xemu For Linux

Retrogaming has existed since the early days of the video game industry, but one could argue that it's a lot better today than in the "old days," mainly thanks to the Internet and awesome emulation technologies.

Retrogaming is all about keeping that sweet legacy of outdated consoles and arcade systems alive and kicking, and this is where console emulators come into play.

xemu is one of the most popular Xbox emulation applications currently available for free. It's a community-built and -maintained project, it's open-source, as well as cross-platform since it can be run on pretty much all major OSes such as Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Building a good console emulator is not an easy task, and there's definitely a lot more that goes into it than just creating an app with a wide range of title compatibility.

In the case of xemu, for instance, the title compatibility list is supremely impressive with somewhere around 1000 titles. Probably more impressive than the number of compatible titles is the compatibility status of said titles. Around 80% of titles (around 800 or so) are fully playable with minimum user input and configuration.

For a modern console emulator to be good, it also has to offer modern features such as the ability to save the state of your games, modding support, in short, features that enhance the whole experience.

Thankfully, this is another one of xemu's strengths. Among the most notable features, xemu provides very good controller support (built on SDL2), snapshots (the ability to save states), render scaling (scale up old titles up to 1080p), and decent networking features as well (connect with other xemu users online, as well as real Xbox accounts).

Probably the first thing that you need to know before installing xemu is the fact that it provides a LLE (Low Level Emulation). What does this mean? Well, unlike most other emulator apps (which are HLE - High Level Emulation), LLEs such as xemu are all about recreating the hardware on which the original games ran.

This is one reason why xemu's compatibility list is not only superior to most other emulators, but the whole experience is more consistent as well.

The only real system requirement is that an OpenGL 4.0-compatible GPU is required. Because xemu emulates the actual hardware of the Xbox, "you must have a copy of the stuff that a real Xbox needs when it turns on."

This includes the MCPX Boot ROM Image, a Flash ROM Image (BIOS), and the Hard Disk Image. Since their contents are copyrighted, you'll have to dump those files from your own Xbox console.

From this point onwards, the experience can be either "smooth sailing," or the complete opposite. To avoid most of the nasty experiences, I strongly recommend that you check out xemu's extensive documentation section.

Just like with most gaming/console emulators, there's a bit of learning curve, and troubleshooting various "stuff" and issues can take a bit of time and patience.

However, once all is said and done, xemu is, arguably, better at playing Xbox games than the original console. This is mostly thanks to today's modern computers that (usually) have tons of RAM, improved CPUs and GPUs, as well as ultra-fast SSDs.

Interested in some nifty Xbox retrogaming? If the answer is yes, then xemu should be at the top of your list.