Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Tag: original xbox

What Is So Special About Xbox 360?

Posted on by Viljami

Xbox 360 was originally released back in 2005. So, what was so special about it and how it seems to be relevant even this day when we are living currently the year 2025? For me personally the console was a huge part of my gaming setup for a long time. I had it hooked on my television for several years before, a bit sadly it finally refused to run any game discs at all. The problem with the console was dust. I actually tried cleaning it with pressured air but finally I decided to remove it completely from my setup as it didn’t work anymore. I got my Xbox 360 back in 2017 as I bought it from a close friend who had decided to sell the console.

Xbox 360 was a fun case in that you could play a lot of original Xbox games on it also. I am now able to play every original Xbox game on Batocera. I wrote about my adventures with Batocera just last month. I think its a very good gaming operating system. It is possible to run Xbox 360 emulation also on Batocera if you happen to have a very powerful PC. Raspberry Pi, even if it is the latest device, is not currently able to run games like these. So, it is very much possible to emulate Xbox 360 on a device that can run an emulation system like Batocera.

Xbox 360 was as a gaming console a follow up to the original Xbox. It actually sold 84 million units and was finally discontinued in 2016. The sales are so good that any Xbox console hasn’t come close to selling as many units as Xbox 360 did. Its toughest competitor, PS3, sold also well. PS3 managed to sell 87,4 million units worldwide. Many of the most popular games of this era were released for both of these consoles, Xbox 360 and PS3. There were some exceptions also. Xbox 360 saw games like Forza Motorsport from 2 to 4, Gears of War series (first three games), Fable 2 and 3 and Halo 3 and 4 while we saw games like Resistance series, Metal Gear Solid 4, God of War III and Gran Turismo 5 and 6 only on PS3.

Technically Xbox 360 was a huge jump compared to its predecessor original Xbox. The game discs had about 7-8 GB of space which was a slight upgrade if compared to original Xbox that used DVD discs that have about 4,7 GB of space. There were different options and models when it comes to hard disks. The size varied from 20 to 500 GB. Later, when Xbox 360 had been in the markets for two years, there was also a model available that utilized HDMI connectivity. This is how I got my Xbox 360 hooked up to my television to be a part of my gaming setup back in 2017.

Controller was nice. Games were good. The lifespan of the console was long. There were some technical issues as the console was somewhat rushed to production. The problem was largely know as the “red ring of dead”. In this situation the console wasn’t fully operational and expressed a red circle on the consoles front panel. I haven’t experienced any issues and the problem was finally fixed. Consumers that faced this problem did get their console finally repaired or replaced. If you find this topic interesting, please search more information since I don’t have all the details. Lets just say that there were some major issues but the developer of Xbox was able to overcome the issues and finally everyone was somewhat comfortable with the situation.

Many Xbox 360 games can still be enjoyed as Microsoft’s Xbox Series X is very much backwards compatible with over 600 games out of all over 2000 Xbox  360 games. Only 63 out of all original Xbox games are compatible with Xbox Series X. You can also keep in mind  the possibility to play Xbox 360 games on an emulator like Xenia. System requirements for Xenia are: operating system should be preferably Windows 11, CPU should have more than 6 cores, GPU should be NVIDIA GTX 980 Ti or later, the PC should have at least 6 GB or more RAM. Xenia is available also for Linux.

The Power of Batocera

Posted on by Viljami

This blog post mostly deals with what Batocera can accomplish as an operating system for a PC. I recently bought a new personal computer. There were many reasons for this and one of them was the global transition to Windows 11. After October 14th (2025) Windows 10 wont be supported anymore by Microsoft. This means that there are no guarantees that your Windows 10 computer would be functional. There will be no security updates. So, I had to buy a new PC mainly because of these considerations.

My older PC was bought at the end of 2020. It wasn’t an old computer. It just wouldn’t be supported by Microsoft anymore after October 14th. I have to agree that it had some age already, but I really wasn’t ready to buy a new computer. I would have liked to use the old one a bit longer than was actually possible. My new PC runs the latest PC games smoothly. It also runs Xbox 360 and PS3 emulation which wasn’t possible with my older PC.

I figured that since my old PC was powerful enough to run PS2, GameCube and original Xbox emulation, I wanted to use it as a retro gaming platform. I have had some nice experiences with Recalbox, so, that was my first option. Well, I wasn’t at first able to get Recalbox installed directly to my older PC. It did run but it was kind of installed to my USB stick. I wanted to try to install Batocera instead. I had heard a lot of positive debate about it. So, I went with Batocera and finally it worked like a dream.

Batocera is an operating system that is very much related to Linux and is also dedicated to being able to run some retro games. My older PC was powerful enough for this purpose. After some fiddling with installations and moving some games to the computer I managed to get some games running. I think original Xbox, GameCube and PS2 have many interesting games for me to play and experiment with. Since all my gaming consoles of this particular era have ended up getting finally broken I figured that emulation could enable me to play these kinds of video games one more time.

