This time, the story is quite close to the edge! The first Xbox was converted into a dream machine! A look back at the relationship between the original Xbox and emulators! Part 5

(*The content of this article is the opinion of the author and does not constitute a recommendation to use an emulator or mod your Xbox. Please understand)

In this article, we will deal with the relationship between the original Xbox console and starting up an emulator. Emulators are often considered taboo in other media, but I think this is because of the strong image of "illegally modifying a game console to do something illegal. However, for me, I am fascinated by the romance of ...... the possibility of reproducing titles that can only be played on a specific console with a high degree of reproducibility on a different console.

I own almost all video game consoles released after the 1980s, and I own enough video game software to open a store in a warehouse, so I have no emotional attachment to going to the trouble of installing an emulator on a video game console and playing it illegally. I just want to know the limits of how far I can bring out the potential of the game console.

I learned about the existence of outlaws who were part of the counterculture to the game industry, such as modifying game consoles and sucking out ROM images of game software by themselves through the "Backup Utilization Techniques" mook book series published by Sansai Books a long time ago, and was fascinated by their world. I was fascinated by this world, especially the "Konnichiwa Microcomputer" series written by manga artist Mitsuru Sugayama (famous for "Game Center Arashi") (now available in e-book format!). ), I started programming in BASIC on a hobby PC, MSX, in junior high school. I am sure that I am not the only one who has the disease of wanting to analyze various things when I started programming (I am sure it is a common occurrence among game developers!) When I was young, I was absorbed in rewriting programs and hacking as an extension of that, and I was so absorbed in shabbing through games because entertainment was not as diversified as it is now.

It was because I was a bad boy living only on such greed that I became an adult and started buying game consoles with the money I earned from working. ......

Emulation technology is evil!

Soon I began to think to myself, "This is not what you are capable of! I began to think against video game consoles when I came across "bleem!", an emulation software that made it possible to run PlayStation titles on Windows machines and Dreamcasts. The memory of running "Gran Turismo 2" and "Tekken 3" on the Dreamcast and being impressed by the beautiful graphics was so strong that even as a 50 year old man, it has not been erased from my memory. After discovering the beauty of emulation technology, I was captivated by its charms.

I feel that those who think that emulators play a role in the proliferation of copy software sales because they suck out ROM images and boot them up must have fossilized brains. The development of emulation technology is necessary to pass on to the future the cultural heritage of the game industry, which has survived to this day through friendly competition among manufacturers (as game consoles get older, they become unusable due to increased malfunctions, including leaking capacitors). I believe that now is the time to reevaluate the significance of emulators in terms of reducing legacy costs in terms of preserving content.

When the aforementioned "bleem!" company was sued in the US District Court by SCE, which sells PlayStation, the US judiciary ruled that emulators were legal, and thus emulators were able to see the light of day. We hope that these facts will help people understand that emulators are not an evasion of the law.

If the technology of emulation had stopped evolving, the "Nintendo Classic Mini Family Computer," "Nintendo Classic Mini Super Nintendo Entertainment System," "Mega Drive Mini," "PC Engine mini," "NEOGEO mini," "PlayStation Classic," and so on, The recent trend of miniaturized and revamped retro hardware and multi-emulator machines like "Retro Freak" and "POLYMEGA" would never have been released. What is really bad is not the emulators themselves, but the people who suck out ROM images of game software and distribute or sell them to unspecified people over the Internet.

This is how I modified my Xbox!

I have to say this much in advance, but I am sure that there are those who will reflexively label the mere mention of the word "emulator" as "shady," and that emulation technology is evolving at an ever-increasing pace. I thought that if I didn't write about it, some people would recognize the word "emulator" as "dubious" and would not understand the reality that emulation technology is evolving day by day.

Now, the main topic, "the relationship between the Xbox and the emulator," goes back to the time of the original Xbox. I owned a number of first-generation Xboxes (Xbox 360 and Xbox One as well), but the first one I purchased was an early production lot that had just been released. For some reason, these early versions often had scratches on the game disc surface, and at first I put up with it, thinking it was a problem with my handling. However, other users began to complain that the discs were sometimes scratched, and this turned out to be a "common defect in early-lot units," as is often the case with game consoles. Eventually, while playing the game, I started to hear the sound of the disc being polished. The AC adapter was also causing a heat problem, which was officially announced by Microsoft, so I decided to buy another new Xbox.

