a hardware
thing they did eventually fix it so yeah
we'll have that in the end screen for
you
or if you want some more in-depth info
on emulation performance on the xbox
series s
go check out modern vintage gamers video
on the subject we're gonna have that
linked down below as well