I have this issue with older gaming hardware. I have a Nintendo GameCube, Sony Playstation 2 and also an original Xbox but they all broke down as I had them set up in my corner of gaming in my living room. I guess they are gathering too much dust and finally end up not reading the disc at all. I also have a Xbox 360 console that isn’t functional and the reason seems to be dust.

You can actually run Batocera from a USB stick but I wanted to install it to my older PCs hard drive. This required me to boot the computer to my USB stick. This required some fiddling with BIOS settings. This isn’t actually difficult but it requires some knowledge. However there are instructions that can be found online. I also wanted to wipe my disks completely. I did it with a program called ShredOS. Now, this procedure took about 14 hours. I ended up running it through overnight so I wouldn’t need to monitor this. After I got rid of all the content from my hard disks, that were a 2TB disk and a 256GB disk, both of them SSDs, the actual installation process was simple. Of course I had to set up all of these systems BIOSes and move over all the game roms.

I wanted to be able to play my retro games on the Batocera that I had installed with a controller of Xbox Series S/X. I find this controller to be as comfortable as a controller can be. I also bought a good quality cable that was three meters long. This way the controller didn’t need a battery at all. I don’t actually mind about the cable. I actually prefer using cable over using a battery in a controller. The latest Xbox’s controller is also a natural choice because it is very much compatible with a PC. I am playing my GameCube, original Xbox and PS2 games with this controller. It is very versatile as a game pad.

Batocera needs some power to run this kind of emulation. It is nice to be able to actually have a dedicated device for playing retro games like this. I am very content that the system is able to run also Dreamcast games if I would just set up the BIOS and move over the game roms. You can also play some older video game consoles games with Batocera. Some of these games feel a bit clunky since they are a bit old already. All in all I find Batocera a good video gaming operating system for any gamer. It is a good way to utilize also your old personal computer if you are replacing your old PC maybe because of the transition to Windows 11.

The Push for New Hardware

Posted on by Viljami

What is the push for new hardware and where does this kind of thinking fit? What are some options for getting your hands on the latest hardware? Are you playing video games with older hardware? Where does emulating retro video game consoles fit right in this discussion? These are only some of the questions I am trying to answer in this latest blog post. I am happy to have you on board!

I was recently playing some PS2 games on my current PC setup. I started thinking about some modern games and how were they compared to these old PS2 games. There is just some deeper appeal in these so called retro games for me. I have also played lots of Xbox 360 games recently. One of these Xbox 360 games is Dirt 3 and there are many other good games that you can actually play on the latest Xbox, Xbox Series X, through its backwards compatibility.

For me the golden era of video games was, or is, the 2000s. Back in the day we had consoles like PS2, PS3, original Xbox and also Xbox 360 along with GameCube. Sega Dreamcast has to be also mentioned when it comes to the hardware of this golden era of gaming. There are also ways to run these games on emulators. So even after the hardware might be broken, that being the console or the actual game disc, you can still get back to playing games from this era. Today we are getting lots of power out of PCs. It is today possible to emulate Xbox 360 and PS3 hardware with a decently powerful, new, PC.

Why are we getting pushed for new hardware? This is a very good question. The hardware manufacturers have to sell some products. After all there would be no manufacturers if there weren’t new hardware products for them to sell. Also the software is getting sold mainly for same reasons. Without mentioning any specific company we can say that there are some facets that get profit from pushing the new hardware to us consumers that also are the gamers in this world.

What is enough when it comes to performance? We could have a device that would be roughly as powerful as a PS4 and that would actually provide all the power needed to run modern video games. One particular gaming console that has made a difference when it comes to performance was the first Nintendo Switch. in the recent years it couldn’t stand up against its greatest competitors.

Do we need new hardware so badly? For me the answer is actually no. You can have a ten year old PC that you would connect to a screen of any type and play the best games from 2000s with a brand new Xbox One controller and enjoy the golden era, according to my viewpoint, with this kind of a setup. We have some hobbyist that actually like to play with and fix old computers. Also many old PC games cannot be run with a modern PC at all. You might need an older operating system and also some old drivers for older hardware like graphics processing unit or an audio device.

I have had some tough luck with my older video game hardware. I have broken two PS2s, one original Xbox and also one Xbox 360 console. The main issue I’ve had was that the console isn’t somehow able to read the game disc anymore. This has everything to do with dust. Also original Xbox has some electrical components, condensers, actually, that are very sensitive to wearing down when time progresses. So, for me it is way more easier to just abandon a broken down console and turn to some emulation on a suitable PC.

These were some thoughts that I had in mind. They were appearing to me as I was playing some PS2 games as I told you in the beginning of this blog post. I ahve to say that I was actually playing Need for Speed – Hot Pursuit 2, but I just couldn’t find the original game to take a photo of. So you are going to have to be content with another great PS2 racing game Burnout 3 – Takedown. I actually do play my PS2 emulator games with this fresh Xbox Series S/X compatible game pad. It is very handy as a controller on a Windows PC.