After using the second-generation Xbox for a while, the huge first-generation Xbox unit that had been left unattended became a nuisance.

I was wondering whether I should get rid of it when I came across a foreign Xbox website that said it was possible to replace the HDD and rewrite the BIOS. It only scratches the disk surface (I don't know if it's tough being made in the U.S., but even with all the scratches, the games and DVD software will still boot up!) The Xbox itself was not malfunctioning ......, so we will take the unit apart and start modifying it.

(Of course, if I disassembled the unit, the support center would not accept repairs from now on, which is a self-responsibility issue, but since I was already playing with the second-generation Xbox, I had no regrets if it broke down, so I decided to go ahead!

I decided to try a magical modification of the Xbox!

The contents of the Xbox are almost the same as a personal computer with a Pentium series CPU. However, it took me about a week to understand what to do because the website that introduced the modification was written in English and used some incomprehensible technical slang.

However, I did not give up. I was awakened by a parental desire to revive my neglected Xbox, which had become a giant ornament!

First of all, I succeeded in replacing the IDE HDD with a large capacity 120GB HDD. It was quite tedious, but by following the steps carefully, we were able to make it work. It is hard to imagine nowadays, but the HDD in the Xbox was only 8GB!

The Xbox was also the first console to have a hard drive, and it was probably easier to hack because it was based on a PC. 3.5" IDE hard drive and 4 controller ports for offline 4-player games were the main reasons why the first Xbox was so huge. I heard that this was one of the reasons why the original Xbox had to be so huge, but when I disassembled it, I realized that it was not a lie.

For young people today, IDE HDDs are probably treated as antiques, and they probably don't believe in the existence of 8GB HDDs, which have less capacity than a single double-layer DVD.

Let's take a break from this story. After installing EvoX, the dashboard interface itself was changed, and the various emulators that were running on Windows were changed, The installation of EvoX changes the interface of the dashboard itself and allows the user to run various emulators that were running on Windows. Not only that, but DVDs will be region-free. In addition, it was possible to backup Xbox software to the hard drive and boot from it.

Of course, rewriting the BIOS is your responsibility. If you fail to do so, you may not even be able to boot the Xbox itself. However, if my beloved first-generation Xbox machine was to be brought back to life, I had no choice but to do it. And if it fails, I have another Xbox to use! With this in mind, I decided to install EvoX.

(At the time, there were only a handful of Japanese users who had installed EvoX, so there was no one who could teach me how to do it.)

I won't go into the details of how to do it, but back in the day, junk first-generation Xboxes were sold at Hard-Off for about 1,000 yen, and hardware junkers bought them because they were suitable for modding (although they are now much more expensive due to the growing momentum to reevaluate retro games), and they were used as a springboard to introduce EvoX It was also used as a springboard for the introduction of EvoX.

I was able to transfer the emulator and ROM images via FTP to the HDD of the first-generation Xbox with EvoX installed (a feat typical of the first-generation Xbox, which was equipped with a LAN port by default), and then use it as a stepping stone to install EvoX. (A rough trick typical of the original Xbox, which had a LAN port by default), and booted the Xbox from the EvoX dashboard. You can play NES, Mega Drive, PC Engine, and other home video game consoles through the Xbox on your TV screen. You can also run emulators for MSX, X68000, and other PCs. All the data sucked out of arcade game boards could also be started. The moment when the first Xbox, which had been dusty at home and treated as junk, was reborn as a dream machine is a memory that I still cannot forget even after more than 15 years have passed.

Unfortunately, due to a defect in the disk drive, my magic Xbox would not boot from the HDD backup after mounting the Xbox software on the tray. I didn't want the disk to get scratched up.

I succeeded in resurrecting the first Xbox by magically modifying junk like this, but I don't want to recommend that you go out of your way to magically modify the first Xbox that is still in use because of the hurdles involved in purchasing an IDE HDD or installing EvoX now.

If you want to try to remodel an Xbox that has been junked due to problems, it would be a good idea to give it a try. If it breaks, it is your own responsibility!

(Text by Junk Hunter Yoshida)